Music Notes – Sunday, June 1st:
This week’s musicians are Laura Silverman and Ann Yu.
Laura Silverman received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in piano from The Cleveland Institute of Music and was a prize winner in both The Casadesus International Piano Competition (now The Cleveland International Piano Competition), and the J.S. Bach International Piano Competition. Ms. Silverman has served on the faculties of both The University of Akron School of Music (Director of Collaborative Piano Studies) and The College of Wooster.
Praised for her “full-bodied, rich and warm tone” (Cleveland.com), violinist Ann Yu is an accomplished soloist, chamber, orchestral, and session musician and educator whose versatility, excellence in artistry, and collaborative spirit has secured her as one of the most coveted musicians throughout Northeast Ohio’s artistic communities. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music studying with Jaime Laredo, Jan Sloman, and William Preucil, where she was the 1st prize winner of the 26th Annual Darius Milhaud Competition and Concerto Competition and the recipient of the Fortnightly Musical Award. Locally, you can find Ann performing at the Candlelight Concerts, Severance Hall with the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, and teaching through the Cleveland Orchestra’s Crescendo Program at the Cleveland and Dike School of the Arts. Ann finds great joy in exploring other genres and styles of playing the violin. Currently she studies Baroque violin with Julie Andrijeski, Old Time fiddle with Paul Kirk, performs with blues band Crazy Marvin and the Blues Express at the Treelawn, and jams with local bluegrass and old time musicians. Outside of music, she enjoys dancing lindy hop and blues, training in krav maga, and volunteering for the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
Prelude: Nocturne for Violin and Piano – Boulanger
French Composer Marie-Juliette Olga “Lili” Boulanger (1893–1918) made an extraordinary impact on European musical life during her short lifetime, although she is sometimes confused with her older sister Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979), who was also a composer but was better known as a conductor and music educator. At just 19 years old, Lili Boulanger became the first woman to win the coveted Prix de Rome for musical composition with her cantata Faust e Helene. Chronically ill for most of her life, she nevertheless wrote a significant amount of music, particularly Psalm settings and other works for voices with instruments. Boulanger composed this Nocturne for solo violin with piano accompaniment in 1911.
Song: ‘Tis a Gift to Be Simple – Brackett
“Simple Gifts” is one of the most familiar and beloved American songs ever written. It was originally composed as a ‘dancing song’ in 1848 by Joseph Brackett, Jr. (1797-1882) for the Shaker Settlement of Gorham, Maine. The song remained relatively unknown outside of the Shaker community for nearly a century, but it entered the American mainstream in 1944 when Aaron Copland (1900-1990) prominently featured the melody (which Copland had discovered in a Shaker songbook borrowed from his local library) in his orchestral suite Appalachian Spring. The song is #16 in our Singing the Living Tradition hymnbook.
Centering Music: Selections from Nocturnes – Alexander
American composer, pianist, and music educator Dennis Alexander (b. 1947) is best-known for his significant contributions to pedagogical repertoire for the piano. He has well over 400 published works and spent more than 20 years teaching piano pedagogy at the University of Montana. First published in 2018, Alexander’s Nocturnes have already become widely used as teaching pieces and recital repertoire.
Offertory Music: La fille aux cheveux de lin (The Girl with the Flaxen Hair) – Debussy
French composer Claude Debussy (1862-1918) is widely considered to be the father of musical Impressionism, although Debussy himself disliked the idea of being categorized as a composer. Throughout his career, Debussy wrote music for a wide variety of performing forces, and his nontraditional use of harmony played a vital role in ushering in a new era of music at the turn of the 20th century. Debussy wrote “La fille aux cheveux de lin” in January of 1910 as part of his first book of Préludes for solo piano. This work is one of Debussy’s best-loved pieces and has been arranged for various performing forces and recorded by hundreds of artists.
Song: Go Lifted Up – Barron
“Go Lifted Up” (#1057 in our Singing the Journey hymnbook) was written by Mortimer Barron (b. 1939) during his time as Music Director at Murray Unitarian Universalist Church in Attleboro, Massachusetts. At Murray UU Church and in many other congregations, “Go Lifted Up” is used regularly as a ‘sending forth’ song.
Postlude: Salut d’Amour– Elgar
Salut d’Amour was written by Edward Elgar (1857-1934), a British composer who wrote primarily orchestral and choral music, and is most famously known today as the composer of the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, the first of which is frequently played at commencement ceremonies in North America. Elgar composed Salut d’Amour (op. 12) in 1888 as an engagement gift to Caroline Alice Roberts. Elgar and Roberts married in 1889 and remained so until her death in 1920. Elgar originally titled Salut d’Amour as Liebesgruss (‘Love’s Greeting’) because of his bride-to-be’s fluency in German. Originally composed for violin and piano, Salut d’Amour has since been arranged for a variety of performing forces and has been recorded dozens of times by a plethora of artists. It remains one of Elgar’s best-known chamber works.
-Mike Carney, UUCC Music Director