Acclaimed Pianist Pamela Mia Paul Performs at HSU

As a pianist, she has been hailed as “a star among stars” and performed in major concert halls on four continents, including appearances with the world’s great orchestras. As a teacher, she has presented master classes in Europe, People's Republic of China and throughout the United States. On March 26 in Fulkerson Recital Hall, Pamela Mia Paul will perform a solo concert that includes works by Brahms and Debussy, and an American premiere. She will also teach a master class at HSU on March 25.

Pamela Mia Paul has performed with major symphonic orchestras including the Vienna Symphony, the Dutch Radio Symphony, New York Philharmonic and the symphonies of Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Detroit and other American cities, as well as the Boston Pops and New York Pops orchestras.

As a chamber musician, she has performed in the Salzburg and Bregenz music festivals as well as in other venues in Europe, Asia, Canada and various U.S. cities. Including her work as a soloist, she has received consistent critical praise for her interpretations of the standard classical repertoire as well as twentieth-century and contemporary music. She received her bachelor and master degrees and a Doctor of Musical Arts, all from the Julliard School. She is currently Regents Professor of Piano at the University of North Texas. She is professionally recognized as a Steinway Artist.

At HSU Pamela Mia Paul will perform two works by Johannes Brahms, and selections by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Her concert features the American premiere of a work by contemporary composer Andrew May, who is also her teaching colleague at the University of North Texas. May composed Charnel House (after Frederic Chopin) just last spring.

May’s work is not the first new composition Pamela Mia Paul has introduced. She performed the world premiere of American composer Robert Beaser’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, and its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall. She recorded this concerto with the American Composer’s Orchestra for the Eroica label.

In addition to her concert on Saturday evening, she will teach a master class on Friday, March 25 from noon to 1:30 pm in the Fulkerson Recital Hall at HSU. This class is free and open to the public.

Pianist Pamela Mia Paul performs on Saturday March 26 at 8 PM in the Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus in Arcata. Tickets: $8/$3 students and seniors from HSU Ticket Office (826-3928) or at the door. This Guest Artist concert is produced by HSU Department of Music.

Media: Humboldt State Now, Arcata Eye

Pamela Mia Paul: The Program

Sextet Op. 18 - Johannes Brahms
Allegro ma non troppo - transcribed for solo piano by Reuben Allred, 2008

Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel op. 24 - Johannes Brahms

Intermission

Charnel House (after Frederic Chopin) - Andrew May 2010 - American premiere

Valses Nobles et Sentimentales - Maurice Ravel

L'Isle Joyeuse-- Claude Debussy

Pamela Mia Paul: Bio

Pamela Mia Paul is both a brilliant performer and a deeply dedicated teacher. On stage, she has performed with the world’s great orchestras. She has given concerts throughout the U.S., and in Europe, the People’s Republic of China, South Korea and Turkey both as soloist and as chamber musician. In the studio, or in the setting of a Master Class, she is an internationally sought-after pedagogue whose students have participated in and won competitions including the Naumburg International Piano Competition.

Ms. Paul has commissioned and premiered works for the piano; Robert Beaser’s Piano Concerto, which was written for her, had its world premiere in the U.S., with the St. Louis Symphony conducted by Leonard Slatkin, and in Europe with the Monte Carlo Philharmonic under the baton of American conductor Richard Dufallo. The Beaser Concerto had its New York premiere in 1992 at Carnegie Hall, with Dennis Russell Davies conducting the American Composer’s Orchestra.

Miss Paul has received critical acclaim for her appearances with orchestras in the U.S. and Europe, where her interpretations of both standard repertoire and twentieth-century piano concertos have garnered consistent critical praise.Miss Paul's European orchestral appearances include the Vienna ORF Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Berlin Stadskapelle, and the Dutch Radio Symphony; her U.S orchestral appearances include those with the New York Philharmonic, symphonies of Detroit, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Houston, American Composers Orchestra, Boston Pops, New York Pops, the Minnesota Orchestra, and Caramoor Festival Orchestra.

In both orchestral performances and recitals, Ms. Paul has appeared in world’s major concert halls including Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna, and the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam.

As a chamber musician, she has been an invited guest artist at the Salzburg and Bregenz Festivals in Austria, Aspen Music Festival in Colorado, and at Music Mountain in Connecticut. Quartets with which she has performed include Cassatt, Penderecki, Borromeo, Chester, Orlando, Leontovich, Miro and DaPonte.

Recent engagements include master classes at the Prague International Master Classes, guest artist performances in Seoul and Pusan, South Korea, with Fort Worth Chamber Music Society and Corpus Christi Symphony, and at the Vetta Chamber Music Series in Vancouver and Bargemusic Chamber Music Series in New York City.

Pamela Mia Paul has presented master classes in Europe, The People's Republic of China, South Korea, and throughout the U.S. She received a doctor of musical arts, master of music and bachelor of music from the Juilliard School. She is currently Regents Professor of Piano at the University of North Texas.

Ms. Paul is a Steinway artist.

PianoVoce: Kevin Sharkey, Richard Duning, Nancy Correll, Annette Gurnee Hull and Virginia Ryder. Not pictured: Kamala Stroup Rocher.

Music of Sorrow, Fear, Transcendence and Transformation with PianoVoce

“What better way to explore the nature of death than through its expression in music?” asks North Coast pianist Nancy Correll. Her answer is this carefully selected program presented by the North Coast ensemble known as PianoVoce on March 12 in Fulkerson Recital Hall.

Pianists Correll and Annette Gurnee Hull created PianoVoce in 2001. They were the “piano” and vocalist Sue Mullen was the original “voce” or voice. “She passed away in September 2010, but we still hear her voice,” said Correll. This concert is dedicated to her memory.

Over the years the group added vocalist Kevin Sharkey, HSU woodwind professor Virginia Ryder, and text reader Richard Duning. This year PianoVoce introduces soprano Kamala Stroup Calderoni.

Noting that death is the universal human experience and therefore a universal subject of the arts, Correll described the rationale for this evening’s program. “From our culture’s music for piano, voice and oboe, we’ve chosen pieces that explore various aspects of death,” she said. “Sorrow, fear, transcendence and transformation are some of the feelings expressed in these piano duets, song and oboe music.”

A religious response to death is reflected in selections from Bach’s Cantata #127. The Sonata for Piano and Oboe by modern French composer Francis Poulenc is an elegy for his friend and fellow composer, Sergei Prokofiev.

“There are also lighter ways to consider death,” Correll said. “The ‘danse macabre’ was once a terror-inspiring art form, but in the hands of Saint-Saens, it becomes a semi-comic ragged dance of clattering bones and blowing shrouds.”

Other selections are from Franz Schubert, Edvard Grieg, Roger Quilter, Aaron Copland, Gian Carlo Menotti, Hugo Wolf and Cody Wright. The music is often paired with poetry by Henrik Ibsen, Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver, Ogden Nash and other authors.

“All of these images, and more, can be found in art where the artist is exploring this basic condition of our lives,” Correll concludes. “There are no answers, only the thoughts and feelings of those who have struggled with this reality... We believe that some of our tradition’s most beautiful music and poetry comes from the struggle to come to terms with death, in all its forms.”

PianoVoce performs on Saturday March 12 at 8 PM in the Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus in Arcata. Tickets: $8/$3 students and seniors from HSU Ticket Office (826-3928) or at the door. Produced by HSU Department of Music.

Media: Humboldt State Now, Arcata Eye, North Coast Journal

Commentary

Death is an experience that all humans have. Each culture, each individual has its own way of dealing with this reality. Our own long heritage of music and poetry has a rich and varied response to the issue of death.

From our culture’s music for piano, voice and oboe, we’ve chosen pieces that explore various aspects of death: the pain of loss, mourning, various ideas and images on what we think might happen after death; some images of the horrific and macabre; and even some religious imagery.

Our religious heritage has some very definite ideas about death and afterlife, which we have represented with a selection from a Bach Cantata. However, most of this recital’s music comes from a more individual perspective. The pain of loss is expressed in Poulenc’s Sonata for Piano and Oboe, which is an elegy for Poulenc’s friend Serge Prokofieff. The song “Befreit” is addressed to a dying spouse.

There are also lighter ways to consider death. The “danse macabre” was once a terror-inspiring art form, but in the hands of Saint-Saens, it becomes a semi-comic ragged dance of clattering bones and blowing shrouds. The composer uses the medieval chant “Dies Irae” from the requiem mass, which was originally solemn and awe-inspiring, but in this Danse Macabre it is transformed into snippets of remembered horror.

Death has been used as a metaphor, too. Consider the so-called “little death” of sexual climax, which is often the meaning of the word death used in love songs. In Le Colibri, the hummingbird drinks so much nectar that he “dies”. Other concepts used as metaphors for death include sleep, night, and darkness.

A curious legend linking death and music is the notion of the “swansong”. The swan is, supposedly, silent throughout its life. Then, at the end of life, the swan sings and dies. In “Ein Schwan”, Grieg uses the legend itself as a poignant eulogy for a loved one.

All of these images, and more, can be found in art where the artist is exploring this basic condition of our lives. There are no answers, only the thoughts and feelings of those who have struggled with this reality. The dialogue is rich. We believe that some of our tradition’s most beautiful music and poetry comes from the struggle to come to terms with death, in all its forms.

The sense of transformation is strong in much of this music. We are not as we shall become. Although we don’t know what that will be, it is a belief as universal as it is varied. Beliefs include everything from a physical life after death to a wave disappearing into the ocean. We will be different. It is also the nature of music to transform. After we have heard a compelling piece of music, we are different. So, what better way to explore the nature of death than its expression in music?


A Brief History of PianoVoce

Nancy Correll and Annette Gurnée Hull created PianoVoce, a group that performs art songs and piano duets, in the fall of 2001. They both have B.A.'s in music from HSU where they studied piano with Charles Fulkerson. As the senior accompanist in the HSU music department, Nancy allowed Annette to share her office until they retired in the Spring of 2001. Three months later, on the first day of the fall semester, they giggled their way through their first piano duets together. Annette was introduced to piano duets as a young girl when her father, also a student of Fulkerson, played rousing renditions of Mozart with her. “Charlie” was an avid duettist; and after his death, his daughter Julie invited Annette and Nancy into his music library to take whatever music they wanted. They wanted duets.

Sue Mullen was the original voce of PianoVoce. She passed away in September 2010, but we still hear her voice. Their first concert, "Voyage à Paris," was a benefit for the Humboldt Community Breast Health Project, and as Nancy is a breast cancer survivor, many of their concerts have been benefits for the project. Kevin Sharkey, owner of Threadbare Dancewear in Arcata, joined the group when they performed Leonard Bernstein's "Arias and Barcarolles" for two singers and piano duet. He refused to leave.

"Pagine di Guerra" explored music in times of war, and the next year's "Friendship" concert added HSU woodwind professor Virginia Ryder to their entourage. Annette and Nancy’s trip to France for the duo piano conference, Musique à Beaumont, inspired "PianoVoce Goes to France." They returned to France last summer to perform Bach’s Duo Piano Concerto BWV 1062 which they reprised in Fulkerson Recital Hall in January. Richard Duning, Nancy's husband, is an integral part of the group reading the poetic translations of the songs and offering insightful thoughts on the music being performed. Soprano Kamala Stroup Calderoni joins us this year from Montpellier, France to celebrate the spirit of life. Newlywed Calderoni is a graduate of Humboldt State University and has performed in Paris, London, and the San Francisco Bay area. In addition to solo performances, she has sung various opera roles with San Francisco Lyric Opera, Golden Gate Opera, Oakland Lyric Opera and other ensembles.


The concert will also be performed at the following locations:
Sunday, March 6, 4 pm at The Unitarian Fellowship, Ashland, Oregon;
Old City Hall, Redding, California, on Friday, March 11, 7:30 pm

The Program

Death: Part the First: Fear and the Macabre
Dies Iræ/Danse Macabre ..................... Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Richard Duning ~ Kevin Sharkey
Nancy Correll & Annette Gurnée Hull
Der Tod und das Mädchen ........................... Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Kevin Sharkey & Nancy Correll
Ein Schwan ..................................................... Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
Kamala Stroup Calderoni & Nancy Correll
Vos me matasteis ....................................... Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999)
Kevin Sharkey & Nancy Correll
Le Colibri .................................... Amédée-Ernest Chausson (1855-1899)
Kamala Stroup Calderoni & Nancy Correll
Fear no more the heat oʼ the sun .................... Roger Quilter (1877-1953)
Kevin Sharkey & Nancy Correll
Befreit .......................................................... Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Kamala Stroup Calderoni & Nancy Correll
Sonata for Oboe & Piano, Opus 185 .......... Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)
Dedicated to the memory of Serge Prokofieff
I. Elégie - Paisiblement
II. Scherzo - Très animé - le double plus lent - Tempo I
III. Déploration - Très calme
Virginia Ryder & Nancy Correll
~ Intermission ~
We dedicate this concert to our dear friend and colleague,
Suzanne Mullen
1956-2010
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Death: Part the Second: Acceptance and Transcendence
Cantata #127 .................................. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
I. “Herr Jesu Christ, wahrʼ Mansch und Gott”
II. Recitativo “Wenn Alles sich zur letzten Zeit entsetzet”
III. Aria “Die Seele ruht in Jesu Handen”
Virginia Ryder
Kevin Sharkey ~ Kamala Stroup Calderoni
Nancy Correll & Annette Gurnée Hull
Ich bin der Welt abhanden bekommen .......... Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Kamala Stroup Calderoni & Nancy Correll
The World Feels Dusty ................................. Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Kevin Sharkey & Nancy Correll
The Swing ............................................... Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007)
Kevin Sharkey & Nancy Correll
Sleep is supposed to be ............................... Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Kamala Stroup Calderoni & Nancy Correll
Zur Ruh, zur Ruh ................................................. Hugo Wolf (1860-1903)
Kamala Stroup Calderoni & Nancy Correll
Morgen! ....................................................... Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Kamala Stroup Calderoni & Nancy Correll
Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht .............. Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Kevin Sharkey & Nancy Correll
Inori (Prayer) ............................................................. Cody Wright (1977-)
In memoriam Nabeshima Tadao
Nancy Correll & Annette Gurnée Hull

Soprano Molly Servidia, soloist with the Humboldt Symphony

A Pretty Night with the Humboldt Symphony

Two soloists highlight Humboldt Symphony’s early spring concert on Saturday and Sunday, March 5 and 6 at 8 PM in the Fulkerson Recital Hall.

Soprano Molly Severida, this year’s winner in the HSU student Aria Competition, will perform a song from Susannah, the most famous opera by American composer Carlise Floyd. Premiering in 1955, this opera became the American work taken to the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels. The song, “Ain't It a Pretty Night?" is about “a young woman in the Tennessee Valley who is looking up at the stars and dreaming of a different life,” according to Humboldt Symphony conductor and HSU Music professor Paul Cummings.

HSU Music professor Dr. Dan Aldag is the soloist on Concerto for Trombone by 20th century Danish composer Launy Grondahl. “Though the composer isn’t well known, this piece is a popular one,” Cummings said. “Of all the pieces written for orchestra and trombone there are only about ten that are regularly performed, and this is one of them. The second of the three movements is particularly haunting.”

While both of these pieces involve the entire orchestra as well as the soloists, the orchestra itself is the star after intermission with Franz Schubert’s Symphony #8. “It’s an early Romantic piece, with a lot of heartfelt melodies,” Cummings said. Even though it is only two movements, this “Unfinished Symphony” is Schubert’s most famous. The Humboldt Symphony will play the first movement for these performances, and will finish the Unfinished Symphony in its May concert by playing both movements.

The March 5 and 6 concerts begin and end with a dance. As England prepares for a royal wedding, the Symphony starts off with several of the Courtly Dances that Benjamin Britten composed for the coronation of the current Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. “There’s a Renaissance flavor to these dances,” Cummings said, “suggesting the refined court dancing style of the late 16th century.”

Capping the concert is one of the quite different Slavonic Dances by the 19th century Czech composer Antonin Dvorak. This dance—identified as Op. 46 No. 8 in G minor—is “very fast, very lively. There’s always something melodic happening.”

The Humboldt Symphony with guest soloists Molly Severdia and Dan Aldag performs on Saturday and Sunday, March 5 and 6 at 8 PM in the Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus in Arcata. Tickets are $7 general, $3 students/seniors, from the HSU Ticket Office (826-3928) or at the door. Free to HSU students with ID. Conducted by Paul Cummings, produced by HSU Music Department.

Media: Humboldt State Now, Arcata Eye, Humboldt Beacon

Dr. Dan Aldag, soloist for the Humboldt Symphony

Humboldt Symphony: The Program

Benjamin Britten
Courtly Dances from Gloriana

Carlisle Floyd
"Ain't It a Pretty Night?" from Susannah
soloist: Molly Severdia

Launy Grondahl
Concerto for Trombone
soloist: Dr. Dan Aldag

Intermission

Franz Schubert
Symphony No. 8 in B minor (Unfinished)

Antonin Dvorak
Slavonic Dance, op. 46 No. 8 in G minor