Haley Borchers

Junior Recital Program Notes

Trillium – Elizabeth Brown

Born in 1953 in Camden, Alabama where she grew up on an agricultural research station,
Elizabeth Brown combines composing with an extremely diverse performing life, playing flute,
shakuhachi, and theremin. She attended Julliard and there she received her master’s degree in
flute performance in 1977. Brown started composing in the late 1970s and her music has been
heard in many countries around the world, including Japan, Australia, the Soviet Union, and
Vietnam. Along with playing in the New York City Ballet Orchestra, she has also performed as a
thereminist in the American Symphony and in a music program in Japan for shakuhachi. She has
won many grants and awards throughout her life including the Guggenheim Fellowship. Bwon
currently resides in Brooklyn, New York with Visual artist Lothar Osterburg.

Composed in 1999 and commissioned by the National Flute Association for the High School
Competition in 2000, Trillium plays with the many timbres the flute can produce. Trillium is an
early spring woodland wildflower with leaves and white petals in threes, and the piece follows an
ABA form which reflects the three petals of the flower. Trillium is heavily influenced by
Japanese shakuhachi music and birdsong featuring many extended techniques such as
microtones, unusual trills, multiphonics, harmonics, and pitch bending.

Concerto, Op. 8 – Otar Gordeli

Otar Gordeli was born in 1998 in Tbilisi, Georgia, where he attended the Tbilisi Conservatory
and studied piano and composition. He completed his graduate work in composition at the
Moscow University. After graduating, he returned to the TIbilisi University and served as head
of the Georgian Musical Choreographic Society and was a member of the Composers Union
until his death in 1994. Throughout his life Gordeli composed works for orchestra, operetta, and
film scores. Examples of other works include Piano Quintet, Festivities Overture, and Piano
Concerto in C minor.

Originally written for flute and orchestra, Concerto, Op. 8 was composed in 1958 and remains
one of Gordeli’s most played and most well-known pieces of music literature. The piece is
composed as one continuous movement combining closely related allegro sections with closely
related andante sections. The concerto opens with a lively, technical allegro section and then
transitions to an andante section featuring lyrical, cantabile passages, which both return later in
the piece. The cadenza towards the end of the concerto leads directly into an energetic presto
section, which brings the piece to an exciting conclusion.