UIC News Release

Sting Surprises Music Class at UIC , April 25, 2005

British rock star Sting surprised students when he visited their music composition class at the University of Illinois at Chicago on April18.  MTV filmed the class for an episode of its "Stand-In" series, which will air on the college network channel mtvU on Monday, April 25.  "We're particularly pleased to have Sting visit UIC because his background mirrors that of many of our students," said  Michael Anderson, chair of performing arts at UIC. "He came from humble beginnings, got his start in teaching, yet had the tenacity to make a career in the volatile world of professional arts. Seeing him teach demonstrates the link between classroom learning and professional reality."  Sting's entrance drew a loud round of applause and cheers. He opened with an hour-long discussion of the art of songwriting, then he and his band played '80s hits, new ballads and a country-western song about divorce.  "Besides performing beautifully, he was an articulate and impressive educator," said Laura Schwendinger, UIC associate professor of composition, who ordinarily teaches the class.  Sting concluded by advising the class to approach music as a form of self-therapy and "a never-ending journey, like yoga." He urged them to study Bach's complex time signatures and Stravinsky's revolutionary music and to explore songwriting as storytelling.  "Music has a narrative, a kind of architectural integrity," he said. "If it's not structured well, the story doesn't come through."  Sting ended the class by jamming with students on "Every Breath You Take."  mtvU's "Stand In" brings famous musicians, humanitarians and other celebrities into college classrooms, always as a  surprise to the students. After it airs, the April 25 episode will be posted at www.mtvu.com/on_mtvu/stand_in/ UIC ranks among the nation's top 50 universities in federal research funding and is Chicago's largest university with 25,000 students, 12,000 faculty and staff, 15 colleges and the state's major public medical center. A hallmark of the campus is the Great Cities Commitment, through which UIC faculty, students and staff engage with community, corporate, foundation and government partners in hundreds of programs to improve the quality of life in metropolitan  areas around the world.

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Artists Find Inspiration at a Creative Community in the New England Woods

By Keming Kuo

Peterborough, New Hampshire 1/10/05

Excerpt from Voice of America piece on MacDowell with Laura

With fresh snow at the MacDowell Colony, the artists at the New Hampshire retreat have caught sight of a moose in the forest scattering the wild turkeys that usually feed on the grounds. But the writers and composers are not in the New England woods for bird watching. For nearly a century, artists have come here to create. It is where American composer Aaron Copland wrote Appalachian Spring. Leonard Bernstein and Virgil Thomson have been here, and American writers Thornton Wilder, Willa Cather and James Baldwin. Today, artists from across the country and around the world compete to stay at MacDowell -- with this year's international residents hailing from such far-flung countries as China, Albania and Cameroon.... That has been the case for Laura Schwendinger, a composer who teaches at the Universities of Wisconsin and Illinois. She says she sometimes feels the influence of the composers who worked in the studio-cottage she now occupies. "Aaron Copland has composed on these pianos...Leonard Bernstein was [in my studio] in 1971...all sorts of incredible composers," she marvels. "You're not only part of a continuum, but you feel like you're working in the same environs that they worked in. That gives you such a boost. It makes you feel a part of this huge creative flow." Nothing is allowed to disturb that creative flow, not even meals. Lunch is delivered to each studio and left on the doorstep. But breakfast and dinner are eaten in a common dining hall, where the residents have lively debates about their work and about art in general. "We've had a lot of discussions this residency with artists about 20th century music," notes Professor Schwendinger. "I won't mention her name, but a very fine sculptress here asked, not quite as tersely as I'm stating it, 'Why do 20th century composers like writing such ugly music?' It was fantastic in a way, because it opened up dialogue that you don't have with people in the real world." Along with the work, the discussions and the lasting friendships that are formed, the tranquil setting of the MacDowell Colony allows for another important creative process: napping. "The naps are really famous here," notes Laura Schwendinger. "Everyone has a bed in their studio, and napping is a wonderful treat. In that nap, you re-energize. You wake up and something new appears in your head."

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MUSIC REVIEW, By Mark Kanny Pittsburgh-Tribune

Creative program enriches New Music Ensemble concert, Monday, August 4, 2003

"The absence of any visual entertainment for Laura Elise Schwendinger's "Buenos Aires" focused attention on the musical excellence of her hard-driving quartet for flute, bass clarinet, violin and cello. She creates fresh and compelling lines that are brought together to a powerful climax. It was superbly performed by Lindsay Goodman, Schempf, Ines Voglar and Omsky. "

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MUSIC REVIEW By Richard Buell, 5/6/2003

Boston Globe

Dinosaur Annex with Scott Wheeler Conductor.First and second Church, Boston

Laura Elise Schwendinger's "Magic Carpet Music" like the composer's other music we've heard, rejoices in edge and has a force that has its way even if the section titles promise something softly atmopheric- as here, with "Arabesque", "Air" and "Buenos Aires". Here is a a composer who has distinct voice. It made for an enlivening evening, not soothing, end to a more than usually enlivening evening"

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Collage New Music, David Hoose, music director, Paine Hall, Harvard University

MUSIC REVIEW By Richard Buell 2/25/2003

Boston Globe

''Chewy,'' it says in your reviewer's notes on Laura Elise Schwendinger's ''Fable'' (1994). This composer certainly had a knack of making you wonder what was lurking round the corner for her spirited little band of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion. Movement No. 1 began questioningly with a breathy tremolando for clarinet and ended, as if in answer, with a quiet, almost feathery drum roll. In between, a long-lined near-melodiousness runs up against violent disturbances in which agitated, high-pitched twitterings seem bent on sucking all the oxygen (and middle and low frequencies) from the air. Movement No. 2 was night music, lighted by phosphorescent swirls and arabesques. The finale was nasty from the start (wittily so, with registral extremes glowering at each other something awful) - and it kept up its punchy, irascible tone until it was quite through with us, thank you. This was shrewd composing, the genuine article. Onto the ''season's best'' list it goes.

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Arditti quartet softens its edges

MUSIC REVIEW By Richard Buell, Globe Correspondent, 1/27/2003

Oddly enough, it was the newest piece on the program, the String Quartet (2001) by Laura Elise Schwendinger commissioned by the Harvard Musical Association, that proved the most conservative. The movement titles – “With intensity,'' ''Molto espressivo, dancelike,'' ''Maestoso,'' were one sign of that conservatism. There was also the way that out of an abstract, ''modern'' sort of play with sound material, an unmistakable lyric intensity would want to emerge - and would actually do so. A fine piece all in all, if perhaps a bit extended, and it's worthy of the Arditti's attention.

More can be heard from Schwendinger, who is a Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute, on Collage New Music's concert on Feb. 23.

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Arditti Quartet, Kresge Auditorium, Jan. 24, 8 p.m.

World Premiere Highlight of Quartet Concert

Arditti Quartet Presents Well-Rehearsed But Unmoving Program of 20th-Century Works By Jacqueline O'Connor

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Over the past few decades, some of the worlds renowned quartets have performed at Kresge Auditorium as part of the MIT Guest Artist Series. On Friday, England's Arditti Quartet stopped by for a program of four contemporary works, which included a world premiere by Laura Elise Schwendinger. The quartet, founded in 1974 by first violinist Irvine Arditti, also performed string quartets by Bela Bartok, Jonathan Harvey, and Gyorgy Ligeti.

Despite the tremendous difficulty of the program, this well-seasoned group completed the concert with near-perfect technique. Hardly a note was out of place, even in the midst of extreme dissonance, and every effect the instruments could produce was presented clearly.

Next on the program was the highlight of the evening, the world premiere of Laura Elise Schwendinger's String Quartet. Schwendinger, an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Illinois in Chicago, wrote the quartet on commission from The Harvard Musical Association of Boston, which co-sponsored this concert with the MIT Guest Artist Series. The piece itself was impressive and appeared very aware of its audience.

The first movement, influenced by Bartok, followed many of his patterns of composition. Though the opening was tonally stressful, the piece was full of movement as it reached false climaxes, only to continue climbing. Intermingling graceful melodies with the complex rhythms and discord, Schwendinger provides a sort of relief from the intenseness of the rest of the movement. The second movement, Molto espressivo, dancelike, opened with a suspenseful cushion of tremolos on which the cello and viola melodies rested. The dance part of the movement was felt in the short melodies though many pauses interrupted the flow. The last movement of Schwendinger's quartet mimicked its inspiration, the music of Maurice Ravel, with its intricate orchestration for only four instruments. A perfect balance was struck between the first violins melodies and the countermelodies that supported it. The Arditti Quartet's performance was well-received, especially by the composer herself, present in the audience

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January 25, 2003 Saturday, ARTS & LIFE

MUSIC REVIEW; Quartet recital transcends boundaries By KEITH POWERS, Boston Herald

Arditti String Quartet, Kresge Auditorium, Cambridge, last night

They've been new so long it starts to look like old. The Arditti String Quartet, the foremost European purveyors of contemporary composition in this generation, performed a rare Boston-area recital last evening in Kresge Auditorium at MIT. Founded in 1974 by first violinist Irvine Arditti, the foursome occupies the front ranks of new music specialists, with over 100 commissions to brag about. Arditti makes the continent's equivalent of America's Kronos Quartet, each now in its fourth decade. Last night's concert was a joint presentation by MIT and the Harvard Musical Association, which commissioned one of the works on the program, Laura Elise Schwendinger's string quartet. Arditti performed quartets by Bartok, Jonathan Harvey and Ligeti as well. Her Bartok movement made the players spend too much time in first position. But the second movement marked important textural ground, with sparse, tense and spirited writing. The finale broke at the end like surf hitting the sand, positively infectious.

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Freitag, 24. January 2003, Berliner Morganpost

Spectrum Concerts feiern Jubilum

Leises Flirren. Zupfen und Zirpenin hchster Lage. Verstreute Gerusche der Nacht finden sich zu einer Melodie zusammen. Robert Helps ldt mit seinem Nocturne auf eine Klangexpedition durch die Dunkelheit ein. Das feinsinnige Werk von 1960 stand am Beginn des Jubilumsabends der Spectrum Concerts Berlin. Fr den amerikanischen Komponisten haben sich die Berliner von Anbeginn eingesetzt.

Seit 15 Jahren engagieren sich der Cellist Frank Dodge und seine Mitspieler fr den Brckenschlag zwischen Europa und den USA. Wir sind dankbar, dass Sie uns etwas von der Kultur Amerikas herberbringen. Das ist eine Sprache, die wir besonders gern und gut hren, erklrte Richard von Weizscker, Ehrenmitglied des Spectrum-Frderkreises, in seiner Ansprache.

Ein typisches Spectrum-Programm gab es zum Fest. Es verband die amerikanische Moderne mit europischer Romantik und Neoromantik. Die groe Zahl von neun Musikern und eine eigens fr das Konzert geschriebene Urauffhrung fielen aus dem Rahmen.

Die amerikanische Komponistin Laura Schwendinger, die als Professorin in Chicago wirkt und vor drei Jahren Stipendiatin der American Academy in Berlin war, erntete mit ihrem Quintett "Celestial City" viel Zustimmung im Kammermusiksaal der Philharmonie. Das Werk ist den Opfern des 11. September 2001 gewidmet. Es verbreitet nicht nur Klagen, sondern auch Zuversicht und Gemeinschaftsgefhl. Fnf Musiker, besessen von demselben melodischen Gedanken, finden nach und nach zueinander.

Herausragend auch, mit welcher Sensibilitt sich Janine Jansen (Geige), Ron Schaaper (Horn) und Daniel Blumenthal (Klavier) mit ihren ungleichen Instrumenten in Brahms' Horntrio aufeinander einstellten. Mit klangschtigem Schwung strzten sich die Musiker schlielich in Ernst von Dohnnyis Sextett von 1935. mig

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Horn sucht Halali, Der Taggespiegel, 1/24/03, KLASSIK

Dissonanzen kommen wieder in Mode. Glcklicherweise ist das anlsslich des Jubilumskonzerts von Spectrum Concerts, jenem Ensemble, das seit nun 15 Jahren deutschamerikanische Musikfreundschaft manifest macht, nicht politisch gemeint. In Laura Schwendingers im Kammermusiksaal der Philharmonie uraufgefhrter "Celestial City", einem den Opfern des 11. September gewidmeten Werk, wird jedenfalls deutlich, dass Dissonanzen gefragt sind, wenn Unbehagen und die Klage um Geschehenes zumAusdruck kommen sollen. Und vor der fast trostlosen Grundierung des Stcks wirken sie besonders impressiv. Kein Wunder, dass nach einem solchen Stck Johannes Brahms Horntrio eigentlich ein von erwrmendem Es-Dur-Wohlklang durchdrungenes Werk nicht so einfach auf Genuss gespielt werden kann. Verhalten klingt der Beginn des Trios, bedrckt der Mittelteil des Scherzos, dster der klagende dritte Satz, und auch im con brio des vierten will das Horn nicht allzu plakativ zum Halali blasen. Plakativ wird es dann nach der Pause, als Ernst von Dohnanyis Sextett op. 347 auf dem Programm steht ein Stck, das alle Register der Collage, der berzeichneten Kontraste und der ppigen Diktion zieht, ohne dabei jedoch, wie es fr hnliche Werke etwa von Dmitrij Schostakowitsch charakteristisch ist, ironisch zu werden. Dennoch fr das Ensemble Gelegenheit genug, der Muisizierfreude freien Lauf zu lassen. Und der Applaus gilt wohl auch der Tatsache, dass ein Werk, dessen Schluss mit stilistischen Elementen sowohl von Wagner als auch von Gershwin durchsetzt ist, nicht das schlechteste Statement auch gegen politische Dissonanzen ist. Christian Ksser

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January 21, 2002 Plain Dealer ,ARTS & LIFE; Pg. C9

Upshaw enchants recital audience by Wilma Salisbury, Plain Dealer Music Critic

American soprano Dawn Upshaw has it all: lovely voice, refined musicianship, command of languages, charming stage presence. In her delightful recital Saturday night at Akron's E.J. Thomas Hall, she excelled as a joyous interpreter of German lieder, Hungarian folksong, contemporary American music, Russian characterization and cabaret comedy. With master pianist Gilbert Kalish as her sensitive accompanist, she communicated the meaning of every word and nuance. At one point, she took an extended pause between numbers because of excessive coughing by members of the large audience. Generally, however, she kept the listeners spellbound.

In the first half of the concert, spoken program notes were unnecessary. After intermission, each group of songs was introduced with background information about the composers and the music. The first fascinating set was selected because the composers, born between 1956 and 1962, are contemporaries of the 41-year-old singer. One of them, James Aikman, was present to hear Upshaw's exquisite interpretation of his song, "Spring Is Purple Jewelry." The other composers - Laura Elise Schwendinger, Michael Torke, Andy Vores, Osvaldo Golijov and former Clevelander James Primosch - contributed pieces that were well-suited to Upshaw's light voice and clear diction. Especially captivating was Schwendinger's playful take on e.e. cummings' poem, "In Just-Spring."

In comparison to these brief compositions, Ruth Crawford Seeger's songs on texts by Carl Sandburg sounded strong, spare and dramatic. The final selections from "The Nursery" by Moussorgsky showcased Upshaw's skills as a singing actress in the dual roles of a precocious Russian child and his long-suffering nanny. In the final number, she rode an imaginary hobby horse and gracefully galloped around the piano.

Although she had been singing for nearly two hours, Upshaw responded graciously to the audience's plea for an encore. Her parting gesture, an adorable interpretation of William Bolcom's cabaret song, "Amour," provided the perfect ending to an evening of vocal enchantment.

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SOPRANO DAWN UPSHAW SOARS TO NEW HEIGHTS

By DONALD ROSENBERG; PLAIN DEALER MUSIC CRITIC

October 7, 1999

Never was a singer so aptly named. Dawn Upshaw has a knack for sounding fresh, invigorating and intensely musical whenever she opens her mouth. She does so in a vast repertoire ranging from concert and opera to Broadway, which can't be said for many artists of her classical persuasion. Upshaw was in resplendent form Tuesday at Oberlin College's Finney Chapel for a recital with pianist Gilbert Kalish. Typically, the soprano's program was an eclectic array of songs, including 19th- and 20th-century literature by renowned and emerging composers, as well as a few Great-White-Way goodies by Vernon Duke and Leonard Bernstein. To all of these works, Upshaw brought an unerring sense of style and a voice that drew the listener directly into the particular dramatic world. Her soprano isn't a large instrument, but it is so perfectly placed, gleaming in timbre and true in intonation that it projects with utter directness. With Kalish providing collaborations of atmospheric magic, Upshaw gave blissful and poignant evocations of the music's generous romanticism. She suggested humor with graceful nuances, passion with tonal radiance.

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Along with her championing of the old, Upshaw attends to the new. She began the second half with songs by six living composers who either have written on commission from her or tickled her artistic fancy. They are composers worthy of the attention, especially James Primosch (whose "Cinder" is a haunting essay about destiny based on a poem by Susan Stewart), Laura Elise Schwendinger ("in Just-spring," a childlike delectable set to verses by e.e. cummings) and John Musto (the noble "Litany," with text by Langston Hughes).

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PERFORMING ARTS

Contemporary Music Forum In Works by Women by Cecelia H. Porter

October 21, 1997, Tuesday, Final Edition

Only in this century have the publication and performance of music by female composers begun to approach those of men. One of the foremost institutions in Washington involved in this phenomenon is the Contemporary Music Forum, which, together with the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the International Alliance for Women in Music, sponsored a concert Sunday by female composers at the museum. And what an intriguing event it was. Laura Schwendinger's clearly structured "Rumor" (for flute and cello) revels in sinewy counterpoint as the instruments alternately vie and entwine in heated discourse.

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January 23, 2002 Wednesday , ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT,CONCERT REVIEW

DAWN UPSHAW'S STORYTELLING CAPTIVATES by ROBERT CROAN, POST-GAZETTE SENIOR EDITOR

Classically trained American singers are usually trained to sing in German, Italian and French, as well as their native English, of course. In recital at Squirrel Hill's Jewish Community Center last evening, soprano Dawn Upshaw included no Italian or French, although she has excelled in that repertory both in opera and concert. She made up for the omission by including songs in Hungarian (Bartok's Folksong Settings), Russian (Mussorgsky's "The Nursery") and Portugese (a lullaby by the South American Osvaldo Golijov). All this in addition to four German Lieder each by Schumann and Mahler, and a lengthy segment of Americana. Upshaw is no ordinary singer, and her appearance on the Y Music Society series -- now taken over by the Pittsburgh Symphony -- was something very special. She is best-known in opera, and she brought an operatic sense of drama, captivating her audience by telling a story quite vividly in each of 29 songs plus two encores.

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The totality of her performance, in which she was strongly supported by pianist Gilbert Kalish, was an unforgettable experience, moments lingering in the mind long after the recital had ended. This is what singing is all about. This singer is, indeed, a great boon to American song composers. She showcased seven of her own generation -- she was born in 1960 -- among which James Aiken's "Spring is purple jewelry" was warmly moving, Laura Elise Schwendinger's version of an e.e. cummings poem delightful for its pointed wit, Michael Torke's setting of lines from Proverbs most ambitious in its scope. She followed with three songs from the 1920s by Ruth Crawford Seeger, stepmother of folk singer Pete Seeger.

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The Washington Post

November 1, 1999, Monday, Final Edition STYLE

Dawn Upshaw Lets The Sun Shine In; Recital Showcases Young Songwriters by Philip Kennicott, Washington Post Staff Writer

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The music world loves Dawn Upshaw, the American soprano who sang an exquisite recital Friday evening at George Mason University's Center for the Arts. Yet perhaps because she is young and pleasant-mannered, and because she sings from a very centered, very sensible and very sincere inner musical core, she never quite gets the final benediction she deserves. She is, of course, the greatest American vocal recitalist working today and one of the very best opera singers of our time. Hearing her exposed voice produces tunnel vision in the listener, banishing the distractions of the audience, the concert hall and the nagging little thoughts one carries there unwillingly. She is also one of the most versatile of singers, moving effortlessly from Broadway to the concert hall without being arch in the former or vulgar in the latter. Upshaw transcends merely beautiful singing with a voice that is capable of the musically inflected speech of a folk singer. This tendency is most pronounced in her lower range, where one hears a hint of all the cigarettes and booze that she probably never consumed.

Upshaw's programming is exceptionally imaginative, especially her now-standard inclusion of a substantial number of contemporary songs written for, or discovered by, her. On Friday night she sang works by Osvaldo Golijov, Michael Torke, James Primosch, Laura Elise Schwendinger and others--all of them born within six years of Upshaw's own birth in 1960. The six songs, though written in styles ranging from the exotic to contemporary American postminimalism, work together as a cycle, with moments of humor and reflection well balanced.

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Dawn Upshaw's Adventures With Today's Songs by ANTHONY TOMMASINI

April 28, 1997, Monday

Most artists who achieve success with mainstream classical-music audiences are reluctant to jeopardize it by taking risks with repertory. Such thinking is nonsense to the soprano Dawn Upshaw. When the opportunity came for her recital debut at Carnegie Hall, she thought of presenting a program of contemporary American music. Her confidence that less adventurous listeners would follow her lead was borne out on Friday night when an enthusiastic audience filled the hall for her program.

She began with seven songs by American composers all born within five years of 1960, the year of her own birth. It says something about the timidity of the classical-music field that Ms. Upshaw's natural curiosity about the music of her contemporaries is considered principled advocacy worthy of note.

Some of the songs, like Kenneth Frazelle's restless "Sunday at McDonald's," with a text by A. R. Ammons, were written for her. Others, like Laura Elise Schwendinger's fanciful setting of E. E. Cummings's "In Just-Spring," with its wonderfully fidgety accompaniment, were sent to her unsolicited. Songs by James Aikman, Michael Torke, James Primosch, John Musto and Larry Alan Smith made strong first impressions. Ms. Upshaw's singing was alert and plaintively beautiful. The pianist Gilbert Kalish, her frequent accompanist, played with incisiveness and character.

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The Washington Post

January 23, 1996, Tuesday, Final Edition

For Fleisher, Matters Are Well in Hand by Joan Reinthaler

Leon Fleisher has been associated with the Theater Chamber Players since their beginning, as a founder, conductor and music director, but his appearances with them as a pianist in a pair of weekend concerts -- Saturday's at the Kennedy Center and Sunday's at Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church in Bethesda -- were a step toward the reemergence of a major artist. On Sunday, runs negotiated with authority in the joyful finale of the Brahms G Minor Piano Quartet, Op. 25, signaled that Fleisher's right hand is recovering from the nerve damage that had forced a 30-year interruption in his piano career. But the quiet, beautifully phrased and pedaled chords with which he opened the Schumann song cycle "Frauenliebe und Leben" signaled the return of a rare musical talent.

The program opened with Laura Elise Schwendinger's Lament for String Trio, a poignant short piece in which each instrument has an opportunity to express its own sorrow. The ensemble did so convincingly.

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Bay Area Composers' Symposium,Classical Pitch to Sound Out Talent,Young musicians hear their workby ROBERT COMMANDAY, CHRONICLE MUSIC CRITIC

JANUARY 24, 1993, SUNDAY, SUNDAY EDITION

LEAVE it to a young American conductor to come up with a fresh idea in the symphonic scene. Last weekend, Gary Sheldon conducted his Marin Symphony in a public reading of six new works. The young composers had a chance to hear how their pieces actually sound before they submit them for concert performances. As about 200 members of the orchestra's audience listened to the composers describe their pieces, to Sheldon's instructions to the orchestra, and then to the readings, this audience became part of the process.

Laura Schwendinger, another doctoral candidate in composition at UC Berkeley, offered a very intense, dark work, ''Night Dances,'' music of considerable power.

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The Washington Post

Chamber Players, Striking a Balance by Charles McCardell

February 10, 1998, Tuesday, STYLE

Like skilled playwrights, the Theater Chamber Players know that well-placed levity can function not as a distraction but as a means for intensifying the seriousness of what precedes it. The group's Saturday night concert at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater contained mostly vocal music from the 19th and 20th centuries, heavy in content and dark in mood. Yet with just two bits of absurdity from composer Ernst Toch at the end, the emotional scales almost balanced. These Toch nuggets were necessary, arriving after a lineup that included two melancholy Brahms pieces. The Sonata in E Minor for Cello and Piano found cellist Evelyn Elsing taking the lead role in grand fashion, with unabashed passion and a large tone to match. Leon Fleisher, tentative at first, warmed to the task in the minuet movement and fugue finale. His keyboard efforts assumed a far more sinister character in support of baritone John Shirley-Quirk in the "Vier ernst Gesaenge." Theirs was a splendid partnership; Shirley-Quirk's majestic phrasing of the biblical texts and Fleisher's commanding touch earned a standing ovation.

Mezzo-soprano Patricia Green and violinist Sally McLain teamed up for Boris Blacher's "Francesca da Rimini," in which the spirit of this murder victim speaks to Dante about her desperate love for the also-slain Paolo. Green conveyed the heroine's anguish and pathos with conviction, while McLain added jittery colorations as though depicting the winds of Hades. Green had a more difficult assignment in the world premiere of Laura Schwendinger's "Songs of Heaven and Earth," based on four works by Chinese poet Ts'ai Yen. The pitches assigned made for great leaps in register and dynamics. Green did well recounting the poet's tragic life story, and the septet behind her exuberantly took to the challenges involved. Schwendinger's score has an impressive luster and transparency, even when the textures become thick.

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Radcliffe Quarterly - Spring 2003

Quick Study

Laura Elise Schwendinger RI '0

Laura Elise Schwendinger RI '03, a composer and an assistant professor of composition at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is creating an orchestral work in one movement for her fellowship project. Her recent works include commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation and the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard, and her music has been performed around the globe. Schwendinger has received the American Academy in Berlin Prize fellowship and a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as other fellowships throughout the United States and in Italy. She earned her doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley.

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What is the most challenging aspect of being a Radcliffe Institute fellow? Leaving my office in June!

Which trait do you most admire in yourself? My enthusiasm and love of all things beautiful.

What is your most treasured possession?

Chloe, my seventeen-year-old cat.

Predict the next major event in your field.

I would like to see an unparalleled upsurge of interest in art music. Who is your muse?

Euterpe, of course, the Greek goddess of music and lyric poetry.

What do you consider your greatest success? Dawn Upshaw's performance of my song in Just--spring on tour and around the globe.

Which literary character do you most admire? Elizabeth from Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice. Tell us your favorite memory.

Watching the sun set over San Francisco Bay with my family.

Who are your heroes? My parents, my husband, and former President Jimmy Carter. If you could dine with any two composers, who would they be?

Igor Stravinsky and Johann Sebastian Bach.

Describe yourself in six words or less. At all times creative. Where in the world would you like to spend a month?

That's easy. The Rockefeller Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy.

Whose tunes do you enjoy? Johann Sebastian Bach and Cole Porter.

What is your fantasy career? To be a composer.

If your life became a motion picture, who should portray you? I'm told I resemble Debra Winger, but I'd prefer Isabella Rossellini.

Why does your work matter? I hope and believe that my music conveys something true about life, human emotion, and the mysterious and beautiful world of sound.