School Notes: School of Music
January/February 2010

Yo-Yo Ma premieres concerto by Angel Lam ’10AD

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of music director Robert Spano, presented the New York premiere of Angel Lam’s Awakening from a Disappearing Garden on Saturday, November 7, at Carnegie Hall. Lam is a second-year student in the artist diploma program at the School of Music and a two-time winner of Carnegie Hall’s emerging composer commission. The piece, a concerto for cello and orchestra, is Lam’s third commission from Carnegie Hall and was first performed in Atlanta Symphony Hall in October 2009. In addition, Lam’s composition Empty Mountain, Spirit Rain was selected for the repertoire of Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble’s tours throughout the United States, Britain, Canada, China, Japan, and Switzerland in 2007 through 2009. The Silk Road Ensemble has recorded this work twice for Sony/BMG.

Prokofiev rediscovered

The Yale in New York concert series, directed by David Shifrin, will present a concert of rarely heard music by Sergei Prokofiev, including three premieres of recently rediscovered works. The program will feature Music for Physical Exercises, a fragment from the opera To the Distant Seas, and music for the ballet Trapeze. The program will be presented in New Haven on Monday, February 8, and in New York at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, on February 9.

Students and recent alumni garner prizes

In the tenth San Antonio International Piano Competition, Ryo Yanagitani ’08MMA won the Gold Medal—the competition’s top prize—and Andrea Lam ’04AD won the Silver Medal. In addition, Yanagitani received prizes for the best performance of a Romantic work and of a work by a Latin American composer, as well as the prize of the junior jury. Lam was awarded prizes for the best performance of a classical composition and best performance of a Russian work.

In Amsterdam in September, the prestigious Gaudeamus Prize was awarded to Ted Hearne ’09MMA for his work Katrina Ballads. (For a Yale Alumni Magazine report on Katrina Ballads and a link to audio, see "Lyrics Ripped From the Headlines.") The award is intended as a commission for a new work that will be performed at the 2010 International Gaudeamus Music Week. The Yale Percussion Group, which is directed by faculty member Robert van Sice, was among the select group of winners of the 2009 Percussive Arts Society (PAS) International Percussion Ensemble Competition. Igor Pikayzen ’11MM captured first prize in the Wronski International Competition for solo violin, held at the end of September in Warsaw, Poland.