East coast tour to showcase IU New Music Ensemble

While some college students will be spending their spring breaks on a beach, 20 musicians from the IU New Music Ensemble will be touring the East Coast with a concert called “New Music from Indiana.” There will be three performances from March 10-12.\nPerformance majors and faculty members from the Jacobs School of Music will be performing at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in College Park, Md., the Perelman Theater in Philadelphia and the Miller Theatrein New York City, said David Dzubay, composer and ensemble director. Auditions were held in August for students to be a part of the 2006 to 2007 ensemble, according to the Web site. \nThe ensemble is a showcase of contemporary performance and composition from the Jacob’s School of Music, Dzubay said. \nFour of the five pieces were written in the last three years by Jacobs faculty members and composers including Dzubay, Claude Baker and P.Q. Phan and student, Joseph Sheehan. The fifth piece was written in 1982 by Toru Takemitsu, a composer from Tokyo, who passed away in 1996, said faculty members.\nOne of the works to be performed is a piano and string quartet titled “Tableaux Funebres”, which Baker wrote for the 50th anniversary of the Chamber Music Society of Louisville, Ky., Baker said. \nHe said that the piece is written in memory of one of his former colleagues and is based on four Japanese haikus associated with death and graves.\nAnother composition that will be performed is a piece by Sheehan titled “Colors Suspended in Perpetual Ascent.”\n“The title is a reference to a constant pulse,” Sheehan said. “The piece uses exclusively ascending scales so it is always going up.”\nHe said the piece was inspired by music from the Baroque period and music by Antonio Vivaldi and J.S. Bach.\n“Music from the Baroque period has a lot of energy, rhythmic vitality and a bright quality to the sound,” Sheehan said. “I was trying to capture that feeling in my piece.”\nHe said he chose to use two violins because he knew both of the violin players and he thought it would be nice to feature them.\nThe performers and composers alike have spent a long time preparing for this tour and it’s a great experience for the musicians to perform the material multiple time so they can learn and improve as the tour progresses, Dzubay said.\n“We spend a lot of time practicing and it’s great to be able to play it more than once while touring.”