concert at kimber contours ARTIST AND PROGRAM INFOPROGRAM
ZEITGEIST SET CLOSED LOOP by Pamela Z Loop • Roll Call • Corn • Chop Chop SPARROW GRASS by Heather Barringer ANCIA SET TRAPPED by Claire Cope CIUDADES by Guillermo Lago Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzogovina) • Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) CONFLUENCE by Libby Larsen PEACE by David Maslanka 
Closed Loop (2024)
By Pamela Z For Zeitgeist Every gardener and farmer is deeply familiar with the cycle that moves from soil to sustenance and back again. Closed Loop, Pamela Z's work for Zeitgeist, celebrates that cycle with chamber music for piano, clarinet, and a percussive arsenal including marimba, vibraphone, drums, mixing bowls, whisks, and...an immersion blender. Partnering the live musicians is an electronic score featuring samples of MN and WI chefs, farmers, and livestock. Closed Loop includes the sampled voices of Colleen Rice, Caroline Glawe, Beth Fisher, Ryan Rickman, Dean Engelmann, Abbie, Brianna Baldus, Caleb Stellmach, Molly Castle, Mathew Janczewski, Scott Mellencamp, Kirsten Mellencamp, Heather Barringer, Tristan Barringer Kenny, Maria Alvear, Sergio, Armando, Eartha Borer Bell, Rick, Rachel Wandrei, and Laura Getch. 
Sparrow Grass (2025)
By Heather Barringer Sparrow Grass is grounded in the history, biology, horticulture, and family lore surrounding that most delicious spring perennial, asparagus. A perennial, it's origins are in Asia, but it has been cultivated and foraged around the world and arrived in North America with early colonists. My mother tended an asparagus bed, patiently nurturing spring spears through the three years it takes to establish the crowns before a harvest can occur. After that, her asparagus nourished our family year after year. A properly tended bed will deliver culinary delight for 20 years or more, but grassy weeds and lapses in fertilization are a continual threat. Asparagus is one of the first vegetables to be available in the northland, with crowns poking through the wet and chilly May mornings. It's season, ending by the 4th of July, is brief. Midsummer, the plant explodes into tall, feathery fronds as it works to capture the energy of the sun and bustle it down to the cellar of it's roots. Fall and winter dormancy serves it well, and a nice insulating cover of leaves and snow bodes well for the following year. My grandmother did not bother with asparagus, and said that her family, and those around her, never ate the plant, being put off by it's abundance in ditches and proximity to graveyards. She said that in the times of her childhood people would plant asparagus on graves because of it's beautiful fronds and reliable annual rising. I follow in my mother's stead, and have established two asparagus patches and am soon to invest my time in a third. My children will also have plots of their own, having grown to value this reliable but brief visitor. — Heather Barringer Trapped (2021)
By Claire Cope The idea for Trapped emerged during the third national lockdown in the UK during the Coronavirus pandemic, which occurred during January and March 2021. Less about the idea of being ‘trapped’ in isolation, which was a common feeling during the first lockdowns, this is more a reflection of those feelings of frustration and anxiety in which individual voices were unheard and ignored, whilst the systems around them remained unstable, chaotic and disruptive. A constant driving rhythm, fluctuating between 4 and 7 time, hints at this chaotic urgency, whilst a simpler melody reflects those individual voices trying to be heard above the disruption. The central section of the piece is a calmer exploration of sound, with a more pleading and contemplative melodic line that interweaves between the four instruments, before arriving in a sonorous chorale where all four voices move together in rich harmony. Gradually, fragments of the opening rhythmic motif begin to disrupt the calm, and we are once more thrust into the driving and unsettled character of the opening, before, finally, elements of all sections are brought together to end in an agitated and fraught finale. — Claire Cope Ciudades (2021)
By Guillermo Lago Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina) is dedicated to Lago’s many friends in the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the nineties of the last century, the town was hit by a cruel civil war. In the beginning of this millennium Lago was invited to help re-establishing a saxophone class at the Sarajevo Academy of Music and together with ‘Musicians Without Borders’ and his friend Adnan Cico he founded the Winds of Change, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s first wind ensemble, a group of young musicians, each of them affected by the country’s recent history. Addis Ababa is an energetic description of the capital of Ethiopia and inspired by Lago’s collaboration with the Ethiopian singer Minyeshu. They worked together at the famous New Year’s Concert by the Netherlands Wind Ensemble in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw in 2007. - Program Note from publisher and University of Georgia Hodgson Wind Symphony concert program, 22 March 2017 Confluence (2014)
By Libby Larsen For Ancia Saxophone Quartet Confluence by Libby Larsen is a four-movement work inspired by four major river confluences around the world. • USA: Columbia, Willamette, Snake • China: Yangtze, Jialing, Chongqing • Germany: Rhine, Mosel, Ill • USA: Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri Each movement musically reflects the geographic and cultural character of these intersections, while also drawing attention to a shared global concern: the health and sustainability of the world’s river systems. A passionate advocate for environmental awareness, Larsen often composes works that invite performers and audiences to consider their relationship to the Earth and their responsibilities as stewards of its future. In Confluence, she turns our attention to the rivers that have sustained human civilization for over 600,000 years—and to the urgent threats they now face. Many of the world’s great rivers, once abundant sources of life, are now critically polluted. Larsen’s piece echoes the fragility of these ecosystems and urges reflection on the damage to waterways like China’s Yangtze, India’s Ganges, and North America’s Rio Grande. Confluence is both a celebration of these natural wonders and a call to protect them before it is too late. Peace
By David Maslanka Peace was made as an encore for the 2012 Tokyo Masato Kumoi Sax Quartet premiere concert of my Songs for the Coming Day, and my transcription of the Bach Goldberg Variations. The music for Peace is a slight recomposition of the “song” that ends the first movement of my Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Wind Ensemble. This “song without words” is an evolution of the Chorale melody Christum wir sollen loben schon. Peace may seem like simple music, but it requires an exquisite balance of tone and dynamic control. — David Maslanka 
Ancia Saxophone Quartet
When four world class Saxophone performers become friends and form a quartet, you have an explosion of energy, joy and deeply wonderful music-making – you have Ancia! – Libby Larsen Hailed by Chamber Music America as an ensemble which “approaches the commissioning and performing of new works as a special mission,” the Ancia Quartet (AHN-chee-uh) has been dedicated to expanding the saxophone repertoire for over thirty years. The quartet has shared its passion for new music with a diverse range of audiences around the world through performances filled with “energy, precision, and huge dynamic range” (Eugene Rousseau). The group’s unique ability to “create exquisite musical interpretations” have drawn commissions from an impressive array of contemporary composers, including such luminaries as Grammy Award-winner Libby Larsen, Pulitzer Prize- and two-time Grammy-winner Jennifer Higdon, and Pulitzer Prize-finalist Lei Liang. Ancia places a high value on the “deeply collaborative” (CMA) nature of the commissioning process. The quartet received a grant through the Alice M. Ditson Fund to complete their new CD, Confluence, now available on Albany Records. Confluence features the premier recording of Libby Larsen’s work of the same name commissioned by the quartet in 2015 and inspired by a shared concern for the environment. The quartet premiered the four-movement work, which depicts four endangered waterways from around the world, at the SaxOpen (World Saxophone Congress XVII) in Strasbourg, France later that year. To celebrate and discuss this exciting new work and its environmental theme, Ancia was featured live on Performance Today for a special Earth Day broadcast on National Public Radio. The CD also features works by Rutkowski, Ricker, Piazzolla, and Dodgion. The group has continued to engage in collaborations with innovative composers and performers, most recently leading a consortium commission of a new work by Chris Rutkowski entitled “Changes.” Ancia has also worked closely alongside provocative Israeli composer Yehuda Yannay to push the members’ boundaries as saxophonists and musicians in his new composition, “The Center Does Not Hold.” Renowned “BEATBoX SAX” artist Derek Brown spoke fondly of his recent performance with the quartet, calling them “a top-tier ensemble with an incredible range of playing styles and emotions.” Ancia takes its role as ambassadors of new music seriously, not solely through the commissioning of new works, but through performances of the most captivating existing repertoire. The ensemble particularly enjoys showcasing concertos – a genre often overlooked by saxophone quartets – by some of the most influential composers of our time, including Philip Glass (Concerto for Saxophone Quartet, with the Wayzata Symphony Orchestra) and William Bolcom (Concerto Grosso, with the Bloomington Symphony). Although the quartet’s mission privileges the creation and dissemination of new music, Ancia thoroughly enjoys transporting audiences across time and genre. The group expertly performs repertoire spanning centuries and styles, with programs as likely to include arrangements of 12th-century German mystic Hildegard von Bingen as those of jazz legend Duke Ellington. Ancia has been the recipient of numerous national, regional, and local grants and awards, including awards from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and Metropolitan Regional Arts Council Community Arts grants for seven consecutive years. Ancia has collaborated with composers through Society of Composers, Meet the Composer, American Composers Forum, and THE Commission Project. Individually, Ancia members are active soloists, chamber musicians, and professional saxophonists in a broad range of musical genres, including work in classical, jazz, contemporary and popular idioms. Ancia members hold degrees from Eastman School of Music, Ithaca College, Kansas State University, the University of Minnesota, the New England Conservatory of Music, Northwestern University, St. Olaf College and the University of Wisconsin. As dedicated teachers, Ancia members serve as saxophone artist-teachers at Augsburg University, the University of Minnesota Duluth, the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and Eastview High School, Apple Valley. They have presented masterclasses, workshops, and educational performances across North America, Europe, and Asia. Ancia is an Artist-Clinician Ensemble for Selmer Paris Saxophones. The group is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Group members are: Matthew Sintchak (soprano saxophone), Joan Hutton (alto saxophone), Benjamin Cold (tenor saxophone), and Angela Wyatt (baritone saxophone). 
Kimber Contours Farm
Kimber Contours is a 240 acre organic research family farm that focuses on perennial grains. We collaborate with the University of Minnesota's Forever Green program. Our mission is to feed humanity in a climate challenged future by developing scalable practices which includes researching perennial grains. Kimber Contours uses a variety of biosphere friendly conservation practices. |
|
