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Two by Three

Nathan Froebe composer

Duo Rouge
Jessica Raposo & Mihoko Watanabe flute, piccolo, alto flute

Michael Seregow piano

Release Date: February 2, 2024
Catalog #: NV6601
Format: Digital
21st Century
Chamber
Solo Instrumental
Flute
Piano

If there were two words to describe Nathan Froebe’s musical output, they would be: exuberant and ruminative. In fact, these two attributes might arrive at a tie on TWO BY THREE, a selection of energetic freetonal, programmatic pieces for a myriad of flutes and piano.

The thoughtful nature of these works is apparent even in their respective titles: Meditation, Three Scenes for Wind and Hammer, and Essay for Piccolo, Piano, and Alto Flute, to name but a few. Meticulously composed by Froebe and impeccably performed by flutists Jessica Raposo and Mihoko Watanabe with pianist Michael Seregow, TWO BY THREE sweeps through the mind like a fresh breeze on a crisp April morning.

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Track Listing & Credits

# Title Composer Performer
01 Three Scenes for Wind and Hammer: I. Ice Sculptures Nathan Froebe Jessica Raposo, flute, piccolo; Michael Seregow, piano 3:46
02 Three Scenes for Wind and Hammer: II. Whispering Mines Nathan Froebe Jessica Raposo, flute, piccolo; Michael Seregow, piano 4:25
03 Three Scenes for Wind and Hammer: III. Forged in Flames Nathan Froebe Jessica Raposo, flute, piccolo; Michael Seregow, piano 2:49
04 Meditation 1 Nathan Froebe Mihoko Watanabe, flute 3:09
05 Meditation 2 Nathan Froebe Mihoko Watanabe, flute 2:30
06 Meditation 3 Nathan Froebe Mihoko Watanabe, alto flute 2:42
07 Commune Nathan Froebe Jessica Raposo, flute; Mihoko Watanabe, alto flute 5:16
08 Essay for Piano and Two C Flutes Nathan Froebe Jessica Raposo, Mihoko Watanabe - flute; Michael Seregow, piano 9:21
09 Essay for Piccolo, Piano, and Alto Flute Nathan Froebe Jessica Raposo, piccolo; Mihoko Watanabe, alto flute; Michael Seregow, piano 6:36
10 Essay for Two Flutists and Pianist Nathan Froebe Jessica Raposo, Mihoko Watanabe - flute, piccolo, alto flute; Michael Seregow, piano 10:01

This project was supported in part by Indiana University’s Presidential Arts and Humanities Program.

Recorded August 2023 at Sursa Performance Hall at Ball State University in Muncie IN
Recording Session Producer & Engineer Christoph Nils
Mixing Christoph Nils
Mastering Melanie Montgomery

Executive Producer Bob Lord

VP of A&R Brandon MacNeil
A&R Danielle Sullivan

VP of Production Jan Košulič
Audio Director Lucas Paquette

VP, Design & Marketing Brett Picknell
Art Director Ryan Harrison
Design Morgan Hauber
Publicity Kacie Brown
Digital Marketing Manager Brett Iannucci

Artist Information

Nathan Froebe

Nathan Froebe

Composer

Nathan Froebe (b.1983) is a composer, conductor, and music educator. Having written for band, chorus, orchestra, chamber settings, and electronic media, his works have been performed both nationally and internationally, and frequently appear as favorites in the Midwest. Additionally, his works have been featured at a number of festivals and conferences, including the North American Saxophone Alliance, the International Tuba-Euphonium Association, the National Flute Association, the International Trombone Festival, and the Society of Composers, Inc. Froebe’s works often focus on narrative design and gestural presentation, utilizing a harmonic palette that ranges from thorny chromaticism to exuberant lyricism.

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Jessica Raposo

Jessica Raposo

flute

Dr. Jessica Raposo is Associate Professor of Music and Chair of the Fine and Performing Arts Department at Indiana University East in Richmond IN. An active solo and chamber musician in Indiana and Connecticut, recent projects include Duo Rouge, a flute duo performing on multiple flutes, and The Melba Project, a soprano/flute duo.

Her orchestral experience includes Orchestra Indiana, the Vancouver and Burnaby symphonies, Michigan Pops Orchestra, and the Rome Festival Orchestra. Raposo was flutist with the Wolverine Winds quintet, the Goodenough Chamber Orchestra, Trio Euterpe, and the Tempest Flute Ensemble. She performed for Sir James Galway at the University of British Columbia’s FluteFest in 2005, and won the 2007 National Flute Association’s Piccolo Masterclass Competition.

Raposo earned her music degrees from the University of Michigan, the Royal Academy of Music, and the University of British Columbia. Her research into the flute’s English performance history won her the National Flute Association’s 2008 Graduate Research Competition. Her articles have been published in the journals of the NFA, British Flute Society, and Netherlands Flute Society. Raposo is a frequent presenter and performer at the NFA annual conventions, and has presented at the College Music Society national conference and the IUPUI Assessment Institute.

Mihoko Watanabe

flute

A celebrated and versatile international flutist, Mihoko Watanabe has won competitions sponsored by both the Japan Flute Association and the National Flute Association (NFA) and has appeared in Japan, Israel, Canada, England, and the United States as a recitalist, chamber musician, orchestral musician, concerto soloist, educator, and ethnomusicologist.

As a member of the Ball State University Faculty Residency Ensemble, Musical Arts Wind Quintet, Watanabe received the National Endowment for the Arts grant in 2010. As a result, Musical Arts Wind Quintet produced an album, American Breeze, with Albany Records in 2012. In 2006, as a member of Duo Viva, she recorded the album Doppler Effect of Little Piper in 2006. She performed with Hibiki Trio (flute, viola, and harp), Trio Harmonia (flute, viola, and piano), Trio Piacere (flute, cello, and piano), and Duo Rouge (two flutes) with Jessica Raposo.

She has held several principal flute positions and performed with American and Canadian orchestras. She is the principal flutist of the Orchestra Indiana and has performed with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and Fort Wayne Philharmonic.

In addition to being a gifted flutist, she is devoted to ethnomusicology. She researched Flute Solo Pieces by Japanese Composers. Her research resulted in a feature article in the Spring 2008 issue of the Flutist Quarterly, the official journal of the NFA, and led to lecture recitals at the 2007 NFA Convention, the 2010 British Flute Association Convention in England, and the 2013 International Flute Festival at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg in Germany. In 2011, her article was translated into Dutch and published in the Nederlands Fluit Genootschap’s Fluit, the official journal of the Dutch Flute Association. In 2013, the writing was translated into German for the DGfG e.V.’s Flöte aktuell.

She is a professor of flute at Ball State University and a chair of entrepreneurial studies in music. Before joining the School of Music, she taught at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, the Memorial University of Newfoundland, and the University of Windsor, Canada. She is a practitioner and coach for Mindful Meditation.

mihokoflute.com

Michael Seregow

piano

Pianist Michael Seregow enjoys a multifaceted career as a performer, teacher, and recording artist. An avid chamber musician, he has received national and international recognition in addition to winning numerous prizes and competitions. In 2020 he was the winner of The American Prize in chamber music performance, and more recently in 2022 he was awarded 2nd prize in the Puerto Rico Center for Collaborative Piano’s International Collaborative Piano Competition.

Seregow regularly performs with internationally recognized artists throughout the world. Recent highlights include performances at the 18th Encuentro Universitario Internacional de Saxofón México in Mexico City, the 2nd International Conference on Women’s Work in Music in Wales, as well as at conferences for the International Trombone Festival (Salt Lake City UT; Conway AR), North American Saxophone Alliance (Tempe AZ), College Music Society (Louisville KY), and National Flute Association (Salt Lake City UT). Additionally, Michael has performed recitals and given masterclasses throughout the United States as well as in Costa Rica, Honduras, and Scotland. Currently a member of the piano faculty at Ball State University in Muncie IN, he has also served on the keyboard faculties at Washington State University, University of Puget Sound, and University of Oregon. A sought-after pedagogue, he has presented lectures and master classes in the United States, the United Kingdom, and in Latin America.

michaelseregow.com

Notes

The concept and creation of this piece came from an expedited need; my colleague and I needed something to perform in a relatively short time frame. In many ways, this piece is the distilled essence of my own creative artistic process: find a kernel of an idea, hammer it out, and give vivid shape to a unique image.

Focusing on the primary actions of sound production for both the flute and the piano lead to the title, whereupon I decided to explore the various ways that the wind and hammer(s) might meet. “Ice Sculptures” is about harsh cold rigidity that is shaped by chiseling out lines and shapes. “Whispering Mines” envisions a miner trapped in the depths who, during his methodical digging, begins to hear voices that slowly infect his mind, driving them to madness. “Forged in Flames” mimics the process of metalworking and crafting a weapon with sparks flying, loud banging, and constantly repeating figurations giving the metal form.

— Nathan Froebe

These Meditations are meant to be brief, instrument-agnostic works, meaning that any instrument that the performer wishes to use may be utilized. They have been composed in such a way that the performer may take liberties with the performance of the material to suit their given instrument. The performer has free reign to interpret any non-standard symbols as they see fit, and they may freely transpose any line to any other register for either artistic or practical purposes.

— Nathan Froebe

Three core ideas coalesced to create the basis for this piece.

The first core idea of the work is about mixing and interweaving timbre. The piece begins on a single pitch, then avoids pitch class simultaneities until they are miles apart before slowly collapsing back to a singularity.

The second core idea arose from the thought of how the performers would interact. Both players read from the same score, and traditional rhythmic notation is used in a nontraditional way. This results in the given durations being approximated suggestions, interpreted from two angles. The first angle is based on what type of rhythmic duration the note is prescribed. The second angle to this is the physical layout of the work, with the actual distance on the page between notes also suggesting their temporal executions. Rarely do any of the rhythms line up between the parts, and this gives the work an aleatoric, improvisatory feel.

The third core idea is to let the work be for any two instruments, allowing for a broad range of performers to have access to the music. This resulted in Part A taking the higher gestures and Part B moving through the lower gestures. All of the lines are composed in such a way that virtually any instrument may interpret it, with any suggested extended techniques being broad enough to have equivalency across multiple instrument families.

The title itself, Commune, is a result of the three core ideas working together — communing, if you will.

— Nathan Froebe

Essay: noun
1. a short piece of writing on a particular subject.
2. an attempt or effort.

The Essay Triptych is a collection of works for two flutists and piano, with the flutists utilizing the piccolo, alto flute, and C flute across the pieces at various points. The creation of this set of works was inspired by a performance from my colleague, Jessica Raposo, her duo partner Mihoko Watanabe, and their mutual pianist friend Dianne Frazer.

Each piece is labeled as an essay, hearkening to Barber’s use of the term in his works for orchestra. The essays each focus on a different musical object, presented as a thesis statement, which are then examined and developed, thus mimicking different types of written essays. There is no prescribed order for performance, nor do all three pieces need to be programmed together. There is also no external program associated with any of the essays, allowing for both the performers and audience to freely embrace their own interpretations of the music. This deemphasis on a specific external program also factored into the decision to title the works with the broad term of essay.

The bulk of the essays of this triptych were written and workshopped during a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in July 2021. Many thanks are extended to the resident fellows who participated in conversations that helped to shape these essays. The creation of these essays was also supported by Indiana University East, through its Summer Faculty Fellowship award.
The essays were composed in the following order:
• Essay for Piano and Two C Flutes
• Essay for Piccolo, Piano, and Alto Flute
• Essay for Two Flutists and Pianist

— Nathan Froebe

Essay for Piano and Two C Flutes is centered around the exploration of a single musical object as presented in the opening gesture of the piano: a D-flat triad, with a C and G laid on top of it. After the statement of this thesis, the music then strips away all but one pitch, and begins to explore various ways of creating musical gestures with various parameters of the thesis material. As the piece progresses, more elements of the initial thesis are reintroduced, such as bringing back pitches that were initially wiped away, and exploring the intervallic possibilities with different subsets of the thesis material. As with the central thesis being a single object that all the musical material is derived from, this expository essay was scored with all three instruments working as a singular entity; it is not a piece for flutes with a piano accompaniment.

— Nathan Froebe

Essay for Piccolo, Piano, and Alto Flute is modeled after the argumentative essay. The initial thesis statement given in the piano, a combined sonority of a D-major and E-major triad, has its material split between the piccolo and alto flute, with each “defending” their position in short, individual movements before actively debating in a duet. Halfway through the piece, a counterargument is given where the material absent in the original sonority, where the piccolo and alto flute again “defend” their interpretations of the material before joining together in a final discussion that results in declaration that the material is fluid enough to exist as both D-major and E-major simultaneously, with accentuations from the counterargument material.

— Nathan Froebe

Essay for Two Flutists and Pianist is cast in the vein of a both a reflective as well as exploratory essay. The last essay written in the Triptych, it reflects not only on the processes and techniques explored in the prior essays, but also on the composer’s catalog as a whole up to this point. The exploratory part comes from the metamorphosis of the initial material into its later forms through organic means. The flutists cycle through using the alto flute, C flute, and piccolo in turn to follow the natural progression of the textures and melodic lines. This work also focuses on clarity of the material, allowing the material to express itself as directly and simply as possible — a decision of direction the composer came to based on the complexity of his earlier works.

— Nathan Froebe