Pacific Serenades Opens Season With Work By Youngest Commissioned Composer

PACIFIC SERENADES OPENS SEASON WITH NEW WORK BY YOUNGEST COMPOSER COMMISSIONED IN 24-YEAR HISTORY OF CHAMBER ENSEMBLE

Program – entitled “To Youth! To Wisdom!” – includes Quintessence by 25-year old composer Jeff Kryka, Brahms’ String Quintet #1 in F Major and selected movements from Bartok’s 44 Duos for Two Violins

Violinists Tereza Stanislav and Brendan Speltz, violists Roland Kato and Connie Kupka and cellist David Speltz will perform

Saturday, January 30, 2010; 8 pm; at a private home in Culver City
Sunday, January 31, 2010; 4 pm; The Neighborhood Church in Pasadena
Tuesday, February 9, 2010; 8 pm; The UCLA Faculty Center
Calendar Summary follows press release

LOS ANGELES, Calif. According to Mark Carlson, Artistic Director and Founder of Pacific Serenades, composers tend to develop more slowly – or later – than performers. “It’s unusual to hear music by someone who already has his own voice at age 25 and who also has the compositional skill to express that voice,” says Carlson, a flutist who has composed nearly 100 works and whose recording of his works, The Hall of Mirrors, was a winner of the Chamber Music America/WQXR Record Awards for 2001.

But there are exceptions to every rule, as audiences will discover when they hear the World Premiere of Quintessence by composer Jeff Kryka, 25, on Saturday, January 30 at 8 p.m. at a private home in Culver City; Sunday, January 31 at 4 p.m. at the Neighborhood Church in Pasadena; and Tuesday, February 9 at 8 p.m. at the UCLA Faculty Center in Los Angeles. “Jeff definitely has his own unique voice, which is what caught my attention about him,” says Carlson of the young composer, a First Prize winner of the Turner Classic Movies Young Film Composers Competition in 2006.

Also on the program, entitled “To Youth! To Wisdom!,” are String Quintet #1 in F Major by Johannes Brahms and Bela Bartok’s 44 Duos for Two Violins.

“This season, our 24th, there is a little subtheme running through all but the 3rd concert,” Carlson explains. “We’re programming new compositions from 2010, then coupling them with a work from the first half of the 20th century and an older piece. 44 Duos for Two Violins, written in 1931, obviously fits into that equation. The duos are just amazing, beautiful gems. Some of them are only 30 seconds long and none is longer than a couple of minutes or so. They are flashy, fun, poignant, and colorful. They show off the violins beautifully, violinists love playing them, and audiences always find them captivating.”

When asked about Brahms’ inclusion in “To Youth! To Wisdom!,” Carlson smiles. “Brahms’s music always sounds as if written by a wise old man. Also, it’s full of the typically rich sonorities and beautiful, singing melodies that we associate with Brahms.”

As for the youngest composer, Jeff Kryka, almost as much thought went into christening his new work as writing it. For starters, Quintessence reflects the dictionary definition of the term: the pure, concentrated essence of a thing or the perfect embodiment of it. But the explanation for the title of the 5-movement work goes far beyond that.

“Quintessence, literally the ‘fifth essence,’ was thought by the ancients to be the purest, most rarefied element – after earth, air, fire, and water – of which the planets, sun, moon, and stars were made,” Kryka explains. “Plato theorized about its existence in Timaeus, a dialogue which is also notable for his discussions of music, the Pythagorean scale, and the Doctrine of Ethos-the influence of music on human emotion and morality.”

Contemporary astrophysicists have also borrowed the term, Kryka continues, to describe a hypothetical form of Dark Energy-a force that, along with Dark Matter, permeates all of space. Currently the most prevalent theory among scientists to explain the accelerated expansion of the universe, Quintessence is thought to account for three-quarters of the total mass-energy of the universe.

“Naturally, I found the concept of Quintessence instantly appealing for the basis of a string quintet,” says Kryka. ” I always imagined the motion of celestial bodies to be something like a dance. Watching the way the planets wandered across the sky, sometimes retrograde to the movement of the moon, sun, and stars, I like to think this is how the ancients saw the universe too. By the end of the fifth movement, with the 5-note motive transformed into a great chorale, this is what Quintessence has become: the music of the spheres.”

Last but not least, Quintessence is written for a quintet – for two violins, two violas and cello. Musicians taking part in “To Youth! To Wisdom!” include violinists Tereza Stanislav, assistant concertmaster of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and Brendan Speltz; violists Roland Kato and Connie Kupka; and cellist David Speltz.

“Brendan is the son of long time Pacific Serenades members Connie Kupka and David Speltz,” says Carlson. “Since our founding in 1982, we’ve always said that, at Pacific Serenades, we’re a family. And this concert proves this in a whole new way!”

Tickets for “To Youth! To Wisdom!” are available online, at www.pacser.org, or by calling 213.534.3434. Tickets for Private Home concerts and the post concert reception are $55/person; for the Neighborhood Church and UCLA Faculty Center, $32/person. (Neighborhood Church and UCLA Faculty Center tickets are also interchangeable.) Full time students with valid identification can purchase tickets – at the door only – at the Neighborhood Church or UCLA Faculty Center for $5.

The Neighborhood Church is located at 301 N. Orange Grove Blvd. in Pasadena. The Gamble House museum, next door to the church, offers a discounted tour at $8/person to Pacific Serenades patrons on concert dates only. Tours begin promptly at 2 pm and at 2:40 pm and last approximately one hour. Reservations are required and must be made at least 48 hours in advance of the concert date by calling 626.793.3334, ext. 16.

The UCLA Faculty Center is located at 405 N. Hilgard Ave. on the UCLA campus in Westwood. Parking is available for $10 in Lot 2. In addition, prior to each concert, dinner at the UCLA Faculty Center is available for Pacific Serenades patrons. Reservations can be made by calling 310.825.0877.

Directions and additional information about private home concerts are mailed to ticket holders upon receipt of their order.

The mission of Pacific Serenades is to generate new chamber music by commissioning works and presenting them alongside standard repertoire in intimate concert settings, emphasizing Southern California musicians. For more information about Pacific Serenades, its upcoming season, musicians and composers, visit www.pacser.org or call 213.534.3434. Subscriptions are currently available.

ABOUT COMPOSER JEFF KRYKA

Although only 25 years old, composer Jeff Kryka has already received awards from Turner Classic Movies, ASCAP, the RMA L.A., the Henry Mancini Foundation and has had works performed in concert by virtuoso violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Symphony Orchestra, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Concert Band, and the Heartland Symphony Orchestra.

In addition, Kryka has served as composer for many films, most notably: Las Angeles (dir. Gerardo Flores Villarreal, Maverick Productions), Deserted (dir. Nils Timm, AFI), Forgive Us Our Transgressions, (dir Walter Richardson, UCLA), Cherchez La Femme (dir. Idit Dvir, Gaia Films), Code Duello (dir. Nora Gruber, UCLA), The End (dir. Maggie Ye, UCLA), and Changing Focus (dir. Mindy Ramaker, UW-Madison)

In 2008, as a participant in the ASCAP Film and Television Scoring Workshop, Kryka conducted his music with the Hollywood Studio Symphony at 20th Century Fox’s Newman Scoring Stage. During the summer of 2007, he taught a UCLA course in film music with Paul Chihara and music editor Dan Carlin and in the fall of that year interned in the television music department at 20th Century Fox Studios under Carol Farhat, where he oversaw recording sessions for hit TV shows such as the Simpsons, Family Guy, and American Dad. In 2006, Kryka was named the First Prize winner of the Turner Classic Movies Young Film Composers Competition. His score was chosen out of a field of over 650 international participants and judged by Academy Award-winning composer Hans Zimmer.

Kryka studied music composition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with composers Stephen Dembski and Laura Schwendinger, receiving his undergraduate degree in May 2006. In the fall of that year he began graduate work at the University of California-Los Angeles, studying with composers Paul Chihara, Roger Bourland, Ian Krouse, and David Lefkowitz. At UCLA, he also studies film music with composers Charles Fox and Laura Karpman, as well as orchestration with Bruce Broughton. He has been a teaching assistant for composers Russell Steinberg and Mark Carlson, and he teaches music theory and musicianship to undergraduate music majors.

ABOUT THE MUSICIANS (alphabetical)

Described by the Los Angeles Times as “a brilliant virtuoso, playing with the perfect combination of energy and eloquence,” Roland Kato, internationally acclaimed viola recitalist and soloist, has been a member of LACO since 1976 and was appointed Principal Violist by Iona Brown in 1987. He has also held the principal position in many orchestras including the Music Center Opera Orchestra, the Pasadena Symphony, the California Chamber Symphony, and the Pasadena Chamber Orchestra. Kato also plays chamber music with the Santa Clarita Chamber Players, Pacific Serenades and other popular ensembles in Los Angeles.

As a guest artist, Kato recently was invited to play with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and has appeared with the New York New Music Ensemble. He was also honored to perform chamber music with Yo-Yo Ma in a concert benefiting cancer research. In November 2002, he and LACO Concertmaster Margaret Batjer gave the West Coast premiere of Benjamin Britten’s double concerto in b minor for violin and viola.

Kato has appeared as soloist/recitalist on both viola and viola d’amore throughout the US and abroad with LACO, Festival Casals in Puerto Rico, Grand Canyon Chamber Music Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, Festival Internacional de Musica (Costa Rica), among many other festivals. In addition, he produced the award-winning premiere recording of Telemann’s Quatrieme Livre de Quatours, a collection of six chamber pieces on the Koch Classics International label performed by the period instrument ensemble American Baroque. This recording has just been re-released on the Music and Arts label. He has also recorded chamber music of Tania French released on the Centaur label, and composer Mark Carlson’s Piano Quartet. The Carlson recording (The Hall of Mirrors) was awarded the Chamber Music America/WQXR Record Awards for 2001. Other chamber music recordings include those with Ransom Wilson and Marni Nixon.

As a commissioned arranger of music, Kato’s works have been performed worldwide. His transcription of Prokofiev’s Music for Children was recently given its New York premiere, and in Washington, D.C. his arrangement of Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite was premiered at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts by the New Hampshire-based Apple Hill Chamber Players. It received its European premiere in Ireland and has consequently been performed throughout Europe and the US by various ensembles.

Connie Kupka, violist and violinist, was born and raised in Los Angeles where she studied at UCLA and began her professional career. In 1972, she won a scholarship to study chamber music with the Guarneri Quartet and concurrently worked with the violin pedagogue, Broadus Earle. In 1973, Kupka joined the Arriaga Quartet, which won First Prize in the Coleman competition in Pasadena. The following year, she debuted at Town Hall in New York with the ensemble.

Kupka has participated in many summer chamber music festivals, including those in Santa Fe, the Grand Canyon, the Oregon Bach Festival, the Mainly Mozart Festival in San Diego, and the Ojai Music Festival. She has served as Principal Violinist for LACO, the Pasadena Symphony, and the Colorado Music Festival and has appeared as soloist with the South Bay Symphony and Colorado Chamber Orchestra.

A member of LACO for 14 seasons, Kupka augments her Los Angeles orchestral activities with chamber music performances for such series as the South Bay Chamber Music series and Monday Evening Concerts. She is also active in motion picture studio orchestras.

Violinist Brendan Speltz is currently a student at the USC Thornton School of Music, working with Margaret Batjer. During the past several summers, Speltz has studied chamber music extensively with the Colorado Quartet at Soundfest, Cape Cod with Marion Feldman, at the NYU Quartet workshop in New York City, at the Bowdoin Music Festival in Maine and the International Academy of Music in St. Petersburg, Russia and Niagara Falls, Canada. He has also participated in such established professional chamber music series as the South Bay Chamber Music Society and Pacific Serenades and has performed several times on the broadcasts from the Los Angeles County Museum of Arts on KMZT. The young violinist has also performed in orchestras under the direction of Larry Livingston at the Idyllwild School of Music and was selected to play under Helmuth Rilling at the Bach Academy in Stuttgart.

David Speltz, cellist, began his formal studies with Eleanore Schoenfeld after being introduced to the cello by his father. Later, he was invited to join the Piatigorsky masterclass at USC.

He earned a master’s degree in mathematics from UCLA but soon realized that music was the path he should follow. In 1973, he helped form the Arriaga String Quartet, which went on to win first prize in the prestigious Coleman competition in Pasadena.

As a member of the Musical Offering ensemble, Speltz has performed at the Library of Congress, Lincoln Center, Casals Festival in Puerto Rico, and recorded on the Nonesuch label. He has also participated in many of the chamber music series in Los Angeles, including Pacific Serenades, Chamber Music in Historic Sites, the Bing series, the IMA, South Bay, and LACMA chamber music series. During the summer months, he participates in music festivals in Santa Fe, the Grand Canyon, and at the Oregon Bach Festival.

Speltz was a member of LACO during Sir Neville Marriner’s tenure and principal cellist of the California Chamber Symphony for eight seasons. In 1989, he was invited by Helmuth Rilling to serve as principal cellist of the Bachakademie in Stuttgart, Germany. He is also active in the Los Angeles recording field, performing on such films as Schindler’s List and Jurassic Park.

Violinist Tereza Stanislav was appointed Assistant Concertmaster of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in 2003 by Artistic Director Jeffrey Kahane. Dividing her time among solo, orchestral, chamber and recording projects, Stanislav has been hailed for her “expressive beauty and wonderful intensity” (Robert Mann) and her “sure technique and musical intelligence” (Calgary Herald).

An active performer, Stanislav has appeared in venues including the Library of Congress, the Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall, the Ravinia Music Festival and at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. She has performed in concert with artists including Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Gilbert Kalish, Jon Kimura Parker, Jian Wang and Mark Steinberg. In 2004, Tereza released a CD in collaboration with pianist Hung-Kuan Chen.

In 2009, Stanislav was invited to be the Chamber Music Collaborator for Sonata Programs for the Sixth Esther Honens International Piano Competition, as well as the soloist on a Central European tour performing Mozart’s Fifth Violin Concerto. In addition, she was invited to join the Miró Quartet for their summer program, including performances at Chamber Music Northwest, Santa Fe Music Festival and La Jolla Summerfest.

As a founding member of the Ens? String Quartet, Stanislav was awarded the Second Prize of the 2004 Banff International String Quartet Competition, and led the quartet to win the Special Prize awarded for best performance of the “Piece de Concert”, commissioned for the competition. The quartet was a winner of the 2003 Concert Artists Guild, Chamber Music Yellow Springs and Fischoff competitions. The Strad magazine cited the quartet for “…totally committed, imaginative interpretation that emphasized contrasts of mood, dynamics and articulation.”

With the Ens?, Stanislav is featured on the Naxos recording of the complete Ignaz Pleyel quartets, Op.2. The quartet was highlighted on the Minnesota Public Radio’s “St. Paul Sunday” in 2004, and was appointed to a Lectureship in String Quartet at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music in the 2004-2005 academic year.

An advocate for new music, Stanislav has worked with composers including Steve Reich, Joan Tower, Toshio Hosokawa and Karim Al-Zand. Premieres include James Matheson’s Violin Sonata, Bruce Adolphe’s Oceanophony, the 2009 world premiere of Gernot Wolfgang’s Rolling Hills and Jagged Ridges and the West Coast premieres of Steve Reich’s Daniel Variations and Gernot Wolfgang’s Jazz and Cocktails. She is featured on a new recording of the Wolfgang on Albany Records and the Reich on Nonesuch label.

She is active in the film scoring industry in Los Angeles and in 2009, co-created the new music series, In Frequency.

ABOUT PACIFIC SERENADES

Founded in 1982, Pacific Serenades is one of the longest performing ensembles on the west coast, featuring many of the most acclaimed musicians in Southern California -including principals from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, The Pasadena Symphony and the Long Beach Symphony. Yet, while most chamber ensembles offer either all-new music or all-traditional repertoire, Pacific Serenades makes a point of including both at each concert.

“It’s very important for people to hear-and play-a new piece in the context of masterpieces of the past,” says founder Mark Carlson. “I really want new music to be heard as part of an ongoing tradition, rather than as a new art form with no roots.”

By June 2010, Pacific Serenades will have commissioned and premiered 98 new works by 54 different composers, with many of these works receiving as many as 50-60 additional performances worldwide following their premieres. Carlson, himself, is the recipient of more than 40 commissions and has composed works for the National Shrine in Washington, DC and the New West Symphony, among others, as well as many individual musicians.

Concerts currently take place at three venues, each selected to replicate the smaller, more intimate environment in which chamber music historically was performed: the Neighborhood Church in Pasadena; the UCLA Faculty Center; and a private home in Los Angeles. In addition, Pacific Serenades gave its first New York concert, at Carnegie Recital Hall, in September of 1994, and its first San Francisco concert in January of 1998.

Recently, Pacific Serenades won its second Adventurous Programming Award from ASCAP and Chamber Music America, in addition to a CMA/WQXR Record Award, in 2001, for its first CD, Mark Carlson’s The Hall of Mirrors. The ensemble’s latest CD, Border Crossings – featuring new works by Enrique Gonzalez-Medina, Robert Livingston Aldridge, Mark Carlson, and Miguel del Aguila – illustrates how the composers – two, Latin American-born and two, overtly influenced by Latin American music – have artistically crossed the border between the United States and Latin America.

“The Latin-born composers brought those influences with them when they moved here, and the others of us actively went to Latin America, seeking them,” explains Carlson.

A third CD, entitled “War Scrap: that we may have peace”, will include music by John Steinmetz, Larry Lipkis, and Mark Carlson. CDs may be purchased through Pacific Serenades’ website, www.pacser.org or by calling 213.534.3434.

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CALENDAR:
PACIFIC SERENADES – “To Youth! To Wisdom!”
Jeff Kryka: Quintessence
Brahms: String Quintet #1 in F Major
Bartok: selected movements from 44 Duos for Two Violins
Saturday, January 30; 8 p.m.; private home in Brentwood
Sunday, January 31; 4 p.m.; Neighborhood Church
301 N. Orange Grove Blvd. in Pasadena
Tuesday, February 9; 8 p.m.; UCLA Faculty Center
405 N. Hilgard Ave. on the UCLA campus
Soloists:
Tereza Stanislav, violin
Brendan Speltz, violin
Roland Kato, viola
Connie Kupka, viola
David Speltz, cello
Tickets: $32 (Neighborhood Church and UCLA Faculty Center)
$55 (private home/reception)
$5 for students with valid id at the door only (Neighborhood Church and UCLA)
For more information, call 213.534.3434 or visit www.pacser.org