Columbia's 'Composer Portraits' Series to Continue with Composer Sofia Gubaidulina, 2/9 & 3/21

Miller Theatre at Columbia University School of the Arts continues the 2012-13 season of its Composer Portraits series with the works of Russian composer SOFIA GUBAIDULINA, featuring the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Rebekah Heller, bassoon and Christian Knapp, conductor. The International Contemporary Ensemble performs four pieces from the composer's diverse repertoire, showcasing the breadth of her musical genius.

The concerts are set for Saturday, February 9, 2013, 8:00 PM at the Miller Theatre (2960 Broadway at 116th street). Tickets: $25-30 • Students with valid ID: $15-18. And On Tour: Thursday, March 21, 2013, 7:00 PM at Calderwood Hall, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (280 The Fenway). Tickets: $12-27, including discounts for students, seniors, and members

Sofia Gubaidulina has earned her place among the great living composers. Her singular sound is characterized by a love of unusual sonorities and a deep-seated belief in the mystical properties of music. Quietly encouraged by Shostakovich to boldly pursue what the Soviet establishment perceived as the "wrong course" musically, she fled to Germany, where she cultivated her passion for the avant-garde. This program-her second Portrait at Miller-traces her evolution before and after her relocation to Hamburg, with several solo works as well as larger spiritual tours-de-force. Ten years following her first Portrait at Miller Theatre, after which The New York Times proclaimed she had "taken her place as one of most admired composers now working," this program traces her evolution before and after her relocation to Hamburg. It features several solo works as well as larger spiritual tours-de-force performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble, with bassoonist Rebekah Heller and conductor Christian Knapp.

The Boston performance features an alternate program highlighting several intimate chamber works ideally scaled for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's beautiful new chamber music hall.

PROGRAM:
Meditation on the Bach Chorale "Vor deinen Thron tret' ich hiermit" (1993)
Trio (1989)
Concerto for bassoon and low strings (1975)
Concordanza (1971)

ON TOUR:
Thursday, March 21, 2013, 7:00 PM
Calderwood Hall, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (280 The Fenway)

ARTISTS:
International Contemporary Ensemble

PROGRAM:
Sonatina (1978)
Dancer On a Tightrope (1993)
The Garden of Joy and Sorrow (1980)
Quasi Hoquetus (1984)
Meditation on the Bach Chorale "Vor deinem Thron tret ich hiermit" (1993)

Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931) was born in Chistopol in the Tatar Republic of the Soviet Union. After instruction in piano and composition at the Kazan Conservatory, she studied composition with Nikolai Peiko at the Moscow Conservatory, pursuing graduate studies there under Vissarion Shebalin. Until 1992, she lived in Moscow, but since then has made her primary residence in Germany, outside Hamburg. Gubaidulina's compositional interests have been stimulated by the tactile exploration and improvisation with rare Russian, Caucasian, and Asian folk and ritual instruments collected by the "Astreia" ensemble, of which she was a co-founder, by the rapid absorption and personalization of contemporary Western musical techniques (a characteristic, too, of other Soviet composers of the post-Stalin generation including Edison Denisov and Alfred Schnittke), and by a deep-rooted belief in the mystical properties of music. Her uncompromising dedication to a singular vision did not endear her to the Soviet musical establishment, but her music was championed in Russia by a number of devoted performers including Vladimir Tonkha, Friedrich Lips, Mark Pekarsky, and Valery Popov. The determined advocacy of Gidon Kremer, dedicatee of Gubaidulina's masterly violin concerto, Offertorium, helped bring the composer to international attention in the early 1980s. Gubaidulina's scores frequently explore unconventional techniques of sound production. Since 1985, when she was first allowed to travel to the West, Gubaidulina's stature in the world of contemporary music has skyrocketed. She has been the recipient of prestigious commissions from the Berlin, Helsinki, and Holland Festivals; the Library of Congress; the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; the New York Philharmonic; and many other organizations and ensembles. A major triumph was the premiere in 2002 of the monumental two-part cycle, Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ according to St. John, commissioned by the International Bachakademie Stuttgart and the Norddeutschen Rundfunk, Hamburg. Gubaidulina made her first visit to North America in 1987 as a guest of Louisville's "Sound Celebration." She has returned many times since as a featured composer of festivals - Boston's "Making Music Together" (1988), Vancouver's "New Music" (1991), Tanglewood (1997) - and for other performance milestones.

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