Amy Porter, Flute, Liz Ames, Piano

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LiveARTS is excited to invite you to join us for a donation-based Zoom concert on Sunday, February 28, 2021 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern US time, featuring solo flautist and pedagogue, Amy Porter, and pianist Liz Ames. There will be a question and answer session at the end. Don’t miss this wonderful opportunity!

PROGRAM

In celebration of Women's History Month in March, Ms. Porter and Ms. Ames will present a program of music by female composers.

Mel Bonis (1858-1937): Sonate pour flute et piano   (1904)

Katherine Hoover (1937-2018): Kokopeli (1990)

Eve Beglarian (b. 1958): I Will Not Be Sad in This World - for Alto Flute and Electronics (2009)

Allison Loggins Hull (b. 1982): Homeland (2018)       

Nina Shekhar (b. 1995): Zoo Song for singing flutist (2017)

Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944): Concertino for Flute and Piano, op. 107 (1902)  

ABOUT AMY PORTER

Flutist Amy Porter has been praised by critics for her exceptional musical talent and passion for scholarship. In a versatile and distinguished career as one of the world’s leading concert performers, she has become one of the most skillful and creative muses for composers of our time. Critics uniquely note her “strength, beauty, a captivating and seductive force, sensitivity, perfection and a sense of humor.”  

Ms. Porter has been a featured soloist with the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, and with the Atlanta, Houston, Omaha, Delaware, Albany, Flint, Billings, Battle Creek, Arkansas, and Elgin symphony orchestras. She has twice appeared in recital at the National Concert Hall in Taipei, as well as at Skidmore College’s Arthur Zankel Music Center. 

Winner of the 3rd Kobe International Flute Competition and the Paris/Ville d’Avray International Flute Competition, Ms. Porter has served on international juries around the world, including the 6th Kobe International Flute Competition. She has been heard in recital on National Public Radio; highlighted on PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center; and featured on the covers and as a writer for the magazines Flute Talk in the USA and The Flute in Japan.  

Formerly a member of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Ms. Porter is Principal Flute of North Carolina’s Brevard Music Center, where she performs as soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player.  Highlights of Ms. Porter’s 2020 season is launching her first Podcast season, "PorterFlute Pod" with a series of topics that she will cover throughout the year. Also she is bring her workshop "Anatomy of Sound" online and developing an online course to offer to students at different times.

Born in Wilmington, Delaware, Ms. Porter graduated from The Juilliard School and pursued further studies at the Mozarteum Academy in Salzburg. She plays a 14K white gold flute with rose gold engraved keys made for her by the Wm. S. Haynes Co.

ABOUT LIZ AMES

Liz Ames is a celebrated collaborative pianist who is passionate about performing and working with instrumentalists, vocalists and composers. Her international appearances include performances in Belgium, the UK, Spain, Peru and France. Ames has served as piano coordinator and staff pianist at the North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conferences and the United States Navy Band International Saxophone Symposium.

Her publications and projects include piano reductions of large-scale works including Henry Brant’s Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra, Peter Schickele’s Concerto for Simply Grand Piano, and multiple concertos and oratorios by Steven Bryant, Joel Puckett, Donald Grantham, David Biedenbender, and John Mackey.

Ames completed her doctorate in collaborative piano at Arizona State University and is currently living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, performing with musicians throughout the Midwest and serving on the piano staff at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance.

PROGRAM NOTES

Sonate pour flute et piano

Mel Bonis (1858-1937)

Andantino con moto

Scherzo Vivace

Adagio

Finale

Mélanie Hélène Bonis was born in Paris and was a prolific French classical composer. Aged 16, she attended the Paris Conservatoire studying harmony, composition and accompaniment in the same classes as Debussy and Pierne. Her compositional output included over 300 works including works for piano solo/duos, chamber music, vocal and orchestral.

Kokopeli (1990)

Anne LeBaron (b. 1953)

(Notes pending)

I Will Not Be Sad in This World

For Alto Flute and Electronics (2009)

Eve Beglarian (b. 1958)

(Notes pending)

Homeland (2018)

Allison Loggins Hull (b. 1982)    

Commissioned by The Texas Flute Society for the 2018 Myrna Brown Competition.

“When you are forced to leave your country in order to survive. When the people of your country are completely divided. When your country has been destroyed by a natural disaster. A human disaster.

Is home still home?”

 

Zoo Song (2017) For singing flutist

Nina Shekhar (b. 1995)

Commissioned by Hannah Weiss

Flute New Music Consortium (FNMC) Composition Competition Winner (2018)

Program note:

“Like many children, I vividly remember my first trip to the zoo. I remember being amazed by Mother Nature, seeing the distinctive talents and features that all of her unique life forms had. I also remember my parents being annoyed at my nonstop attempts to mimic the animal sounds I had just heard – my endless moos, oinks, meows, and roars were probably not the most pleasant noises, at least not when I made them."

Zoo Song is an attempt to recreate this common childhood experience. The singing flutist assumes the character of a child who is obsessed with various animals. The performer squawks and brays in a desperate attempt to be each animal, only to prove unsuccessful at the end.

Many thanks to Hannah Weiss for commissioning this work and for allowing me to use the word “snort” in her piece.”

Text: (written by Nina Shekhar, composer)

What do you know about chickens?

Chickens can lay two hundred eggs a year.

I want to be a chicken.

What about pigs?

Pigs dream when they sleep,

Just like chickens.

I want to dream like chickens.

Did you know that horses can run

Twenty-seven miles an hour?

I want to be a horse!

But donkeys can bray even louder,

So maybe I’ll be a donkey instead…

What do you know about sloths?

They sleep for fifteen hours at a time.

I want to sleep like a sloth.

And sloths can swim,

But whales can swim even better.

And whales can spout.

I want to spout like a whale!

I can’t lay eggs like a chicken,

I can’t run like a horse,

I can’t bray like a donkey,

I can’t sleep like a sloth,

I can’t spout like a whale.

So maybe I’ll just be me,

But I still want to dream like a chicken!

Concertino for Flute and Piano, op. 107 (1902)

Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944)

With her Concertino for Flute, op. 107, Cécile Chaminade entered the ranks of the many esteemed (female) composers to have written a concours solo for the Paris Conservatoire. Others whose pieces were used for this famous end-of-year competition, which began in the mid-nineteenth century, included Fauré and Messiaen. Apart from a few early orchestral works—including a symphonie dramatique she called The Amazons—Chaminade was limited by societal expectations of women composers, writing mostly character pieces and mélodies. While not garnering the acclaim of “significant” works like concertos, symphonies, and operas, these pieces did sell extremely well in the print market and made her popular in England and the United States. Her striking use of instrumental colors and subtle wit are qualities she shares with her French contemporaries, but her harmonic palette is milder. Like the other works on this concert, her Concertino also features clear textures and shapely melodies, but Chaminade’s instinct for memorable tunes sets her apart and this is an example par excellence.