Musiqa: If I Had a Hammer Performance
Thursday, October 27 | 6PM
Silver Street Studios, East Gallery
2000 Edwards St., Houston, TX 77007
Musiqa presents four new works commissioned for a musical performance of the FotoFest Biennial 2022 exhibition, If I Had a Hammer. Written by finalists in Musiqa’s annual Emerging Composer Fellowship competition, each performance piece will draw its inspiration from the artwork of FotoFest Biennial artist Mike Osborne, resulting in a one-of-a-kind program for clarinet and percussion lasting approximately forty minutes.
For two decades, Musiqa has been known for its commitment to new voices and collaboration with artists of all sorts. In keeping with our mission to make new music available to audiences everywhere, this event is free to the public.
About the performers
Alex Berko, Composer
The “stirring” (New York Times) and “intoxicating” (Philadelphia Inquirer) music of American composer Alex Berko (b. 1995) is characterized by a balance of intimacy and power, a keen sense of lyricism and emotional sensitivity, and a love of narrative. Berko’s music often poses questions about our personal environments and relationships to one another, and he is interested in weaving listeners through intimate stories and perspectives with universal values. Berko’s music has been commissioned and performed by the Monterey Symphony, Cape Symphony, Bloomington Symphony, The Crossing, Conspirare, NOTUS Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Miró String Quartet, Del Sol String Quartet, and the Boston New Music Initiative among many others. He has received two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards for his orchestra and choral music (2022/2021) and has received additional national recognition from SCI, ACDA, The American Prize, The Television Academy Foundation, Cleveland Institute of Music, and more. Berko is a recent graduate of Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music where he received his MM in composition. He holds a BM in composition with an outside concentration in piano and a certificate in entrepreneurship from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music.
“When looking at this collection of photographs by Mike Osborne, I was drawn to certain images that contain a small subject within a large space. I was moved by how these photos explore scope and felt inspired to create a musical landscape that has a similar sensation. There is one photo in which two people are shown standing atop a pillared building draped with half-circle flags. I thought of this image like a musical score reading from top to bottom. The form of my work loosely mirrors this trajectory: stasis (the sky) gradually moving towards and revealing itself as structure (the figures and the building). At its core, my work is an attempt to capture the small within the large, just as Osborne’s images do: a feeling of muted kinetic energy woven through a vast sonic canvas.” – Alex Berko
Theo Chandler, Composer
Theo Chandler is a Houston-based composer of concert music and stage works. Chandler is a recipient of the Copland House Residency Award, SCI/ASCAP Graduate Commission, Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund Award, Charles Ives Scholarship from the Academy of Arts and Letters, American Prize for Vocal Chamber Music, and the Graduate Music Award from the Presser Foundation. Chandler has received commissions from the New York Youth Symphony First Music Program, Tanglewood Music Center, Utah Arts Festival, Les Délices, Fischer Duo, and others. Chandler has been a fellow at the Cabrillo Festival Composers Workshop, Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme, Mizzou International Composers Festival, Tanglewood Music Center, Copland House Cultivate, and Aspen Music Festival. He has been the Composer in Residence for the Maryland Wind Festival, Young Artist Composer for Da Camera, Emerging Composer Fellow for Musiqa, Composer in Residence for Les Délices, Young Composer in Residence for the Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings, and participated in the I-Park Composer + Musicians Collaborative Residency with Akropolis Reed Quintet.
“I composed Disappearance Studies in response to Mike Osborn’s photography series Federal Triangle. In his commentary on the work, Osborn describes Washington D.C. as a kind of “Bermuda Triangle,” and reflects on the capital’s potential for activating paranoid conspiratorial fantasies. I felt this paranoia in his shots of government workers, taken from behind to hide their humanity, cropped to hide context. The Bermuda Triangle comparison was apt; the sensation I experienced was a fear of disappearing, a fear of becoming as unidentifiable as the subjects of the photos. Disappearance Studies depicts three different kinds of disappearances.” – Theo Chandler
J.E. Hernández, Composer
Composer and cinematographer J.E. Hernández (b.1993) is a Mexican-born, Houston-based composer focusing on elevating personal and cultural narrative through his work. J.E.’s music has been featured by distinguished ensembles and organizations such as the Kennedy Center for the Arts, Houston Grand Opera, American Opera Project, Apollo Chamber Players, Foundation for Modern Music, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, American Composers Forum, the Brazil National Orchestra, and in a wide variety of films, both in the United States and abroad. He holds a degree from the University of Houston. Past teachers include Marcus Maroney and Gregory Spears. J.E.’s work focuses on both traditional and multi-disciplinary mediums, and he has collaborated with directors, choreographers, and playwrights. His process cultivates creativity through stewarding tangible life experiences through an intensive, multi- narrative process that is mathematical, philosophical, and historical; these include environmental displacement, anthropologic self-assessments, and non-artistic life narratives. Recent and upcoming projects include hela, a chamber work focusing on the transformative aspect of trauma, commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera. Voces Fantasmas, a multi-disciplinary work dedicated to people in immigrant facilities, to be premiered by Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, excerpts of which were streamed by the Kennedy Center for the Arts, a McKnight Visiting Composer Residency with American Composers Forum, and a fellowship with American Opera Project’s Composers & the Voice program, where he will workshop a wide variety of operatic works with world class singers, culminating in a premiere.
“Inside of Mike Osborne’s photography is a considerable dedication to the sense of depth that each image can depict. Especially, his series titled Monopoly, is replete with not just visual parallax and its relationship to the visual sense of scale, but also historical and emotional depth. A dimension that threads itself through the gestural photography that his language lives in, and moved me to create a piece that in some way could provide a musical analogue to this feeling. That there could be something that is still, filled with a gestural stillness and quality of implied movement, and how it can be related to a longer history. To this end, I chose to use the Teponaztli, an ancient Mesoamerican instrument of Mexica fame. This instrument, with its implied historical depth (for its true history is lost to violence and imperialism) and its renewed depth in contemporary works that utilize it, is an instrument that, to me, can engage with this deeper psychological depth. Their wood, varied but usually dyed a deep amber color, is not dissimilar to the same glow that is present in Osborne’s Monopoly, through the dim light in halogen light bulbs on streets.” – J.E. Hernández
Badie Khaleghain, Composer
Khaleghian is an Iranian-born American composer and a multimedia artist interested in collaborative and innovative storytelling. His compositions are wide-ranging in influence and inspiration, encompassing solo, chamber, orchestral, electro-acoustic, and multimedia works. Due to his religious background, he was banned from public higher education in Iran, and in 2014 he came to the US as a religious refugee. Khaleghian’s music is influenced by his Middle Eastern background, social justice activism, and passion for collaboration. His music has been included in music festivals such as Splice Festival, Omaha Under the Radar, Alba Music Festival (Italy), and performed by ensembles such as Crossing Borders, Hub New Music, Talea Ensemble, Transient Canvas, and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. He is currently pursuing his doctorate in music composition at Rice University.
Beyond Grey
I. Artificial
II. Literal Lines
III. The Window
“This piece is three different perceptions of an artwork. It was fascinating to show the image to various friends and get completely different responses on what they saw and what words or emotions were attached to their perception. Therefore, I tried to “read” the image in three ways. For Artificial, I wrote a simple algorithm to read the image from left to right in two minutes and translated the whiteness and blackness to the different dynamic ratios of overtones. Then I used the algorithmic product to design the formal structure, pitch content, and gestural organization. I perceive the image as lines, edges, and surfaces for the Literal Lines. I mapped any musical gestures I could find on each surface and translated them musically. The Window is my semantic perception of the image -as a window. I associated my imagination about the image with looking at it as a whole and what emotions and stories come from it. I am thankful to MUSIQA for giving me the opportunity to write this piece.” – Badie Khaleghian
Maiko Sasaki, Clarinet
Fulfilling a childhood dream, Dr. Maiko Sasaki, a clarinetist, enjoys her professional career as a solo/chamber/orchestra musician. Dr. Sasaki plays in prestigious orchestras such as River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, Opera in the Heights, Sarasota Symphony, and Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Houston. She has also been featured in many chamber concerts such as the Kennedy Center Conservatory Project, Musiqa, the ROCO Connection Series, and Take Five — a Houston Symphony’s outreach program to just name a few. For her passionate and inspiring performances, she has been awarded the Presser Music Award–which is given to an artist demonstrating excellence and outstanding promise for a distinguished career in the field of music. Since 2011, Dr. Sasaki has co-founded an ensemble “MATIMA” with pianist Dr. Makiko Hirata. Its mission is to promote music as a universal language to help us transcend our differences through a communal sensory experience. MATIMA was invited to perform as guest artists at the International Clarinet Association’s ClarinetFest 2015 in Madrid, Spain for their contribution to the clarinet literature and their collaborative artistry.
Blake Wilkins, Percussion
Blake Wilkins is Professor of Music and Director of Percussion Studies at the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music, and in 2016-17 he served as Interim Director of the Moores School of Music. Prior to joining the UH faculty in 1997, he served as percussionist and substitute principal timpanist with the Oklahoma City Philharmonic from 1993-97. Under his direction the Moores School Percussion Ensemble has distinguished itself internationally by winning the Percussive Arts Society International Percussion Ensemble Competition three times (2003, 2006, and 2010); with the release of three critically acclaimed commercial compact discs on the Albany Records label; and through its Percussion Ensemble Commissioning Project, which to date has generated sixteen new works for large percussion ensemble. He is equally active as a composer, and his four works for large percussion ensemble have been recorded by the University of Oklahoma and University of Houston Percussion Ensembles on the Albany Records label. His Twilight Offering Music was a prizewinner in the 1988 Percussive Arts Society International Composition Competition. Dr. Wilkins holds degrees in Percussion Performance and Composition from the University of Oklahoma and the University of Southern California. He is an artist endorser of Innovative Percussion and Zildjian cymbals.
FotoFest Biennial 2022 Media Sponsor:
Image: Mike Osborne, Security Perimeter / H St NW, 2019. Archival inkjet print. Courtesy of the artist.
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