Introduction & Scherzo-OB/BSN/PN

Introduction & Scherzo (2001)

for oboe, bassoon, and piano

by Jonathan Newmark, American composer, pianist, violist, conductor, and neurologist.

ABOUT THE MUSIC

This work was commissioned by oboist Dr. Jan Jakob Mooij and bassoonist Dr. Hans Cats for the 2001 season of the Chamber Music Conference and Composer's Forum at Bennington College, Vermont, where they premiered it. It represents an attempt to write a fundamentally serious, short work contrasting with the generally lighter trios for this combination by Fracis Poulenc, Jena Francaix, and Andre Previn, as well as to generate a complete new work from very few musical materials. The work is featured on he CD of Newmark's chamber works, Trios and Duos, and is available at cdbaby.com. 

ABOUT THE COMPOSER

Composer Jonathan Newmark, born New York City in 1953, pianist,  violist, and conductor, received his MM degree in composition from the  University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in 2015.  His  teachers have included Joel Hoffman, Douglas Knehans, and Michael Fiday,  at CCM, as well as Jonathan Kolm, Gloria Wilson Swisher, and James  McVoy.  He played viola in the Tacoma (WA) Symphony for four seasons,  and guest conducted the Independence Sinfonia of Philadelphia.  He has  participated at the Chamber Music Conference at Bennington, Vermont and Hamilton, New York  since 1981 and worked there with composers including Carman Moore,  Eleanor Armer, Eleanor Cory, Allen Shawn, Martin Bresnick, Daniel Strong  Godfrey, Kurt Rohde, Paul Moravec, Chen Yi, Pierre Jalbert, Marc  Mellits, Donald Crockett, Lisa Bielawa, Scott Wheeler, Jesse Jones, Sky Macklay, Donald Crockett, and Ted Hearne, performing premieres by most of these composers.  He has been awarded artist residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025.  

His 1997 String Trio  co-won the Southeastern Composers Competition at Old Dominion  University in 2000.   Works of his premiered at Connecticut  Summerfest, Hartford, 2017 Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival, New  York, 2016; Charlotte New Music Festival, North Carolina, 2015; Walden School Creative Musicians’ Retreat, Dublin, New Hampshire, 2014; nief-norf summer festival, Knoxville, Tennessee, 2018; artsonglab, Vancouver, British Columbia, 2019; the International Trombone Festival, Iowa City, Iowa, 2018;  the International Trombone Festival, Muncie, Indiana, 2019;  June in Buffalo, 2020;  nief-norf composer/performer summit in 2021; Texas New Music Festival, Houston, 2023 and 2024; Divergent Studio, Longy School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2025; and New Music on the Point, Leicester, Vermont, 2025.   Trinity Chamber Orchestra of Washington, DC premiered his orchestral  overture in 2015.   His trio Secret Atop the Bluff  for  bass clarinet, violin, and piano won the Boston New Music Festival  score call in 2017.   

A CD of four of his chamber works was released in  2009 on the Music Unlimited label.  His string quartet Tom Dooley Without the Fringe On Top (2015) appears on a CD released on the Navona label in 2019 by the Altius Quartet; his 2014 Piano Sonata appears on a 2019 CD by British pianist Martin Jones.  Three works, Better on Slickrock (2015) for flute + marimba, Meg's Miniature (2023) for solo flute, and Carya Dances (2025) for string quartet, appear on CD's released in 2024 and 2025 on the Phasma Music label.  His music is published by TrevCo-Varner and by WaveFront Music, and has been performed by The Westerlies (New York), Sybarite5 (New York), Juventas Ensemble (Boston), Yarn/Wire (New York), Wet Ink Ensemble (New York), Great Noise Ensemble (Washington), Beo Quartet (Pittsburgh), Georgetown Quintet (Washington), West Shore Piano Trio (Baltimore), TEMPO = The Epicenter Music Performance Organization (Los Angeles), Texas New Music Ensemble (Houston), Opera Contempo (Salt Lake City), Carya String Quartet (Houston), Altius Quartet (Boulder, Colorado), Bergamot Quartet (New York), and the string orchestra of Lyndon Baines Johnson Middle School (Albuquerque).

A  1974 graduate of Harvard College, he earned his MD degree from Columbia  University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1978.  He is a  board-certified neurologist, full professor of neurology at the  Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, clinical assistant professor of neurology at George Washington University, retired Colonel in  the US Army Medical Corps, staff neurologist at the Washington DC VA  Medical Center, former Chemical Casualty Care Consultant to the Army  Surgeon General (2002-2012), presently consultant to the  National Institutes of Health, and one of the nation’s leading authorities on medical response  to chemical warfare and terrorism.  In 2017 he was appointed to a four-year term on the Secure and Resilient Commonwealth Panel in the office of the Governor of Virginia; he was reappointed to a second four-year term in 2021.  He lives in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC.