New Juilliard Ensemble, led by Joel Sachs, performs the world premiere of Ryan Gallagher's Sirens and works by Toivo Tulev, Younghi Pagh-Paan, John Woolrich, and Daniel Bernard Roumain, on Tuesday, November 20, 8 PM, in The Sharp Theater

On Tuesday, November 20 at 8 PM in The Peter Jay Sharp Theater, the New Juilliard Ensemble led by Joel Sachs performs the world premiere of Juilliard alumnus Ryan Gallagher’s (U.S.) Sirens (2007); and Western Hemisphere premieres of 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 City premiere of a work by Daniel Bernard Roumain’s  (U.S.) Grace (1996). (Please note: the temporary entrance for The Peter Jay Sharp Theater is 155 West 65th Street.)
 
FREE tickets are available for this concert beginning November 6 at the Juilliard Box Office, located at 60 Lincoln Center Plaza. The Box Office is open 11 AM – 6 PM, Monday through Friday. The Juilliard Box Office is accessible by elevator, escalator, or stairs located on W. 65th Street near Amsterdam Avenue. For more information, please call (212) 769-7406 or visit www.juilliard.edu.  

Ryan Gallagher’s Sirens, commissioned by and written for Joel Sachs and the New Juilliard Ensemble, receives its world premiere. Completed in September 2007, Sirens is a short work divided into five sections depicting the imagined anguish of the sailor Odysseus. In Greek mythology, Sirens were sea goddesses, sometimes described as having the head of a woman and the body of a bird – who sang mesmerizing songs directed toward passing sailors. Those unfortunate enough to be tempted toward the Sirens were doomed to end their voyage listening to that music for the rest of their lives and wasting away. About his work, Mr. Gallagher remarked: “The composition is not necessarily intended to be a tone poem in the way of depicting this scene musically, nor did I wish to imitate in this piece what I imagined the song of the Sirens sounded like. Rather, I meant to musically capture the desire and desperation I imagined Odysseus felt as he strained mightily against the ropes, listening to the Sirens and begging to be set free, but only to be tied down tighter by his crew as they continued sailing.” Mr. Gallagher is in his first year of graduate studies at Cornell University, where his teachers include Steven Stucky and Roberto Sierra. He received his bachelor of music degree from Juilliard, where he studied with Christopher Rouse. A native of Wooster, Ohio, he studied composition with his father, Jack Gallagher, at the College of Wooster. He also studied with Samuel Adler, Martin Bresnick, George Tsontakis, Richard Cornell, and Julian Wachner. Performances of his music include those by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, eighth blackbird, Society for New Music, Collage New Music, the Contemporary Youth Orchestra of Cleveland, and the Nevsky String Quartet.

Toivo Tulev’s Be lost in the Call, which receives its Western Hemisphere premiere, was commissioned by Berlin’s MaerzMusik festival and premiered in 2003 by the NYYD Ensemble and conductor Olari Elts at the Chamber Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic. The title of the work was borrowed from the closing lines of an English translation of a poem by Persian poet Mevlana Jalaluddin al-Rumi (1207-1273) – “Remember God so much that you are forgotten. Let the caller and the called disappear, be lost in the Call.” In the composition, a measured gradual movement, characteristic of western liturgical music, commingles with oriental tone-colors and disjointed modernistic melodies. All the tensions eventually fade away. Mr. Tulev graduated from the Tallinn Conservatory where he studied composition with Eino Tamberg. He furthered his training with S.D. Sandström in Stockholm, studied electro-acoustic music at the Cologne Hochschule and undertook a post-graduate course at the Estonian Academy of Music. He currently teaches composition and is head of the composition department at the Estonian Academy of Music.

 Younghi Pagh-Paan’s Go-Un Nim, which receives its Western Hemisphere premiere, was written for chamber orchestra in 1997-98 and had its first performance in Bremen in 1998 for the reopening of the Bremen Kunsthalle, where it was conducted by Günter Neuhold. Ms. Pagh-Paan was born in South Korea and studied music theory and composition at the Seoul National University. She continued her studies at the Musik-hochschule in Freiburg on Breisgau with Hans Huber, Brian Ferneyhough, Peter Förtig, and Edith Picht-Axenfeld. Her compositions have been performed at the ICSM World Music Days, the Donaueschinger Musiktage, numerous new music festivals, as well as on many European radio stations. She has been a professor at the Hochschule der Künste in Bremen since 1994. 
 
John Woolrich’s Going a Journey, which receives its Western Hemisphere premiere, refers to William Hazlitt’s celebrated essay, “On Going a Journey” (1822) on the joys of nature’s solitude and the value of the unmediated aesthetic experience. The work was commissioned by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. Mr. Woolrich’s work has been championed by the Britten Sinfonia, the BBC, Nicholas Daniel, Joanna MacGregor, and Steven Isserlis. He has collaborated with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, and from 2004, has been the associate artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival, working with Thomas Adès.

Daniel Bernard Roumain uses his own text in Grace, which makes reference to Amazing Grace, whose words were written by former slave-trader John Newton in Olney, England in 1772. Mr. Roumain re-imagines the work and adds elements of hip-hop music, 1960s-style psychedelic instrumental music, and recalls the engaging novelties of Gunther Schuller’s Third Stream music experiments. Grace will be receiving its New York City premiere. It was commissioned and composed for the Dogs of Desire Ensemble, a group from Albany, New York. Composer, violinist and band leader, Daniel Bernard Roumain’s works have been performed by groups throughout the United States, including the American Composer’s Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Nashville Symphony, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Of Haitian-American heritage, he holds degrees from Vanderbilt University, Nashville, and the University of Michigan (master’s and doctorate).

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 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 Dutch composer Robin DeRaaff and Juilliard composer Jude Vaclavik; and 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 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.