New Music Chicago Presents: Michael Schwebke’s +Pan Quartet

Description

Join us Tuesday, August 18 at ESS for a special evening presented by New Music Chicago. The +Pan Quartet performs works by 20th and 21st century composers combining piano trio and the unique sounds of the steel pan.

NMCP is free to attend, but donations are encouraged to ensure NMC can continue presenting its members’ work to the maximum of its ability!

RSVP Required. Livestream here.

Program

“Downstream”** (+Pan Quartet) – Dr. David Maki
“Tugboat”* (Steelpan & Strings) – Louis Raymond-Kolker
“In One Breath” (Steelpan & Piano) – Robert Chappell
“What Will We Say”** (+Pan Quartet) – Aaron Gage

Mike Schwebke, Steelpans
Eric Sewell, Violin
Lisa Donald, Violoncello
Mark Nelson, Piano

Special thanks to New Music Chicago for curating this event and others like it.  Thanks to the musicians involved, our families, composers and fellow artists that create a space for this music to live and breathe.

* Indicates World Premiere
** Indicates Regional Premiere

Program notes:

“Downstream” – Dr. David Maki
In Downstream, I was interested in exploring different types of flow: melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic. The continuous rhythm of the opening piano gesture is not organized into larger beats, but varies in its groupings to produce a shifting background. As the piece progresses, various tempo changes are all related on some level and contribute to the undulating character of the surface texture. Harmonic and melodic materials vary from somewhat dissonant to modal to lushly tonal within a larger form that moves fluidly from section to section. I wanted the music to resemble a journey to some unknown destination, however some of the material from the first section returns, but in a different context, in the last section of the piece. I would like to thank Mike Schwebke and the +Pan quartet for their commitment to new music by expanding the repertoire of their unique ensemble.
— Dr. David Maki

“Tugboat” – Louis Raymond-Kolker
“Tugboat” is an intense and delirious trio for double seconds, violin, and cello, inspired by Tugboat Gallery in downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. I started going to the first Friday gallery openings at the end of the first year of my master’s degree, and Tugboat quickly became my favorite spot in downtown Lincoln. 

Visits were always wild – it’s a bit of a maze, the corridors are too tight for the amount of people who were there, and the art leant just grungy enough that you learned to count on seeing something surprising. My monthly ritual visit to Tugboat was draining but invigorating, and it helped serve as a reminder that my degree in music was connected to a larger artistic community.

I started to write “Tugboat” on the first Friday in October in 2021, the year that I moved away from Lincoln. In writing, I thought about creating a gallery of different musical ideas. Each one gets its own spotlight, but the spirit of the piece is really in the claustrophobia of standing in the middle of everything, hearing these conflicting ideas’ forced interaction. 

There’s an angst to this music, but it would be wrong to conflate that angst with the homesickness that produced the piece. If anything, my life was too quiet, and I was homesick for the chaos, the crowd, and the surprise that I knew I was missing from Lincoln. I wrote “Tugboat” so I could keep that chaos with me – and as a love letter to the place that made me crave it so much.

“Tugboat” was commissioned by Mike Schwebke. My thanks to Mike and the +Pan Quartet for bringing this piece to life.
— Louis Raymond-Kolker

“In One Breath” – Robert Chappell
The work of Robert Chappell in percussion and steelpan writing has played massive influence on chamber music for steelpan.  As a teacher, Robert has worked with thousands of students across globe in a huge variety of capacities.  I consider myself lucky to have studied with him and to have found his influence very early in my musical career.

“In One Breath” is described as a jazzical duet for steelpan and piano: utilizing modern harmony, improvisation and carefully composed/orchestrated passages.  Works like this summarize my relationship with music creation.  I love working my way through chord changes and interacting with other musicians on stage while we perform or improvise together.
— Mike Schwebke

“What Will We Say?” – Aaron Gage
At the time this piece was conceived, the world had fallen into chaos. We were in the midst of a vast economic crisis leaving millions in poverty, racism had once again found its foothold in the foreground of US culture, climate change had decimated the west coast in flames while southern coastal cities were being bombarded with floods from storms. We have also been forced to see the ugliness of domestic terrorists establishing themselves in the hopes of hurting their fellow citizens. However, these issues pale in comparison to the utter devastation we have faced from COVID-19. As I write this note, we are just shy of nearly a quarter of a million people having senselessly died from COVID-19. The utter failure we’ve had in leadership and lack of empathy from our fellow citizens have caused countless families to now have empty seats at their table. There was no need for this. Hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children have died from means that could have been completely preventable.

When I was asked to write this piece, I wanted to come up with a simple concept as an elegy to those lost to the virus. A simple question arose; What will we say? 50 years from now, how will we answer to those younger generations while we collectively sat by and did nothing to help each other? How are we going to excuse letting the rot that has sunk in go unpunished? How do we defend the indefensible? This question haunts me. The music you will hear channels my answer to that question. There is no true resolution. There is no happy ending. When we have finally moved on past this pandemic, we are still left in the wake of hundreds of thousands of dead citizens. One day it will hit us all how many lives we really lost. So I ask this; while you listen, reflect on every individual who suffered at the hands that did not act. Allow yourself to absorb the true gravity of what we have experienced. Give those victims a few minutes of your time. When the time comes for you to be asked, what will you say?
— Aaron Gage