Program notes;
Charles Shere was born in Berkeley, California in 1935 and grew up there and on a small farm in Sonoma County, where he attended high school and learned to play most wind instruments. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in English; then studied composition with Robert Erickson at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and privately, and conducting with Gerhard Samuel.
The first public performance of his music was of incidental music for Tennessee Williams' Camino Real, given at UC Berkeley in 1958. He has since composed music in every medium; his opera to Marcel Duchamp's La Mari‚e mise a nue par ses c‚libataires, mˆme, composed with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, was presented (in part) in 1984; and other music has been commissioned and performed by violinist David Abel, the Contra Costa Symphony, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, the Oakland Symphony Youth Orchestra, the Arch Ensemble, the Cabrillo Festival and others.
He was music director of KPFA, 1964-67; and announcer, director, producer and critic at KQED, 1967-73; and instructor at Mills College, 1973-84; and art and music critic at the Oakland Tribune, 1972-88.
Although the Three Pieces for Piano were written nearly thirty years ago they are being given their first public performance today. (An orchestral version of the music, the Small Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, was performed in 1965 at the Cabrillo Festival by Nathan Schwartz.)
The two outside movements are centered on soft dynamic levels and smoothly phrase lines. The center movement, the last to be composed, is pitched on a much louder level, and alternates violent and rapid gestures with ringing sonorities. The second movement uses only pitches omitted in the outer movements; otherwise the composition follows only intuitive principles of structure, not conventional tonal or serial concepts. The pieces were dedicated to Edith Fitzell -- "bright; cheerful; generous," in the composer's words -- and this first performance is dedicated to her memory.
RAE IMAMURA pianist Annie's Hall 1610 Carleton Street Berkeley, CA (510) 540-7948 4:00pm Sunday, March 28, 1993
Piano Sonata, No. 2 (1911-1915) Charles Ives "Concord, Mass., 1840-1860" 1. Emerson 2. Hawthorne 3. The Alcotts 4. Thoreau
-Intermission-
Three Pieces for Piano (1964) Charles Shere
Incarnation II (1978) Somei Satoh for piano and digital delay
Rae Imamura is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley and received an M.F.A. from Mills College while studying piano with Bernhard Abramowitsch. She has given many solo and chamber concerts, spanning Baroque through contemporary repertoire, including solo performances at the Seibu Museum in Tokyo; The Kitchen in New York City; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; New Langton Arts in San Francisco; and 1750 Arch St. in Berkeley.
Ms. Imamura has concertized extensively in the Bay Area, and in France, Germany, Italy, Austria, England and Japan. She currently is on the faculty of the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts in Richmond, and teaches privately in Berkeley.
Typed by Cheryl Vega 6-1-95