As part of the celebration of Athena Kildegaard's new book of poetry, Course, beloved Minnesota soprano Maria Jette and noted pianist Ann DuHamel will perform the world premiere of a song cycle by award-winning St. Paul composer Linda Kachelmeier. The song cycle, I Give Voice to My Mother, features six poems from Kildegaard's book. Kachelmeier's remarkable cycle reflects and enlarges the themes in the book.
 
The celebration will be Saturday, March 3, 7:00 p.m. at Studio Z. The program begins with the poet, composer and performers discussing the challenges and surprises of bringing poetry to life as art song. Kildegaard will read selections from the book, and then Jette and DuHamel will return to do a performance of the complete song cycle. A reception and book signing will follow.
 
Course is Kildegaard's fifth book of poetry and is published by Tinderbox Editions, an independent press based in Red Wing, MN. The book explores the course of Kildegaard's mother's life and death, the course of grief, and the course of a river. Four-time Minnesota Book Award winner Jim Moore says: “'Tenderness toward existence' is the phrase that came to me again and again as I read Course, Kildegaard’s marvelous new book of poems in which grief and joy course together through time and to the end of time. 'Any tender place a place for death,' Kildegaard writes. But equally true, as this book so lovingly demonstrates, is that any tender place is a place for life. Athena Kildegaard has written a book which has found a true home for tenderness in a world so desperately in need of it.”  
 
The commissioning of the song cycle and the performance are made possible by an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board.

Athena Kildegaard has been a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award and the Midwest Book Award. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and have appeared in such journals as Ecotone, Poetry Northwest, North American Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review. She lives and teaches in Morris, Minnesota.
 
Linda Kachelmeier is a composer, conductor, and professional singer in St. Paul, Minnesota. She has received grants and commissions through the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, the American Composers Forum, the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and is a 2017 McKnight Fellowship recipient for composition. She has written over 50 choral pieces and art songs performed by professional choirs such as The Singers, VocalEssence, and The Rose Ensemble, as well as many school and church choirs across the United States.
 
Soprano Maria Jette has sung everything from early Baroque opera to world premieres, in the United States and abroad.  She has performed with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Houston, Kansas City, San Luis Obispo, Santa Rosa, Charlotte, Buffalo, Grand Rapids, Austin, Marin and San Antonio Symphonies, New York Chamber Symphony, Portland Baroque Orchestra and Musica Angelica; plus Berkshires Opera, Roanoke Opera, Sacramento Opera. In the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro, she has sung with VocalEssence (led by conductor Philip Brunelle), Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, Minnesota Sinfonia The Schubert Club and Lyra Baroque Orchestra.
 
Pianist Ann DuHamel serves as Head of Keyboard Studies at the University of Minnesota, Morris, where she coordinates and teaches solo, collaborative, and group piano, as well as piano pedagogy. She is a founding member of new music group ensemble: Périphérie, which has performed in Carnegie Hall. Other venues where DuHamel has played include Argentina, Bulgaria, Canada, Italy, Mexico, Sweden, and across the U.S., including the San Francisco Festival of Contemporary Music.

Athena Kildegaard is a fiscal year 2018 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

Born in Kanagawa, Japan, Tetsuya Takeno started playing drums while he was attending International Christian University, Mitaka Japan and won two prizes at the Yamano Big Band Jazz Contest as a drummer of the Modern Music Society. He recorded with jazz trumpeter Wayne Bergeron at Capital Records in Los Angeles, CA in 2003 with MMS. He earned his B.M and M.M in Percussion Performance with summa cum laude from Youngstown State University. While attending YSU, he performed with many ensembles including at famous venues such as Carnegie Hall. He also performed with several well-known artists, including Allen Vizzutti, Sean Jones, and Grammy Award Winner Ralph Lalama. He was also a winner of the Dana Young Artist Competition in 2006 playing vibraphone. After the B.M. degree, Tetsuya worked as a drummer for the Holland America Line. Since the summer of 2010, he has lived in Twin-Cities and performed with numbers of professional groups such as Electric Avenue, Melody Best Band, Popular Girl, Elemental Ensemble, and Cantus Vocal Ensemble. With these groups, he performed various well-known venues and music festivals.

Tetsuya is also an active composer/ arranger and scholar. His works have been performed various professional groups and university ensembles such as Greenville Symphony Orchestra. His analytical work Metric Structure of the Compositions by Miles Okazaki was selected at the Research on Contemporary Composition Conference (ROCC) 2017 at the University of North Georgia. He is currently a doctoral student in Music Composition at the University of Minnesota, serving as a teaching assistant/ instructor.

Tetsuya is one of three winning composers of Zeitgeist's 23rd annual Eric Stokes Song Contest. Named in memory of late composer Eric Stokes, the contest is designed to encourage and celebrate amateur composers throughout the Twin Cities. Tetsuya's winning composition, Samsara, will be performed by Zeitgeist at their annual Playing it Close to Home concert Feb. 23-24 at Studio Z. 

Samsara features steady and simple catchy patterns that depart from that symmetry, gradually transforming into complex polyrhythmic ensembles. It ends dramatically, frantically reprising materials from previous sections. Samsara is inspired by the rhythmic concept of Mirrors (2006), jazz guitarist and University of Michigan professor Miles Okazaki’s debut album, and David Lang’s 1993 breakthrough composition cheating, lying, stealing. Both composers are known for their own unique rhythmic concepts. Okazaki’s Mirror is focused on a variety of rhythmic concepts, applied to both jazz and classical contexts. The modern minimalist Lang is known for his concept of rhythmic permutation.

Samsara is based throughout on the simple rhythm and its permutations, which are sometimes shortened and at other times concatenated into longer patterns. The combination of the permutations of basic figures provides a sense of asymmetrical meter, juxtaposed against a group measure of 4/4. Because at least one part always keeps a repetitive rhythmic pattern in common time, music is always polyrhythmic. Thus, each part may appear simple, while ensemble coordination is always challenging. The solo part in the middle section is based on rhythmic mirror form and palindromic melody. Harmonically, Samsara features slash chords, triads with an independent and typically dissonant bass line, and a unique and intricate progression of pentatonic and synthetic modes.

Folwell School, Performing Arts Magnet Elementary is a public, magnet school located in Minneapolis that encourages students to become responsible, successful learners in and through the arts. With their strong dedication to the arts, Folwell School teamed up with local composer collective 113 for an extended residency project in the 2017-18 school year. Composers from 113 and professional string players met with Folwell School orchestra students (grades 5-8) beginning in October 2017 to teach composition and string techniques. In large groups, they listened to contemporary art music, discussed contemporary and traditional string techniques, improvised, and composed text-based music. In smaller groups, the students composed using traditional, graphic, and text-based notation and wrote poetry. As the pieces developed, the students performed the music as a large ensemble. 113's residency at Folwell School will culminate in a concert of student works performed by combinations of students, Folwell teachers, and professional musicians.​ 

The resulting graphic and text-based compositions written by the students at Folwell School were chosen as a group to be one of three winning entries to Zeitgeist's 23rd annual Eric Stokes Song Contest. Named in memory of late composer Eric Stokes, the contest is designed to encourage and celebrate amateur composers throughout the Twin Cities. A suite of selected graphic scores by the students at Folwell School will be performed by Zeitgeist at their annual Playing it Close to Home concert Feb. 23-24 at Studio Z. 
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Isaac Mayhew is a composer and trumpet player based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He holds a bachelor's degree in music composition from Lawrence University, where he studied primarily with Asha Srinivasan, Joanne Metcalf, and Benjamin Klein. Isaac, who is a recipient of the Pi Kappa Lambda Composition Award, has had works featured on programs both on campus at Lawrence and in the Appleton community. His piece Ataraxis 2.3 for solo bassoon and electronics, was premiered in June 2017 at the International Double Reeds Society Conference. His work may also be heard on the album Liquid Jungle by his brass quintet of the same name. Isaac strives to create music that has the capability to engage a wide range of audiences while maintaining a high level of artistic integrity, drawing influence and inspiration from the works of a great many composers such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, Alan Hovhaness, and David Maslanka.

Isaac is one three winning composers of Zeitgeist's 23rd annual Eric Stokes Song Contest. Named in memory of late composer Eric Stokes, the contest is designed to encourage and celebrate amateur composers throughout the Twin Cities. Isaac's winning composition, On the Nature of Self, will be performed by Zeitgeist at their annual Playing it Close to Home concert Feb. 23-24 at Studio Z. 

On the Nature of Self is a piece that explores two contrasting (and competing) aspects to one's personality. There is the side of ourselves that we are the happiest with, the way that we wish to be seen by others, and the way we wish to see ourselves. This is represented by the Christian hymn All Creatures of Our God and King, which shares melodic similarities with the other major quotation--the Dies Irae, which also has Christian roots, but with very different connotations.
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Feb. 23-24, 7:30 p.m.  
Studio Z: 275 East Fourth Street, Suite 200, St. Paul
$15 / $10 students & seniors
Tickets/Info

With winning songs from the Eric Stokes Song Contest plus music by local composer Davu Seru, Zeitgeist's annual Playing it Close to Home concert celebrates the wealth of musical creativity found right here in our own backyard. The program includes music by Eric Stokes Song Contest winners Isaac Mayhew, Tetsuya Takeno, and students from Folwell School, plus the world premiere of Davu Seru’s new work Dead King Mother, which tells the story of a near-forgotten event in North Minneapolis and United States civil rights history that has been with Seru since early childhood.  ​

How long have the two of you been collaborating? What was your collaborative process like in creating this version of Stockhausen's POLES? 

Taavi: We have been playing together for five years. So far it has been mainly a flute/piano duo. But now we added electronics too and it really does open up even more repertoire and challenges. The process with POLES started with a three-week rehearsal period in Morelia, Mexico where we were in residency in the electro-acoustic music centre CMMAS. The piece is an open score so you would imagine that reading it would not maybe be so difficult but in reality it is a truly difficult piece to perform. It is written in  so called + - notation, a notation created by Stockhausen. To perform it you have to learn it from zero. It is really like learning a new language. You learn grammar, learn words, learn how to put together a sentence.


What is special about the Serge Modular Synthesizer? 

Taavi: It is indeed a special instrument. The instrument comes from early 1970s, and by now it has gained a somewhat cult status. First of all, of course, because its beautiful profound sound that still amazes musicians, but also because of its very clever interface. As I see it, interfacing with electronic instruments is a very important part of music creation process. It is a West Coast style synth meaning that it is possible to redesign it in countless ways; you have to make it your own to make music with it and find your very own language to communicate with it. The very instrument's previous owner was Michael Manion, a late composer who used to work as an assistant for Karlheinz Stockhausen. 


What was it like working with Stockhausen on the piece he wrote for you, Camilla? 

Camilla: It was a complete surprise. I had won a prize in Rotterdam playing his In Freundschaft, which I had prepared with the help of Suzee Stephens and the late composer Michael Manion, and before I was to play it in Cologne, I went out to Kürten to play it for Stockhausen himself. I had of course analyzed every note and could play it perfectly from memory, and this somehow impressed him so much that he began then and there to start arranging AMOUR for me. Eventually I returned and lived for a week in a cabin on his ground while he continued to work. When we met for daily work sessions, he’d ask me about range or fingering or intervals and we would discuss phrasing and breathing. The original version was for clarinet (Suzee Stephens), and several things worked differently when transposed for flute. I remember being impressed not only with his exactness, but also in his desire to make it natural for the flute. He didn’t want to create “difficulties for difficulties sake.” I also experienced for the first time the luxury of being at a “retreat” — living in nature with no outside distractions and allowed to just practice and read (notably Satprem on Sri Aurobindo) and then to enjoy stimulating conversations with Karlheinz and Suzee at mealtimes. I also got to browse in his record library (which included a great LP-set of the history of folk to rock!)


How did your interactions with Stockhausen influence the creation and performance of this version of POLES? 

​Camilla: My interactions with Stockhausen included a wide range of activities, from attending rehearsals of music from Donnerstag aus LICHT (where I first met the whole Stockhausen clan)  to working in his publishing company to learning other solo and chamber works. In the 80’s I attended every rehearsal and performance I could, later I participated in Montag in a studio part and then had a role on stage in 1993 for the opera Dienstag. Nothing he did was superfluous and this inspires us to respect all he has notated. At the same time, remembering him as a person, I remember him also as someone who could surprise with humor — and who introduced in his otherwise strictly formal compositions, the occasional “flowers for the ladies” (as he called a certain phrase in In Freundschaft) and who could also write “bagatelles” as gifts for friends (AMOUR).  If I were to summarize the influence all these interactions with him in one word, I would choose “awareness.” He himself was always aware of so many things that were going on around him. He listened and watched very precisely and demanded from his musicians this as well: an extremely high level of awareness concerning not just the musical notes, but every aspect of the creative and re-creative process. This we are trying to carry on with our realization of POLES.
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​This is 10th Wave's inaugural concert. How did the group come together?

Just about a year ago, 10th Wave was just a cool dream that we were bouncing off each other. Clarinetist Weily Shay, percussionist Eri Isomura, and I started having conversations about starting a new chamber music collective in the Twin Cities. It started as an idea to create a concert series that would present our favorite works of chamber music to audiences in a new way – different than going to an orchestra concert or a chamber music recital.
 
From that point Weily, Eri, and I began to have regular meetings to start planning what would eventually become 10th Wave, and here we are at the first concert. From that point, we reached out to musicians that we knew in the area to see if they were interested in performing with us. Now we’re here about to have our first concert. It’s surreal.
 

What plans does 10th Wave have for the future?

We’ve got a lot of exciting ideas on the horizon. We’re already starting to book some more shows in the spring. We’re calling these concerts Chamber Brews, where we take some of the music that we’ll be performing at our first concert along with some new stuff out into bars and coffee shops around the Twin Cities. Bringing this music out into unconventional concert spaces is one of the things that we’re most passionate about. We really believe in the importance of performing this amazing music for people who would otherwise never have the opportunity to hear it.
 
Aside from the Chamber Brews concerts, we’re busy brainstorming for our first full season, where we are hoping to play more concerts like this one.
 

Tell us about the program for Feb. 11th and what motivated the theme.

The core of our mission is about connecting with audiences and our community genuinely and authentically. Conflict | Perseverance came from something that everyone on the planet can relate to in their own way - struggling with and overcoming challenges.
 
We picked five pieces that deal with this subject matter in one way or another. Some of the pieces such as Golijov’s Mariel and Hatzis’s In the Fire of Conflict deal with subjects like death and violence. But there are other pieces, such as Kevin Puts’s And Legions Will Rise and Greenstein’s At the end of a really great day, that are about rising up to these difficult challenges and overcoming them. We want to take the audience through a musical journey of emotion with the hope that each person will be able to connect to the pieces through their own personal experiences.
 

10th Wave endeavors to create a unique musical environment. What should the audience expect that is different from the usual classical music experience?
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The most obvious difference at this first concert will be how the pieces are presented. We’re going to have some literature in the form of poetry and quotes being read aloud before each piece is performed. We’ll also have that literature projected as we’re performing the pieces so the audiences can process both aurally and visually along with the music. We want to incorporate different artistic mediums in our concerts to accompany the music and enrich the experience for the audience.