2025/26 marked a year of growth for the Portfolio Project as we collaborated with the graduate composition department at UNC for the first time, bringing in some of their composers as well as having a second performance of the program on their campus in the beautiful Tew Recital Hall.
Performance Details
Performance 1
January 22, 5:30 pm
Nelson Music Room – Duke University
1304 Campus Drive
Durham, NC United States
Performance 2
January 23, 7:30pm
Tew Recital Hall – UNC Greensboro
100 McIver St
Greensboro, NC 27412
Participant Pieces
Erich Barganier (Duke) – The Dead Dog and Pony Show
Maybe Next Time
Thematically, the piece grapples with the loss of a relationship, friendship, or loved one and ultimately leans on the idea that maybe in the next life or when they meet again, everything will work out differently.
Ally Harvel
UNC Greensboro
Ally Harvel (UNC) – Maybe Next Time
Ronja Mokráňová (Duke) – Z JAVORINKY II
Clem Pearson (UNC) – Foxfire
Jacob Smith (UNC) – Move Fast, Break Things
Ethan Foote, Peace of Montreux
Peace of Montreux, for string quartet, is a disordered meditation on the nature of creativity. (Ethan Foote)
Ethan Foote is a composer and musician rooted in jazz, Euro-American folk music, and the Western classical tradition. From his grounding as a jazz bassist in his hometown of Washington, D.C., he ventured into songwriting, arranging, theatre, and concert music, developing a multidimensional creative practice as a performer-composer that has also been shaped by literature, philosophy, and religion. His work tends to be obliquely expressive, often attempting to analogize musical structures to spiritual ones and playing with the mirroring of form and the structures of human consciousness.
He received a BA in English from Oberlin College in 2010 and an MFA in Music Composition from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2020.
His commissioned work for Fuse Ensemble, Will There Be Jazz In Hell, premiered in May 2023.
Chris Williams, swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; (a remembrance)
In February 2022, the Australian composer Nigel Butterley (1935-2022) passed away, and this small remembrance piece was written with him in mind. Nigel was a teacher, a mentor, and a friend, and his passing an enormous loss. The line swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; comes from one of Nigel’s favourite poems, ‘Pied Beauty’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Although Nigel was particularly known for his vocal music and affinity with text, he felt that Hopkins wasn’t suitable for setting to music, in part because of its intricate linguistic texture and own internal music. So rather than setting the words to music, I’ve tried to set music to the words – to find something swift, slow, sweet, sour, adazzle, and dim. The poem praises all things “counter, original, spare, strange,” and I hope that the piece does the same, forging its own austere, strange, and beautiful ‘internal music’ for these words. (Chris Williams)
Chris Williams is an Australian composer. He completed his undergraduate studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and a Master of Philosophy in composition at the University of Oxford. In 2012 he was commissioned by Carnegie Hall where he worked with composer-in residence Kaija Saariaho. Previously, Chris was one of only six composers worldwide to be selected by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies to attend his Advanced Composition course at the Dartington International Summer School. He has received commissions from the Melbourne and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras, The Song Company, and the New Bristol Sinfonia.
Williams was the inaugural Friends of the National Library of Australia Creative Arts Fellow. He is an Associate Artist at the Australian Music Centre.