The Juilliard Percussion Ensemble, led by Daniel Druckman, presents "Three Rivers, Three Roads" featuring works by Edmund Campion, Alejandro Vinao, and Kaija Saariaho on Friday, October 19 at 8 PM in The Peter Jay Sharp Theater

The Juilliard Percussion Ensemble, led by Daniel Druckman, presents “Three Rivers, Three Roads,” featuring music by three composers who are taking a new look at percussion, on Friday, October 19 at 8 PM in The Peter Jay Sharp Theater, located at 144 West 66th Street. The program features Edmund Campion’s Ondoyants et Divers (Wavelike and Diverse) for percussion sextet (2006) and ADKOM (A Different Kind of Measure) (2001-02) for percussion quartet; Alejandro Viñao’s Arabesco Infinito (2006) for vibraphone and marimba and Estudios de Frontera (2004); and Kaija Saariaho’s Trois Rivieres (1994).

FREE tickets are required for this performance and will be available on October 5 at the Juilliard Box Office, located at 60 Lincoln Center Plaza.  To get to the Box Office, walk west on 65th Street and take the escalator or elevator near Amsterdam Avenue up to the plaza level. Box Office hours are Monday through Friday from 11 AM to 6 PM. For more information, call the Juilliard Box Office at (212) 769-7406 or visit www.juilliard.edu.
       
In putting together the program for this year’s Percussion Ensemble, Director Daniel Druckman remarked: “The three composers – Campion, Viñao, and Saariaho are worlds apart stylistically, but share certain commonalities. Technology is central to all of them, whether used to extend the timbral palette in Saariaho’s music, or to explore ideas of ‘creative unpredictable repetition’ found in fractal geometry and chaos theory in Viñao’s works, or to push at the boundaries of organized time and rhythm in Campion’s compositions. All three of these composers have spent significant parts of their artistic lives at IRCAM, the Paris-based center for musical and acoustical research. There is a certain kind of intellectual rigor and fascination with process which unites these works, a willingness to test boundaries and forms, a patience to let formulas and architecture unfold. And while the music is never subservient to the science, these composers all seem eager to embrace the possibilities and metamorphoses made available to them by new technologies. This is what these very varied works have in common.”

Edmund Campion’s work, Ondoyants et Divers (Wavelike and Diverse), was commissioned by the Percussion de Strasbourg Ensemble. The title comes from one of the essays of the French writer Montaigne “on friendship.” The composer also heard scientists talk of the wavelike and diverse patterns of the universe and sociologists talk of wavelike and diverse patterns of human behavior. The piece is about total cooperation. Each of the six musicians performing the work has only five small percussion instruments: one skin, one wood, one metal, one pitched metal, and one auxiliary, and the focus is on the players and not the timbres; it is a concerto for six. Mr. Campion’s work, ADKOM (A Different Kind of Measure), commissioned and composed for Miguel Bernat and the Drumming Ensemble (in Porto, Portugal), is written for four percussionists equipped with special in-ear computer generated clicktracks. The work is divided into seven short etudes, with each exploring a different aspect of musical time. The suite was inspired in part by the photographic work of Eadweard James Muybridge, who used a system of trip-shutter high-speed photography to reveal time and motion.

A native of Dallas, Texas, Mr. Campion received his doctorate degree in composition from Columbia University and attended the Paris Conservatory where he worked with Gérard Grisey. He is currently professor of music at the University of Berkeley in California. He has been the recipient of the Nadia Boulanger Award, the Paul Fromm Award at Tanglewood, a Charles Ives Award, given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Fulbright scholarship for study in France.

Alejandro Viñao says of the inspiration for his piece Arabesco infinito:  “I first thought of writing an ‘arabesque’ for marimba and vibraphone as I was hearing my son Matteo practice Debussy’s second arabesque at the piano. Shortly afterwards, I considered Debussy’s piece in the context of ideas about repetition derived from classical Islamic art, Chaos Theory, and fractal geometry.” In traditional Islamic art, ornamental textures often are constructed from a single geometric figure multiplied in all directions creating an infinite pattern. In Arabesco infinito, Mr. Viñao emulates this kind of construction. His Estudios de Frontera, commissioned for a consortium of players by the Peabody Conservatory, is for five percussionists and is in two movements: “Homage to Nancarrow” and “Visita a la Frontera.” The first movement is concerned with the perceptual illusion of multiple simultaneous speeds or tempi. In the second movement, the composer revisits a central theme in 20th century art: the discontinuity of form when more than one story is told at the same time. 

Mr. Viñao studied composition with the Russian composer Jacobo Ficher in Buenos Aires. In 1975, he moved to Britain where he continued his studies at the Royal College of Music and the City University in London. In 1988, he was awarded a Ph.D. in composition at the City University. His work has been played and broadcast throughout Europe and the U.S., and has been featured at Tanglewood and the London PROMS. Mr. Viñao is currently artist-in-residence at the Computer Lab of Cambridge University.

Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s Trois rivières is written for four percussionists and is in three sections. The first part introduces all the instrumental colors used in the piece. The second part adds a rhythmic aspect to the nuances of color and texture, as an ostinato is developed in markedly varying directions. The last part is an epilogue, recalling components of the two preceding parts. In the last part, the earlier aspects of the material are reorganized and placed in different relationships to each other. The work includes a poem La nuit de lune sur le fleuve (Moonlit Night on the River) by Chinese poet Li Po (701-762) recited by the percussionists during the piece.

Ms. Saariaho studied visual arts at the University of Industrial Arts in Helsinki before studying music. She studied composition with Paavo Heininen at the Sibelius Academy and with Brian Ferneyhough and Klaus Huber at the Musikhochschule in Freiburg. She took courses in computer music at IRCAM in Paris, where she has been living and working. 

Percussionist Daniel Druckman is active as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician and recording artist, concertizing throughout the United States, Europe and Japan. He has appeared as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the American Composer’s Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic’s Horizons concerts, the San Francisco Symphony’s New and Unusual Music series, and in recital in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Tokyo. He has been a member of the New York Philharmonic since 1991, where he serves as associate principal percussion, and has made numerous appearances with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Da Capo Chamber Players, the American Brass Quintet, the Group for Contemporary Music, Orpheus, Steve Reich and Musicians, and the Philip Glass Ensemble.

Mr. Druckman has also participated in chamber music festivals at Santa Fe, Ravinia, Saratoga, Caramoor, Bridgehampton, Tanglewood and Aspen. An integral part of New York’s new music community, both as soloist and as a member of the New York New Music Ensemble and Speculum Musicae, Mr. Druckman has premiered works by Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, Jacob Druckman, Aaron Jay Kernis, Oliver Knussen, Poul Ruders, Joseph Schwantner, Ralph Shapey and Charles Wuorinen, among many others.  Recent appearances include collaborations with Alan Feinberg at Dartmouth College, with Fred Sherry at BargeMusic, with Dawn Upshaw at Carnegie Hall, and solo concerts at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre and Merkin Concert Hall in New York. Recent solo recordings include Elliott Carter’s Eight Pieces for Four Timpani on Bridge records, David Felder’s In Between on EMF, and Jacob Druckman’s Reflections on the Nature of Water on Koch International. 
      
Mr. Druckman is a faculty member of The Juilliard School, where he serves as chairman of the percussion department and director of the percussion ensemble. He was born and raised in New York City. The son of composer Jacob Druckman, he had invaluable exposure to music and musicians at an early age. He attended Juilliard, where he was awarded the Morris A. Goldenberg Memorial Scholarship and the Saul Goodman Scholarship, receiving both the bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music. Additional studies were undertaken at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, where he was awarded the Henry Cabot Award for outstanding instrumentalist.

Juilliard presents more than 700 dance, drama, and music events annually. During ongoing renovations, a full calendar of events is scheduled. For a complete listing of events, as well as construction updates, go to www.juilliard.edu.