146: Connect More

Joey gets a gig 🎉

Name That Tune

This week’s Name That Tune is a Joey Special. Here’s your hint this composer was name-dropped (perhaps not too kindly) in a recent big movie:

As always, your goal is to provide as much accurate analysis as possible. First try to get the nationality, year, and genre, then make educated guesses about the composer and — if possible— the piece. If you know the piece immediately, send us an email at toneprose@substack.com instead of commenting so the rest of us can have fun guessing.

Last Week’s Results
Tone Prose 145
Massenet, Chansons des bois d’Amaranthe

I’m not tracking the results since I’m still out of town, but I’m playing along and I’ll see you all in the comments section!

Think you can stump your fellow Listeners? Go ahead and try!

Head to our Google Form to submit a YouTube link OR upload your own 30-second clip of an unidentified piece of classical music for us to try to identify.

Ensemble Connect

I (Joey) am reaching the end of my educational journey.

Since daycare in Portugal in the early 2000’s, I’ve clung desperately to some sort of school all my life, including three degrees in piano over the past 10 years. Naturally, with the last year of my doctoral studies upon me in 2025 – 26, despair at the prospect of getting on the academic job market caused me to look at a few other temporary stopgaps. I was extremely fortunate to get a lifeline through Spring 2027 in the form of a two-year fellowship with Ensemble Connect!

(Be warned: the rest of this post will be entirely sincere.) As described on their website:

Ensemble Connect is a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education.

This two-year fellowship program prepares extraordinary young professional classical musicians for careers that combine musical excellence with teaching, community engagement, advocacy, entrepreneurship, and leadership.

Ensemble Connect offers top-quality performance opportunities, intensive professional development, and the opportunity to partner with a New York City public school throughout the fellowship.

One cycle (two years) ago, I auditioned for this program and was placed on a waitlist, and that experience definitely helped me this time around, considering the audition process was so unique. It involved three parts:

1. An interview

2. The performance of a 10-minute audition with a program of my own making, and a minute of public speaking to go along with it. They wanted the program to reflect my personal musicianship or some kind of coherent theme, so I played part of Unsuk Chin’s Etude No. 1 “In C” (representing my new music leanings), and a couple excerpts from Ravel’s piano set Miroirs (representing my taste for French repertoire), all wrapped up in a theme about two composers who changed how the piano is written for. (Those Chin etudes are seriously awesome.)

3. A chamber music reading with current members of Ensemble Connect (the 2023-2025 class)

My big takeaway from the whole thing is, again, that I feel extremely lucky. Sure I prepared for this audition, but so did many other amazing pianists. So many factors are out of one’s control in this music world, and there are so many brilliant players. As one apocryphal story goes, upon being asked for advice on making it in the classical piano world, Vladimir Horowitz told a group of students that, “it’s a bad business — there are too many pianists trying to make it these days.”

[Will: First off, Joey, I speak on behalf of the entire Tone Prose community in offering you our heartiest congratulations!

After landing the gig, Joey was given a repertoire request form. I thought it would be of interest to TP readers to see what the requirements were and what Joey submitted:

Please recommend a total of 8-12 pieces. (Pieces that do not require a conductor are highly preferred.)

Please consider the following:

• First and foremost, music that inspires and moves you;

• Music from varying time periods and of varying styles;

• Composers of diverse backgrounds and identities;

• Major anniversaries, cultural themes, or current events;

• Ensemble combinations of varying sizes, from trios up to ensembles of 8-10 players (sonatas and duos may be submitted but are unlikely to be programmed). We are happy to have suggestions for mixed instrumental groups and standard instrumentation. (Please note that standard string quartet repertoire is not typically programmed.)

• Please research your recommendations, so that you are able to give us accurate and complete information. If you recommend a work with which we are likely to be unfamiliar, we would appreciate a description and a link to a recording.

Joey’s selections:

• Ravel, Piano Trio

• Dvořák, Piano Quartet No. 1

• Falla, Concerto for Harpsichord, Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Violin, and Cello

• Shostakovich, Piano Quintet

• Yike Zhang, Three Flows in Quartet

• White, Trio for Viola, Horn, and Piano 💪

• Che Buford, i don’t see stars where i’m from

• Fauré, Piano Quintet No. 1

• Schnittke, Piano Quintet

• Stravinsky, L’histoire du soldat

• Exmail, Piano Trio

• Shaw, Thousandth Orange

Intéressant, non?]

Tone Praise

Porpora, Sonata in G minor

Twelfth Night is an ensemble that proves that we can have a hip French-style early music chamber ensemble right here in the good old U. S. of A. And the cellist was a member of the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra (before I became the conductor.)

Tone Prose is a co-production of William White, Joseph Vaz, and the Listeners (i.e. you.)