Virko Baley's "Treny" (Laments) to have West Coast premiere (11/02/03)

Virko Baley's "Treny" (Laments) to have West Coast premiere

LOS ANGELES - Virko Baley's monumental chamber work "Treny" (Laments) for Two Violoncellos and Soprano (1996-1999), will have its West Coast premiere on Wednesday, November 12, at 8 p.m., at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in the Leo S. Bing Theater.

Featured performers at the concert will be cellists Natalia Khoma and Andrew Smith, and soprano Christine Seitz. Ms. Seitz and Mr. Smith are colleagues of Mr. Baley at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

The complete cycle of "Treny," a tetralogy for two cellos and soprano, was inspired by a bilingual edition of an eponymous poem by the Polish Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski, translated into English by Stanislaw Baranczak and Seamus Heaney, and published in 1995.

In the words of Mr. Baley: " 'Treny' is a work that I wrote with the sound of Natalia Khoma's sound ringing in my ears. At the time of my initial writing of it I was deeply involved in many readings of the great series of poems, titled "Treny," by the Polish Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski, whose deeply personal and highly charged poems, inspired by the death of his infant daughter, led to my wanting to write something to commemorate three deaths that occurred very close to each other: the death of my mother, Laryssa Bondarenko, the wife of Valentin Silvestrov, and Bruce Adams, a very dear friend. Kochanowski's laments helped me to focus my own grief and led to the writing of this cycle."

Since its premiere and release as a CD on the TNC Classical label, "Treny" has garnered significant reviews. In writing about the work, John Schaefer, the celebrated writer and commentator on WNYC-FM Radio said: " 'Treny' (Laments) is part of a trilogy of works by the Ukrainian American composer Virko Baley that deal with the ultimate questions: questions of mortality, death, grief, and the legacy we leave behind 'Treny' is economically scored for two cellos and (in the end) soprano, and was inspired by the grief-wracked Renaissance poetry of Jan Kochanowski. Writing at a time of personal loss, and working with purposely restrained forces, Baley offers some of his most deeply felt, ingeniously developed music. Haunted by ghosts, suspended in a musical and emotional twilight, 'Treny' is a masterful example of music's power to express what words cannot."

In reviewing the piece for the prestigious British magazine Gramophone, Ken Smith wrote: "The strength of the piece lies in its highly - and unapologetically - emotional content, dispensed artfully with the utmost thematic discretion. The strength of the playing lies in Natalia Khoma's sense of drama and attention to timbre, where much-needed light shines on the pervading darkness just as the piece threatens to sink into its own gloom ... The vocal line [words by the Polish Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski], whose wordless hum soon blooms into a text reconciling itself to human morality, descends on the earthiness of the cello like a message from above."

New York commentator Jed Distler, writing for the magazine Classics Today, noted: " 'Treny' is a 73-minute composition that encompasses two solo cello movements, a movement for two cellos, plus a final movement where a soprano soloist joins the cellists. Weld these forces to composer Virko Baley's introspective, darkly lyrical sound world, and the end results are remarkably sustained and subtle for a work of such duration and scope. It may take several hearings to grasp Baley's carefully deployed thematic interrelationships and transformations, but the sheer incandescence and registral resourcefulness of his cello writing are omnipresent."

The "Treny" CD (TNC 1505) is available on the web at www.tncmusic.net.

Tickets for the concert may be purchased at the museum ticket office or through Vista Ticketing at (877) 522-6225. The museum ticket office can be reached at (323) 857-6010

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Virko Baley was born in Ukraine in 1938, but has spent his creative life in the United States and considers himself a citizen of the world. Multilingual and multi-disciplinary, he infuses his music with themes of contemporary and traditional motifs.

Reviewing a concert of his music, given by Continuum, Shirley Fleming of the New York Post called his music "vibrant, dramatic, communicative, much of it framed by extra-musical allusions that place it in a solid context." The New York premiere of his Concerto No. 1, Quasi Una Fantasia for Violin as performed by the New Juilliard Ensemble conducted by Joel Sachs, with Tom Teh Chiu, soloist, was acclaimed by Village Voice critic Kyle Gann for "sonic images memorable enough to take home."

Mr. Baley's most recently released work on TNC Recordings, Symphony No. 1: "Sacred Monuments" was commented in Classics Today by David Hurwitz as "Powerfully imagined, clearly articulated, and quite moving It's a very serious ambitious statement by a gifted artist, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it turns out to have more staying power than many other contemporary works by today's trendier composers."

Mr. Baley's musical training began in Germany and continued in the United States at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music (now the California Institute of the Arts), where his principal teachers were Earle C. Voorhies and Morris H. Ruger.

A highly respected composer, Mr. Baley has received grants and commissions from numerous organizations. He is the recipient of the 1996 Shevchenko Prize for Music awarded by the Ukrainian government and he was also awarded the State of Nevada Regents' Creative Award for 1996.

He has received commissions also from the National Endowment for the Arts, New Juilliard Ensemble, Kiev Camerata, Project 1000 and the Winnipeg Symphony, Cleveland Chamber Orchestra, Nevada Symphony, Continuum, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, California E.A.R. Unit, and from many individual artists.

In 1989 Mr. Baley co-produced and composed the music for the film "Swan Lake: The Zone," which won top awards at Cannes - the first Ukrainian film ever to receive a prize there. More recently, he wrote his second film score for another feature film, "A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa," directed by the renowned Ukrainian film director Yuri Illienko.

A highly respected writer on music, Mr. Baley's most recent publication was the 39 new articles and five revisions he did for the new New Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2000).

His recordings include a trilogy of his chamber music: "Orpheus Singing" (CD 1087), featuring the violin concerto, "Jurassic Bird" (CD 1077) and "Dreamtime" (CD 1090) - all on the Cambria lable. In December 2002 the TNC Classical label released his "Treny I-IV" (TNC 1508) and Symphony No. 1: "Sacred Monuments" (with the the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Virko Baley, conducting, TNC 1505). The song cycle "A Journey After Loves" is being released this fall on Arsis.

Mr. Baley has also led the Kiev Camerata in recordings for over 15 CDs of orchestral music by composers ranging from Mozart, Beethoven, Ivan Karabyts, Valentin Silvestrov and Bernard Rands to Yevhen Stankovych. For a number of years he was also the principal guest conductor and music advisor of the Kiev Camerata in Ukraine.

Mr. Baley is founder, and was for many years the conductor and music director, of the Nevada Symphony Orchestra in Las Vegas. Currently, he is distinguished professor of music at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

His current projects include producing for release (winter 2003-2004) seven CDs of the music of Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov, four CDs of the music of Yevhen Stankovych, as well as CDs devoted to the music of Oleh Kyva, Volodymyr Huba, Volodymyr Runchak and the pianist Evgeni Gromov performing piano music of Ukrainian composers.

His immediate composition projects include work on the String Quartet, a piano cycle for New York pianist Jed Distler titled "Cante Hondo" and based on flamenco motifs, and a series of guitar pieces to be written for the virtuoso Ricardo Cobo.

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