Notes on Tonight’s Program
Thursday, 8 October 2026, 7:30PM
Ian Jeffress, saxophones
Andrew Adams, piano
Vicariously Through You (2024) - Ephraim Champion
About the piece:
I have a sincere admiration for people who are good at what they do. Often, I think about what it'd be like to be "in their shoes:"
What does it feel like to achieve mastery?
To live out one' s dream?
To reach and impact others on a large scale?
As someone who is working daily to master my own craft, these kinds of questions intrigue me, and I'm continually inspired by those who've stirred such questions within. Funny enough, I'm sure extra ordinary people think little about the impact of their artistry because they're too busy doing it.
This realization is where I — the dreamer I am — am pulled from the depths of my imagination to confront reality as it is. But it's through living vicariously through others — their success, their story, their dream — I've developed such deep appreciation for my own. I'm indebted to those who inspire me because they've shown, not just me, but us all just how possible our dreams are.
And yet, not everyone has a choice.
It's the cruel reality of life that some people have their dreams stripped from them through no true fault of their own. They have no choice but to live vicariously through others: it's the athlete with a torn ACL , the musician with focal dystonia , the parent who didn't have the same opportunity as their children. And now, they live indirectly through others, a part of them forever missing. . .
I don't mean for this to take a dark turn, as one can find peace in vicarious living. The solace it provides can be as beautiful as the journey to the dream itself. This piece is a reflection of all these thoughts . It's emotional, cathartic, introspective. It's dedicated to the dreamers, the doers, and those who never had the choice.
About the composer:
Chicago-based composer and musician Ephraim Champion’s music has been lauded as “strongly individual,” “compelling,” and “distinctive” (Chicago Classical Review). His work spans stage and screen, with highlights including Scenes from South Shore, Chicago (premiered by Gaudete Brass at the 2021 Ear Taxi Music Festival) and Humanhood (premiered by Constellation Men’s Ensemble, 2022). As the 2023 Hearing in Color/La Caccina Young Composer-in-Residence, he composed All Things Sublime and Colossal for the virtuosic women’s vocal ensemble, La Caccina, and A Stone of Hope (Martin’s Song) for the Music Institute of Chicago, featuring the talents of multi-Grammy nominated pianist, Marta Aznavoorian.
Champion’s international presence is growing. His Suite for the F Horn & Tenor Saxophone premiered at the 2023 World Saxophone Congress (Spain), followed by The Spectacle (commissioned by The Yamaha Tuba Duo) in Fukuoka, Japan (2024). April 2025 marked the debut of Ephraim’s significant first foray into larger ensemble writing with the Chicago Composers Orchestra’s premiere of Sonder & Ozurie, a Symphonic Sketch for Chamber Orchestra. In August of 2025, Ephraim’s piece, Vicariously Through You, was released by Neuma Records as part of the Project Encore, Vol. 2 album, commissioned by world-renowned and Grammy-winning classical saxophonist, Timothy McAllister.
An accomplished film composer as well, in 2023, Ephraim joined Slightly American Productions as their composer-in-residence, scoring Girls in the Back of the Club and Rejection is God’s Protection. Other IMDB credits include My Darling, Look At Me!, produced by A2C Entertainment and Repugnant Riddles Productions, and a feature-length documentary entitled Living Beneath Las Vegas, produced by Southwest Film Productions and set to release early 2026.
Beyond music, Ephraim enjoys writing, film, and time with his wife, Kianti, and their two yorkies, Heath and Ginger.
(note and bio by the composer)
Eliza’s Aria (2003) - Elena Kats-Chernin
About the piece:
Elena Kats-Chernin’s 2002 ballet The Wild Swans is based on the Hans Christian Andersen story of the same name. The tale tells of a princess whose eleven brothers are cursed to become swans; the princess, Eliza, discovers that she must break the curse by collecting painful stinging nettles in the dark forest and knitting them into shirts for each of the swan brothers. “Eliza’s Aria” is the ballet’s introduction of the princess to the audience, and showcases her inner goodness and innocence, along with her love of her brothers and home. The ballet, along with the orchestral suite drawn from it, and especially “Eliza’s Aria,” have become fixtures of ballet theatres and concert halls worldwide since the ballet’s 2003 premiere at the Sydney Opera House.
(note by the performer)
About the composer:
Among Elena Kats-Chernin’s extensive oeuvre are works in nearly all genres of classical composition: instrumental solo and ensemble pieces, symphonic, chamber orchestral and concertos, for plays, ballet and musical theater, choral and other vocal music. The composer has received numerous commissions from internationally renowned ensembles and institutions, including the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Australian World Orchestra, the Symphony Orchestras of Adelaide, Tasmania, Melbourne, and Sydney, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, the City of London Sinfonia, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, the North Carolina Symphony, as well as the opera houses of Antwerp, Stuttgart, and Kassel.
Kats-Chernin, who was born on 4 November 1957 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, as the younger of two daughters of a physician and an engineer, grew up from the age of four in the Russian regional capital of Yaroslavl. She devoted herself since earliest childhood to piano playing. She received instrumental instruction at music school, and later also composition lessons at the Sobinov Conservatory in Yaroslavl. At the age of fourteen, she passed the entrance examination at Moscow’s Gnessin Academy of Music and was one of nine candidates accepted from among 600 applicants. During her training there, her family decided to follow Kats-Chernin’s aunt and uncle, who had emigrated with their family to Australia, and so in 1975, at the age of seventeen, she settled in Sydney, where she continued her studies at the Conservatory of Music with Richard Toop (composition) and Gordon Watson (piano), among others. She received her diploma in 1979, whereby she was the first graduate to be granted a double degree as pianist and composer; for her concert exam, she played her own piano concerto, which also won her the Frank Hutchens Scholarship for Composition of the Music Teachers’ Association of New South Wales.
In the 1990s she wrote her first opera, Iphis, and, as a commission from ZDF/arte, the silent-film soundtracks to Victor Sjöström’s Körkarlen (The Phantom Carriage; 1921), Robert Siodmak’s Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday; 1930), and G. W. Pabst’s Abwege (The Devious Path; 1928). For the opening ceremony of the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, she collaborated with Meryl Tankard and composed Deep Sea Dreaming for children’s choir and orchestra. Wild Swans, after Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale of the same name, which was premiered in 2003 by the Australian Ballet and granted the Helpman Award in 2004, also emerged from the collaboration with Meryl Tankard; in 2019 it was accepted into the national Sounds of Australia archive. The Eliza Aria taken from this ballet score was used for many years for the TV/cinema advertising campaign “For the Journey” of the British financial service provider Lloyds and contributed to Kats-Chernin’s international fame.
For the inauguration of Barrie Kosky’s directorship in 2012, she arranged all three of Claudio Monteverdi’s surviving operas for the Komische Oper Berlin. For the theater music to Frankenstein, she was given, together with Daryl Wallis, the 2013 Sydney Theatre Award; in 2014 she received the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award. She was composer in residence of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra (2011) and of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (2017). Opera Australia granted commissions for the four-part TV soap opera The Divorce (2015) as well as for the artists’ opera Whiteley (2019). A great success in the German-speaking countries are her operas for young audiences.
Elena Kats-Chernin was named Officer of the Order of Australia in 2019, and is “represented artist” of the Australian Music Centre. Her works are published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes.
- Jens Luckwaldt, November 2025 (translation: Howard Weiner)
(bio reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes)
Children’s Songs (1980/1996) - Chick Corea, arr. R. Buckland
About the piece:
The “Children’s Songs” are the first collection of music I’ve written specifically for solo keyboard. I wrote the first song in 1971 to convey simplicity as beauty as represented in the spirit of a child. Song 1 though 15 were composed for the Fender Rhodes and 16 through 20 for the acoustic piano, although any of the songs can be played on either instrument. Songs 17 through 20 were composed during a one month period in 1980, completing the series. The songs lend themselves nicely to various forms of expansion with orchestration.
( - Chick Corea)
I first encountered this wonderful collection of pieces in the late 1980’s, was immediately drawn to them and intrigued by the last line of the preface above. I extracted a set of movements that I felt worked most successfully for solo saxophone and piano, and have performed these in concerts ever since. I was delighted in 1996 when Chick Corea gave me his blessing to record my arrangements of three of these on my CD “Towards The Light” Quartz 2020, and even more delighted this year when he also granted me his blessing to publish this set of arrangements, in the hope that this will introduce his wonderful music to an even wider audience…. In the original compositions, Chick Corea leaves all dynamics and articulations to the performer’s discretion – I have included some as a guide, but performers should feel free to honour the freedom that Chick Corea originally intended.
(- Rob Buckland)
About the composer:
A DownBeat Hall of Famer and NEA Jazz Master, 27-time Grammy winner, and keyboard virtuoso, Chick Corea has attained legendary status after five decades of unparalleled creativity and an artistic output that is simply staggering.
Chick is one of the most-nominated artists in the history of the Grammys, with 71 nominations. He's also earned 5 Latin Grammy Awards, with an additional 7 nominations.
From straight ahead to avant-garde, bebop to fusion, children's songs to chamber music, along with some far-reaching forays into symphonic works, Chick had touched an astonishing number of musical bases in his illustrious career while maintaining a standard of excellence that is awe-inspiring. A tirelessly creative spirit, Chick was named Artist of the Year three times between 2014 and 2018 in the DownBeat Readers Poll, a publication that called him “a pianist virtually without peer.” [For more information about Chick Corea’s life and career, please visit: https://chickcorea.com/about-chick/]
(bio reprinted by kind permission of Chick Corea Productions)
Whimsical Sketches of Fanciful Birds, Book 3 (2020) - Vincent Ho
About the piece:
When I was a child, birds fascinated me. So much so that I spent a great deal of time learning about the many varieties there were. With each species I learned, I would create imaginary cartoon-like characters of them and dream up little stories to amuse myself.
Book 3 is a continuation of my “Whimsical” series for alto saxophone and piano. Like Books 1 and 2, these movements are meant to be cartoon-like musical caricatures of various species of birds. With each bird, I personified them by associating the with amusing characteristics and personality traits that many of us could identify with. By doing so, this gave rise to many inventive musical ideas, opening up new possibilities of saxophone performance techniques while expanding my “Fanciful Bird” universe. The subtitles of each movement are self-explanatory regarding their narratives.
About the composer:
Vincent Ho is a multi-award winning composer of orchestral, chamber, vocal, and theatre music. His works have been described as "brilliant and compelling" by The New York Times and hailed for their profound expressiveness and textural beauty, leaving audiences talking about them with great enthusiasm. His many awards and recognitions have included four Juno Award nominations, Harvard University’s Fromm Music Commission, The Canada Council for the Arts' "Robert Fleming Prize", ASCAP's "Morton Gould Young Composer Award", four SOCAN Young Composers Awards, and CBC Radio's Audience Choice Award (2009 Young Composers' Competition).
During the period of 2007-2014, Dr. Ho has served as the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's composer-in-residence and had presented a number of large-scale works that have generated much excitement and critical praise. His Arctic Symphony has been described "as a beautiful work that evokes the Far North in a very special way" (John Corigliano), and "a mature and atmospheric work that firmly establishes Ho among North American composers of note" (Winnipeg Free Press). His percussion concerto, titled The Shaman, composed for Dame Evelyn Glennie was hailed as a triumph, receiving unanimous acclaim and declared by critics as "Spectacular" (The New York Classical Review), "A powerhouse work" (The Winnipeg Free Press), and "Rocking/mesmerizing...downright gorgeous" (The Pittsburgh Gazette). His second concerto for Glennie titled From Darkness To Light, Ho's musical response to the cancer illness, was lauded as "a lasting masterpiece of sensitivity and perception" (Winnipeg Free Press). His cello concerto, City Suite, composed for Canadian cellist Shauna Rolston, has received similar praise with critics calling it "Thrilling" (Windsor Star) and "Overflowing with striking ideas...The most successful piece heard at this year's Festival" (Classical Voice America).
Born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1975, Vincent Ho began his musical training through Canada’s Royal Conservatory of Music where he earned his Associate Diploma in Piano Performance. He gained his Bachelor of Music from the University of Calgary, his Master of Music from the University of Toronto, and his Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Southern California. His mentors have included Allan Bell, David Eagle, Christos Hatzis, Walter Buczynski, and Stephen Hartke. In 1997, he was awarded a scholarship to attend the Schola Cantorum Summer Composition Program in Paris, where he received further training in analysis, composition, counterpoint, and harmony, supervised by David Diamond, Philip Lasser, and Narcis Bonet.
In his free time, he enjoys running, reading, traveling, dancing, hiking, playing chess, and learning the keyboard works of Bach, Beethoven, Ravel, and Ligeti (among many others). He is also an enthusiast of old-time radio shows, photography, crime noir, Zen art, jazz, Jimi Hendrix, graphic novels, and Stanley Kubrick films.
Dr. Ho has taught at the University of Calgary and currently serves as Artistic Director to Land’s End Ensemble. His works are published and managed by Promethean Editions Ltd and Theodore Presser Company.
(note and bio by the composer)
Parallel Play (2019) - Sarah Kirkland Snider
About the piece:
Parallel Play was commissioned for Allison Loggins-Hull’s New Music USA-sponsored project Diametrically Composed, which asked five composers who also happened to be mothers to compose music about motherhood. The hardest part about motherhood for me is the letting go: embracing the vulnerability. I think this is true for my children, too, just in a different way. Parallel Play sets a dreamy, restless melody in the flute atop a grounded, supportive foundation in the piano, but in two slightly different harmonic worlds. These parallel narratives pull, play, and chafe at one another--sometimes teasing, at others, imploring--in search of something approaching grace in vulnerability.
About the composer:
Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider writes music of direct expression and vivid narrative, hailed as “rapturous” (The New York Times), “groundbreaking” (The Boston Globe), and “ravishingly beautiful” (NPR). Recently named one of the “Top 35 Female Composers in Classical Music” by The Washington Post, Snider’s works have been commissioned and performed by the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Conspirare, Cappella Amsterdam, eighth blackbird, Roomful of Teeth, Renée Fleming, Colin Currie, and Emily D’Angelo, among many others.
Her first opera, Hildegard (for which she wrote the libretto), recently premiered with LA Opera, earning a New York Times Critic’s Pick and the 2026 Best New Opera Award from the Music Critics Association of North America. Winner of the Detroit Symphony Lebenbom Award, her recent works include Forward Into Light for the New York Philharmonic, Drink the Wild Ayre for the Emerson String Quartet, and Mass for the Endangered, programmed by dozens of choirs globally.
Snider’s five full-length LPs—co-released on Nonesuch Records and/or New Amsterdam Records—have earned critical acclaim from The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, New Yorker, NPR, Pitchfork, Gramophone, The Guardian, and BBC Music Magazine. In 2026, her orchestral album Forward Into Light was shortlisted for the Opus Klassik Award in New Classical. A founding Co-Artistic Director of the non-profit New Amsterdam Records, Snider holds an M.M. and Artist Diploma from the Yale School of Music and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. Her music is published by G. Schirmer.
(note and bio by the composer)