Sunday, April 26, 2026  •  3 p.m.

Wexner Center for the Arts Galleries
Columbus, OH

Program

Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Xinchen Du, clarinet
Yiwei Zhu, violin
Martin Fihe, violin
Brandon Waite, viola
Jacob Schwengler, cello

Brush Strokes

Alyssa Morris

Benjamin Newman, oboe
Kaleigh Rummel, flute
Laila Elhamri, bassoon

Duets for Unaccompanied Horns

Gunther Schuller

Nora Lemmon, horn
Andrew Waite, horn

Après un rêve

Gabriel Fauré

Felipe Mathias Romagnoli, violin
Lily Jiaxuan Wang, piano

Broken Heart: Meditation on the Chorale Melody "You Who are Three in One"

from Recitation Book I

David Maslanka

Cooper Greenlees, saxophone
Ziheng Huang, saxophone
Sean Bauman, saxophone
Hudson Müller, saxophone

Udacrep Akubrad

Avner Dorman

Haydn Veith, percussion
Jacob Cauley, percussion
 

Artist Statements

Xinchen Du

Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581 | Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Gallery B: Ximena Garrido-Lecca — Seedings

In Seedings, Ximena Garrido-Lecca creates a system based on movement and transformation. Visitors take seeds, carry them up the stairs, and drop them into a large metal silo. Once released, the seeds disappear from sight, and their falling sound becomes the only trace of their movement.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581, composed in the twilight of his life, radiates an almost paradoxical luminosity. Though written during a period shadowed by physical decline, the work breathes with grace, warmth, and an unmistakable sense of renewal — music that seems to transcend circumstance and gesture toward continuity, even hope. A similar poetic resonance unfolds in Seedings, where the image of seeds evokes quiet reservoirs of potential, poised between dormancy and awakening, shaped by the unseen forces that nurture their growth.

In this light, both works articulate a shared conceptual framework. Mozart’s score, though fixed on the page, is not static; rather, each performance constitutes a renewed act of realization. Like seeds entrusted to different hands and environments, the music takes on new life with every interpretation, shaped by the sensibilities of the performers, the acoustical space, and the conditions of listening. Some performances may project warmth, others introspection or fragility, just as seeds respond differently to variations in soil, light, and care. In both the visual and musical domains, what appears transient is not extinguished but transformed: although musical sound dissipates once produced, its expressive and interpretive dimensions persist in the perception and memory of the listener, analogous to seeds that, while seemingly dormant, retain the capacity for regeneration.

Benjamin Newman

Brush Strokes | Alyssa Morris

Gallery B: Ximena Garrido-Lecca — Seedings

The River Mice, a trio composed of flute, oboe, and bassoon is proposing to perform movements one and four of Brush Strokes by Alyssa Morris. Each movement of the piece is inspired by an artist. The first movement is titled “Monet,” an impressionist artist, and the fourth movement is titled “Pollock,” an abstract artist who used the drip technique of painting. This performance connects with Ximena Garrido-Lecca’s Seedings and the Agriculture and Industrialization exhibit. Seedings centers around the theme of the importance of seeds and how they represent life, as well as themes of the changing agricultural practices. The movement “Monet” is reminiscent of water and rivers, offering stylistic markings such as ‘Like a River Flowing,’ ‘Reflection on the Water,’ ‘The River Gains Momentum,’ and ‘River Rapids’ to depict a river in different states of flow. Like the seed, water is also commonly used as a symbol for life. Rivers often help with the transport and dispersal of seeds to other lands. Water and seeds are interconnected, with the seed depending on water for life. Likewise, agricultural practices can impact water. Different agricultural practices have the ability to protect or pollute water, having compounded effects thousands of miles downriver. This sentiment can relate to Agriculture and Industrialization as it focuses on the importance of agriculture and the changing methods of agriculture over time from traditional methods to industrialization. Agriculture is the center of many cultures and regions throughout the world. Water is very important in agriculture, and pivotal to successful harvest. Early farming civilizations often settled around water sources. Rivers are a major source of water, and can span thousands of miles long, connecting life, people, and crops. Water is part of the vast web that connects people to their food, culture, and way of life. 

The “Pollock” movement is reminiscent of the drip technique of painting that he often used. This technique consists of pouring or flinging paint onto a canvas, allowing where it lands shape the painting. This movement is energetic and fast-paced to reflect drip painting. This act of dripping paint can be connected to the silo exhibit as part of Seedings where seeds are dropped down and land where gravity places them, as opposed to using the more traditional, intentional storage containers. Like the seeds falling into the silo, blowing on the wind, or floating down river to later find itself in the ground and grow, Pollock flung paint onto the canvas, allowing the paint to freely land where it landed rather than placing each drop himself.

Andrew Waite

Duets for Unaccompanied Horns | Gunther Schuller

Gallery C: Hew Locke — Passages (Boats)

Upon first seeing Passages by Hew Locke, we were immediately drawn to the boat exhibition, because of its size and stark contrast between the colorful sails and run-down exterior. After reading more about the meaning behind the piece, and Locke's inspiration for his art, we knew we had to choose this gallery. 

Nora Lemmon and I will be performing Gunther Schuller's "Duets for Unaccompanied Horns," a four-movement work that explores high vs. low registers, fast vs. slow tempi, and simple and steady vs. complex and changing meters. The first movement is monotonal; a written B4 is sustained throughout the entire movement, while the two horns interweave a melody by alternating sustained pitches and moving notes. The second movement is much more rhythmically active and complex. The two parts explore the full range of the instrument and often create compound rhythms. They come together in the last few bars, but end apart again. The third movement is much more steady, and there is no true melody. This movement explores polyrhythms and clashing intervals. The final movement is nearly entirely homorhythmic in texture; running eighth notes dominate this movement. There is a brief pause before the final notes and the two parts end together on the exact same note. This final note is the first time the instruments come together and it occurs at the end of this piece. We drew a connection to Locke’s imagery of home and movement. The piece moves through many different styles of playing, before coming to the fourth movement, which is the most active one. This movement, like Locke’s works, ends in “home”; one pitch. The boats in this gallery drew us to this idea the most; a form of transportation that can serve both as a means to reach home or a home in itself. 

We also drew connections between Locke’s philosophy regarding art and the Schuller’s mindset towards music. Throughout Schuller’s career, he advocated for music of all genres; upon becoming president of the New England Conservatory (NEC), he quickly worked to add programs for genres of music that were (and still are) overlooked by music institutions. In addition, he was a strong advocate for the inherent merit of music, instead of basing merit on genre. Schuller believed America benefitted from the sheer diversity and expressiveness of its people and encouraged all musicians, regardless of global, racial, and ethnic differences, to share their artistic visions. After witnessing the formation of Guyana’s independence, Locke drew upon these experiences to inform his work. Nation-building and hybrid cultures are strong influences on his work, and directly connect to Schuller’s vision of an equal, diverse American nation that celebrates all cultures.

Felipe Mathias Romagnoli

Après un rêve | Gabriel Fauré

The Box: Vitoria Cribb — echoes of a wet finger

The dreamlike interiority of Après un rêve resonates strikingly with Cribb's echoes of a wet finger, as both works explore the unstable boundary between reality and imagined or constructed experience. Fauré’s song, centered on the lingering emotional intensity of a dream that dissolves upon waking, emphasizes longing, illusion, and the desire to remain within an imagined world shaped by the subconscious. It invites introspection, positioning the dream as a space where emotion feels more vivid and meaningful than waking life. Similarly, Cribb’s exhibition constructs a surreal, fluid environment in which identity itself becomes unstable, as the protagonist undergoes a transformation within a digitally mediated and surveilled reality. Her work blurs distinctions between body, dream, and code, suggesting that contemporary experience especially online functions like an extended dreamscape in which perception and selfhood are constantly shifting.

The connection between the two lies in their shared focus on transformation and the tension between immersion and awakening. In Fauré, the return to reality is marked by loss, as the dream fades and leaves only emotional residue. In Cribb, however, transformation within this dreamlike digital space may offer resistance or agency, implying that the instability of identity can be generative rather than purely melancholic. Both works therefore engage with liminality, with Fauré exploring the threshold between sleep and waking and Cribb examining the boundary between physical and virtual existence. Ultimately, each suggests that what feels most real may not be anchored in material reality, but in the shifting and subjective experiences of perception, memory, and imagination.

Cooper Greenlees

Broken Heart: Meditation on the Chorale Melody "You Who are Three in One” | David Maslanka

Gallery A: Naeem Mohaiemen — Corinthians

David Maslanka's first movement from Recitation Book is a meditation on a chorale by Bach, titled "You Who are Three in One", which references the holy trinity from the Bible. Maslanka notes that each of the movements revolve around the theme of death, which to him means the passing of the old and the coming of the new. Naeem Mohaiemen's Corinthians seeks to view past events through lenses of trauma, and it evokes scripture and how time creates large distances to different events in one's life. His film, "Through a Mirror, Darkly", references the deaths of 4 students at Kent State University and other tragic events. The artist notes that this exhibition is rarely put on by religious institutions. He importantly notes that as significant events become further back in time, the ideas and memories of them become more hazy and harder to remember.

As both bodies of work reference scripture, we would like to connect the two since the theme of death in both pieces is so significant, and the somber and emotional mood of Maslanka's piece reflects that very well. We hope for people to have a better and more empathetic connection so this exhibit through the the first movement of Maslanka's Recitation Book, which evokes the same ideas of mortality and the passing of time.

Haydn Veith

Udacrep Akubrad | Avner Dorman

Lobby: Erin N. Mack — A Whole New Thing

Avner Dorman’s Udacrep Akubrad directly relates to Eric N. Mack’s exhibition A Whole New Thing through its emphasis on layered perception and global influences. The piece consistently presents multiple layers at once, encouraging the listener to identify them by engaging from different vantage points, both visually and aurally. These layers are often split not only between hands but between the performers themselves, creating textures that sound unified while actually being strategically divided. Like Mack’s work, Udacrep Akubrad is not always what it seems on the surface—taking a deeper look reveals hidden layers and interlocking parts that blend together, often subverting what the listener might expect to hear while watching. Even the title reflects this idea: when read backwards, “Udacrep Akubrad” becomes “Percadu Darbuka,” the percussion duo that the piece was originally written for and the North African drum that the piece uses. Similarly, Mack invites viewers in his learning guide to move around the exhibition and experience the work from multiple vantage points, uncovering new details from various views.

Immersion is central to both works. Just as Mack encourages audiences to become physically immersed in his installations by viewing them from different perspectives, Dorman creates a sonic environment that surrounds the listener. The music includes many layers at one time that can be perceived individually depending on where the listener focuses their attention, or even where they are positioned in relation to the performers. In both cases, the audience plays an active role in shaping their own experience.

Like Mack, Dorman also incorporates a wide range of global influences. These include North African drumming, jazz-influenced harmonies, mixed meters common in global music styles, and the demanding level of technicality and musicality found in modern marimba repertoire. This blending of styles parallels Mack’s use of diverse textures and materials from around the world in his installations. Dorman also uses textures of his own, including the use of dead-strokes, using fingers on both the marimbas and drums, and varying textural grooves underneath the main melodic material. In both the music and the visual art, seemingly different elements come together to form something cohesive, layered, and open to interpretation. 
 

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