Sonic Crossroads to break cultural boundaries with music

Sonic Crossroads, a new initiative on campus will explore culture through musical exchange and foster an awareness of musical traditions.

Founder and director Kathryn Woodard, an assistant professor of performance studies at Texas A&M University, developed Sonic Crossroads in order to build audiences for both new music and traditional music and the intersection of the two.

“In effect with Sonic Crossroads I am building a lab, with performance experiments on campus and all over the world,” Woodard said. “For one concert in January students will accompany me to New York to assist in the production of the concert and attend the Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference. Even when I am off on my own performing, in Istanbul in December, for example, those are opportunities for me to interact with composers and musicians and to build connections for future programs on campus.”

The inaugural season of Sonic Crossroads features concerts in Dallas, Houston, New York and Istanbul as well as two performances at Texas A&M featuring faculty and guest artists from around the globe. The A&M concerts are Caucasian Sketches: Music from Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey (Nov. 28, 2007), and Between Tides: New Music of Japan (Jan. 17, 2008).

For the first concert on campus Woodard draws on her long-standing engagement with the music of Turkey and the Caucasus in order to explore how composers represent traditional music from the region on Western instruments. In addition student musicians from the Turkish music ensemble TekSaz will join Woodard and other faculty for arrangements that include both Western and traditional Turkish instruments.

The concert also has a programmatic tie to the earlier main-stage event sponsored by the Department of Performance Studies, the “Spiritual Sounds of Central Asia” concert on October 28.

“One composer I will play on November 28, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh of Azerbaijan, has worked closely with Alim Qasimov the renowned vocalist who performed here in October. You can hear the influence of his vocal style rooted in mugham, or the modal practice of Azerbaijan, even in this piece for piano,” explains Woodard.

Long-term goals for Sonic Crossroads include organizing workshops on performance and composition, symposia on historical and contemporary musical exchange and a commissioning and recording program. More information about the scheduled performances is below.

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Erin Wood
erinwood@libarts.tamu.edu
979.862.4879

November 28, 2007 – “Caucasian Sketches”

Annenberg Presidential Conference Center at 7:30 p.m.; Admission free

Anna Carney, clarinet; Nicole Cherry, violin; Brian Vogel, percussion; Kathryn Woodard, piano; and TekSaz, traditional Turkish music ensemble at Texas A&M

Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov (Russia, 1859-1935) – Caucasian Sketches, “In the Village”
A. Adnan Saygun (Turkey, 1907-1991) – Suite for violin and piano
Franghiz Ali-Zadeh (Azerbaijan, b. 1947) – Music for Piano
Eka Chabashvili (Georgia, b. 1971) – New Work
A. Adnan Saygun – Horon for clarinet and piano
Aram Khachaturian (Armenia, 1903-1976) – Trio for clarinet, violin and piano
Arrangements of traditional melodies from Anatolia and the Caucasus featuring TekSaz

January 17, 2008 – “Between Tides”

Annenberg Presidential Conference Center at 7:30 p.m.; Admission free

Theresa Salomon, violin; Ariane Lallemand, cello; Kathryn Woodard, piano; Marty Regan, composer & shakuhachi

Minoru Miki – Wa (Aleatoric piece for Japanese and Western instruments)
Marty Regan – In Remembrance… (2006) for piano trio with shakuhachi
Toru Takemitsu – Between Tides (1996) for piano trio
Yoko Ono – performance art piece