Bruce Curlette

Fifteen Minutes of Fame: Bruce Curlette - 2011

Dr. Curlette is an active performer who has been featured on national venues such as the Oklahoma Clarinet Symposium and the national conference for the National Association of College Wind and Percussion Instructors. Dr. Curlette has also taught the clarinet studio at The Ohio State University while its current professor, James Pyne, was on sabbatical. Prior to his tenure at Cedarville, Dr. Curlette was a member of the Grand Rapids Symphony and the Pittsburgh Ballet Orchestra. He received his M.M. degree in clarinet performance from Eastman School of Music in 1981 and his D.M.A. degree in clarinet performance from The Ohio State University in 1991. Dr. Curlette has studied with James M. Pyne, D. Stanley Hasty, Gervase de Peyer, and Carl H.C. Anderson and has been on the Cedarville music faculty since 2001.

Concert Dates

  • October 30, 2011 - New York City

15 one-minute selections for Bruce Curlette

  • Roundabout

    Virginia Botha

    Virginia Botha (born 1992) is currently studying Composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Australia. Having developed a keen interest in musical composition throughout high school, Virginia is pursuing her passion under the guidance of Matthew Hindson and Damien Ricketson. Virginia also teaches and performs on violin and piano.

    "Roundabout" takes its inspiration from the shock of being knocked off a pushbike. The opening motif portrays the idea of someone's heart thumping uncontrollably; erratic semiquaver passages are intended to convey dizziness and a feeling of disbelief. The overall intention behind the piece is to convey physical and mental reactions to an unexpected fright.

  • Clarypso

    Remigio Coco

    Pianist and composer, Remigio Coco is born in Maenza (Italy) in 1965 and lives in Latina, near Rome. He received his Piano Diploma in 1985, and graduated in Electronic Music in 2007. His works range from chamber music to electroacoustic pieces, also with live electronics.

    "Clarypso" is a short piece for solo clarinet composed in 2011, in which reminiscences of calypso (hence the name), latin rhythms and a little bit of jazz are mixed together.

  • Chorinho

    Douglas DaSilva

    Douglas DaSilva is a composer, guitarist, educator and Artistic Director of the Composer's Voice Concert Series and Premiere Salon Concerts in New York City. He composes in various styles including jazz, pop, children's music, chamber music and experimental. Much of his writing is influenced by Brazilian music and self-inflicted stress.

    "Chorinho", a musical paradigm of the amalgamation which made up late 19th Century Brazil: polka & African rhythms, Franco-Iberian concepts of harmony join in this music of the streets. I've attempted to pull choro into the 21st Century by using a decatonic scale system and compressing the traditional AABBACCA form.

  • Soliloquy

    Malcolm Dedman

    Born in London in 1948, Malcolm Dedman was initially self-taught, having started to compose when he was 12. He had formal composition lessons with Patric Standford at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1974-75, and he gained a Masters Degree in Composing Concert Music in 2005.

    Written for clarinet solo in 2011, "Soliloquy" is an expression of that term used in drama, i.e. a solo in which the player talks to him or herself. The piece starts calmly in the low register, builds to a climax in the high register before returning to the opening calm.

  • The light of a match

    Jim Fox

    Los Angeles-based composer Jim Fox's music-usually quiet, slow, unassuming, and often described by critics as "austere" and "sensuous"-has been commissioned and performed by ensembles and soloists throughout the U.S. and recorded on the Cold Blue, CRI, Advance, Grenadilla, Raptoria Caam, and Citadel labels.

    "The light of a match" was written with the often-terse, often-angular motifs of great soprano saxophonist and composer Steve Lacy darting about the recesses of my mind. Not meant to imitate Lacy's work, it simply allows short moments of activity, some a bit technically daunting, to jostle about.

  • Fire

    Tony Franklin

    Tony Franklin, born 1991, is a composer of many different styles and genres. His works have been performed at various locations in Indiana by groups such as the JCFA Composers Orchestra of Butler University, where he currently studies under Dr. James Mulholland, Dr. Frank Felice, and Dr. Michael Schelle.

    Relaxing at home. Something that all of us enjoy, and something some of us are not able to do this enough. This is where this piece begins. Everything stays normal for a little while, but eventually things take a turn for the worse.

  • Hide and Seek

    Murray Gross

    An award-winning composer and conductor, Murray Gross studied at New England Conservatory, Oberlin College, and Michigan State University. Currently on the faculty at Alma College (Michigan), his compositions have been performed by the New York New Music Ensemble, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, and numerous professional and collegiate ensembles.

    Children's games, such as hide-and-seek, tag, and the popular variant "Marco-Polo" were all on my mind when composing this playful piece. Energetic, colorful, and challenging, this one-minute work was composed for clarinetist William Bruce Curlette.

  • Limericks and Laughter Thereafter

    Stanley M. Hoffman

    Stanley M. Hoffman (b. 1959, Cleveland, Ohio) holds degrees in Music Composition from Brandeis University (Ph.D.), New England Conservatory of Music (M.M.) and Boston Conservatory (B.M.). His music is published by ECS Publishing, Oxford University Press, Wehr's Music House and Fatrock Ink. He is currently Chief Editor at ECS Publishing.

    "Limericks and Laughter Thereafter" is a jovial piece composed in a chromatically saturated musical language. The clarinet tells and reinterprets the same limerick theme punctuated by musical chortling. Most of the clarinet's range is used to demonstrate the spectrum of tone colors (from mellow to shrill) it is can produce.

  • In statu nascendi

    Gabriel Malancioiu

    Gabriel Malancioiu (Romania) began the study of composition under the direction of Remus Georgescu, and in 2005 he began to attend the MA in composition within "Gheorghe Dima" Music Academy of Cluj, under the direction of Cornel Taranu, PhD, member of the Romanian Academy. Since 2007 he has been studying for his PhD degree in composition under the direction of Prof. Adrian Pop, PhD within "Gheorghe Dima" Music Academy.

    "In statu nascendi" is a metaphor of a slow process of transforming denser energies (low register, powerful sounds in the beginning of the piece) into rarefied ones (high register, ethereal multiphonic sounds at the end of the piece).

  • Morning in a Minute

    Peri Mauer

    Composer PERI MAUER: MM, BM Manhattan School of Music, BA Bard College, has composed works for solo instruments, chamber music ensembles, orchestra, and theater. She has received performances of her compositions in various new music festivals and is a recipient of awards and grants. Most recently, her trio Afterwords, was performed by Cross Island.

    "MORNING IN A MINUTE" was composed specifically for William Bruce Curlette, for consideration of performance in the October 30, 2011 Composers Voice 15-Minutes-of-Fame concert in NYC. It is a work inspired by, and meant to express, the dream-state from which we emerge in the morning as a new day dawns. There is fantasy entwined with recognizance, energized in knowing a new day has begun.

  • Miniature Sonata

    Jose Mora Jimenez

    Jose Mora-Jimenez was born in Costa Rica. He studied the majors Classical Guitar and Music Composition at the University of Costa Rica. He is currently finishing his composition studies at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague under the guidance of Gilius van Bergeik and Cornelis de Bondt.

    The typical sonata form sections are compressed into the limits of one minute. Two very contrasting musical materials are used to fill in the structure. The first "theme" is based on additive processes (both metric and melodic), while the second "theme" is flexible and very improvisatory in nature.

  • Little Joke

    Serban Nichifor

    Serban NICHIFOR (b. 25.08.1954, Bucharest); STUDIES: National University of Music Bucharest (NUMB), PhD Musicology; USIA Grant, 1982; - COMPOSITION PRIZES: Amsterdam (First Prize Gaudeamus), Tours, Evian, Atena, Toledo, Urbana-Illinois, Trento, Roma, Bydgoszcz, Hong Kong, Jihlava, Karlsruhe, Koln, Newtown-Wales, Birmingham-Alabama, Zagreb; Officer Belgium Crown Order; AT PRESENT: Professor at the NUMB.

    "Little Joke" for Bb Clarinet is dedicated to the extraordinary clarinet virtuoso William Bruce Curlette, "Little Joke" is a Jazzistic miniature inspirated by the Romanian dance "Joc".

  • For Clarinet 2

    Pinelli Rossano

    After classical studies, I have studied Harmony and Counterpoint at the Music Conservatory in Brescia and then I graduated in Composition at the Parma Conservatory under the guide of the composer and teacher Antonio Giacometti. I have been selected to attend seminars and masterclasses given by Franco Donatoni, Gyorgy Ligeti, James MacMillan.I have had a lot of commissions from many musicians and institutions, and my works have been performed in several national and international Festivals in Italy and abroad.

  • Bogong Dreaming

    David Shergold

    David Shergold; a composition student from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (Australia), has focused his creative energies towards finding his voice. Most notable of his work was his first string quartet, 'The Mortal Quartet' of which the first movement, 'Turbulence' was performed at the Sydney Opera House in 2007.

    "Bogong Dreaming" was written on a mild spring evening when night time road works had flooded my street with light. The bright greens of new growth on the deciduous trees, stood juxtaposed against the black night sky. And a solitary giant Bogong Moth fluttered dreamlike through this surreal setting.

  • Albumblatt n. 2

    Luca Vanneschi

    Luca Vanneschi (b. 1962 in Montepulciano) - Hans Werner Henze said about Vanneschi music: ". it is an intelligent, non conformist, elegant and full of grace music."

    "Albumblatt n. 2," for clarinet, is a kind of meditative soliloquy, underlined from very and very touching and intense variations, where the timbre colours the expression and it is a relevant element of the same structure. The sound dilates, compresses, lies down, dissolves into something else, and is left suspended, slides along unforeseeable lines, continuously running across chromatic itineraries.