Electric Aroma
“an electric aroma a most disagreeable noise”
-Pablo Picasso
October 10, 1936
Premiere: June 23, 2017. Eighth Blackbird Creative Lab, Ojai, CA
Dylan Ward, saxophone, Michael Maccaferri, clarinet, Phoebe Wu, piano, Matthew Keown, percussion
Version for flute, clarinet, saxophone and piano will be performed today.
Lilac Tears
When Tim McAllister asked me to write him and his piano partner, Liz Ames, a piece for their ongoing “Project Encore,” I was delighted. The opportunity to write for one of the greatest saxophonists of all time is a great honor, if also a joyful challenge. How does one write an encore for a top performer who always plays a brilliant concert? As I began to sketch my first attempts at the commission, I kept thinking about how similarly gifted instrumentalists concluded a performance.Suddenly I thought of a perfect analog: Prince’s 2004 performance of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” at Harrison’s posthumous induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Harrison’s song is a meditative piece written for his band The Beatles. It is often tied to a disharmonious period in the band’s tenure and the spiritual ambivalence of its author. In form, it is a sort of twentieth-century pop music chaconne in its schematic structure that operates as a vehicle for a dazzling instrumental line in its final third. On the night of the performance, Prince stood to the side of an all-star band that included Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Jeff Lynne, and Steve Winwood. When The Purple One (uncharacteristically dressed in red under his black mourning suit) emerged for the final third, he proceeded to eclipse his collaborators. Prince’s performance cemented his status as one of music’s greatest guitarists and acted as an ecstatic apotheosis that remedied the doubt detected in Harrison’s earlier verses.
“Lilac Tears” is my engagement of this phenomenal solo with the ambition to showcase Tim’s skillful playing and the emotional depths that his playing inspires. It is an homage to the almost alchemical experience of great instrumentalists and a testament to my esteem for Tim in the comparison. (note by Jennifer Jolley)
Apparition
Prized Possessions
With its two contrasting movements, Prized Possessions attempts to address the human phenomenon of taking things for granted by sending musical material through various repetitions and expressive treatments. The piece focuses on balancing fleeting, quickly vanishing ideas with other material that’s allowed to obsessively linger until almost no longer welcome.
This work was composed for the PRISM Quartet during their residency at Princeton University, and premiered during the group’s 2015 New York and Philadelphia concert series at the Curtis Institute of Music and Symphony Space on May 22 and 23, respectively. Heartfelt thanks to the members of PRISM:
Timothy McAllister, soprano
Zachary Shemon, alto
Matthew Levy, tenor
Taimur Sullivan, baritone
(note by Viet Cuong)
How Do I Love Thee?
Eric Nelson (b. 1959) is a composer, choral conductor, and clinician who currently serves as Professor of Music and Director of Choral Studies at Emory University and conductor and Artistic Director of Atlanta Master Chorale. His choirs have performed all over the world, and he has conducted and presented workshops for many organizations, including ACDA, the Music Educators National Conference, the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians, and the Presbyterian Association of Musicians. Dr. Nelson's composition closely follows the poem How Do I Love Thee?, one of the most well-known sonnets by poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861). Perhaps a love letter to her husband, the poem enumerates the many ways she loves him, ranging from the mundane ("everyday's most quiet need") to grand and
abstract ideas ("as men strive for Right"). Additionally, Barrett Browning includes
sadness in her enumeration of love and “touches on the early sorrows, but only to pass lightly over them. ‘I love thee’ the poem repeats, and the mood of that quiet, confident statement is reflected technically.” How Do I Love Thee, scored for SATB and piano, is characterized by multiple key changes throughout - the song begins in F major and then immediately transitions to D major, followed by movement to Ab major, Db major, Eb major, G major, D major, F major, D major, E major, and Db major. Three soaring “I love thee” passages mark transitions between phrases and denote a shift in color and emotional subtext. The wide range in dynamics supports the narrative arc of the piece: tender and flowing, reaching two dramatic climaxes, and settling into the gravity of the final section “I shall [but] love thee better after death.” – Program notes by Kijana Knight-Torres
Sonnets from the Portuguese 43: How do I love thee? – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Measure Me, Sky! inspires singers and listeners to take hold of their limitless potential. Ascending vocal lines stretch across a driving accompaniment, as if reaching out to grasp the expanse depicted in Leonora Speyer’s rapturous poem. Eliane Hagenberg writes: The effect of the poetry in Measure Me, Sky! is instantaneous. It's as if one's arms have been cast wide, and their eyes turned to the heavens to take in the expanse both around and above. By opening with accented arpeggios that immediately rise into billowing triplet figures, I wanted to launch singers into flight and invite listeners into the same breathless exclamation. I was also inspired to learn that Leonora Speyer first started writing poetry in her forties, not as a young girl. By composing an ascending key change for the final refrain, a new harmonic world is revealed, calling us to venture into the unknown to discover our limitless potential.
Measure Me, Sky! – Leonora Speyer
Measure me, sky! Tell me I reach by a song. Nearer the stars; I have been little so long!
Weigh me, high wind! What will your wild scales record?
Profit of pain, Joy by the weight of a word!
Horizon, reach out! Catch at my hands, stretch me taut,
Rim of the world: Widen my eyes by a thought!
Sky, be my depth. Wind, be my width and my height,
World, my heart's span; Loveliness, wings for my flight! Measure me, sky!