Sunday, Nov. 16, 2025  •  3 p.m.

Wexner Center for the Arts Galleries
Columbus, OH

Program

Portraits of Langston

Valerie Coleman

I
II

Joseph Zishka, clarinet
Shreeya Yampati, flute
Li Wang, piano

Yuhwa for Solo Flute

Adolphus Hailstork

Nic Digena, flute 

Dawn, Still Darkness

John Dove

Connor Bruce, voice
Nancy Nehring, piano

Eulogy for Augusta

Isaac McCarthy

Isaac McCarthy, banjo

Petite Suite

Claude Debussy

I En Bateau (On a Boat) 
III Menuet

Yiwen Zhu, piano
Lily Jiaxuan Wang, piano

Catching Shadows

Ivan Trevino

Jacob Cauley, marimba
Kye Pyeatt, marimba

Vent de Folie

Didier Favre

Kaleigh Rummel, flute 
Almudena Curros-Varela, clarinet 
Ben Newman, oboe 
Brandon Golpe, bassoon 
Kaylee Skaris, horn
 

Artist Statements

Joseph Zishka

Portraits of Langston | Valerie Coleman

Gallery A: Nanette Carter — Abstraction and Meaning

Valerie Coleman is an African American flutist and composer. Her work is heavily inspired by jazz, soul, and Afro-Cuban musical traditions mixed with modern European music theory. Her composition Portraits of Langston for clarinet, flute and piano embodies a lot of these African music traditions as well as Langston Hughes’ work as a poet. Langston Hughes is an African American poet renowned for his work during the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a celebration of African American art slightly before and during the Civil Rights movement. Art created during this period was exclamatory for freedom and equality for African Americans. Langston Hughes’ poetry was heavily influenced by blues and jazz which was deeply personal to the African American struggle.

Nanette Carter’s three-dimensional abstract paintings in Afro Sentinels are heavily influenced by jazz and represent the intangible moments of current sociopolitical issues. Carter uses abstract pieces of red and brown colored Mylar to create a series of protective figures that stand guard over the entire gallery. These figures represent the protection of social injustice against minorities of color through protests and acts of breaking boundaries. Langston Hughes’ poems represented in Coleman’s work also serve as a form of protest against social injustices.

Before each movement, the correlating poem by Hughes is narrated to set the atmosphere. The first movement, Helen Keller, is about Keller’s message of strength through her disabilities, resonating deeply with Hughes and the Civil Rights movement. In the second movement, Danse Africaine, Hughes’ poem is read aloud before the music begins which describes a scene of dancing to the beat of a tom-tom drum in a circle. In the musical notation, Coleman writes “djembe-like” in the clarinet part. The djembe is a drum in West African culture that serves as a voice to communicate with the village and the ancestors. The drum plays a huge part in African musical culture and this movement is rhythmic throughout to represent the drum.

The composition itself represents Carter’s three-dimensional abstract art in a musical form. The first movement uses the juxtaposition of light and dark timbres of the flute and clarinet to represent Helen Keller transcending her physical disabilities. In the beginning, the clarinet and flute move independently and slowly converge at a certain point until they completely play together in harmony. In Carter’s work, one can tell that the figures are made up of individual abstract shapes of Mylar that are placed together to create a structured form, telling a story about those who overcame oppression to protect. Similarly to how Carter breaks boundaries with three-dimensional composition, Coleman breaks boundaries by using non-Western rhythmic structure. Valerie Coleman breaks the usual boundaries of typical composition by writing complex triplet rhythms in 4/4 that visually look more challenging than if it were written in 12/8 meter. The dance accelerates until finally the players reach the second Piu Mosso where it is written 12/8, the dance gradually falls into 2 because of its fast tempo.

Nic Digena

Yuhwa for Solo Flute | Adolphus Hailstork

Gallery A: Nanette Carter — Abstraction and Meaning

Before I entered the exhibit hall showcasing Nanette Carter’s Afro Sentinels, I read a blurb on the wall that discussed the work. It gave some information on the artist, the medium of the pieces, but also mentioned how the compositions are “built with line, color, shape and texture.” As a musician, these words immediately jump out to me; I am always trying to enable these facets into my music making. Perhaps I can be inspired by how she incorporates them into her work.

Carter has a heavy use of color in her exhibit, it is perhaps the first thing one notices upon entering the space. The colors used are contrasting and catch your eye. Afro Sentinels features many works of paint on Mylar. These abstract shapes she creates have very visible paint strokes, which add both texture and line to her art. The strokes create an illusion of dimension with some strokes appearing darker and some lighter, showing more of the film. Some of the visible brushmarks curve and meander, creating direction. The shape feels like it is going somewhere, as she likened them to “poured butter.” The placement of these shapes are improvisatory, creating a series of overlapping shapes.

I struggled to notice balance in Carter’s works, until I reached the final wall. About a dozen oddly embellished vertical lines were displayed parallel to each other across the wall. This was the title piece, “Afro Sentinels,” described as a “commanding group of abstract warriors standing as guardians against injustice around the globe.” Only now do I see how the embellishments to the vertical lines evoke armor and ancestral drawings. Carter cites two inspirations for her work, the Congolese nkisi and the Terracotta Army of the First Emperor of China. A nkisi is a sacred object from the Kongo people containing spiritual forces used for healing, often humanistic. Both sculptures being created in different times and places represent similar themes; protection in the afterlife, social and political order and control and artistic individuality. Carter’s primary African inspiration is being uniquely balanced with European and Asian influences to create a collection of pieces that exist to guard the Earth and its many people from our shared enemies, as a sentinel should.

I have been playing Adolphus Hailstork’s Yuhwa for a few weeks, a piece for unaccompanied flute. One of America’s most prolific and versatile composers, Hailstork has written for every instrument and ensemble across every classical style imaginable. He has written pieces that draw on notable milestones and experiences of African Americans. Hailstork is open on his inspiration on the Black experience in his works, most positive and negative, and how it produces a blend of European and African American traditions.

As a piece for solo flute, I have especially been trying to portray some of these present concepts in Carter’s work, like color, line and texture. The impression of multiple textures is hard for a solo instrument, and being keen on tone color to give the music contrasting sounds is done very intentionally. I find that using visuals to help enhance my musicality has been a critical aid in depicting different colors and textures.

A striking similarity between these two pieces is their drawing of Asian influences; Yuhwa was the daughter of a River God, canon to Korean Mythology. She was tricked into marrying the Sun God, escaped to her homeland and gave birth to his son who went on to be the founder and monarch of Korea’s northern kingdom. She became known as the Goddess of the Willow Trees, a symbolic source of healing in Korean Folklore. Hailstork, known for his compelling African American influences is suddenly pulling from a new culture to portray a piece about healing. Preparing Hailstork's piece, I am inspired by the visuals Carter provides. I picture the landscapes of color, texture, line and shape when performing and making musical decisions.

Connor Bruce

Entr’acte  |  Jacques Ibert

Gallery C1: Veronica Ryan — Investigating Details

The piece I am submitting here is titled “Dawn, Still Darkness,” an aria from John Dove’s 1998 opera, Flight. In the opera, the character called The Refugee is stranded in an airport, stuck in a legal limbo due to his immigration status. Throughout the opera, he remains in conflict with the Immigration Officer, who seeks to arrest him. This aria occurs towards the end of the opera, and is in some senses, a culminating moment. The Refugee sings this phenomenal aria of his plight and his story. He is successful in moving the Immigration Officer as well as the other characters in the opera. While the Immigration Officer does not arrest The Refugee, he is also forbidden from leaving the airport terminal, leaving him in the same situation he was in at the start of the opera.

I was called to submit this application alongside Investigating Details largely because of the overlapping themes between the two works. The most obvious theme being travel — of migration, and the tremendous impacts it can have on an individual. Other overlapping themes occur here as well — of belonging, and the challenges that those who are immigrants face while navigating and finding a sense of belonging. Themes of growth occur here as well; though The Refugee finds himself in a very similar situation at both the start and end of the opera, he is not the same person he was at the start of the opera.

Isaac McCarthy

Eulogy for Augusta | Isaac McCarthy

Gallery B: Eric N. Mack — The Meaning of Fabric

Once woven into fabric, individual threads can trigger deep emotional experiences. The pinnacle of fabric’s ability to connect with our inner well of humanness is the quilt, where a mosaic of different colors, textures and fabrics bind to create a sum larger than the parts. Eulogy for Augusta, inspired by the principles of quilting, weaves musical threads into a provocative experience. Channeling the experience of leaving home, reconciling with loss, and acceptance of life’s changes, this work for solo banjo is a musical quilt waiting to be draped over the listener. Together in dialogue with Mack’s work, this piece challenges the listener to look for threads in places they wouldn’t expect, explore the process of interweaving, and provoke self-reflection. Mack’s work, avant-garde quilts in their own ways, asks observers to find meaning in the grooves, lines and shine of various fabrics. Augusta, made up of three individual parts, parallels The Meaning of Fabric in construction, topic and dialogue, but explores the same questions through the aural sphere; just as listeners are asked to reconcile with fabric in new ways, Eulogy invites the listeners to catch aural threads and weave them into sonic quilts of their own. Written by Isaac McCarthy and drawing on his experience as an Appalachian musician, the work explores the texture of the banjo, the melody of the Appalachians, and the beauty of the quilt through a 21st century medium.

Yiwen Zhu

Petite Suite | Claude Debussy

Lobby: Eric N. Mack — A Whole New Thing

This performance proposal draws inspiration from Eric N. Mack: A Whole New Thing, whose installation redefines the experience of space through fabric, color and motion. Mack’s work explores how soft materials — draped, suspended and responsive to air and light — can transform architectural environments into living, breathing forms.

Similarly, Debussy’s Petite Suite reveals a painterly sensibility in sound. In En Bateau, delicate waves of arpeggios and translucent harmonies evoke water, air and reflection. The music moves with the same fluid tension that animates Mack’s textiles: a balance between gravity and suspension, structure and improvisation. Both works encourage perception beyond form — an awareness of atmosphere and movement rather than fixed outlines.

The third movement, Menuet, reimagines a Baroque dance through impressionistic color and rhythm. Its elegance and subtle shifts parallel the way Mack reshapes familiar materials to propose new spatial rhythms. In both, traditional boundaries dissolve: sound becomes texture, and fabric becomes light.

Through this performance, we seek to translate Mack’s architectural abstraction into sound, allowing listeners to experience how air, color and rhythm flow across both visual and auditory dimensions. The four-hand format enhances this dialogue — two performers weaving lines together as if threading light through space.

Jacob Cauley

Catching Shadows | Ivan Trevino

Gallery A: Nanette Carter — Abstraction and Meaning

When looking at Nanette Carter’s Shifting Perspectives #1, what grabs your attention? Is it the rich blue, prominent in its stature? Or is it the subtle purple, creeping out only to sink back into hiding? What about the streaks of grey, spanning the entire work and obscuring the colors beneath? Despite what draws your gaze, the grey seems to be looming over everything else. Beautiful, oppressive, mysterious…who’s to say? While looking at this piece, I began to hear Catching Shadows in my head, a groovy marimba duet in a minor key with splashes of audible color throughout the piece.

When reading about Nanette Carter’s exhibition, Afro-Sentinels, her focus on using abstract concepts and forming them into products that stimulated both sight and sound spoke to me, particularly the following prompt: “Think about the relationship colors and shapes have to sound. What do colors sound like? What do they feel like?” While these are great questions and thought exercises for artists to approach visuals from a different perspective, they can also be interpreted in reverse: “What do sounds look like? If I were to assign a color (or colors) to a piece of music, what would they be and why? Furthermore, do they have identifiable textures that I can latch onto?” This more holistic approach to art and how it interacts with the various senses can help artists gain a deeper appreciation and understanding for their art no matter which outlet they use.

While I do not know what specific idea or conflict Carter had in mind while creating Shifting Perspectives #1, I do not believe that this knowledge is necessary to interpret the work. Carter herself acknowledges that observers will make their own meaning from abstract forms. In this case, I see the prominent grey in the art as a shadowy overlay to the other colorful shapes that represent the different melodic material heard in Catching Shadows. When thinking about the title Catching Shadows, I think about chasing the receding darkness as the sun rises, accompanied by the beautiful colors that come with the morning sunrise. Grey, which is clearly the most prominent color, represents the shadows. Out of the shadows comes blue, full and rich in texture and sound; red, sharp and aggressive with an attack to match the intensity of the rising sun; purple, subtle and fleeting yet beautiful; and finally yellow, the arrival of the morning sun and the retreat of darkness.

Additionally, the dispersion of the colors is also relevant. Carter notes that the colors are balanced left-to-right, similarly to how the two players rotate through melodies and patterns. Vertically, the yellow sits atop all else, representing the inevitable arrival of the morning. Though the yellow is tainted by textured grey lines to show this constant struggle, the light conquers the dark as the piece ends with a fleeting, shadowy ostinato that fades to nothing.

Kaylee Skaris

Vent de Folie | Didier Favre

Gallery B: Eric N. Mack — The Meaning of Fabric

“Vent de Folie” by Favre translates to “Winds of Madness” or “Crazy Wind.” This piece is a very flashy whirlwind of motion, energy and different textures. Written for woodwind quintet, the five instruments (flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon) are constantly in motion, trading melodies, overlapping rhythm, and interweaving with each other similarly to how Fabric is intertwined. The five instruments are almost like different colored threads. Every thread is unique and has different fibers and structure, but when it comes together, the entire fabric becomes one uniform body. Much like this, the five instruments of a woodwind quintet have a unique sound, structure and personality, but together create one uniform ensemble. Vent de Folie’s thick counterpoint, layered rhythms, and shifting textures and timbres parallel how textile artists layer and tie fibers into a pattern. Favre’s writing constantly shifts between thinner textures like solos and thicker passages in the bass voices, which emulates the tactile diversity in this exhibit.

31st Annual Music Celebration Concert

Friday, Dec. 5 at 7:30 p.m.

Mershon Auditorium, 1871 N. High St.

Join us for our annual community celebration featuring student bands, choirs, jazz bands, orchestra and more. 

Purchase tickets

Name a seat in the recital hall

Celebrate 100 years of music at Ohio State by naming a seat in the new Recital Hall. With a gift of $2,500, honor someone special and secure your place in our history, helping ensure the next century of extraordinary music. give.osu.edu/SOM100

Join us…

Visit Events for upcoming performances, lectures and more. Most are free. Many are livestreamed for later viewing. 

Receive news and upcoming events. Subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter, OVATION. 

Visit Outreach for opportunities for middle/high school musicians and educators.

Our Community Music School offers opportunities for all ages and ability levels.