Jubilees—Celebrating new music commissioned by the MIT Wind Ensemble
Friday, March 8, 2024
8:00 PM Kresge Auditorium, MIT
Eric Ostling ’88, guest composer
Elizabeth Klein, guest flute soloist
Sara Simpson G, flute soloist
Kathryn Salfelder, guest composer
Featuring the world premiere of Three Episodes, Two Flutes, Wind Ensemble (3, 2, 1) by MIT alumnus Eric Ostling, with soloists Elizabeth Klein, Associate Principal Flute of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Principal Flute of the Boston Pops Orchestra, and Sara Simpson, Emerson/Harris Music Fellow and MIT PhD candidate in Brain and Cognitive Sciences. The program also includes Michael Hennagin’s Jubilee, Vaughn Williams’ Toccata Marziale, Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus, arr. by Kreines, and Insurgence for percussion ensemble by Kathryn Salfelder.
$10 General Admission. Free for MIT community.
Click here to view the livestream: https://mta.mit.edu/viewlisten/live-kresge-auditorium
ABOUT ERIC OSTLING
Eric Ostling ’88 maintains careers in both the jazz and classical worlds as a composer, pianist and teacher, alongside a technical one in the medical device industry. A graduate also of the Performing Arts School in Louisville, he has studied or worked with Pulitzer composers John Harbison and Karel Husa, and jazz educators Herb Pomeroy, Jamey Aebersold and Charlie Banacos.
Eric's compositions have been premiered and performed previously by Elizabeth, other soloists and ensembles at MIT, Louisville, Indiana University, Boston and New York, including the Muir and Manhattan String Quartets. A second string quartet will be premiered later this year, while a new publication of his “24 Children’s Pieces for Piano” is available from J.W. Pepper Music. He was recently commissioned by world-renowned theater critic Eric Bentley, for a release of Hanns Eisler music on Roven Records with soprano Karyn Levitt, composing ‘Ivesian’ piano meditations on three of Eisler’s famous melodies at Mr. Bentley's request.
Eric also keeps an active jazz schedule, having written and arranged for the FJE and other jazz ensembles, while performing and recording with his own quartet, featuring a library of over 70 original jazz tunes, also available from J.W. Pepper.
ABOUT ELIZABETH KLEIN
Elizabeth Klein joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1994 and was named associate principal flute in 1997. Mrs. Klein grew up in Ridgewood, NJ, and graduated in 1994 from the Curtis Institute of Music, where she was a student of Julius Baker and Jeffrey Khaner. During her freshman year at Curtis, she won first prize in the quadrennial Koussevitzky Competition for Woodwinds. She spent a summer with the National Repertory Orchestra and was a featured soloist during the Festival of Contemporary Music as a Tanglewood Music Center Fellow. Mrs. Klein has been featured in Boston Symphony performances of Frank Martin’s Concerto for Seven Wind Instruments and has also performed as soloist with the Boston Pops and New Jersey Symphony orchestras, the Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, and the Masterworks Festival Orchestra.
A frequent performer in solo and chamber recitals, she has appeared locally with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players and the Boston Artists Ensemble. She has premiered three works written for her: at Jordan Hall, Michael Gandolfi’s Geppetto’s Workshop for flute and piano and Dan Coleman’s Pavanes and Symmetries for flute and orchestra, and at Gordon College, Jeremy Begbie’s Good Measure for flute and piano, after a poem by Malcolm Guite.
In May 2017, Mrs. Klein graduated summa cum laude from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary with a master’s degree in spiritual formation, having studied Christian piety in various eras of church history, lived out by individuals such as the Stockbridge, MA, Puritan missionary Jonathan Edwards and the composers Hildegard of Bingen and Olivier Messiaen. She has lectured on “Christ and the Arts” at the Institute for Christian Unity, and performed in lecture events for Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts. Mrs. Klein is on the flute faculty of Boston University.
ABOUT SARA KORNFELD SIMPSON
Sara Kornfeld Simpson is a sixth year Ph.D. candidate in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. A recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, she studies how repeated visual experience differentially affects the activity of neurons in the primary visual processing area of neurotypical and autistic brains; she has presented this research at international conferences in Italy and Washington, D.C. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Boston University (BU) in 2018 with a dual degree, triple major in Neuroscience, Flute and Oboe Performance. She received the Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence (highest GPA in the graduating class) from BU’s College of Fine Arts, and in 2017 was inducted into Pi Kappa Lambda, the music honor society.
Sara began studying piano at age 4, flute at age 10, and oboe at age 11. At BU, Sara studied flute with Linda Toote and oboe with Mark McEwen, performed with multiple BU music ensembles, and presented junior and senior recitals on both instruments. Sara was a YoungArts winner in Classical Music/Flute in both 2014 and 2015 and has performed with the NSO’s Summer Music Institute Orchestra, the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, and the Nova Scotia Symphony. In 2017, she made her Jazz at Lincoln Center debut as the invited soloist for Society for Science and the Public’s Alumni Event. She is now performs with the MIT Wind and Festival Jazz Ensembles, and is privileged to study flute with Elizabeth Klein, associate principal flute of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
ABOUT KATHRYN SALFELDER
Composer Kathryn Salfelder (b.1987) engages late-Medieval and Renaissance polyphony in conversations with 21st-century techniques; she borrows both literally from chansons, motets, and masses, as well as more liberally from Renaissance-era forms and structures.
Commissions have included new works for the Albany (NY) Symphony, Boston Musica Viva, United States Air Force Band – Washington D.C., American Bandmasters Association, Chelsea Music Festival, New England Conservatory, Western Michigan University, Temple University, MIT, Japan Wind Ensemble Conductors Conference (JWECC), and the Frank Battisti 85th Birthday Project. Her music has been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, saxophonist Timothy McAllister, conductor Ken-David Masur, and by over three-hundred ensembles at the nation’s leading universities and conservatories.
She is the recipient of the ASCAP/CBDNA Frederick Fennell Prize, ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, Ithaca College Walter Beeler Memorial Composition Prize, and the United States Air Force Colonel Arnold D. Gabriel Award. Three wind ensemble works — Cathedrals, Crossing Parallels, and Reminiscence — are published by Boosey & Hawkes.
Kathryn teaches figured bass (à la Boulanger/Vidal) and composition privately as well as through New England Conservatory’s School of Continuing Education. Previously, she served on the faculty of NEC’s College division and as Lecturer in Music Theory at MIT. In her spare time, she can be found realizing figured bass lines and dabbling at the organ.
DMA, New England Conservatory. MM, Yale School of Music. BM, New England Conservatory. Studies with Michael Gandolfi, Aaron Jay Kernis, and David Lang.
ABOUT THE MIT WIND ENSEMBLE
Founded by Music Director Dr. Frederick Harris, Jr. in the fall of 1999, the MIT Wind Ensemble (MITWE) is one of the most innovative ensembles of its kind. Comprised primarily of outstanding MIT undergraduates and graduate students studying a wide range of disciplines within science, engineering, and the humanities. Repertoire includes outstanding traditional works and new music for full wind ensemble, chamber winds, brass ensemble, percussion ensemble, and woodwind ensembles. MITWE has commissioned 45 original works from many prominent composers. MIT Affiliated Artist, renowned composer, and tuba player of the Empire Brass, Kenneth Amis, is the Assistant Conductor of MITWE.
MITWE has been featured on NPR and was the subject of the 2014 Emmy-winning documentary Awakening: Evoking the Arab Spring Through Music, aired on PBS. MITWE is also featured in the 2019 Emmy-nominated documentary The Great Clarinet Summit, and Call and Response: Creativity at MIT. MITWE’s joint recording with the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble, Infinite Winds, received a five-star review from DownBeat and was chosen by the magazine as one of its “Best Albums of 2015 Five-Star Masterpieces” — the first such recognition of its kind for a collegiate wind ensemble. The Boston Globe called the recording “one of the most compelling of 2015.”
Throughout its 21-year history, MITWE has collaborated with elementary, middle and high school students throughout Massachusetts. In March of 2019, MITWE embarked on its first tour, spending a week in the Dominican Republic, presenting four concerts, many STEAM presentations for middle, high school and college students, and premiering the eco-music piece In Praise Of The Humpback.
In May of 2020, MITWE had the honor of opening MIT’s virtual Commencement with To The Light, To The Flame. MITWE also participated in MIT’s 2021 virtual Commencement, performing Diary Of A Pandemic Year.
In March of 2023 the MIT Wind Ensemble, along with the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble and MIT Vocal Jazz Ensemble, toured and performed in the Brazilian Amazon. The project was focused on cultural and environmental sustainability and music’s power as a vehicle for change.
ABOUT THE DIRECTORS
Dr. Frederick Harris, Jr. is the Director of Wind and Jazz Ensembles at MIT, where he serves at Music Director of the MIT Wind Ensemble, MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble, and oversees jazz chamber music programs including three combos, MIT Vocal Jazz Ensemble, and the Emerson Jazz Scholars Program.
He and the MIT Wind Ensemble have been featured on PBS in the 2014 Emmy-winning documentary Awakening: Evoking the Arab Spring through Music, with music by Jamshied Sharifi. Harris and his students also are featured in the 2018 Emmy-winning documentary Imagination Off The Charts: Jacob Collier Comes to MIT.
He is a strong advocate for the creation and performance of new music, having commissioned and/or premiered 93 works for wind, jazz, and mixed ensembles, recently leading pieces by Jamshied Sharifi, Chick Corea, Don Byron, Jacob Collier, and Miguel Zenón. He has also been highly active with public school students and music educators throughout his career. Harris is the author of Conducting with Feeling and Seeking the Infinite: The Musical Life of Stanisław Skrowaczewski, and currently writing a biography of Herb Pomeroy. He has performed as a drummer with the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra, John Harbison, the Boston Pops, and Grammy-winning jazz saxophonist Joe Lovano.
Nominated by his students, Harris is a 2013 and 2019 recipient of the James A. and Ruth Levitan Award for Excellence in Teaching in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at MIT.
World renowned composer-performer, Kenneth Amis, enjoys an international career of high acclaim. Mr. Amis began his musical exploits in his home country of Bermuda. He began playing the piano at a young age and upon entering high school took up the tuba and developed an interest in performing and writing music. A Suite for Bass Tuba, composed when he was only fifteen, marked his first published work. A year later, at age sixteen, he enrolled in Boston University where he majored in composition. After graduating from Boston University, he attended the New England Conservatory of Music where he received his master’s degree in composition.
As a tuba player, Mr. Amis has performed as a soloist with the English Chamber Orchestra and has been a member of the Tanglewood Festival Orchestra and the New World Symphony Orchestra. His performance skills are showcased on many commercial records distributed internationally. Mr. Amis is presently the tuba player of the Empire Brass and the Palm Beach Opera Orchestra, the assistant conductor for the MIT Wind Ensemble, a performing artist for Besson instruments, and on the faculties of Boston University, the Boston Conservatory of Music, Longy School of Music and the Conservatory at Lynn University.
An active composer, Amis has been commissioned over a dozen times and has written for many organizations including the New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, the University of Scranton, the College Band Directors National Association, the Boston Classical Orchestra, and a consortium of twenty universities and music organizations. His music is published by Subito Corp., Boosey & Hawkes, Inc. and through his own company, Amis Musical Circle, which can be found at www.AmisMusicalCircle.com.
He has been commissioned by such groups as the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Academy of Music Symphonic Winds, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the National Arts Center Orchestra of Ottawa. In 2003 Mr. Amis became the youngest recipient of New England Conservatory of Music’s “Outstanding Alumni Award.”
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LIVE STREAM LINK: https://mta.mit.edu/viewlisten/live-kresge-auditorium