The Circumpolar Music Series Has Begun!

by Dr. Sean Dowgray, CMS Faculty Organizer and Term Assistant Professor of Music

The Circumpolar Music Series kicked off its 2024-2025 events in October with an amazing concert featuring the Fairbanks Flutists, Wild Shore New Music, and Dr. Heidi Senungetuk. With the audience invited to sit on stage with the performers, every nuance of the performance could be heard and felt. Wild Shore began their performance with a work by the Kanaka Maoli composer, Leilehua Lanzilotti, entitled, we began this quilt there (2021) for two violins, viola, cello, and alto flute. Lanzilotti's work references quilts made by Queen Lili'uokalani during her imprisonment, some of which had secret messages within them. Conrad Winslow and Charly Akert then performed the intensely delicate Agita (2020) for piano and cello. Winslow expressed, "you can almost hear it as two sides of one person pulling apart and then finding a new kind of alignment... towards the end, suddenly without warning, nothing changes and everything changes."

Following this, Dr. Senungetuk presented selections from George Rochberg's Caprice Variations for Solo Violin, which she calls Qutaaŋuaqtuit (Dripping Music). Dr. Senungetuk presented a distinct interpretation of Rochberg's work, adding titles reflective of her Iñupiaq heritage to each variation performed. For example,  Rochberg's 34th variation titled "Molto adagio" became Oonuoqpuk (Long Night), therefore transforming a serialist composition originally inspired by Niccolò Paganini into a distinctly Alaskan adventure.

The final work on the program - Raven Chacon's For Zitkála-Šá (2022) - showcased each of the musicians individually as they took one movement each from Chacon's graphic score consisting of twelve different movements total. Each movement by Chacon was written for a living indigenous woman committed to music today, one of them being Dr. Senungetuk herself.

When I introduced the concert, I called it a distinctly Alaskan event, showcasing the fact that every member of Wild Shore New Music is from Alaska, with 5 out of 6 members from right here in Fairbanks! Now in their eleventh season, this was their first time performing as a group in Fairbanks. I could not have asked for a better way to kick off another year of CMS events by inviting these musicians home to share their stunningly original work with our community!

Please save the date for our next CMS event - Sounds of the Changing Arctic - which will be held on Thursday, November 14th at 7:30pm in the Davis Concert Hall and is a collaboration between the UAF Department of Music, The International Arctic Research Center (IARC), and three Juneau based musicians/composers Todd Hunt, Beth Leibowitz, and Michael Bucy. We will perform their newly composed chamber works, Glacial Pathways, Lost Ice, and Babel 2.0 that were composed in collaboration with IARC scientists Joanna Young, Olivia Lee, and Vladimir Alexeev. This program will feature students from Choir of the North (Dr. Jaunelle Celaire, director), the UAF Percussion Group (Dr. Sean Dowgray, director), the Iñu-Yupiaq Dance Group, as well as student, faculty, and community musicians.

 

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About the Author

 

Dr. Sean Dowgray is a classical percussionist specializing in modern and contemporary music. Dowgray is a proponent of creative collaborations which has resulted in recent musical works by Daniel Tacke (Vorrücken and einsamkeit), Josh Levine (Shrinking world/expanding and Les yeux ouverts) as well as new chamber works by Justin Murphy-Mancini (Sic itur ad astra and A Song of Grecis.) and Lydia Winsor Brinadmour (As if, sand). In the recent past, Dowgray has collaborated closely with composers including Jürg Frey (Garden of Transparency), Christopher Adler (Strata), Ioannis Mitsialis (Machine Mode), Lewis Nielson (Where Ashes Make the Flowers Grow and NOVA), and James Wood (Cloud Polyphonies). As a soloist, Dr. Dowgray has focused extensively on works that stretch the technical and expressive capabilities of both instrument and performer. This includes the work of Jason Eckardt, Josh Levine, Daniel Tacke, Salvatore Sciarrino, Lewis Nielson, David Lang, Christopher Adler, Brian Ferneyhough, Luciano Berio, Richard Barrett. Dowgray has been featured as a soloist at the Oberlin Percussion Institute, the Percussive Art Society International Convention (PASIC), the WasteLAnd New Music Series, Harvard’s Institute for Advanced Learning, the University of Arizona, the SoundON New Music Festival, and Eureka! Musical Minds of California. As a creative practitioner, Dowgray has focused recently on his project, WHEN for mixed ensemble set to premiere in 2025. He recently completed the interdisciplinary collaboration, In A Time of Change: Boreal Forest Stories featuring artists and scientists. As part of this collaboration, Dowgray created the work Moving Through the Boreal Forest in partnership with Maïté Agopian (light and shadow work) and Daryl Farmer (poetry), Associate Professor of English at UAF. Dr. Dowgray is a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy where he studied with John Alfieri, the Oberlin Conservatory (B.M.) where studied with Michael Rosen, the University of Alaska Fairbanks (M.M.) where he studied with Dr. Morris Palter, and the University of California San Diego (D.M.A) where he studied with Steven Schick. In Dr. Dowgray's dissertation, Time Being: Percussion as a Study of Time, he presents an analyses of new and rarely heard works for and with percussion through theoretical frameworks of time study from authors including Jonathan Kramer, J.T. Fraser, Edward T. Hall, and others. Recent notable performances include John Corigliano's percussion concerto, Conjurer with the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra and Lewis Nielson's Lengua Encubierto for solo percussion at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC).