Paul Vaillancourt and Jeffery Meyer were both graduate music students, working on their doctorates at Stony Brook University in New York, when they first met 13 years ago.
Because their musical tastes ran to the avant garde, they gravitated toward each other musically. In the past 13 years, they have collaborated often. The last time was three years ago in St. Petersburg, Russia, where they participated in a contemporary music festival.
Since last Sunday, the two musical partners in Strike, have been rehearsing for Monday’s concert.
They commissioned new works for piano and percussion by four friends.
Meyer said it was crucial that they commission the new works because there is very little repertoire for piano and percussion duos. And what is available, neither he nor Vaillancourt liked.
After receiving their doctorates in music, both became music professors. Vaillancourt has been at Columbus State University’s Schwob School of Music for eight years, while Meyer has been director of orchestras at the school of music at Ithaca College.
“Yeah, he just waves his hands around now,” a laughing Vaillancourt said of Meyer. Meyer is also the artistic director of the Water City Chamber Orchestra in Wisconsin and the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic in Russia.
Vaillancourt is one of the founders of the Fountain City Ensemble.
The pieces of music include some that are loud and others that are surprisingly soft and ethereal, Meyer said.
“I am thrilled about the new music,” he said after he and Vaillancourt rehearsed “Duo Toccata” by Jim David, a CSU Schwob School of Music graduate.
The other pieces that will be played Monday night are Daniel Koontz’s “Soft Stillness and the Night,” “Sacred Trees” by Brooke Joyce and “China West Suite” by Chen Yi.
Koontz’s piece, Meyer said, was inspired by several trips the composer took to the Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa.
The best thing about working with living composers is they can call and ask for clarification.
“We’d have to have a seance to talk to Beethoven,” Vaillancourt joked.
And how did they manage to commission works without paying the composers? “They’re all friends of ours,” Meyer said. “And we promise them performances of their work and a good, commercial recording. And we gave them a bottle of wine.”
Besides Monday night’s concert here, the two men will perform at Auburn University and Macon’s Mercer University. Later in the spring, the concert will be performed at Ithaca College, Cornell University and Syracuse University. Then during this summer’s academic break, Meyer will return to Columbus to record the four new recordings with Vaillancourt at Legacy Hall.
“This is an extraordinary space,” Meyer said of Legacy Hall.
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