John Harbison Celebration

Name: John Harbison Celebration
Start: 2019-02-17T19:30:00
End: 2019-02-17T19:30:00
Location: UW Humanities Building-Mills Hall

Feb 17, 2019 7:30 PM

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UW Humanities Building-Mills Hall 455 N. Park St., Madison, Wisconsin 53706

August 22, 2018

1:58 PM

Brynn Bruijn

Part-time Madisonian and full-time classical music superstar John Harbison celebrates his 80th year with a commission written for UW-Madison violist Sally Chisolm. The Pro Arte Quartet will perform Haydn’s “Sunrise” string quartet and Harbison’s “Four Encores for Stan,” an homage to Polish composer Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. And the world premiere of Harbison’s new “Sonata for viola and Piano” — which will also be played in London and Berlin — will finish out the memorable concert.

press release: Composer and music educator John Harbison, winner of both a MacArthur Fellowship “genius” grant and a Pulitzer Prize in composition, has created a new work for Sally Chisholm, violist with the University of Wisconsin’s Pro Arte Quartet.

The composition, tentatively entitled “Sonata for Viola and Piano,” will receive its world premiere with Chisholm and Minnesota pianist Timothy Lovelace at a special concert on the UW-Madison campus February 17, 2019, as part of a yearlong celebration of the composer’s 80th birthday. Across the world in 2018 and 2019, the celebration includes two other world premieres, over a dozen new recordings, a first book and many performances.

Harbison has known Chisholm for many years. “I have been aware of Sally’s extraordinary playing for quite some time,” says Harbison, whose actual 80th birthday is December 20, 2018. “She performed my composition called ‘The Nine Rasas,’ about an ancient Indian theory of states of being that were both interesting and refined. Sally was quite remarkable.”

The first half of the School of Music concert will feature the Pro Arte Quartet (with Chisholm, violinists David Perry and Suzanne Beia and cellist Parry Karp) performing Haydn’s String Quartet Op. 76, No. 4, known as “Sunrise,” and Harbison’s “Four Encores for Stan,” an homage for string quartet and narration to Polish composer Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, former director of the Minnesota Orchestra.

The program’s second half will include solo performances by Lovelace, followed by Chisholm, who will play selections from Harbison’s “The Violist’s Notebook,” dedicated to fellow violists Kim Kashkashian, Marcus Thompson and James Dunham. Harbison’s new composition, written specifically for Chisholm, will close the program.

Harbison will be present for the premiere. The performance will take place at Mills Concert Hall in the George L. Mosse Humanities Building, 455 N. Park St., on the UW-Madison campus. Tickets are priced at $25, and are available online.

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In tandem with the concert, the Mead Witter School of Music announces the Dr. Stanley and Shirley Inhorn Strings Scholarship, initiated with a $10,000 gift from the Inhorns, to be augmented with ticket proceeds from the concert. The scholarship will be awarded in the fall of 2019, and is available to both graduate and undergraduate strings students. “As the cost of higher education increases dramatically, we recognize that the availability of more scholarships will greatly enhance the ability of the Mead Witter School of Music to attract both in-state and out-of-state strings students,” says Stanley Inhorn. Susan C. Cook, director of the School of Music, expressed her thanks to the Inhorns. “Stan and Shirley Inhorn have been great and generous friends to the Madison music community. Their ongoing support of the Mead Witter School of Music will ensure that our wonderful students can realize their musical dreams.”

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Harbison currently teaches musical composition and arrangement in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s jazz division. He has composed for the Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, as well as scores of other large and small ensembles. His catalog includes three operas, six symphonies, twelve concerti, a ballet, five string quartets, numerous song cycles and chamber works, and a large body of sacred music that includes cantatas, motets, and the orchestral-choral works Four Psalms, Requiem and Abraham. His music is widely recorded on leading labels.

He also is a part-time Madison resident who, with his wife Rose Mary Harbison, each summer over Labor Day weekend hosts the weeklong Token Creek Music Festival, which features classical chamber pieces and jazz.

Other Harbison-related events scheduled in February include a Madison Symphony Orchestra performance of his work “The Most Often Used Chords” ; a UW-Madison Memorial Library exhibit on his music; and a performance of the Grammy Award-nominated Imani Winds Wind Quintet in Shannon Hall at the Wisconsin Union Theatre. Other area ensemble tributes and musical activities are still in the planning stages.

Tickets ($25.00) may be purchased from Campus Arts Ticketing. All seats are general admission.