Thresholds
Ketty Nez composer and pianist
Boston University Wind Ensemble | David J. Martins conductor
Written in the summer of 2011 for David J. Martins and the Boston University Wind Ensemble, Boston-based composer Ketty Nez’s thresholds is a piano concerto inspired by music of different eras, including the canonic manipulations of Renaissance vocal music, piquant harmonies of Elizabethan virginal composers, Stravinskian reinterpretations of Baroque idioms, and occasionally, a huge barrel organ. As a kind of musical actor, the piano soloist theatrically leads the ensemble in abrupt changes of style and character so as to create a fractured world with sonic allusions changing rapidly and repeatedly.
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Artist Information
Ketty Nez
Composer/pianist Ketty Nez joined the Boston University School of Music in 2005. Her ethnographic chamber opera, The Fiddler and the Old Woman of Rumelia, was premiered in 2011 by Xanthos Ensemble, and staged by Juventas Ensemble in 2012. Her portrait CD with Albany, Listen to a Wonder Never Heard Before!, was released in 2010. Ketty's first opera, An Opera in Devolution: Drama in 540 Seconds, was premiered at the A*Devantgarde Festival in Munich in 2003. A visiting composer/scholar at Stanford Universityís Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) in 2001, Ketty studied at IRCAM in 1998-9, after working for two years with Louis Andriessen in Amsterdam.
Boston University Wind Ensemble
The Boston University Wind Ensemble is the premiere wind band of the Boston University School of Music. Under the baton of Professor David J. Martins, the Wind Ensemble is designed to prepare wind, brass, and percussion players for the professional world, and provide future teachers with concepts related to the study of band repertoire. The ensemble, made up of undergraduate and graduate level music majors, has participated in collaborations with composers and other universities, resulting in several world premieres.
David J. Martins
David J. Martins is Professor of Music at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and Adjunct Professor of Music at Boston University. Combining an active teaching and conducting schedule, Martins directs both the Boston University Wind Ensemble and the University of Massachusetts Lowell Wind Ensemble. During the past several years, he has been in demand as a guest conductor and has conducted festival ensembles throughout the Eastern United States. As clarinetist of both orchestral and chamber music, he performs with the Boston Classical Orchestra, and as substitute, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops Orchestra, Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, and the Boston Ballet Orchestra. He can be heard on orchestral and chamber recordings on the CRI, Koch, Titanic, Gasparo, and Albany labels.