The New Juilliard Ensemble, led by Joel Sachs, presents six co-world premieres, part of "The Danube Hudson Project" uniting composition students from the Liszt Academy in Budapest and The Juilliard School on Monday, October 29 at 8 PM in Paul Hall

The New Juilliard Ensemble, led by Joel Sachs, presents six co-world premieres, part of the Danube-Hudson Project, uniting composition students from the Liszt Academy in Budapest and The Juilliard School, on Monday, October 29 at 8 PM in Paul Hall, 144 West 66th Street. In an unusual exchange, three Juilliard composition students, Kyle Blaha, Jakub Ciupiñski, and Edward Aaron Goldman will travel to Budapest for rehearsals and performances of their new compositions by the Liszt Academy students. Hungarian composers, Bálint Horvath, Máté Bella, and Péter Zombola, will travel to New York City for rehearsals and performances of their new works by members of the New Juilliard Ensemble. Joel Sachs conducts both performances (Budapest, October 21; Paul Hall, October 29) of these co-world premieres. Boulez’s Derive I is the model for their pieces. The Danube-Hudson project was conceived by the young Hungarian composer Balázs Horváth, a member of the faculty of the Liszt Academy, and Joel Sachs. 
       
The program opens with the model for the student compositions, Pierre Boulez’s Dérive I (1984/86), and continues with co-premieres by Bálint Horváth’s (b. Budapest) Pages from My Diary (2007); Kyle Blaha’s (b. Belleville, Illinois) Effects (2007); Jakub Ciupiñski’s (b. Warsaw) Sonar (2007); Máté Bella’s (b. Budapest) Equivalence (2007); Péter Zombola’s (b. Budapest) Sextet; and Edward Aaron Goldman’s (b. New York) Cellular Automata. 
       
This event is FREE; no tickets are required. For more information, please call (212) 769-7406 or visit www.juilliard.edu.  PLEASE NOTE: During construction the entrance to Paul Hall is at 144 West 66th Street.
       
Pierre Boulez’s Derive I, for small ensemble, was composed in 1984 and was intended as a tribute to Sir William Glock, controller of music of the BBC upon his retirement as conductor of the Bath Festival. (Sir William Glock had invited Boulez to conduct the BBC Symphony for the first time in 1964, and later appointed him its principal conductor.) 

The title, as a noun, is a nautical term having to do with drift. Dériver, as a verb, connotates a turning away from course. This is conveyed in the shape of the work, which veers to a slow speed in the middle, from which the original momentum is only gradually restored. 
       
In Máté Bella’s work, Equivalence, the instrumentation, tempo, time signature, and bar numbers of his piece are identical with those of Boulez’s Derive I. The pitch material is also derived from the six basic chords that Boulez used. Mr. Bella created a chord matrix from Boulez’s harmonies, which he then used to generate all the chords and the 36-note scales that he employed in this piece. His piece consists of four parts. The first section uses imitation; the second has great metric variety; the third is lyrical; the fourth employs identical rhythms in all phrases. 

Mr. Bella was born in Budapest. He currently is studying composition at the Liszt Academy with Gyula Fekete. 
       
Kyle Blaha was intrigued by Boulez’s colorful use of the instruments within this relatively small ensemble. Textural writing dominates Mr. Blaha’s work, Effects. To achieve variety, he used contrasting moments of thick, bubbly ensemble writing, solo passages, and duet passages in combination with sudden dynamic changes. In addition, varied harmony accentuates the textural shifts, with hope of creating a colorful, engaging work. 

Mr. Blaha is currently pursuing a doctoral of musical arts degree in composition at Juilliard. He holds a master’s degree from Juilliard and a bachelor’s degree from the Eastman School of Music. 
       
The essential concept of Jakub Ciupiñski’s Sonar is similar to the technique of acoustic location – a system using reflected sound waves to determine the position of an object; the acronym SONAR signifies sound navigation and ranging. 

Mr. Ciupiñski was born in Krakow. His works have been performed in Poland, France (Festival of Electronic Music Group in Bourges), Italy, England (by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, the Haverhill Sinfonia, and the Bromsgrove New Music Festival), Scotland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine (by the Lviv Philharmonic at the Contrasts Festival), and in the U.S.

Edward Aaron Goldman’s Cellular Automata is a restless piece, more about its rhythms and textures than about the melodies that occasionally appear. The term “cellular automata” is taken from computer science, where it refers to arrays in which each element (cell) may be on or off, filled or empty. The state of a cell at any given stage is determined by the states of its neighboring cells in the stage before. Though they develop according to deterministic rules, these systems can generate beautiful and unpredictable complexity from simple initial ideas. In Mr. Goldman’s piece, the concept is not applied in its technical sense, but is used as an analogy to suggest themusical form and process. 

Mr. Goldman, a native of New York City, is in his second year of graduate work at Juilliard, studying composition with Samuel Adler. He attended Columbia University for his undergraduate degree. 

Bálint Horváth says that the four pieces of Pages From My Diary originated as songs and choral music. He thinks of the movements as “romantic pieces” – personal messages, souvenirs, diary pages, etc. 

Mr. Horvath was born in Budapest. He attended the Béla Bartók Conservatory where he studied composition with István Fekete Gyõr, and since 2004 has been a student of György Orbán at the Fran Liszt Academy. 

Péter Zombola’s Sextet contains three parts. As in Boulez’s Derive, he based his composition on a predetermined row, which changes throughout the movements. In the first and last sections (respectively Andante and Adagio), he used eight pitches; in the middle, he employed 24. The piece also reflects Boulez’s use of vivid contrasts.

Mr. Zombola was born in Budapest. He studied composition at the Béla Bartók Secondary School of Music. In 2001, he joined the composition classes of György Orbán and Zoltán Jeney at the Liszt Academy, receiving his degree with honors in composition in 2006. He also received a degree in music theory. Currently, he is in the Ph.D. program at the Academy.
       
On Tuesday, November 20 at 8 PM in The Peter Jay Sharp Theater, the New Juilliard Ensemble performs the world premiere of Ryan Gallagher’s (U.S.) Sirens (2007); and U.S. premieres of composers Toivo Tulev’s (Estonia) Be Lost in the Call (2003), Younghi Pagh-Paan’s (Korea/Germany) Go-Un Nim (1998), John Woolrich’s (U.K.) Going a Journey (2006); and the New York premiere of a work by Daniel Bernard Roumain’s  (U.S.) Grace (1996). 
      
The final NJE concert of the 2007-08 season takes place on Thursday, April 3 at 8 PM in The Peter Jay Sharp Theater and the world premieres of a work by Dutch composer Robin DeRaaff and a work by Juilliard composer Jude Vaclavik; the New York premiere of Franco Donatoni’s (Italy) Cloches (Bells) (1988-89); Ursula Mamlok’s (Germany/U.S.) Concertino (1984-85); and Oliver Knussen’s (U.K.) Requiem – Songs for Sue (2006).  

The New Juilliard Ensemble participates in FOCUS! 2008: All About Elliott, which opens on Friday, January 25 with an early tribute to composer Elliott Carter on the occasion of his 100th birthday. This 24th annual FOCUS! festival of six concerts opens with Pierre Boulez conducting on Friday, January 25 at 8 PM in The Peter Jay Sharp Theater with members of the New Juilliard Ensemble and the Lucerne Festival Academy. The program includes Varèse’s Intégrales; Carter’s Triple Duo; Stravinsky’s Concertino (for twelve instruments); Carter’s Penthode; Boulez’s Derive I; and Carter’s Clarinet Concerto (soloist to be announced). The New Juilliard Ensemble, led by Joel Sachs, performs an all-Carter program on Tuesday, January 29 at 8 PM.

The New Juilliard Ensemble is now in its 15th season. Celebrating the liveliness of today's music, and focusing primarily on repertory of the last decade, the ensemble presents music by a variety of international composers writing in the most diverse styles. The ensemble appears regularly in MoMA’s Summergarden festival and has been a featured ensemble four times at the Lincoln Center Festival, playing the music of Brian Ferneyhough, Guo Wenjing, Bright Sheng, and Salvatore Sciarrino to packed houses and rave reviews.  Its members are current students at Juilliard, who are admitted to the ensemble by audition.

New Juilliard Ensemble founder and director Joel Sachs also is co-director of the internationally-acclaimed new music ensemble Continuum. He has conducted orchestras and ensembles in Austria, El Salvador, Germany, Iceland, Mexico, Switzerland, and Ukraine, and held new music residencies in Berlin, London, Salzburg, and Curitiba (Brazil). Recent keyboard appearances include performances of John Cage’s monumental Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano, and, with Continuum, chamber music by American pioneers Cowell, Ives, and Nancarrow at the 2005 Lucerne Festival. In recent years, Dr. Sachs conducted the distinguished Icelandic contemporary music ensemble Caput in a program of music from Ukraine, Uzbekistan, the United States, and Iceland, and a concert of music by Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen. He also conducted Caput for a CD of works by the Icelandic composer Askell Masson. In May 2007, he and other members of Continuum performed in Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, and then performed in Mongolia. Dr. Sachs’ recordings appear on the Advance, CRI, Naxos, Nonesuch, and TNC labels. A member of Juilliard’s music history faculty, Dr. Sachs currently is working on a biography of the American composer Henry Cowell, to be published by Oxford University Press. He also appears on radio as a commentator on recent music.