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Program Notes Personnel/Production Credits Click on a title below to hear the recording in MP3 format. Outcry and Turning (9:46) Evan Chambers
The Abundant Air: Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Band (19:23)
Perry Goldstein Should This Be Found: Six Songs on
Scott’s Last Expedition Perry Goldstein Outcry and Turning Evan Chambers on Outcry and Turning: Turning: the movement of becoming something else (a turning leaf); similarly, a process of change in the course of events (the tide is turning); to change direction by shifting momentum away from an obstacle or toward a new goal; an act of creation, especially in the case of the making of something extraordinary (as in turning out great work); a slow and inexorable rotation of heavenly bodies or circling dancers around a center. In the face of war, disaster or death, we often feel helpless. It seems that all we can do is to cry out from our weakness and from our sense of injustice. And yet there is a tremendous power in our outcry. A wail breaks from our lips in our grieving, untangling over time a knot of tightly coiled pain. It not only expresses our loss, but also stands as a form of tangible protest against what cannot or will not be reconciled. We cry out alone, but we dance together, taking up that fallen sound and turning it into collective motion, transforming space with energy as we move through it. In our turning we gather strength and send it spiraling up and out through our bodies in the hope of redeeming loss or healing what is broken; in the hope of changing direction and restoring a balance that has been destroyed. Evan Chambers was born in 1963 in Alexandria, Louisiana. He is an Associate Professor in the composition department at the University of Michigan. He won first prize in the Cincinnati Symphony National Composers' Competition and in 1998 was awarded the Walter Beeler Memorial Composition Prize by Ithaca College. His work has been recognized by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Vienna Modern Masters Orchestral Competition and the American Composers Forum. The Cincinnati, Kansas City, Memphis, New Hampshire and Albany symphonies have performed his works. In addition to the commission to compose Outcry and Turning, he has been the recipient of commissions from the Albany Symphony, Eighth Blackbird, members of the Cleveland Orchestra, members of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Quorum, the Greene String Quartet and the University of Michigan. Chambers graduated with highest honors from the University of Michigan, where he received a Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music in Composition. His composition teachers include William Albright and Leslie Bassett. His works have been released on recordings by the Foundation Russolo-Pratella, Equilibrium, Clarinet Classics, Cambria, Centaur and Albany Records. His compositions have been recorded by the Greene String Quartet, the Albany Symphony and Quorum. His solo CD Cold Water, Dry Stone is available on Albany records. Outcry and Turning is available at www.evanchambers.net. The Abundant Air: Concerto for
Saxophone Quartet and Band The formal strategy of the concerto emulates late nineteenth-century models in which recurring themes return throughout the piece. Although the piece is in one movement, it is comprised of several sections, nested forms within the larger form. At the work's core is an exotic tune sung first by the soprano saxophone against a droning bassoon background. This theme, presented at first in unpredictable phrase lengths, is “regularized” and picked up by the other saxes and the band. Three sustained sections containing this theme occur throughout the piece and serve as the pinions of the form. As the eight occurrences of the tune occur in different orchestrations and with varying forms of melodic elaboration, they may together be perceived as a set of variations. Alternating with these recurring thematic sections are contrasting passages. There is a brisk development, at turns incisive and comic, after the first thematic section and a “Maestoso” section that gives way to a sustained brooding duet between the tenor and baritone saxophones. A buoyant scherzo follows, after which the clangorous opening of the piece is folded into alternating statements of the opening theme, marking a recapitulation. A coda, reminiscent of the scherzo, brings the concerto to a close. Harmonically, the piece is largely modal. Stylistically, this music owes a debt to some of the ambitious concert jazz that developed in the late 1950's. As a boy, I was treated to my father's delight in the collaborations between Miles Davis and Gil Evans that resulted in such classics as Sketches of Spain, Porgy and Bess and Miles Ahead. Some of the colors and sensibilities of Abundant Air are informed by the deep love I have for that music and for the man who introduced it to me. Abundant Air is dedicated to the West Point Saxophone Quartet, Colonel Thomas Rotondi, Jr. and the U.S. Military Academy Band, without whose confidence and invitation the piece would not have been written. To that inspiration I'll add two others: that of my father's love of good jazz and that of my wife, Dawn, who has created such a cozy and happy home as to inspire a piece of such warmth, optimism and good spirits. -Perry Goldstein Should This Be Found: Six Songs on
Scott's Last Expedition Discovered with the bodies was Scott's journal, on which he wrote, “Send this diary to my wife.” The word “wife” is crossed out and replaced with the word “widow.” Scott's journals make fascinating, harrowing, and deeply touching reading. The panoply of emotions he experienced is vividly represented by his excellent prose and we find him by turns excited, defensive, insecure, and proud. He was insightful and sensitive and his final letters to his wife and the families of the men who died with him are heartrending. Whatever his skill as an explorer (there has been much criticism of the miscalculations that may have doomed the expedition), there is no denying his remarkable courage or that of his men, or the spirit of affection and sacrifice that characterized their relationships. One can barely imagine what they must have suffered; that they remained “unendingly cheerful” even as they faced certain death compels our admiration. Scott's description of his expedition runs to nearly five hundred pages. For the difficult task of distilling these thousands of words into six song texts, I turned to one of our country's most admired novelists, Richard Powers. What a masterful job he has done! The texts evoke the excitement of the undertaking, the beauty of the Antarctic landscape, the humor of the penguins, the arduousness of the journey, the disappointment of dashed hopes, and the final days and hours of transcendent courage. On the structural level, the first five songs involve a recapitulation of opening or prominent material. Only the sixth is through-composed without recapitulation; the party does not return “home,” nor can the music. The first three songs are straightforward, each section having its own unambiguous character. As conditions become harsher and the men march toward their doom, the music takes on greater ambiguity and dissonance. “Impressions on the March” introduces bi-tonality, while “In Winter Quarters” presents music in contradictory tempi. “Summit, the Pole and Beyond” intensifies these impressions of bi-tonality and conflicting tempi, while furthering the sense of dislocation by juxtaposing bits of music from all but one previous song. “The Voyage Out” depicts the giddy excitement of the Terra Nova pushing off from the dock after months of preparation, the energy of the work on board and the mass of people gaily waving goodbye. The cycle's most blatantly programmatic music depicts the near shipwreck in stormy weather. The welcome appearance of the sun and the sighting of “some steep-walled berg, some patch of bluest sea” is rendered in luminous, undulating musical strokes and the final stanza, lauding the crew and expressing hopeful expectations of a successful expedition, returns to the nautical, masculine strains of the song's opening section. By contrast, “Land at Last” is a peaceful barcarole, depicting the gentle rocking of the boat, the beauty of Antarctica, the unloading of the cargo. The last stanza glows with Scott's description of the comfort of the hut they've built, where “peace, quiet and comfort reign supreme.” “Penguins” is a light-hearted intermezzo before the inexorable tragedy that binds the last three songs of the cycle. The men were charmed by the little penguins that were compelled by curiosity to run up to the men when they sang to them but were so bashful that they would run away when the men stopped. Scott misquotes a popular song from 1908 sung by the men to the penguins, “She's Got Rings on Her Fingers,” which appears explicitly in the song. So does a brass rendition of “God Save the King,” which Cecil Meares would sing to the penguins in so off-pitch a manner that it never failed to send them fleeing back to the water. In the last stanza, the penguins walk past howling dogs, straining at their tethers to tear them apart. The sinister music that begins and ends the song represents the penguins' last laugh. “'Hello,' [the penguins] seem to say, 'here's a game -- what do all you ridiculous things want? Oh, that's the sort of animal you are; well, you've come to the wrong place.'” “Impressions on the March” is a Mahlerian funeral march, with major/minor mode mixture and bi-tonality. Scott's sympathy for the animals surfaces again, as it does throughout his writings and in these songs. “The dogs are…tired to-night. Pathetic to see the ponies floundering” is set to labored rhythms. The tempo increases slightly as Scott records his observations about the sights and sounds on the march, before describing “the eternal silence of the great white desert.” “In Winter Quarters” finds Scott learning of Roald Amundsen's attempts to precede him to the Pole. Here and throughout these songs, his fears are quickly replaced by a strong sense of duty. A contrasting “B” section sets Scott's description of his fearless men in heroic terms, the brass and drum music providing an exuberant respite from the increasingly dark circumstances of the doomed expedition. Despite this moment of optimism, the hymns of the Morning Service, depicted in an original chorale, “are not quite successful,” as Scott reflects on the fragility and insignificance of man in the cosmos. To describe the increasing contrast between their aspirations and increasingly difficult circumstances, the score's opening pages contain music in different tempi simultaneously: bassoons and marimba travel faster than the more lugubrious oboe when it enters with its solo. “Summit, the Pole and Beyond” is the final song and carries the cycle's greatest burden of storytelling. Scott is forced to kill the ponies for food, discovers Amundsen's tent at the Pole, describes the death of two of his companions and muses on his wife and son during his last moments. The various musical anomalies and uncomfortable key and tempo juxtapositions that characterize the fourth and fifth songs are intensified in the sixth, as musical reminiscences from all but one of the songs are heard. The last pages of the score aspire to a steely and unsentimental beauty, with a simple repeated chord and a tolling of bells. It represents the way I imagine Scott in his last hours, courageous to the last, accepting his fate. A calm settles over him and he does not regret the fearful journey. “We took risks,” he writes in his “Message to the Public” in those last hours, “we knew we took them; things have come out against us and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last.” The composition of Should This Be Found took seven months and was completed on December 29, 2004. The parts were completed on January 17, 2005, 93 years to the day after Robert Falcon Scott and his men reached the South Pole. The work is dedicated to Sergeant First Class MaryKay Messenger, Colonel Thomas Rotondi, Jr. and the United States Military Academy Band at West Point. I am grateful to Colonel Rotondi for the opportunity to bring musical expression to this remarkable story. -Perry Goldstein Perry Goldstein was born in 1952 in New York City and was educated at the University of Illinois, UCLA and Columbia University, from which he received a doctorate in composition in 1986. His principal composition teachers were Herbert Brün, Mario Davidovsky, Ben Johnston, Chou Wen-Chung and Paul Zonn. His music has been performed throughout the United States, Mexico, Canada, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. Commissions include Motherless Child Variations and Blow!, for the Aurelia Saxophone Quartet; the sextet Twittering Machine, for the Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players; Do Over, for the Guild Trio; Of Points Fixed and Fluid, for pianist Eliza Garth; Total Absorption, for bass clarinetist Michael Lowenstern and Tableau and Talisman, for HET Trio. His music has been released on the Dutch Vanguard, Challenge and New World labels. Since 1992, Goldstein has served on the music faculty of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he is currently the Undergraduate Studies Director in the Department of Music and the Director of the College of Arts, Culture, and Humanities. For information on Mr. Goldstein’s music, contact him at pgoldstein@notes.cc.sunysb.edu. Should This Be Found Song 1: The Voyage Out
Production Credits
Conductors: COL Thomas Rotondi, Jr., CPT Tod Addison * This production was recorded March 7-11, 2005 at the Lycian Center Theater in Sugar Loaf, New York. We wish to express our appreciation to Susan Logothetis and her staff for making this an enjoyable experience.
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