MOMENTUM PROGRAM NOTES

This program, Momentum, delves into how different forms of momentum manifest in our world, from the physical to the abstract, the playful to the profound.

Central to this theme are the relationships and collaborations that propel artistic growth, showcasing how creative partnerships spark new works and ideas.

By celebrating movement as both a literal and metaphorical force, Momentum highlights how keeping things in motion leads to innovation, evolution, and the deepening of connections in the world of music and beyond.

Below are images being shown at the concert. I chose images that I felt captured the spirit of each piece of music.
- Laura

About Tessa
Interdisciplinary flutist/composer  Tessa Brinckman has been praised for her “chameleon-like gifts” and “virtuoso elegance” (Gramophone), an “excellent…flutist” (Willamette Week) and “highlight of Portland” (New Music Box), who “play(s) her instrument with great beauty and eloquence” (Music Matters New Zealand). Originally from New Zealand, she has premiered well over a hundred new works (commissioning almost thirty), with many acclaimed classical music ensembles, concert series, musicians and composers across the globe. Now based in New York City since 2022, she enjoys creating and performing unique work that honors synesthesia, dialect, innate meter and collaboration, often on geo-political themes in a surrealist spirit.

About Hüzün Nar (Rochester premiere)
The words “hüzün” and “nar” in the title  Hüzün Nar  mean “melancholy” and “fire” in Turkish and Arabic respectively and are a nod to Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk and his memoir of his beloved city, Istanbul, which I travelled to in 2011. The music was inspired by city-wide calls to prayer, Turkish TV shows, electronic dance music booming all night in the Old City, and later protests in Taksim Square. The score has room for improvisatory elements and moves rhythmically in cycles of 22. The fixed audio uses processed alto flute, prepared piano and electronic patches.  Hüzün Nar  is also the soundtrack for the animation film,  The Gorgon Cycles  (2023).
- Tessa Brinckman
More about Tessa

I enjoyed meeting Tessa at the National Flute Association convention in San Antonio this past August. We are working on plans for a collaborative performance. - Laura

Kitty Jospé, poet
Response poetry to Prismatic Wind, read before piece is performed

From Kitty
Listening to Laura play these two pieces, as well as the music itself, coaxed my words when spoken to try to make an echo effect. In Plasmonic Mirror, I use a few techniques to mirror the music with the meaning of “Plasmonic” and link it to the John Muir epigraph:” When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” In Prismatic Wind, the title of the music gave me a visual of wind “with a spill of ink to spell” — as in spell out a message, but also hold us in the magic of spellbound. Many of my poems enjoy working sound, and here, the caress of the sibilance and play of silence (which means a musical rest in French) actually shows a visual quarter rest on a stave of music which you will hear only in a pause. You don’t need to translate the French— it sounds just like it means: supple, a sigh and yet coupled with joy and gentle breathing.

About Kitty
Kitty Jospé is in love with words, champions the power of keen observation and careful reflection.  Retired French teacher and art docent, she has been crafting poems since 2005,  leading weekly poetry appreciation sessions in Rochester, NY after receiving her MFA in 2008.  She is known for her enthusiasm as teacher and reader and her joyful presentations.  Her work is in 7 books and appears in a variety of reviews and anthologies.
More about Kitty

About Chloe
A flutist and composer currently living in Oregon, Chloe Upshaw has a mission to nurture the mental health and well-being of musicians, and she does this by promoting the use of sound exploration as a medium for mindful expression. 

About Prismatic Wind
Prismatic Wind  explores evolving textures of tension and meditative release. - Chloe Upshaw 
More about Chloe

About Anna
Described as a “composer of uncommon gifts and unusual methods” in a New York Times profile and as “fearless” by NPR, GRAMMY-nominated Anna Clyne is one of the most in-demand composers today, working with orchestras, choreographers, filmmakers, and visual artists around the world. 

About Hopscotch (Rochester premiere)
Hopscotch is inspired by childlore - the folklore or folk culture of children and young people. It includes, for example, rhymes and games played in the school playground. This piece, which takes its title from the game hopscotch, is both playful and fiery, and also incorporates a gentle folk-like melody. - Anna Clyne 
More about Anna

About Marc
Composer Marc Mellits is one of the leading American composers of his generation, enjoying hundreds of performances throughout the world every year, making him one of the most performed living composers in the United States. From Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, to prestigious music festivals in Europe and the US, Mellits’ music is a constant mainstay on programs throughout the world. His unique musical style is an eclectic combination of driving rhythms, soaring lyricism, and colorful orchestrations that all combine to communicate directly with the listener. Mellits' music is often described as being visceral, making a deep connection with the audience. 

About Discrete Structures (performed as part of world premiere cycle)
Discrete Structures is a set of connected miniatures, each sharing musical material and each movement completing each other.  Sometimes they complete a movement that has already happened, sometimes they complete it before it even begins.  However, they are all based on the same musical material, and as I was writing each movement that material became more and more clear, completely on its own.  I wanted to create a sound world that connected to itself almost serendipitously, creating connections throughout the work.  The music of each movement on their own are very structured, the building blocks of each are all manipulations of each other, keeping the entire piece connected.  Some structures depict events that happened to me during the summer of 2024, for example, III: Survival Structure, inspired by an encounter with a homeless girl reading philosophy in the center of Bucharest, Romania; stay strong, tomorrow is another day.  Other structures compare similar material however, from different perspectives: a wooden clock turns into gold then melts into a liquid.  Serendipity can sometimes be joyous or can sometimes give pause.  Events happen seemingly on their own but often have an impact, from moment to moment, measure to measure.
- Marc Mellits 
More about Marc

Discrete Structures is the result of a consortium of approx. 25 wind players around the world who gathered to support this new work by Marc. Consortium members are performing it as part of the world premiere cycle through September of next year. In May of 2025, I’ll perform the flute & string quartet version here at Payton Violins with the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania based Beo String Quartet. As part of that concert I’ll be premiering a new work by the Dutch composer JacobTV called Serendipity2 for alto flute, string quartet, and tabla (Indian drum). -Laura

Intermission 
During intermission you are invited to:
1) Participate in a reflective activity about momentum in preparation for our Momentum Improvisation.
Think about momentum in your life (how you created something, changed your life, felt unstoppable, or something else!) and write a short reflection / word / poem / drawing, using the markers/pencils and sticky notes provided. Then add them to the “Momentum Wall” posterboard.
2) Experiment with the kinetic toys provided.
Is there one that appeals to you or best represents what you wrote for the Momentum Wall?

About Momentum Improvisation
In this piece the audience will become an integral part of the music-making process where we will create a spontaneous soundscape through the use of various kinetic toys and objects. The soundscape evolves organically as the audience interacts with small hand-held items that evoke motion or movement, such as fidget spinners, fidget cubes, kinetic sand, magnetic putty, mini hand crank music boxes, pop it fidget toys, small rain sticks or shakers, gyroscope toys, Rubik’s cube or puzzle cubes, or Jacob’s Ladders.

The resulting sound environment is one of playful unpredictability. Momentum, in this context, refers not only to the physical movement of these objects, but also to the fluid progression of sound and interaction in the space. Improvising on flute, Laura will respond to the soundscape in real time, weaving in and out of the textures and rhythms created by the audience. The interplay between the organic sounds of the toys and the expressive possibilities of the flute will highlight themes of momentum, spontaneity, and collective creation. This piece is as much about the joy of movement as it is about the music itself, celebrating the unrepeatable nature of every moment.

Thank you to Marcy Bacon for brainstorming on this idea with me and for providing the collection of kinetic toys and objects that we’re using for this improvisation. -Laura

About Weaving Stars (Rochester premiere)
Weaving Stars aims to reflect on the journey of healing and transformation. - Chloe Upshaw

To highlight the importance of teaching for me (on so many levels, including the wonder of being a part of watching students do their thing and helping them as you can along the way), I am excited to share the stage with students Lilianna Fietkiewicz and Raeha Khazanchi on this piece. Special thank you to Chloe Upshaw for sharing this work for us to play together. - Laura

About Sean
Sean William Calhoun is a composer and pianist living in Rochester.

About Duality Keys (world premiere)
Duality Keys is inspired by wave/particle duality. In the first section, the electronics are made from chopping up the sound of two notes played together on a keyboard into rapid streams of particles. In the middle section, the waveform of the keyboard dyad is put into wavetable synthesizers and tiny segments of it become the waves being oscillated and processed. And in the final section, both approaches — the particles and the waves — are used simultaneously. Amidst all of that, the alto flute plays various perspectives on a slow melody. - Sean William Calhoun 

It has been an absolute joy to work with Sean this past year not only on Duality Keys, but also Reimagined Syrinx, and Plasmonic Mirror. You will hear all three tonight. -Laura

About Reimagined Syrinx
Syrinx by Claude Debussy is one of our most famous flute solos that gives a lot of room for interpretation and emotion. In this new version, Syrinx lives and her voice is represented by a 2-note motif in the electronics composed by Sean to represent Syrinx’s voice. In numerology the number “2” symbolizes the feminine, representing both grace and power. - Laura Lentz

Kitty Jospe’, poet
Response poetry to Plasmonic Mirror, read before piece is performed
(see Prismatic Wind notes)

About Plasmonic Mirror
I asked Sean to write me a piece that dealt with climate change or the environment in some way. He thought the best focus on the topic would be on what people are doing to ameliorate it. He started looking into recent developments in energy technology, and learned how a team at the University of Rochester led by Chunlei Guo recently made developments dramatically improving the efficiency of perovskite solar cells. This piece is 4 movements and was inspired by this research. - Laura Lentz 
I. Light on Perovskite
II. Excitons
III. The Mirror of Recombination Reduction
IV. Photoresponsivity
The first movement,  Light on Perovskite, features many quick descending figures representing the beams of sunlight striking the perovskite. These increase in intensity, leading directly into the second movement Excitons. When a photon hits a crystal, it can knock an electron into a higher energy state, leaving a hole at its former energy state, which, despite being the absence of a particle, kind of acts like a positively-charged particle. The electron-hole pair is called an exciton. The electronics for the movement alternate between electron music — bright, distorted, and bassy — and hole music — light plucks and pulsing reverb tails. Being oppositely-charged, the electron and hole are attracted, and so the length of each pair of sections becomes progressively shorter until each is less than a beat. But for a solar cell to work, we need to use the charges to generate power, and that doesn’t happen if the exciton recombines on its own, so a part of solar cell efficiency is reducing the rate of recombination of excitons. And that’s where the titular plasmonic mirror comes in — the UofR team found that a thin layer of certain substances beneath the layer of perovskite could create a sort of mirror that, through Weird Physics Reasons (that I never really managed to understand), suppresses the recombination of excitons. So  The Mirror of Recombination Reduction  has a drone in the electronics representing the mirror, and for everything the flute plays, a part in the electronics plays an inversion of it slightly later below the mirror. Photoresponsivity is the term for the amount of electrical output relative to optical input, so the movement  Photoresponsivity is a high-energy celebration of the greater efficiency of the perovskite solar cells. - Sean William Calhoun 
More about Sean

THANK YOU!
Tessa Brinckman, Sean William Calhounm Anna Clyne, Marc Mellits, and Chloe Upshaw for your incredible music.
Julia Lin for her care and work with me in preparing Discrete Structures for today’s performance.
Kitty Jospe’ for her wonderful spirit, and for creating new poetry for us to enjoy.
Lilianna Fietkiewicz & Raeha Khazanchi for performing with me.
Marcy Bacon for her improvisation idea and providing momentum toys.
Marc Webster for all your help with tech stuff and for hosting a soft-premiere run-through.
Danielle and Sam Payton for being the kindest and most gracious hosts for today’s program.
Genesee Valley Council on the Arts for funding support.
Pier & Luca for your love and always cheering me on.