For 15 years, University of Arizona composing professor Daniel Asia has curated the UA School of Music’s annual “Music + Festival,” a weekend of concerts and symposiums centered on a single musical figure.
This week’s 16th annual event, which runs Thursday, Oct. 12-Sunday, Oct. 15, at the school of music’s Holsclaw and Crowder halls, turns its attention to its creator.
The festival’s eight concerts — the most they’ve ever done, Asia said — will feature Asia’s works alongside the works of composers he taught, mentored or befriended.
The festival is Asia’s last hurrah with the school, where he has taught for 35 years. He recently announced that he will retire at the end of the school year.
“I just turned 70,” he said, adding that he’s been considering retiring for the past year. “It’s been a good 35-year run. That’s enough.”
“Asia, His Teachers Druckman & Perera, and his Friends and Students” will feature three guest soloists: celebrated cellist Julian Schwarz, son of the longtime Seattle Symphony Conductor Gerard Schwarz, who guested with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra in 2018; baritone Jeremy Huw Williams, who has a long history with the UA music school; and composer/flutist Robert Dick, who Asia met as a grad student at Yale and for whom he composed “Plum: DSII” in 1977.
Jeremy Huw Williams
Asia said Dick performed “Plum” around the world and recorded it, giving Asia a big push early in his career.
Dick will perform the world premiere of Asia’s 2017 work “The Wind Cries” for glissando flute during a recital to open the festival on Thursday. Dick created the Glissando Headjoint, an attachment for the flute that changes its pitch when you slide the bar.
Flutist Robert Dick performed one of Daniel Asia's first works, which Asia said was a boost to his composing career.
Schwarz, who Asia described as one of the country’s finest young cellists, will perform Asia’s 1997 cello concerto that he wrote for cellist Carter Brey. Brey premiered the piece with the Greensboro (North Carolina) Symphony Orchestra in 1998 and before he could perform it again was named the New York Philharmonic’s principal cellist.
Cellist Julian Schwarz will be part of the UA Music + Festival this weekend celebrating retiring composing professor Daniel Asia.
“This will be the first time (the concerto) will be performed in 25 years and never in Arizona,” Asia said.
One of the festival’s highlights will come during a late-night concert on Saturday, Oct. 14, dubbed “Electro-acoustic and Amplified Music.” The concert features Jacob Druckman’s 1971 work “Synapse/Valentine,” performed by Philip Alejo on contrabass, and “Sacred and Profane,” an electronic-acoustic song cycle Asia composed with Kip Haaheim.
Asia said he and Haaheim composed and recorded the 45-minute work on a computer.
“I’m hoping we’re going to get a young, hip audience that is interested in new things,” he said. “I want the Club Congress crowd. They are going to dig this a lot.”
Asia said he’s not sure if this weekend’s “Music + Festival” is the final installment of the series that he launched in 2008.
“That will be a decision of the School of Music,” said Asia, whose retirement plans include the world premiere of an opera he composed with the late poet Paul Pines.
Asia has been working on “The Tin Angel Opera,” based on Pines’ novel of the same name, for 10 years. The opera, based on the famous Bowery jazz club the Tin Palace in New York, will be performed in spring 2025 in New York City. The story focuses on the owner trying to keep the club and music alive while facing threats from a cast of unsavory characters including drug dealers, gangsters, corrupt cops and, Asia’s favorite character, the Bahamian drug runner Black Hattie.
“I am jumping out of my skin because I didn’t know if I would hear this before I died,” Asia said, noting that Pines didn’t live long enough to see it staged. Pines, who Asia met at a writers retreat in late 1978 when Pines was writing “Tin Angel,” died five years ago.
After his death, Pines’ wife found four poems he had written on his desk. She sent them to Asia, who spent the last year setting them to music that he called “Pines Last Poems.”
Pianist Daniel Linder will perform the world premiere of the piece on Sunday to close out the festival.
Researchers analyzed the music choices of guests on the British radio program ‘Desert Island Discs’. They found that the music we listen to between the ages of 10 and 30 defines us for the rest of our lives.
