BluePrint 2008-2009: THE URGENCY OF NOW
Lend an ear to burning issues

Nicole Paiement, Artistic Director

	COMING TOGETHER October 18, 2008, 8:00 p.m., Concert Hall 7:00 p.m. Pre-concert showing of film documentary Outside In by Buff Whitman-Bradley Informal post-concert discussion follows with Nicole Paiement, composer John Halle, and guest artist Carla Kihlstedt. Composers Talk Shop with John Halle on Friday, October 17, 2008, 1:00 p.m., Room 207
Nicole Paiement, conductor John Harbison Abu Ghraib with Jean-Michel Fonteneau, cello and Christopher Basso, piano Bright Sheng Postcards for chamber orchestra (west coast premiere) Andrew Imbrie From Time to Time for mixed chamber ensemble Frederic Rzewski Coming Together with narrator Carla Kihlstedt John Halle Homage for violin, cello, piano and two percussionists

The BluePrint season begins boldly, with works that explore painful and controversial events of recent history. John Harbison's Abu Ghraib is an intimate reflection on the emotional toll of the notorious events that transpired at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, while Andrew Imbrie's From Time to Time commemorates World War II's Nanjing Massacre "for the dual purpose of remembrance and reconciliation among all nations." Frederic Rzewski's Coming Together confronts the issue of injustice in our prison system, with text from a letter written by Sam Melville, one of the leaders of the 1971 Attica prison uprising, who was killed in its aftermath. John Halle's Homage will also be presented, as well as Bright Sheng's colorful chamber orchestra work Postcards, inspired by the folk music from various regions of his native China.

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	TRANSPARENT WALLS November 15, 2008, 8:00 p.m., Concert Hall Pre-concert talk at 7:15pm with Aleksandra Vrebalov, Philip Collins and Young-Shin Choi Composers Talk Shop with Aleksandra Vrebalov and Philip Collins on Friday, November 15, 2008, 3:00 p.m., Recital Hall
Nicole Paiement, conductor Aleksandra Vrebalov Transparent Walls for cello, percussion and mixed winds (world premiere, commissioned by the Conservatory) Philip Collins Requies Ranarum for soprano, tape and mixed ensemble Giya Kancheli Midday Prayers, with clarinet and soprano soloists Young-Shin Choi YX Unsquared

A more introspective engagement with today's world, this concert presents Aleksandra Vrebelov's newly commissioned Transparent Walls, as well as the premiere of the final version of Philip Collins' Reqiues Ranarum, a eulogy for eight recently extinct frog species, which includes recorded sounds of the frogs themselves. Giya Kancheli's somber Midday Prayers has a meditative, religious quality, bringing the concerns for our world to a deeply personal and spiritual place, and Young-Shin Choi's YX Unsquared rounds out the program.

	THE LIGHT WITHIN March 7, 2009, 8:00 p.m., Concert Hall Pre-concert talk at 7:15pm with David Garner Composers Talk Shop with David Garner on Friday, March 6, 2009, 3:00 p.m., Recital Hall
Nicole Paiement, conductor George Crumb Ancient Voices of Children with mezzo soprano and boy soprano soloists David Garner Shards (world premiere, commissioned by BluePrint) Terry Riley Y Bolanzero with the SFCM Guitar Ensemble, David Tanenbaum, artistic director Sofia Gubaidalina Concordanza Stephen Hartke The Rose of the Winds

The final concert of the season presents richly evocative works that offer hope for reconciliation, featuring the premiere of Conservatory faculty member David Garner's newly-commissioned work Shards, which is based on fragments of anti-war protest songs and uses the power of music to transcend the horrors of war. Sofia Gubaidalina's Concordanza portrays this process of reconciliation with its own musical process of discordant elements gradually unifying into concord. George Crumb's classic Ancient Voices of Children sets texts by Federico Garcia Lorca using an exotic ensemble including boy soprano, mandolin and toy piano, evocatively capturing the poetry's primal concerns with, as Crumb describes it, "life, death, love, and the smell of the earth", while Stephen Hartke's The Rose of the Winds is an invocation of a specific place, the desert landscape of Taos, New Mexico. Terry Riley's Y Bolanzero brings in the Conservatory's outstanding guitar ensemble, led by David Tanenbaum.