JAVS Spring 2020

This book serves as a complement to Matthew Dane’s celebrated dissertation Coordinated effort: A study of Karen Tuttle’s influence on modern viola teaching. 4 Dane’s dissertation, which detailed Tuttle’s legacy by interviewing several of her students, was one of the few extended length documents that depicted Tuttle’s life and work. 5 The Karen Tuttle Legacy goes a step further, giving primary source accounts from six remarkably accomplished pedagogues and performers. Each of them brings their own spirit and an analytical mindset to their writing. The Karen Tuttle Legacy is a comprehensive treatise honoring a woman who profoundly shaped each of their careers, along with those of countless others among the rank and file in orchestras, quartets, and colleges throughout the globe. The writers offer vivid accounts of their studies with “Tut” (as many of her students and grandstudents lovingly refer to her). I highly recommend this book for violists everywhere, as it will serve as a valuable resource for generations to come.

The piece depicts the story of an imaginary prince who represents the corruption of the state, but whose humble childhood is also explored. Ms. Dixon Vanderveer writes, “When we step back out of the past and into the present, we realize that though his intentions were to rescue his people from past forms of oppression, ultimately, his desire for vengeance hardened his heart, continuing the political cycle of his past.” 8 The piece begins with a haunting, brooding theme in A-flat minor. As the piece develops, it begins to dance with agitation, shifting from a steady 3/4 into 4/4, 9/8, and 5/4 meters. The rhythmic trajectory depicts the prince’s authoritarian reign. When the prince begins to reflect on his childhood, a sprightly dance motive in 9/8 appears in E-flat Major. The humble, happy dance fades quickly when somber, tolling bells interrupt the nostalgic reminiscence. The good intentions that the prince may have had appear in the form of a slow and yearning minor melody. Dixon Vanderveer deftly weaves musical material representing happy childhood memories with a militaristic dance motive from the beginning of the piece before revealing the prince’s hardened heart at the end of the work through an embittered ponticello passage. This piece is available as a digital download on Ms. Dixon’s website, along with her 2018 work The Path Laid Before Me , composed for viola and piano. El príncipe is a thrilling and powerful work that would make for an excellent addition to an unaccompanied viola recital program.

Sakari Dixon Vanderveer: El príncipe sombrío y los recuerdos de su niñez (The Somber Prince and the Memories of His Childhood), 2011 Sakari Dixon Vanderveer’s 2011 El príncipe sombrío y los recuerdos de su niñez (The Somber Prince and the Memories of His Childhood) is a somber and reflective programmatic work

Aleksey Igudesman: Violamania , 2019

for solo viola. Ms. Dixon Vanderveer is a self-published, California-based composer; she received her BM in Composition at the University of Redlands (California), and has received commissions from artists Spencer Baldwin and Kelsey Broersma, and the PHAZE Ensemble. 6 Her piano quintet “Obsidian, rippled in moonlight, gleams” was premiered in the 2018–19 season by the Salastina Music Society, and her multilevel orchestra piece “The Enigma of the Twilight Stallion” has received premieres by two El Sistema programs during the 2019–20 season—MUSICA! (San Jacinto, California) and El Sistema Greece. 7

With his performances, Russian-born

Aleksey Igudesman has been responsible

for drawing new audiences to the violin through a combination of

talent, humor, and acting, and through collaborations with

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