MIT Wind Ensemble 25th Anniversary Concert—Connection, Community, Innovation
Saturday, April 20, 2024
8:00 PM Kresge Auditorium, MIT
MIT Wind Ensemble & MITWE Alumni
Frederick Harris, Jr., Music Director
Kenneth Amis, Assistant Conductor-Composer
Jamshied Sharifi, guest composer
John Harbison, guest composer
Evan Ziporyn, guest composer-clarinetist
Kathryn Salfelder, guest composer
Blanchard BrassWind Ensemble
Five composers, alumni, and local young student musicians join MITWE to close out its 25th anniversary season. This special event features two works commissioned by MITWE (Awakening by Jamshied Sharifi ’83, and Reminiscence by Kathryn Salfelder), Rubies by Institute Professor Emeritus John Harbison, in honor of his 85th birthday, MITWE assistant conductor Kenneth Amis’ celebratory work Bell-Tone's Ring, and Alfred Reed’s wind ensemble classic Armenian Dances (Part 1), performed with MITWE alumni. As a nod to MITWE’s commitment to chamber music over the years, the MITWE clarinet section will perform a fresh arrangement by and with MIT's Distinguished Professor of Music Evan Ziporyn, from his celebrated Pop Channel recording, and the MITWE flute section will perform Vincenzo Sorrentino’s Settimino. In recognition of MITWE’s long-time commitment to connecting to public schools and their communities, the Blanchard Memorial School’s BrassWind Ensemble will be featured and area high school students will join MITWE on Armenian Dances.
$10 General Admission. Free for MIT community.
Click here to view the livestream: https://mta.mit.edu/viewlisten/live-kresge-auditorium
About Jamshied Sharifi
Jamshied Sharifi is a New York-based composer, producer and keyboardist. He was born in Topeka, Kansas, to an Iranian father and an American mother.
Sharifi graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983 with a degree in humanities, and Summa Cum Laude from Berklee College of Music in Boston, with a degree in Jazz Composition and Arranging. At MIT and Berklee, he studied with the legendary Herb Pomeroy, who asked him at graduation to lead the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble. While in Boston, Sharifi studied piano with Charlie Banacos, and West African drumming with Godwin Agbeli and Abubakari Lunna.
Sharifi’s previous work ranges from composing scores for major motion pictures, performing and recording with his own world music ensemble to producing and arranging for other artists. He also served as an arranger for President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Concert We Are One. He has performed at many prestigious venues throughout the world, including Carnegie Hall and Radio City Music Hall in New York, the Hollywood Bowl and the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the Opera Theater in Sydney, Cité de la Musique in Paris and Svetlanovsky Hall in Moscow.
Jamshied Sharifi’s remarkable professional career as a composer and keyboardist, producer and arranger, has included work for motion pictures, his own world music ensemble, collaboration with artists such as Ray Charles and arrangements for the Inauguration of President Barack Obama. Sharifi is an MIT and Berklee College of Music alumnus.
About John Harbison
Composer John Harbison’s concert music catalog of almost 300 works is anchored by three operas, seven symphonies, twelve concerti, a ballet, six string quartets, numerous song cycles and chamber works, and a large body of sacred music that includes cantatas, motets, and the orchestral-choral works Four Psalms, Requiem, and Abraham. He has also penned a substantial body of jazz compositions and arrangements, and cadenzas for major violin and piano concertos.
Harbison has received commissions from most of America’s premiere musical institutions, including the Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. As one of America’s most distinguished artistic figures, he is recipient of numerous awards and honors, among them a MacArthur Fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize.
Harbison’s 80th birthday season, 2018-2019, was marked with celebrations throughout the country and around the world, including major city-wide celebrations in his two home-towns of Boston, Massachusetts and Madison, Wisconsin. The season included first performances of three major works: the monodrama If, the organ symphony What Do We Make of Bach? and the Sonata for Viola and Piano. Summer festival residencies included Songfest, Tanglewood, Aspen and Santa Fe. Harbison’s published his first book, What Do We Make of Bach: Portraits, Essays, Notes (ARS Nova) in late 2018.
Widely recorded on leading labels, recent CD releases include Concertos for String Instruments (BMOP), Remembering Gatsby (National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic, Naxos), Violin Sonata No. 1 (Cho-Liang Lin, Naxos), Late Air (Kendra Colton, Oberlin), Simple Daylight & Piano Sonata No. 2 (Lucy Fitz Gibbon and Ryan McCullough, Albany), String Quartet No. 6 (Lark Quartet, Bridge), Requiem (Nashville Symphony, Naxos), Vocalism(Mary Mackenzie, Albany), and his cadenzas to Beethoven’s fourth piano concerto (David Deveau, Steinway).
The 2019-20 season saw the consortium premiere of the monodrama IF (March, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center) just before the Covid-19 disruption. Premieres postponed due to the pandemic include two new song cycles, In the Early Evening and Four Poems for Robin (Songfest), Mark the Date (Aspen Music Festival), Sleepers Wake, for the Leipzig BachFest, and Passage (Shai Wosner, The Peoples’ Symphony). He recently penned a collection of jazz essays, and is working on a new series of composer reminiscences.
Harbison’s most recent projects include new choral music (Hidden Paths, Frost settings for childrens’ choir) and Cold or Hot (on a passage from Revelations). He also completed Chaconne (for big band), Piano Sonata No. 3, an evolving suite for solo violin, Prelude for Organ, the song cycle and After Long Silence (Yeats), and numerous short piano works, including his contribution to Min Kwon’s America/Beautiful variations project. He is at work on a new piece for Earplay, the 2022 competition piece for the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, a 50th anniversary piece for Collage New Music, a string quintet, and a second volume of pop and jazz songs. His opera The Great Gatsby is due for major revival in 2025, an important anniversary year for both Fitzgeralds’ book and the opera’s premiere.
Harbison has been composer-in-residence with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, American Academy in Rome, and numerous festivals. He received degrees from Harvard and Princeton before joining the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is currently Institute Professor, the highest honor accorded resident faculty. For many summers since 1984 he taught composition at Tanglewood, serving as head of its composition program from 2005 to 2015, often directing its Festival of Contemporary Music. With Rose Mary Harbison, the inspiration for many of his violin works (Violin Concerto, Four Songs of Solitude, Crane Sightings, Violin Sonata No. 2), he has been co-Artistic Director of the annual Token Creek Chamber Music Festival since its founding in 1989. He continues as principal guest conductor at Emmanuel Music (where for three years he served as Acting Artistic Director), and he is a past music director of Cantata Singers. An accomplished jazz pianist, Harbison founded MITs Vocal Jazz Ensemble in 2010, for which he served as coach and arranger, and he is pianist with the faculty jazz group Strength in Numbers (SIN).
Mr. Harbison has been President of the Copland Fund and a trustee of the American Academy in Rome. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is a Trustee of the Bogliasco Foundation. His music is published exclusively by Associated Music Publishers. A complete works list can be found at WiseMusicClassical.com.
About Evan Ziporyn
Evan Ziporyn is a composer/clarinetist who has forged an international reputation through his genre-defying, cross-cultural works and performances. At MIT he is Inaugural Director of the Center for Art, Science and Technology (CAST), founder & Artistic Director of Gamelan Galak Tika, and curator of the MIT Sounding performance series.
His music has been commissioned and performed by Yo-yo Ma’s Silkroad Ensemble, Brooklyn Rider, Maya Beiser, Roomful of Teeth, Bang on a Can, Kronos Quartet, Wu Man, the American Composers Orchestra, Sentieri Selvaggi, the American Repertory Theater, Steven Schick, So Percussion, Gamelan Sekar Jaya, Sarah Cahill, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. They have been presented at international venues including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, London’s Barbican Center, the Holland Festival, Brussels Ars Musica, the Singapore Festival, the Sydney Olympics, the Bali International Arts Festival, and Big Ears. His opera A House in Bali (directed by MIT colleague Jay Scheib) was featured at BAM Next Wave in 2010; that same fall his works were featured at a Carnegie Hall Zankel Making Music composer’s portrait concert. His multimedia interactive stallation, Arachnodrone (a collaboration with Ian Hattwick, Christine Southworth & Isabelle Su) is currently exhibited at the MIT Museum, following its 2018 debut at Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
From 1992-2012 he was a founding member of the Bang on a Can All-stars (Musical America’s 2005 Ensemble of the Air), finishing his tenure with the group with an appearance on an episode of PBS’ Arthur. His long-time work with the Steve Reich Ensemble led to sharing a 1999 Grammy for Best Chamber Performance for their recording of Music for 18 Musicians. He is also the featured multi-tracked soloist on Reich’s Nonesuch recording of New York Counterpoint. Other awards include a 2012 Massachusetts Arts Council Fellowship, the 2007 USArtists Walker Award and the 2004 American Academy of Arts and Letters Goddard Lieberson Fellowship.
His puppet opera Shadow Bang, a collaboration with master Balinese dalang Wayan Wija, was premiered at MassMOCA and was the centerpiece of the 2006 Amsterdam GrachtenFest. Recordings of his works have been released on Sony Classical, Cantaloupe Music, Islandia Music, New Albion, New World Records, Koch, Innova, CRI, and numerous independent labels. He has collaborated with some of the world’s most creative and vital living musicians, including Brian Eno, Paul Simon, Ornette Coleman, Iva Bittova, Maya Beiser, Thurston Moore, Meredith Monk, Bryce Dessner, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Louis Andriessen, Shara Worden, Sandeep Das, Kelley Deal, Cecil Taylor, Henry Threadgill, Wu Man, Matthew Shipp, Wayan Wija, Kyaw Kyaw Naing, and Ethel.
Recent projects include 2023’s telematic Poppy 88, two 2022 solo albums, Bowie Symphonic: Blackstar (w/Maya Beiser), and daily podcast music for acclaimed filmmaker Caveh Zahedi. His compositions and arrangements were featured throughout Ken Burns’ Vietnam; his arrangements were also featured on Silkroad Ensemble’s Grammy-winning CD, Sing Me Home. Other recent recordings include Terry Riley’s Ki, Eviyan: Nayive (w/Iva Bittova & Gyan Riley), and collaborations with DuoJalal, Czech composer Beata Hlavenkova, and Polish jazz masters Waclaw Zimpel and Hubert Zempel. His performance with the MIT Wind Ensemble of Don Byron’s Clarinet Concerto, commissioned by MIT, and released on Sunnyside Records, received a 5-star Downbeat review.
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
