Yale Percussion Group comes to Zankel Hall 12/12

YALE IN NEW YORK presents the dynamic Yale Percussion Group (YPG) on Sunday, December 12 at 8:00pm in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall. Acclaimed for its virtuosity and electrifying stage presence, the Yale Percussion Group and its director, Robert Van Sice, perform four challenging and theatrical works that explore the limitless potential of percussion instruments, written by four singular contemporary composers: Mauricio Kagel, Steve Reich, Thierry de Mey, and James Wood.

The Yale Percussion Group has been a developmental hothouse for young percussionists since it was founded by marimba virtuoso Robert Van Sice in 1997. Past members have gone on to form the renowned S? Percussion quartet, and have set out on solo careers with some of the finest ensembles at home and abroad. The YPG was last heard in New York this summer during Make Music New York's Xenakis festival in Central Park. This past spring, they astounded audiences with their performance of John Cage's brilliant Third Construction at the Oral History of American Music celebration at Zankel (part of last year's Yale in New York series).

The December 12 concert features composers who push the envelope of rhythm, texture and tone in their music for percussion instruments. It ranges from the whimsical theatricality of Kagel's rarely performed Dressur to the Balinese-flavored mysticism in Wood's Village Burial With Fire. Reich's ground-breaking Sextet is a riveting classic, and de Mey's Musique des Tables, played on amplified table, is as striking visually as it is sonically. With their performance of de Mey's piece, the Yale Percussion Group won the 2009 Percussive Arts Society Competition.

The current members of the Yale Percussion Group are: Michael Compitello '11MMA; John Corkill '11AD; Ian Rosenbaum '11AD; Yun-Chu Candy Chiu '11MM; Leonardo Gorosito '11MM; and Adam Rosenblatt '12MM.

YALE PERCUSSION GROUP
Founded in 1997 by Robert van Sice, the Yale Percussion Group is composed of talented and dedicated young artists who have come from around the world for graduate study at the Yale School of Music. Members of the YPG have gone on to form the acclaimed quartet S? Percussion and to perform with Lincoln Center's Chamber Music Two, the Carnegie Hall Academy Ensemble, the Oslo Philharmonic, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Yale percussion students and graduates have recently won the Linz (Austria) International Marimba Competition and the Concert Artist Guild Competition. Recent alumni teach at institutions such as Cornell, Dartmouth, Michigan State, SUNY Stonybrook, UMass Amherst, Baylor, and the Conservatoire de Genève (Switzerland).

ROBERT VAN SICE
Percussionist Robert van Sice has premiered more than one hundred works, including concertos, chamber music, and solos. He has made solo appearances with symphony orchestras and given recitals in Europe, North America, Africa, and the Far East. In 1989 he gave the first full-length marimba recitals at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and has since played in most of Europe's major concert halls, with many broadcasts by the BBC, Swedish Radio, Norwegian Radio, WDR, and Radio France. He is frequently invited as a soloist with Europe's leading contemporary music ensembles and festivals, including the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Contrechamps, and L'Itinéraire and the Archipel, Darmstadt, and North American new music festivals. From 1988 to 1997 he headed Europe's first diploma program for solo marimbists at the Rotterdam Conservatorium. Mr. van Sice has given master classes in more than twenty countries and frequently visits the major conservatories in Europe as a guest lecturer. He joined the Yale faculty in the fall of 1997.

YALE IN NEW YORK
Yale in New York is the acclaimed series in which distinguished faculty members-many of them famous soloists-share the limelight with exceptional alumni and students on Carnegie Hall's stages, capturing the intense collaboration found on every level at the Yale School of Music. The 2009-10 season showcased the classical legacy of Benny Goodman; undiscovered Prokofiev works; the Oral History of American Music project; and Penderecki conducting Penderecki. The series is curated by David Shifrin.

"The performance combined youthful energy and adult mastery. The playing had the kind of precision that can come only from painstaking, arduous rehearsal, yet it remained constantly fresh and surprising, with the spontaneity of improvisation. It was chamber music at its best."
- Chamber Music Magazine about Yale in New York last season

UPCOMING YALE IN NEW YORK CONCERTS:

Monday, February 28, 2011 at 7:30PM in Zankel Hall
"Concertante": rarely-performed twentieth-century concerti grossi
Yale Philharmonia Chamber Orchestra
Shinik Hahm, conductor
This program brings the acclaimed Yale Philharmonia into the intimate space of Zankel Hall
to focus on rarely-performed concerti grossi from the twentieth century.
The orchestra-with celebrated soloists David Shifrin, Ransom Wilson, and Frank Morelli-
will perform works by Ernest Bloch, Richard Strauss, Alberto Ginastera, and Frank Martin,
whose Second Ballade for flute, string orchestra, piano, and percussion
will receive its American premiere 70 years after its composition.

Monday, April 25, 2011 at 8:00PM in Weill RecitAl Hall
"Stylus Fantasticus"
The Yale Baroque Ensemble
Robert Mealy, director
Seventeenth-century composer-violinists broke new ground with an inventive and flamboyant style called Stylus Fantasticus. Acclaimed baroque violinist Robert Mealy-"New York's world-class early music violinist" (The New Yorker)-directs the period instrument Yale Baroque Ensemble from the first violinist's chair in a program of extravagant and experimental music.

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