Meet in the Middle
w/MIDTONES and Asa Featherstone IV
April 13, 2025 | 4:30 PM
April 14, 2025 | 7:30 PM
PAR-Projects
1662 Hoffner Street | Cincinnati, OH. 45223
Scroll down for bios, photos and more
PROGRAM
Introduction: Brianna Matzke
Remarks: Asa Featherstone IV
Shawn E. Okpebholo: Circleplay (10’)
I. Circleplay I
II. Circleplay II
III. Circleplay III
Joseph Morris, clarinet
Remarks: Asa Featherstone IV
Shelley Washington: Middleground (10’)
The Red Door Quartet
Philip Marten, violin
Rachel Charbel, violin
Gabriel Napoli, viola
Diana Flores, cello
Remarks: Asa Featherstone IV
William Grant Still: Lyric Quartette (Musical Portraits of Three Friends) (16’)
I. The Sentimental One
II. The Quiet One (based on an Inca melody)
III. The Jovial One
The Red Door Quartet
Philip Marten, violin
Rachel Charbel, violin
Gabriel Napoli, viola
Diana Flores, cello
Florence Price: Adoration (4’)
The Red Door Quartet
Philip Marten, violin
Rachel Charbel, violin
Gabriel Napoli, viola
Diana Flores, cello
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Shawn E. Okpebholo (b. 1981)
Circleplay (2006)
for clarinet and live electronicsNow internationally recognized for his evocative, genre-crossing works, Nigerian-American composer Shawn E. Okpebholo was still a student at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music when he composed Circleplay in 2006. At the time, it was a bold experiment, pairing the acoustic flexibility of the clarinet with digital effects that were still relatively new to concert music. Today, live audio processing is almost commonplace, but Circleplay remains striking for how fully it embraces the surreal possibilities of electronic manipulation not as a gimmick, but as a way of expanding the clarinetist’s expressive and psychological terrain.
The piece is structured in three movements (Circleplay I, II, and III), each of which turns the clarinetist into a kind of duet partner with themselves. Through live delay, pitch shifting, sound freezing, and combinations of effects, the performer becomes entangled in conversation with echoes of their own playing. This presents a fascinating conundrum: how does a musician phrase freely when their past selves linger in the air, transformed and reanimated? Should the performer lean into those echoes and respond to them, or resist them and assert a singular voice?
I’m not entirely sure what “Circleplay” means, but I imagine it as a reference to the rounded, cyclical play that happens when children sit in a circle for games like Duck, Duck, Goose, where participants race around in constant motion, trying to outrun each other and themselves. In this piece, the clarinetist plays both chaser and chased, looping around their own gestures in a surreal kind of musical hide-and-seek. There’s a strange sense of individuality here, not quite split, but refracted. It’s a game of self-duet that to me feels both playful and quietly existential.
Now a celebrated figure in contemporary music, Lexington, KY native Okpebholo is based in Wheaton, Illinois and remains a Midwestern voice whose work draws from deeply personal and cultural sources. From reimagined spirituals to his searing art songs and orchestral works, his music reflects a commitment to narrative, emotion, and formal exploration. Circleplay offers a glimpse of that voice in formation: inventive, searching, and willing to follow an idea wherever it leads, even into a conversation with oneself.
Notes by Joe Bricker
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MIDDLEGROUND: the space grounded, the between, the center. The Heartland. The prairie, the grasslands, Konza, Flint Hills, Manhattan, Emporia, Salina. Where we gathered.
Home of the heart, heart of the home.
The years spent in cars, daydreaming, scooping handfuls of wheat, racing out into amber fields, cycling together, water wheel ice cream, fireworks and apples. The stories shared, books read sprawled in the yard, family prayers over anything, late evening walks, quiet nights. Open arms, open hearts, humble and extraordinary.
Together, with our wonder, our joy, we created an incredible painting with abounding colors. The kinds of colors that linger in the minds eye long after they are out of sight and cradle you long after goodbyes are spoken and car doors closed. The kinds that find you counting the days until the next birthday, the next holiday, the next bike ride, the next Camp, the next anything just so you can see them again. When you close your eyes you feel their warmth. They stay.
The middle ground: my refuge born from the land living in my heart. Where my home is, living and breathing outside of my body, thousands of miles apart. This hallowed ground.
For my family.
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William Grant Still (1895–1978)
Lyric Quartette (1939–1945)William Grant Still, often hailed as the “Dean of African American Composers,” led a life as multifaceted and lyrical as the music he wrote. Raised in Arkansas after being born in Mississippi, Still’s early years were steeped in the sounds of the Black South, but it was in the Midwest that his musical path began to take shape. At Wilberforce University, just outside of Dayton, Ohio, a historically Black college, Still studied science by day and music by any means possible: conducting the school band, absorbing hymns, spirituals, and the growing sounds of blues and jazz. His time in Wilberforce and later Oberlin marked a formative chapter in his life, where the tension between academic tradition and lived Black experience began to define his voice.
The Black Midwestern experience has been historically overlooked in narratives of American art, but for Still, this region was where ambition met opportunity, and where he first glimpsed what a distinctly Black compositional language might sound like. Though he would later move to New York and eventually Los Angeles, the values of community, resilience, and self-definition he cultivated in the Midwest remained central to his work.
The Lyric Quartette, subtitled “Musical Portraits of Three Friends,” was written at the request of Still’s friend and violinist Joachim Chassman, likely between 1939 and 1945 (although this date is disputed). Still reportedly discarded it after an early read-through, claiming something wasn’t right. Thankfully, his wife, librettist/writer/pianist Verna Arvey, fished it out of the trash and preserved it. Still’s daughter Judith would later publish the work, and the quartet has become one of his most frequently performed chamber works.
Each movement offers a musical sketch of someone dear, rendered with warmth, restraint, and grace. Lyric Quartette is a window into Still’s inner circle; an affectionate, understated tribute to the people who shaped him. Like much of his music, it is emotionally direct, melodically generous, and full of lyrical clarity.
I. The Sentimental One
The quartet begins with a kind of musical tenderness that is nostalgic without being saccharine. Still avoids overt drama here, favoring flowing lines and rich textures that seem to glow from within, that invite us to remember our own “sentimental ones”; those whose presence is felt not in grand gestures, but in quiet constancy.II. The Quiet One
This movement was a favorite with early audiences, many of whom asked the same question: Who was the Quiet One? Judith Still later speculated that it might have been her mother, a reserved but fiercely talented woman in her own right. Musically, Still holds back; soft harmonies and restrained counterpoint seem to hover just beneath the surface. It’s reflective, poised, and intimate, with occasional flashes of pizzicato that break the surface tension like skipping stones.III. The Jovial One
If the previous two movements live in stillness and memory, this finale bursts forward with rhythm and joy. Playful motifs bounce between the instruments, propelled by driving lower string lines and swirling flashes of violin color. Still’s voice here is light and smiling, but never flippant; it’s a celebration of friendship, of character, and of music’s ability to bring both to life.Notes by Joe Bricker
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Florence Price (1887–1953)
Adoration (1951), arr. for string quartet by Felix LinsmeierWritten originally for organ in the early 1950s, Adoration is one of Florence Price’s most performed short works; its tenderness and melodic clarity lending itself beautifully to arrangements like the one heard tonight for string quartet. Price wrote the piece near the end of her life, when she had already weathered decades of overlook and erasure from the predominantly white, male classical establishment.
Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Price eventually made her home in Chicago, where she built much of her professional network and launched the most visible chapters of her career. She became the first African American woman to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra when the Chicago Symphony premiered her Symphony in E Minor in 1933. But her successes were often accompanied by neglect and rejection, perhaps most famously from Serge Koussevitzky, to whom she wrote, “I have two handicaps: those of sex and race.” Still, she remained rooted in her musical and geographic communities, drawing on both Southern spiritual traditions and Midwestern resolve.
Adoration reflects that quiet persistence: the work is poised, lyrical, and full of grace; it's a brief but radiant example of a composer who, even in the face of exclusion, never gave up on beauty.
Notes by Joe Bricker
Composers: Shawn Okpebholo, William Grant Still, Shelley Washington
Collaborators: PAR-Projects, Midtones
A Special Thank You
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