Concert II Program Notes

Soul Force

Soul Force is a one-movement symphonic work which attempts to portray the notion of a voice that struggles to be heard beyond the shackles of oppression. The music takes on the form of a march which begins with a single voice and gains mass as it rises to a triumphant goal.

Drawing on elements of popular African-American musical styles such as big-band jazz, funk, hip-hop and R+B, the piece pays homage to the cultural contributions, the many voices, which have risen against aggressive forces to create an indispensable cultural place.

I have drawn the work’s title from Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in which he states: “We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.” (note by Jessie Montgomery)

Songs of Bukovina: 24 Preludes

Songs of Bukovina are based on the material of traditional Ukrainian songs. My source refers to the edition “Bukovyn‘ski narodni pisni” (“Bukovina Folk Songs”) published by the Ukrainian Academy of Science in 1963 (note by Leonid Desyatnikov)

Rhapsody No. 2 

Rhapsody No. 2 is the second of a set of 6 intended solo violin works, each of which will be dedicated to a different contemporary violinist, and inspired by an historical composer. This virtuosic piece was commissioned by and written for composer and violinist Michi Wiancko on the album Planetary Candidate and is inspired in part by Béla Bartók. (note by Jessie Montgomery)

Apparition

Apparition is an expressive, ethereal piece for cello and electronics. While the piece does not have a programmatic narrative, its emotional core and otherworldly sound was shaped by the imagery of wishing to connect with a lost loved one and express previously unsaid feelings of love, longing, and regret. The piece floats freely out-of-time throughout its thirteen minute duration, and the evolution of its delicate and feathery texture represents the emotional journey of one reflecting on a beloved, lost relationship.

Apparition unfolds across three broad sections. The piece beings with the cello playing gentle harmonic oscillations that are echoed by the electronics. Both parts flow and weave together in a lush, growing tapestry until the cello breaks free into a passionate, lyrical melody as the electronics continue with blossoming waves. In the second major section of the piece, the electronics shift from flowing waves to wispy tremolos, harmonic glissandos, and metallic fluttering. The cello plays a mysterious lament against this backdrop and later plays long, high harmonic tones in alternation with the electronics, as if sending out a signal to the beyond and hoping for a reply. The third major section returns to the wave-like oscillations of the first and reaches new emotional heights before fading into an airy coda that lingers beyond the conclusion of the piece.

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The electronics for Apparition are made entirely from cello samples recorded with Carl Donakowski in the fall of 2023. These samples include a multitude of individual harmonics, arpeggiated harmonic gestures, and improvised timbre manipulation on repeated notes and long tones. Apparition was written for Carl Donakowski in 2023, and today’s performance in the world premiere. (note by Eric Guinivan)

Sketches, Sound Design Excerpts and Lighting Sequence

(the video described below is used in tonight's performance in place of the lighting sequence)

About the Video

Working with Eric Guinivan’s brilliant composition for cello and electronics entitled “Apparition,” this video accompaniment is intended to mirror the music’s emotional narrative, which, through its otherworldly sound, reflects “wishing to connect with a lost loved one and express previously unsaid feelings of love, longing, and regret.”

Based on my art practice of documenting the aquatic biome and collaborating with marine science and related field work projects, the underwater videos included in this work came from glacier-fed inlets from Washington and Alaska, the Belize Barrier Reef, the Great Barrier Reef, and my most recent research trip to the Alboran Sea of the Mediterranean, near Málaga, Spain.

I selected video clips based on the visual rhythms they provided, and where the music became particularly bright or deep in tone or register, the color often reflects that musical quality. You will note that virtually no humans are present, except for the representation of human presence through occasional movement of my snorkeling, free diving, and resistance to waves and currents.

I have also included video footage from my research trip to the Alhambra in Granada and the Mezquita in Córdoba (Spain.) The Alhambra footage is from the Hall of Two Sisters (modern Spanish name) known originally as the “Garden of Happiness.” It features the magical muqarnas cupola. Named originally by Yusuf III, the space features a poem that begins: “I am the garden that with beauty has been adorned.” I am applying this notion of “garden” and all its richness to the underwater realm. Additionally, medieval Islamic architecture frequently involves symbolic and practical inclusion of water in its design; the awareness for the need of water conservation was written into the pages of the Quran, along with its spiritual verses.

I am using this footage as a metaphor for the connection with the lost loved one or their memory. It is symbolic of the depth of time and space beyond our immediate understanding. This piece also suggests that what may be lost is the richness and health of our oceans and other natural spaces—and the memories of what once was. (note by Lisa Tubach)

Grey Catbird

Gray Catbird explores the relationship between humans, birds and our shared sound ecologies by listening to catbird song in habitats across a rural to urban gradient. Following the research of JMU ornithologist Dr. Dana Moseley, Gray Catbird uses field recordings, ambient electronics, catbird song transcribed for piano, and digital art by Audrey Lund to bring audiences into the gray catbird’s sonic environments. The piano portrays the catbird in three distinct settings: the rural George Washington National Forest, the suburban Edith J. Carrier Arboretum, and the urban National Mall in Washington DC accompanied by a soundscape from that location. The piano mimics the catbird as the catbird mimics the differing bird populations present in each environment. As urbanization increases, the catbird alters it’s song repertoire and makes adaptive choices so that it's song may be heard. (note by Anna Showalter)

Gnarly Buttons

The clarinet was my first instrument. I learned it from my father, who played it in small swing bands in New England during the Depression era. He was my first and most important teacher, sitting in the front room with me, patiently counting out rhythms and checking my embouchure and fingering. Benny Goodman was a role model, and several of his recordings–in particular the 1938 Carnegie Hall jazz concert and a Mozart album with the Boston Symphony Orchestra–were played so often in the house that they almost became part of the furniture.

Later, as a teenager, I played in a local marching band with my father, and I also began to perform the other clarinet classics by Brahms, von Weber, Bartók, Stravinsky, and Copland. During my high school years I played the instrument alongside him in a small community orchestra that gave concerts before an audience of mental patients at the New Hampshire State Hospital.

But strangely enough, I never composed for the instrument until I was almost fifty. By that time my father had died, and the set of instruments I had played as a boy, a Selmer A and B-flat pair, had traveled back and forth across the country from me to my father (who played them until he fell victim to Alzheimer’s disease) and ultimately back to me. During the latter stages of my father’s illness, the clarinets became an obsession for him, and this gentle, infinitely patient man grew more and more convinced that someone was intent upon breaking into his New Hampshire house and stealing them. Finally, one day, my mother found the disassembled instruments hidden in a hamper of laundry. It was the end of my father’s life with the instrument. The horns were sent to me in California where they grew dusty and stiff, sitting in a closet. But I brought them out again when I began to compose Gnarly Buttons, and the intimate history they embodied, stretching from Benny Goodman through Mozart, the marching band, the State Hospital to my father’s final illness, became deeply embedded in the piece.

The scoring underlines the folk and vernacular roots of the music: a banjo player (who also plays mandolin and guitar); a trombone, two low double reeds (English horn and bassoon); piano; two samplers playing a variety of sounds including sampled accordion, clarinet, and cow; and strings (either solo or multiple). The third movement, "Put Your Loving Arms Around Me", harkens back to the "Chorus of Exiled Palestinians" in its extreme simplicity: a diatonic melody set against a strummed continuum of chords. This idea became the basis for a much larger exploration in the 1998 work for large orchestra, Naïve and Sentimental Music. The "naïve" affect that Schiller identified in his famous essay, "On the Naive and Sentimental in Poetry", is an element so beautifully employed in Mahler…and so decidedly missing in most contemporary music.

"Gnarly" means knotty, twisted or covered with gnarls...your basic village elder's walking stick. In American school kid parlance it takes on additional connotations of something to be admired: "awesome," "neat," "fresh," etc. etc. The "buttons" are probably lingering in my mind from Gertrude Stein's "Tender Buttons," but my evoking them here also acknowledges our lives at the end of the 20th century as being largely given over to pressing buttons of one sort or another. NB; clarinets have rings and keys, not buttons.

The three movements are eached based on a "forgery" or imagined musical model. The idea for this goes back to the imagined "foxtrot" of my 1986 piece, The Chairman Dances, music to which Madame and Chairman Mao dance and make love, believing my foxtrot to be the genuine article. In this spirit we may believe the genuine articles of Gnarly Buttons to be:

I. "The Perilous Shore": a trope on a Protestant shape-note hymn found in a 19th century volume, The Footsteps of Jesus, the first lines of which are:

O Lord steer me from that Perilous Shore

Ease my soul through tempest's roar.

Satan's leering help me firmly turn away

Hurl me singing into that tremulous day!

The melodic line is twisted and embellished from the start, appearing first in monody and eventually providing both micro and macro material for the ensuing musical structures.

II. "Hoedown (Mad Cow)": normally associated with horses, this version of the traditional Western hoedown addresses the fault lines of international commerce from a distinctly American perspective.

III. "Put Your Loving Arms Around Me": a simple song, quiet and tender up front, gnarled and crabbed at the end.

(note by John Adams)