 |
 |
|||||||
" Few local presenters are as committed to furthering the careers of today's best young musicians as Music in the Loft . . . . ." John von Rhein , Chicago Tribune |
||||||||
Stacy Garrop’s String Quartet No. 2 (“Demons and Angels”) is featured in the TimeOut Chicago
Stacy Garrop has won several orchestra competitions resulting in performances by the Civic Orchestra, Omaha Symphony, New England Philharmonic, the Women's Philharmonic, and readings by the Minnesota Orchestra and the American Composers Orchestra; she was also selected for the Dale Warland Singers 2000-2001 New Choral Music Program. She was a finalist for the 2001 Rome Prize, and received a 2001 Barlow Endowment commission, as well as a 2002 Artists Fellowship Award from the Illinois Arts Council.
Her works have been recently performed by the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Chamber Singers, EARPLAY, violinist Gregory Fulkerson, the Santa Cruz symphony, and by the Roosevelt University Chamber Orchestra on their January 2002 to Japan. Future performances will be given by the National Repertory Orchestra and the new music ensembles Third Angle and SoundsNew.
She has attended residences at the Banff Centre for the Arts, MacDowell Colony, Millay Colony, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Yaddo, and Wellesley Composers Conference.
Ms. Garrop completed her Doctorate in Music at Indiana University in 2000; she also holds an M.A. from the University of Chicago (1995) and a B.M. from the University of Michigan (1992).
Stacy is currently an Assistant Professor in Composition at the Chicago College of the Performing Arts at Roosevelt University.
Reviews:
"A blend of old and new styles, this bracing work uses dissonance and instrumental effects such as flute flutter tonguing, muted violins and altered piano tones for dramatic emphasis. [The director] had filled in the audience with details of the titled Thunderwalker's activities, but this music can stand on its own." -Phyllis Rosenblum, Santa Cruz Sentinel
"Thunderwalker… crackled with energy and vitality. Its performance on this occasion demonstrated that Ms. Garrop is a skillful composer with an interesting message and all the necessary means to convey this message in a meaningful and effective manner… Ms. Garrop's clever use of instrumentation added immeasurably to the effectiveness of the score. Her writing for strings, winds an percussion, and especially the excellent piano effects demonstrated a high level of mastery and artistry. Ms. Garrop is sending us a message that contemporary music is alive and well, and the message came through strong and clear." -Lyn Bronson, Peninsula Reviews (Monterey, CA)
"Thunderwalker shines in concert… The overall impression was of something bracing, highly colored, strongly motivated… You could imagine an idealizes kind of opening-credits music from Hollywood's golden days sounding the way Thunderwalker does. But in this case it wasn't Bernard Hermann composing it, but Stacy Garrop. "" -Richard Buell, Boston Globe
"The work that emerged as the most significant was Garrop’s aptly named Thunderwalker. In three movements following classical style — a fugue, a passacaglia, and a scherzo and trio — her music is all about primitive rituals… [it] started thunderously, with a frightening clatter of percussion and timpani and continued to build. Garrop’s orchestration was inventive and fascinating… Stacy Garrop’s music stretched the imagination and she is the one I would like most to hear from in the future." -William Furtwangler, Charleston Post and Courier (SC)
"The concert turned up a strong front runner in Garrop's Thunderwalker… Cast in three sections, this is a big, bold tour de force for large symphony orchestra that seizes your attention at once and refuses to let go. Garrop knows her modernist antecedents but she also knows how to deploy a large, colorful orchestra confidently, indeed audaciously, lashing her ritualistic rhythms forward in a manner that leaves both the orchestra and audience exhilarated. Given the furious speed with which Garrop's ideas rush by, one was grateful to be able to hear the piece a second time. I hope the CSO eventually takes it up, for it deserves wide circulation." -John von Rhein, Chicago Tribune
Little Bits for Clarinet, Violin, Cello and Piano
"Garrop is more concerned with pitches than with color for its own sake, but it is her rhythmic imagination and sense of humor that bring the piece to life. One successful exception is the brief Crumbs, an homage to George Crumb - complete with shimmering tremolos and harmonic glissandi - that is mysterious and ethereal, with the clarinet quietly riding a moonbeam in for the final diminuendo. Garrop is clearly a composer to watch. Her music is vital and communicative with a substantive core." -Eric Valliere, Contemporary Music Review
Source:
Time Out Chicago / Issue 84: Oct 5–Oct 11, 2006 - read the full article at the TimeOut Chicago website
" The benefits of exorcising
Things go bump in Stacy Garrop’s string quartet “Demons and Angels.”
By Molly Sheridan
It’s hard to miss the anguished story inside Stacy Garrop’s String Quartet No. 2 (“Demons and Angels”). The slashes of the first few chords rip at the ear with the can’t-change-the-channel-now effectiveness of a CSI episode opener, but as the 30-minute work unspools, it quickly takes on a character more closely aligned with the timbres of a fairy tale—albeit one with a Grimm brothers’ preference for horror and madness. The Biava Quartet plays the work three times beginning Saturday 7.
. . .
The quartet was penned specifically for the Biava Quartet to premiere, commissioned in two stages by the Near West Side chamber-music series Music in the Loft. Garrop wrote the first ten minutes as a stand-alone work while composer-in-residence there during the ’04–’05 season, but she knew the piece wasn’t completely finished. With the support of a donor, the Loft’s artistic and executive director Fredda Hyman was able to subsequently commission the entire quartet.
The Loft’s series is generously programmed with the works of those hallowed masters of chamber-music composition (i.e., dead, white males), but being able to provide this kind of support to young artists is clearly one of Hyman’s missions. And she admits that such a mix in the programming allows her to stack the deck each season and introduce a few young living composers to her audience. “I sort of force-feed them. They’re not lovers of contemporary music, but I think they like that the composers are here and they get to meet them. . . . "
. . . read the full article at the TimeOut Chicago website
If the above link does not work, click here to download the PDF file version of the published article.
Bio Page on the Web (bio, works and reviews):
Theodore Presser Company Website
 |
 |
|
1017 W. Washington Blvd., Chicago, IL 60607 © 2003-2006 Music In The Loft, All rights reserved. |
||