Panoramicos by Mary Kay Ferguson, Lynne Ramsey, Thomas Sperl, Danna Sundet

Ferguson also has commissioned , premiered and recorded many new works, including three new chamber works on her recently released CD,"panoramicos". Currently, she is collaborating with composer Paul Ferguson on a Jazz CD featuring Alto Flute.

LYNNE RAMSEY is one of the most prominent violists in the world today. She has been the Assistant Principal Viola of the Cleveland Orchestra since 1989. She has also been a member of the Amici String Quartet, Principal Violist of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Rochester Philharmonic, and has been a soloist with the Beijing Philharmonic . She has served on the faculties of Duquesne University, 1977-85; Aspen Music Festival, 1980-1990; Cleveland Institute of Music, 1989-91, and the Encore School for Strings.

THOMAS SPERL , Double Bass has been a member of the Cleveland Orchestra since 1992, and is very actice as a chamber musician as well. He has served as Principal bass of the Mainly Mozart Orchestra, Assistant Principal Bass of the Rochester Philharmonic, member-Rochester Chamber Players, and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. He has been on the faculties of the Masterworks Festival, Roberts Wesleyan College, Nazareth College, University of Rochester, and Eastman School of Music.

DANNA SUNDET is newly appointed to the faculty at Kent State. Danna is principal oboe with the Erie Philharmonic. She also performs in Cleveland's Trinity Chamber Orchestra, the orchestra RED and is a regular extra player with The Cleveland Orchestra. Danna plays regularly at Cleveland's Playhouse Square performing Broadway shows and ballets and with the Cleveland Opera. In addition, Danna specializes in performing for Bach Festivals, where she is featured on English horn, oboe d'amore and the oboe. These festivals include the Baldwin-Wallace Bach Festival and the prestigious Carmel Bach Festival. Sundet holds degrees in music performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music, as well as Kent State. She was a pupil of John Mack. Sundet is heralded as one of the most prolific and influential teachers of young oboe students in Ohio. Her students are dynamic soloists, chamber musicians and section players who perform in the Northeast Ohio and Pennsylvania areas and go on to study at major conservatories and universities in the United States. She currently has students performing at New England Conservatory, the Cleveland Institute of Music, Stanford, Harvard, Williams College, Northwestern, Louisiana State University and, of course, Kent State.

REVIEW- CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER 10/17/04 DONALD ROSENBERG

The five scores on this independent release by local musicians are immediately appealing and vibrant. Margaret Griebling- Haigh basks in zesty rhythmic shapes and exotic harmonic language, with a leaning toward Spanish and French accents. "Hebert Variations," a salute to former Cleveland Orchestra piccolo player William Hebert, throws out stereotypes of this high-flying instrument in music of haunting and charismatic personality. Equally atmospheric is Griebling-Haigh's "Bocadillos Panormamicos," for viola and piano, in which languid and suave ideas are beautifully balanced. David Morgan's "The Secret of the Golden Flower" exudes oriental allure, while Erwin Schulhoff's Concertino vividly embraces folk elements from Russia and eastern Europe. The performances and sound are first-rate. (The recording is available only at local stores.) A

REVIEW- AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE:JAN 05

REVIEW- JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN VIOLA SOCIETY NOV 04:

MARGARET GRIEBLING-HAIGH (b. 1960) began her musical training in early childhood with her parents, and was composing by the age of five. She studied piano with Margaret Baxtresser and oboe with Cleveland Orchestra

members John Mack and Harvey McGuire, and went on to earn degrees in oboe performance from the Eastman School of Music and the San Francisco

Conservatory of Music. She spent several summers at the Pierre Monteux

Memorial School in Maine, composing, performing, and studying orchestral

repertoire. As a young self-taught composer, Ms. Griebling-Haigh won many

awards in composition, including a grant from BMI and first prizes from the

National Federation of Music Clubs and Music Teachers National Association.

She received her first commissions from the Huntington Trio of Philadelphia,

and has since been commissioned by several chamber ensembles, musical

organizations, and prominent solo and orchestral artists. She has twice

collaborated with the Poets' and Writers' League of Greater Cleveland and

has had music choreographed by Karen Gabay, principal dancer of the former

Cleveland-San Jose Ballet. She was named "Ohio Composer of the Year 2003"

by the Ohio Music Teachers Association. Her music is published by Jeanné,

Inc., Ludwin Music, Inc., and Musicalligraphics. "One hears a composer

painting brilliant sonic images... suggesting Prokofiev's brooding lyricism

and Shostakovich's mystery and anger... a stunning explosion of ideas."

(The Cleveland Plain Dealer)

DAVID MORGAN is active as a jazz bassist, composer, theorist, and teacher. As a bassist Morgan has performed with many leading artists including Joe Lovano, Bob Brookmeyer, Cedar Walton, Benny Golson, John Hicks, and Larry Coryell. His compositions for classical and jazz ensembles are recorded and performed throughout the world, and the Jazz Unit has released a critically-acclaimed CD of his compostions entitled "Choices." His article "Superimposition in the Improvisations of Herbie Hancock" is published in the "Annual Review of Jazz Studies." Morgan earned a Doctorate in Composition from the University of Texas at Austin and is currently Assistant Professor of Jazz Studies at Youngstown State University.

NOTES:

La Bergère des Brises de Vallée , (The Shepherdess of Valley Breezes) for

flute doubling on piccolo, oboe doubling on English horn, and piano,

commissioned by Mary Kay Ferguson and Danna Sundet, was composed with great joy and speed in 2002. The piece begins and ends with an extremely simpleand yet highly ornamented melody reminiscent of cool refreshing breezes, the pipes of a shepherdess, and the small villages and pastoral hillsides of southern France. As the music progresses, the breezes become sometimes more menacing, making use of a figure based on the first names of Danna and Mary Kay; sometimes more capricious, in a scherzando based loosely on their initials (MKRF and DSS); and sometimes more hesitant and thoughtful. rather passionate waltz is composed around the surnames of Sundet and Ferguson. La Bergère is meant to be equally enjoyable for players and audience alike, and seeks to take advantage of, rather than to unnecessarily challenge, the natural tendencies of the instruments involved in creating this impressionistic trio.

Hebert Variations-In a project spearheaded by Mary Kay Ferguson, sixteen notable flute and piccolo players from around North America, who have been either colleagues or students of the renowned former Cleveland Orchestra Solo Piccolo player William Hebert, commissioned the Hebert Variations for piccolo and piano in 2003 as an 80th birthday present in his honor. At the outset of the piece, six chords based on the letters in the name "Hebert" are presented by the

piano: B (standing in for "H") - E - Bb - E - D ("Re") - B ("Ti"). All

eight variations, each one in honor of one decade of Mr. Hebert's life to

date, are based on these six notes, and are characterized as follows:

Variation I: cadenza, II: scherzando, III: tranquillo, IV: à la marcia, V:

minacciavole, VI: cadenza, VII: chorale, and VIII: coda.

Bocadillos Panorámicos is a suite of four descriptive pieces for viola and

piano composed by Margaret Griebling-Haigh as a gift for her sister, violist

and composer Karen Griebling, in 2000. The movements are based on visual

images of North Central New Mexico, as remembered from a vacation the

sisters spent there together. The word bocadillo is Cuban Spanish for "a

little morsel" and can be interpreted as a parallel of the French word

bagatelle.

The first movement, Aguacero, is translated as "cloudburst", from a

paradoxical first impression of the desert Southwest, in which several

torrential downpours were always preceded and followed by calm and seemingly

innocuous sunshine.

This movement begins with happy, lazy chords in accompaniment, and a

slow-moving "big sky" melodic line in the viola part, but soon the scene is

interrupted by pizzicato raindrops and a fast and furious storm...

El Bosque de Jemez follows. This movement represents the surprising

scenery of the Jemez Forest, characterized by tall stands of straight pine

trees on mountainsides, where desert landscape is replaced by alpine

greenery and tranquility. As the viola strums quietly, the piano plays an

ornamented melody with right and left hands four octaves apart. After some

time, the listener notices rustling high in the pines and hears the calls of

birds and insects...

The third movement, La Perrita Fanimál, is an innocent interlude, written

with Karen's beloved little border collie mix, Fanny, in mind. At various

moments the music jumps and plays, barks and growls, and becomes sad and

lonely or silly and romantic, before finally waltzing off to sleep...

Bocadillos Panorámicos ends with an energetic and syncopated movement

entitled Twisty Vista Tango, which is full of up and down motion, twists,

and turns, and represents the thrilling scenery surrounding the canyons and

mountains of New Mexio

"The Secret of the Golden Flower" is an ancient esoteric treatise that was transmitted orally before being recorded on a series of wooden tablets in the eighth century by a member of the Religion of Light. The leader of the Religion of Light was the Lu Yen. It is said that Lu Tzu  became one of the Eight Immortals using the methods described in this treatise. One of the central ideas of this treatise is "action in non-action," letting psychic processes occur without interference from the consciousness. I have found this principle to be a key to the creative process. Especially for those of us who teach music, it can be difficult to switch gears from the analytical and quantifiable to the creative space in which music is actually composed. One must ignore all of the little voices in the brain and suspend judgement of what flows forth.

This piece grows from the simple pentatonic theme initially stated by the cello. Various musical styles evocative of the Silk Road are alluded to as the piece progresses. These allusions symbolize the migration of the "Golden Flower" treatise from Persia to China.

(SCHULHOFF LINER NOTES)

Concertino for Flute/Piccolo,Viola ,and Bass was written in 1925. The unique instrumentation for this work is based on the Baroque Trio Sonata, with each voice stretched to its outermost capacity.

"The accompaniment figure at the beginning of the first movement (viola/bass) was taken from a Russian Orthodox litany. Above this (as often found in old Slavic song) a floating melody in the flute. The second movement(as a scherzo) a "Beseda", known as the Czech national dance, whose main factor is indicated by "Furiant" tempo marking. The theme of the slow movement, based on a Carpathian-Russian love song, is succesively taken over unchanged by each instrument, always appearing within the ornamented framework of two voices. The last movement " Rondino" based on the song of a Carpathian-Russian bear tamer, the second part a Slovakian shepherd's theme in the flute with ostinato accompaniment figures in the viola and bass. The whole, a piece of folk music common to popular festivities in the eastern parts of the Czechoslovakian Republic, where people sing in cheerful minor keys and dance accordingly.

The harmonic structure of Concertino is based on Phyrigian, Lydian, and Mixolydian church modes."

E. Schulhoff/trans. H. Weiner

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