Music + Festival 2018: Claude Debussy and Daniel Asia

Eleventh Annual Composers Festival The University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music October 10-16, 2018

The 2018 Music+Festival: Debussy and Asia will present the lives and music of these two composers within a rich and broad intellectual framework. The festival consists of a conference, with leading scholars discussing the lives and work of the composers to be presented; a symposium providing the historical and artistic context in which these composers lived, as well as a presentation on what to listen for in this music; and seven concerts: five with chamber music, one for large ensembles, and a song and poetry concert. The festival features faculty members and major student ensembles of the Fred Fox School of Music, as well as guest artists and scholars.

Claude Debussy was certainly one of the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and his music has remained highly influential throughout the 20th and into the 21st century. In particular, his attention to instrumental color, a lightness and ephemeral approach to texture, and his interest in scales other than the diatonic, are all matters that composers must consider in their own music. His interest in nature certainly has found compatriots in the realm of living composers, John Luther Adams being one of the most prominent.

I am rather familiar with Daniel Asia, as that would be I! As the festival is beginning its second decade, and I am celebrating both my 65th birthday and my 30th year at the University of Arizona, I decided to go ahead and be self-referential. Consider it a living artist’s retrospective, where both you and I will hear the arc of my compositional journey over the last forty years or so. And I might add that in some respects my music has been very much affected by my encounter with that of Debussy (and many others of course), so the pairing seems natural and appropriate. I also think you will find the hearing of these oeuvres in such close proximity provocative and engaging.

The festival includes a full day conference – only our second – with leading guest scholars and members of our own stellar musicology and theory faculty discussing the lives and work of the composers to be presented. The Amernet String Quartet has garnered recognition as one of today’s exceptional string quartets and are ensemble-in-residence at Florida International University in Miami. At the Music+Festival of two years ago they gave an overwhelming performance of the music of Schoenberg, Weill and Winterberg. Roy Howat, internationally known pianist and scholar, is the founding editor of the Paris-based Complete Debussy Edition (Œuvres complètes de Claude Debussy), for which he edited most of Debussy’s solo piano music. Robert Swensen is a world-renowned tenor, formerly on the University of Arizona faculty, who has recorded much of my music for tenor. Muller and Steigerwalt have been one of the leading four-hand piano teams over the last quarter of a century. In short, it is a stellar cast of participants, both local and from afar.

We are pleased and delighted that you are here to participate in this wonderful festival!

Cordially,

Daniel Asia, Festival Director