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Publication Date

10-29-2017

Year of Release

2017

Note(s)

Leviathan Trio

Lindsey Goodman, flute

Hannah Pressley, cello

Joseph Dangerfield, piano

Program Notes

Leviathan is committed to performing the music of our time with an emphasis on collaborative commissioning, extended musicianship, and gender-balanced programming. Now in their fourth season, this dynamic trio comprised of new music specialist Lindsey Goodman on flute, renowned chamber musician Hannah Pressley on cello, and prize-winning composer Joseph Dangerfield on piano has performed at the University of Florida, West Virginia University, Southeast Louisiana University, and the Florida Flute Association convention. Leviathan has premiered pieces written for them by Luke Dahn, Randall Woolf, and Dangerfield, and is currently collaborating with Linda Kernohan, Aled Smith, and Dangerfield on new works for the 2018 - 2019 season. Recently, the ensemble was signed to perform the PARMA China Concert Tour in September 2018, touring the country for a series of twelve concerts over three weeks with PARMA Recordings. https://www.facebook.com/LeviathanTrio/

Lindsey Goodman is known for her "generous warmth of tone and a fluid virtuosity" (Charleston Gazette), and for her "impressive artistry" (Tribune-Review), "agility, and emotion" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). Renowned for her ''brilliant'', ''bravura performances" (Tribune-Review) "played with conviction" (New York Times), "flair, and emotion" (Gazette), Ms. Goodman is a soloist, chamber collaborator, orchestral musician, recording artist, teacher, and clinician.

Advocating for living composers and electroacoustic works, Lindsey has given over one-hundred world premieres, and her debut CD is available on New Dynamic Records. Ms. Goodman has performed solo and chamber concerts, taught masterclasses, and given presentations at series, festivals, and universities across three countries, including concertos from Mozart to commissioned works. Her second solo album will release in 2018, and Goodman can be heard in solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral performances on the New World, Navona, and Albany labels, as well as on live and recorded radio broadcasts on stations across the country.

Lindsey is principal flutist of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, solo flutist of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and adjunct lecturer at West Virginia State University and Marietta College (OH). She is also founding member of Leviathan flute, cello, and piano trio, PANdemonium4 flute quartet, ASSEM3LY flute, piano, and percussion trio, and Chrysalis singing flutist and singing pianist duo. A student of Walfrid Kujala and Robert Langevin, Lindsey received degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and Northwestern and Duquesne Universities. Ms. Goodman resides in Ohio with her husband and dog. www.LindseyGoodman.com

Joseph Dangerfield has lived and worked professionally in Italy, Germany, Russia, Holland, and New York. He is the recipient of many awards and recognitions, including the Aaron Copland Award (2010), the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra's Composition Prize (2010), the Henry and Parker Pelzer Prize for Excellence in Composition (2005), the Young, and Emerging Composers Award (2002). He was a Fulbright Scholar to the Russian Federation and the Netherlands (2009-10), where he served as composer-in-residence with the Ensemble Studio New Music at the famed Moscow Conservatory, and lectured at Maastricht Conservatorium. He has been a resident in the Leighton Studios of the prestigious Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada, and the Yaddo Colony in New York. Recordings of his works are available on the Albany Records label, and many are published by European American Music and PIP Press Music Publications.

Cellist Hannah Pressley lives in Charleston, West Virginia and actively performs across the region as an orchestral, solo, and chamber musician. She has performed across the US as well as in Canada, the UK, France, and Japan. Hannah has been broadcast live and in recordings on All Classical Portland (Oregon), Maryland Public Television, and KING FM (Seattle).

A lover of the outdoors, Hannah regularly performs string quartets at the bottom of the Grand Canyon on rafting trips with Canyon Explorations. As a founding member of the Leviathan Trio, she toured the southeastern US in winter 2016, performing at the University of Florida, Florida Flute Association, and Southeastern Louisiana University. Hannah is a member of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Roanoke Symphony Orchestra, Ohio Valley Symphony, and the River Cities Symphony-Orchestra. She maintains a private cello studio in Charleston, and works with the West Virginia Youth Symphony as a sectional and chamber music coach.

A native of Seattle, Washington, Hannah attended the Cleveland Institute of Music and Peabody Conservatory, where she received her Bachelor's (2009) and Master's (2011) degrees in cello performance as a student of Dr. Alison Wells. She had the opportunity to study abroad at the Guildhall School in London, UK in spring 2011, where her primary teacher was Richard Lester. While at Peabody, Hannah received the Mihaly Virizlay Memorial Prize in Cello and the Grace Clagett Ranney Prize in Chamber Music. In her free time, Hannah loves traveling, hiking, and making music with her wife, Annie.

According to Greek and Roman mythology, a Seiren is a seductive sea creature in the form of part woman, part bird, who enchants sailors with her singing and eventually lures their boats to crash upon the rocks. The interacting images of the creature, the humans, and the sea are depicted by the three instruments of the trio: flute (alto, and picc.), cello, and piano. The exploration of many different colors and effects, together with the provocative high melodic lines, brings a constant lyrical, yet intensely mysterious character to the work. - APYH

The Impeded Stream is the one that Sings for flute, cello, and piano is a collection of eight short pieces, each of which is based on a phrase or passage of poetry. Thus, these eights movements should be thoughts of more as a collection of musical poems, which can be played in any order, rather than concatenated movements creating an organic whole. As the title demonstrates, most of the poetic phrases on which these short pieces are based reflect upon nature in ways that are nighter explicitly musical ("I owned a slope full of stones. / Like buried pianos they lay in the ground") or that invite imaginative musical portrayal ("I saw a tree inside a tree / rise kaleidoscopically"). Poets and authors represented in the set include Wendell Berry, W.H. Auden, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Kathleen Norris, and Christian Wiman. The Impeded Stream is written for Leviathan Trio. - LD

I can't remember if l was in a playful or spiteful mood when I began To Committee: A Self Parody, for flute, cello and piano. So much in an artist's life is determined by committees, by panels whose judgments matter but ought not to-fights are fixed; the house always wins; moderate notions win over more daring work to satisfy strong personalities; talent can not be the determining factor; everything is unfair. I needed to address the stress, strain, and overwhelming sadness this can cause even the most dedicated among us, ergo this work: part self-deprecation, part raw confessional, one of my "deep psych" pieces. In the middle movement, "How One Becomes Lonely'' (the title of an essay by Arnold Schoenberg, who certainly knew about loneliness) the flute and cello pause for a while, allowing the piano to sink the listener into a quiet maelstrom of trembling, a sad texture. When they resume, they sing, but their loveliness, like all things, must perish. Some styles and trends were mocked in the making of this piece, but none so much as the composer himself. - DF

When I first approached Crumb about writing a companion piece to Vox Balaenae, he told me he was "thrilled that someone would write a sequel, particularly a fellow native West Virginian." As Crumb's work proffered a symbolic look at the Earth from the beginning to the end of time, I was unsure about how a sequel might connect with his seminal work. I decided instead to compose a prequel; a work representative of epochs of the universe, before life on earth began. In The Knot, I tried to capture the atmosphere (pun intended) of each epoch, delineated by the major events that occurred during those eras, and represented them through the imposed personalities of Celtic spirit animals. - JAD

Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale), for amplified flute, cello, and piano is an elegant composition, which represents II story of the Earth as told from the perspective of the whale. Structured in eight attacca movements, the work begins with an extended flute solo, which climaxes in a parody quotation of Also Sprach Zarathustra, representative of the "dawn of creation." A series of variations on the haunting "Sea-Theme," ensue, linking each variant with a geological era of the earth: Archeozoic - Proterozoic - Paleozoic - Mesozoic - Cenozoic. The Cenozoic era is musically denoted by a partial restatement of Zarathustra, hinting at the arrival of man. The work concludes with a "Sea-Nocturne," about which Crumb states: "I wanted to suggest a larger rhythm of nature, and a sense of suspension in time." - JAD

Note

Smith Music Recital Hall

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Fine Arts | Music | Music Performance

Marshall University Music Department Presents the Leviathan Trio

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