CF2 brings the Kansas City-based Lyric Arts Trio to Orlando for the 2024 Timucua International Chamber Music Festival

Saturday, January 20, 2024 | 7:30 p.m. EST

The Lyric Arts Trio of Kansas City (Elena Lence Talley, clarinet; Daniel Velicer, piano; and Sarah Tannehill Anderson, soprano) have delighted audiences throughout the Midwest with their technical and artistic abilities and wonderful musicianship. They project a warmth and pleasure in performing concerts crafted around a central theme, complemented by informal remarks about the music that enlighten and entertain audiences. In this concert, they will be performing:

Stella Sung — Three Songs on Poems by Robert Frost
Charlie Griffin — When Great Trees Fall
Alex Burtzos — The Explosion, and Other Tales, Mvt. III.Dublinesque
Troy Gifford — Night Voices
Mark Piszczek— Star Fell
Alan Gerber — Mvts. 1 & 4 from Love’s Paradox
Seunghee Lee — Selected movements from Dancheong

Event Venue

Timucua Arts Foundation
2000 S Summerlin Ave
Orlando, FL 32806

Discounted tickets are available for members, students, teachers, frontline workers, veterans, and seniors. In-person and livestream tickets are available. Please bring a bottle of wine or non-alcoholic beverage to share.

STELLA SUNG

As a national and international award-winning composer, the music of Stella Sung has been performed throughout the United States and abroad. She served as the first Composer-in-Residence for the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra (2008-2011), and was one of the five composers nationally selected for a “Music Alive” award, a three-year award that allowed Dr. Sung to serve as Composer-In-Residence for the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance (2013-16), sponsored by New Music USA, the League of American Orchestras, ASCAP, the Aaron Copland Fund, and the Andrew Mellon Foundation. Dr. Sung is Composer-in-Residence for Dance Alive National Ballet (Gainesville, FL).

Stella Sung is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2020-21 “Commissioning Grant for Female Composers” from Opera America and a 2021-22 NEA grant for her opera The Secret River (with Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist Mark Campbell commissioned and produced by Opera Orlando). She is the recipient of a Phi Kappa Phi National Artists Award, Florida Individual Artists Fellowships, a fellowship at the prestigious MacDowell Colony, and awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP).

Premieres, performances, and commissions of Dr. Sung’s work have included compositions for world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the German Ministry of Culture (Rhineland-Pfalz), the National Symphony Orchestra, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Cincinnati Pops, the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance, the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, the Monterey (CA) Symphony, the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, the Wichita Symphony Orchestra, the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, the Akron Symphony Orchestra, the Sarasota Symphony Orchestra, the Jacksonville (FL) Symphony Orchestra, and other university and regional orchestras, chamber music ensembles, and soloists.

Several documentary films have been made about Sung’s work, including a film by award-winning documentary filmmaker Lisa Mills, which captures the world premiere performance of Sung’s large orchestral work, The Circle Closes (2010). This film has garnered a Silver Medal Award from the 2011 Park City Film Music Festival (Park City, Utah) and a 2011 Bronze Telly Award. Sung’s highly acclaimed composition for orchestra, Rockwell Reflections, was excerpted and made into a five-minute film by Lisa Mills and was selected for the Cultural Arts Award at the 2009 International MOFILM short film festival.

Another award-winning documentary film about Sung’s Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra by filmmaker Aaron Hosé was selected for two Telly Awards (2007).

The music of Stella Sung is published by the Theodore Presser Music Publishers (USA), Editions Henry Lemoine (France), Southern Music Company (Keiser, USA), and Sonic Star Music Productions (USA), and is currently available on Koch International Recordings, Naxos, Cambria Master Recordings, Sinfonica (Italy), Eroica Master Recordings, MSR, and Albany Records. Sung’s compositions have been broadcast on radio stations worldwide, including WGBH-Boston, WBUR-Boston, WNYC-New York, KING FM radio (Seattle, WA), the Bavarian Radio (Munich, Germany), the Swedish National Radio, and Radio Vaticana (Rome, Italy).

Sung holds a Bachelor of Music degree (piano performance) from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), a Master of Fine Arts degree (Composition) from the University of Florida, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree (piano performance) from the University of Texas at Austin. The University of Florida has recognized Dr. Sung as a Distinguished Alumna, an Alumna of Outstanding Achievement, and she has also received a Distinguished Achievement Award from UF.

Dr. Sung is the director of the Center for Research and Education in Arts, Technology, and Entertainment (CREATE) at the University of Central Florida, College of Arts and Humanities. Dr. Sung holds a “Pegasus” Professorship, the highest honor awarded to distinguished faculty members at the University of Central Florida, and is also an endowed “University Trustees Chair” professor.

Orlando Philharmonic and Full Sail University present Keith Lay’s Four Dimensions, April 21

The Orlando Philharmonic, in partnership with Full Sail University will hold a concert gala fundraiser program entitled Symphony in HD at Full Sail Live, a state of the art venue in Winter Park, Florida. This performance represents an innovative intersection between classical music and technology.

SATURDAY, APRIL 21, 2012 AT 6:00 PM
Full Sail Live at Full Sail University • 141 University Park Drive, Winter Park
Dirk Meyer Conducts • Brian Smithers, Electronic Wind Instrument (EWI) • Janette Zilioli, soprano • Michelle Mailhot, vocalist

Short works, extracted movements and other gems will fill the evening, including works by Stravinsky, Beethoven, Mozart, Duke Ellington, and Orlando’s own Stella Sung and Keith Lay.

Keith composed a new work, Four Dimensions, exclusively for this event (see below).

Program Notes by Keith Lay
Four Dimensions is an imaginary exploration of existence through music and image, co-created by Visual Artist, Nathan Selikoff and me. The work begins with the Zero Dimension and evolves into the First, Second, Third (our universe of height, width and depth) and finally grows into the Fourth spatial dimension that we can only try to imagine. It is a single movement work lasting under seven minutes.

“Four Dimensions” music is composed for orchestra, an electronic wind instrument called an EWI and electronic sounds. The EWI is treated in this work as a regular woodwind in the orchestra and has several important solos. The electronic music was composed to be a new section of the orchestra – playing a similar role as the winds, brass, strings and percussion do – by presenting new material, serving as an accompaniment, and adding timbral color. It employs both musical pitches and unpitched sounds that mix with the orchestra from many different directions: sometimes from behind you – or from the sides of the hall. Maestro Dirk Meyer will be performing the electronics part from the podium with a Nintendo Wii-mote in his left hand while he conducts. This performance technology was created by my Full Sail colleague, Marc Pinsky for tonight’s concert.

The EWI, performed here by another Full Sail colleague and saxophonist, Brian Smithers, plays exactly like a woodwind instrument. But instead of a reed resonating an air column like a clarinet, the EWI electronically senses fingering, breath and mouthpiece pressure which control the tone, loudness and color of what comes out of its loudspeaker.

The work opens with the “Zero Dimension”. To be or not to be. In fact, the zero dimension really isn’t technically a dimension at all because it is dimensionless. In mathematics, we treat this as as a point that has no size, in physics it is a singularity, in logic it is true or false, on or off. An opening fortissimo chord from the brass represents this declaration of existence. The chord is restated in the electronics, then the woodwinds and then the strings over which the EWI appears with the main theme:

The opening elements: the eight note theme, the opening chords, the polytonal harmonic palette, the idea of moving back and forth between instrument sections of the orchestra and electronic sounds provide much of the developmental content throughout the entire work.

Singularities connect to form lines for the “First Dimension”, represented by a loud, bit-crunchy, electronic sounds emphasizing the tritone in the harmonic palette. Only direction exists in this imaginary universe.

In the Second Dimension, the lines from the First Dimension pair up and briefly connect to form planes. This is a primarily orchestral section featuring rapid EWI passages. Intensity builds with an insistent triplet figure, reaching a climax which breaks into the “Third Dimension”.

The “Third Dimension” provides rhythmic relief with a soaring EWI solo over sustained, beautiful orchestral harmonies. We finally arrive at a quiet, stable point with the piano – repeating a closely voiced extended chord in D minor.

A loud interruption destroys this solace as a hole is torn in our dimensional fabric and we fall into the final “Fourth Dimension”. The 3rd dimension is visible within the 4th just as we in the 3rd dimension can see the 2nd. Here, the opening musical material from each dimension recapitulates and climbs to the final statement. At the close, the EWI and strings take the main theme, the woodwinds repeat the triplet figure from the Second Dimension, and large brass chords build to the final climax, ending with a loud, shaped noise.