Name: Chamber Music of George Walker
Start: 2024-11-02T20:00:00-04:00
Location: University Lutheran Church

Bowerbird is pleased to present a concert of chamber works by composer George Walker performed by the Daedalus Quartet, Dynasty Battles, David Hughes, and members of the Arcana New Music Ensemble.
As an aspiring pianist in his early teens, George Walker (1922-2018) gave his first public recital at Howard University’s Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel before studying performance and composition at Oberlin College and the Eastman School of Music. Walker graduated from Philadelphia’s prestigious Curtis Institute with Artist Diplomas in piano and composition in 1945, as one of the first Black graduates of the music school. Walker was a trailblazer within the landscape of twentieth and twenty-first century American music. He was the first African-American performer to appear in performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the first African-American musician to receive a doctoral degree from Eastman. Walker’s many firsts are perhaps best captured by his singular achievement in 1996: the Pulitzer Prize for Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra. Despite Walker’s many achievements, much of his chamber music is not widely known.
PROGRAM
Piano Sonata 1
Dynasty Battles, piano
Piano Sonata 4
David Hughes, piano
Perimeters for Clarinet and Piano
Jonathan Leeds, clarinet
David Hughes, piano
Selection of Songs
“In the Time of Silver Rain”
“What If I Say I Shall Not Wait”
“I Have No Life But This”
“Bequest”
Alize Rozsnyai, soprano
David Hughes, piano
Apres Heures
Carlos Santiago, violin
String Quartet No. 1
Daedalus
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Praised by The New Yorker as “a fresh and vital young participant in what is a golden age of American string quartets,” the Daedalus Quartet has established itself as a leader among the new generation of string ensembles. Since winning the top prize in the Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2001, the Daedalus Quartet has impressed critics and listeners alike with the security, technical finish, interpretive unity, and sheer gusto of its performances. The New York Times has praised the Daedalus Quartet’s “insightful and vibrant” Haydn, the “impressive intensity” of their Beethoven, their “luminous” Berg, and the “riveting focus” of their Dutilleux. The Washington Post in turn has acclaimed their performance of Mendelssohn for its “rockets of blistering virtuosity,” while the Houston Chronicle has described the “silvery beauty” of their Schubert and the “magic that hushed the audience” when they played Ravel, the Boston Globe the “finesse and fury” of their Shostakovich, the Toronto Globe and Mail the “thrilling revelation” of their Hindemith, and the Cincinnati Enquirer the “tremendous emotional power” of their Brahms.
Dynasty Battles, the recipient of the 2021 Career Advancement Award by the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia, has been featured with soprano Marietta Simpson in The Philadelphia Inquirer, and on music critic David Patrick Stearns’ radio program “Creatively Speaking” on Philadelphia’s WRTI (90.1FM). Highlights include a composition Battles debuted by multiple Grammy nominee and Pulitzer Prize finalist Ted Hearne, composed for Dynasty himself, which was featured in The Philadelphia Inquirer; an invitation to perform George Walker’s Piano Sonata No. 1 in a private engagement at the distinguished composer’s home; and performed in a project profiled by The New York Times highlighting the works of Julius Eastman. Recent engagements comprise of hall debuts at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in a concert curated by John Adams, the Chicago Cultural Center’s Preston Bradley Hall as a featured artist in the International Music Foundation’s Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, and the Benjamin Franklin Hall with the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. Additionally, he made his international debut at the Barbican Centre in London while in residency with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.
Battles studies with concert pianist Leon Bates and Eve Wolf, pianist, and Executive Artistic Director of Ensemble for the Romantic Century. He also studied counterpoint and harmony and analysis with Jonathan Coopersmith, Chair of Musical Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music. A native of Philadelphia, Dynasty received a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance, cum laude from Temple University, under the instruction of Harvey Wedeen as a recipient of the Esther Boyer College Scholarship.
more at www.dynastybattles.com
David Hughes is a Philadelphia-based pianist with a wide-ranging repertoire that places a special emphasis on modern and lesser-known works, as well as chamber music. Hughes has performed at the Kennedy Center, Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw and the Spanish Embassy in Washington, DC. He has been featured on Philadelphia’s WRTI radio station in an hour-long segment of solo repertoire, and can also be heard playing four different keyboard instruments on John Zorn’s violin concerto, “Contes de Fées,” on the Tzadik label. Mr. Hughes has a strong interest in contemporary music and received third prize in the Gaudeamus Interpreters Competition—one of the world’s premier competitions for modern music—as a member of Outer Banks Duo with saxophonist Stacy Wilson. This was followed by the release of their debut CD, L’Incandescence. He regularly works with instrumentalists at the Curtis Institute of Music and has appeared on Curtis’ student recital series. He is also a past recipient of a fellowship to the Tanglewood Music Center, a prizewinner in the MTNA National Chamber Music Competition, and holds a doctoral degree in piano performance from Indiana University.
Founded in 2016, the Arcana New Music Ensemble is a group of Philadelphia-based musicians dedicated to presenting interesting, beautiful, and unconventional music in interesting, beautiful, and unconventional places.
Built on a flexible roster of 25 musicians, Arcana is able to perform a broad range of repertoire in numerous configurations. Composers featured in recent programs include Julius Eastman, Morton Feldman, Galina Ustvolskaya, Pauline Oliveros, Tom Johnson, Moondog, and James Tenney. Arcana has performed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Fleisher Art Memorial, The Rotunda, The Kitchen (NYC), and collaborated with Variant Six, Prometheus Chamber Orchestra, and Pig Iron Theater Company.