Showcase to feature pieces by faculty composers in School of Music

The original version of this article contained multiple errors and has been changed. See the bottom of the article for additional information.

The instrument is ancient, but the sound is modern: overlapping tracks of sustained notes and slowly repeated musical motifs creating a kind of musical tapestry.

These are just some of the sounds of UCLA music professor David Lefkowitz’s latest exploration into the musical potential of the harp. Lefkowitz will be one of seven members of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music whose original works will be showcased Wednesday night at Schoenberg Hall.

All seven faculty members are professionally active as composers or performers.

“The idea of being in a community of scholars and experts doesn’t mean only that we sit around in libraries, experimenting or reading,” Lefkowitz said.

Lefkowitz’s most recent composition fortheharp, “Double Double Vision,” will make its world premiereWednesday night. Though written for the harp, the piece incorporates jazzy rhythms and musical techniques like percussive pluck and pitch bending, Lefkowitz said. It also utilizes repetition, droning tones and as many as four harps playing at once to create a layered sound.

While Lefkowitz draws inspiration from the instrument, his colleague Professor Mark Carlson finds it in recent history. Written near the height of the Iraq War in 2005, his five-movement string quartet “Short Stories” includes a piece titled “Empty Chairs,” a tribute to families who were confronted by the empty chairs of their missing loved ones. The other four movements also have evocative titles: “Prelude to a Mysterious Adventure,” a tango called “The Hidden Pearl,” a penultimate piece called “An Unknown Place” and a final movement called “Taking Off.”

A committed educator, lecturer, mentor and arts entrepreneur, Adam Schoenberg said his own composition “Fleeting,” which features clarinet, violin, cello and piano, was inspired by the idea of someone vanishing while still being able to hear his or her thoughts.

“Ultimately the piece conveys a sense of searching,” Schoenberg said. “In fact, the piece never really resolves, but rather fades away.”

Lecturer Daniel Marschak earned twobachelors degrees and amasters at UCLA before joining the music faculty two years ago.

“To be in the ranks of my former teachers is pretty humbling,” Marschak said.

Music composition and theory lecturer Sean Friar is another faculty member who will showcase his compositions Wednesday. Friar, along with Schoenberg, were honored as featured composers at the Hear Now Music Festival in Santa Monica and Venice earlier this month. An alumnus of UCLA and now a music lecturer, Friar became the youngest composer in 25 years to be awarded the 2011 Prix de Rome Samuel Barber Rome Prize for his composition, “Expanding Clunker Concerto: A Junk Car Percussion Quartet Concerto.” 

Ian Krouse, a music professor and chair of the composition division, has a background as a classical guitarist, which informed his own featured composition. Written when he was only 20 years old, his award-winning composition “Villancicos” reflects international roots and references. In addition to implementing influences of Spanish and Portuguese musical traditions such as flamenco, Krouse draws upon the literary forms of “villancicos,” a type of Spanish Renaissance poetry adapted to music. He is currently composing a work titled “Armenian Requiem,” which will have its world premiere at Royce Hall next year.

All fourcomposers credit the UCLA music students who perform their pieces with inspiring some of their best work.

“My teaching influences my composing,” Carlson said. “I absolutely love having my own students, and my past students, play my music.”

The faculty composers also actively collaborate with each other.

“There is definitely a kind of synergy and feedback,” Krouse said. “My colleagues throughout the years have been so supportive, very inspiring and have taken my music around the world.”

Among the other works to be performed at Schoenberg Hall will be “Theme and Variations” by multiple Emmy winner and Oscar nominee Bruce Broughton, “Requiem: The Lady of Permutations” by Peter Golub, director of the Sundance Film Music Program, and “Etude for English Horn and Prepared Piano” by Sean Friar, a lecturer at UCLA whose works have been performed bytheBerlin Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The music featured on Wednesday night will incorporate instruments derived both from ancient and more modern times, just as the pieces reflect the composers’ distinct roles as academics and artists.

“My colleagues are all world-class musicians,” Krouse said. “We are all very excited, to hear the diversity of the pieces that our fellow faculty members have written.”

Correction: The name of Schoenberg Hall was misspelled. Daniel Marschak was not honored at the Hear Now Music Festival.