Duos

Program Note: The word here and the word there are in many respects the same. If you look up either in the dictionary you find the same definition for both: at or in this place.  Yet, they are not truly interchangeable. Their meaning is altered by the speaker’s perspective and frame of reference. My here can be someone’s there, and my there can be someone’s here, and so on. I was drawn to these words as a title because they fittingly describe the emotion that is conjured up when one is torn between two places. In a way it is comforting to remember that only a slight shift in perspective can bring the there, here.

Program Note: “I Breathed a Song” is intended to serve performers in an educational performance setting as well as a recital program. Longfellow’s poetic message in “The Arrow and the Song” is one of enduring universal significance. Symbolically, the arrow and the song for me so vividly represent in its simplest form hate and love, and the poem reminds us that what we send out into the world will have a lasting effect, even if we don’t immediately perceive its impact. “I breathed a Song” was commissioned by the American Wild Ensemble.

The Arrow and the Song
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82)

Program Notes: Many of my compositions have been inspired by poetry. Many poets in turn have been inspired by visual art, creating what is called ekphrastic poetry in which vivid and often dramatic descriptions of visual works of art form the basis of the poetry. To have both, the poetic interpretation and the visual art upon which it was based, created another inspirational layer to my creative process. “Leonardo Saw the Spring” takes as its inspiration the ekphrastic poem “Drawing of Roses and Violets” which in turn was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s Studies of Flowers. The poem was published in 1892 as part of a collection of thirty-one poems depicting paintings exhibited in European art galleries. The collection entitled “Sight and Song” was published by Michael Field which was the joint pseudonym of collaborative poets and lovers Katherine Harris Bradley and Edith Emma Cooper. In the preface the authors state: “The aim of this little volume is, as far as may be, to translate into verse what the lines and colours of certain chosen pictures sing in themselves; to express not so much what these pictures are to the poet, but rather what poetry they objectively incarnate.” This too is my aim with “Leonardo Saw the Spring” – to find the music that is innately embedded in the lines of the poetry and drawing. “Leonardo Saw the Spring” was commissioned by flutist Sophia Tegart with support by a Washington State University New Faculty Seed Grant.

A duo in five movements:

1. if  (bass clarinet & marimba)
2. is (bass clarinet & vibraphone)
3. or (bass clarinet & marimba)
4. we (clarinet in b-flat & vibraphone)
5. go (bass clarinet & marimba)

Program Notes: The concept of Two-Letter Words came from the realization of how powerful a small, two-letter word can be.  My goal was to encapsulate the purest meaning of each word, stripped of any contextual framework within a sentence. The list of contenders was quite impressive and included wonderful words such as do, up, in, and no. The National Scrabble Association, actually, lists over 100 possible two-letter words in the English language. Ultimately the decision came down to which words had the clearest indication of motion and form. If implies a consequence; is, a state of being; or, a choice; we, a coming together and go, an action. Needless to say, I had fun working with these words and capturing their essence musically. Two-Letter Words was written for newEar clarinetist Tom Aber and percussionist Mark Lowry premiered on March 24, 2006 in Kansas City, Missouri.

Program Note: When I think about the impact a melody or a song such as Silent Night can have on millions of people, even becoming the catalyst for a ceasefire during World War I, it strengthens my faith in our universal connectedness. “Von Fern und Nah” (From Far and Near), a line taken from the common German version of the lyrics for Silent Night, celebrates this ability we have to find common ground through deeply shared experiences.

“Von Fern und Nah” was commissioned by the Stille Nacht Museum Hallein, for the Internationales Halleiner Gitarrenfestival and was premiered by Christina Schorn-Mancinelli and Yvonne Zehner.

Anmerkung der Komponistin: Wenn ich daran denke, welche Wirkung eine Melodie oder ein Lied wie „Stille Nacht“ auf Millionen von Menschen hat und sogar zum Katalysator für einen Waffenstillstand im Ersten Weltkrieg werden konnte, stärkt das mein Vertrauen in unsere universelle Verbundenheit. „Von Fern und Nah“, eine Zeile aus der gebräuchlichen Fassung des Liedtextes von „Stille Nacht“, feiert diese Fähigkeit, durch tief geteilte Erfahrungen Gemeinsamkeiten zu finden. 

„Von Fern und Nah“ wurde vom Stille Nacht Museum Hallein, für das Internationale Halleiner Gitarrenfestival in Auftrag gegeben, und wurde von Christina Schorn-Mancinelli und Yvonne Zehner uraufgeführt.

Program Note: “With Eyes Open” takes as its source material an earlier piece of mine entitled “with both eyes” written in 2008 for Flute, Guitar, Vibraphone and Piano. In “With Eyes Open” the original material is reimagined for Alto Saxophone and Piano, a process that felt very organic especially because the premise of the initial composition was to write a piece that would create a unified whole from multiple perspectives on the same musical materials. As in life, so in music, the only way to gain multiple perspectives on an idea, and to truly begin to know the depth of these ideas, is to open oneself completely to the idea of possibility. Taking a composition originally written for four divers instruments and creating a new piece was opening myself up to these new possibilities.

The painter David Hockney wrote, “Cézanne starts to look at the cup before him with both eyes, opening one and then the other, and painting his doubts.” Only through a synthesis of these multiple perspectives did Cézanne see the truth, his truth, in the cup he was painting. With both eyes open then is the only way to really see things one has not seen before, and in the process gaining a perspective that is only possible by embracing and indeed celebrating the very possibilities inherent in the material itself.

“With Eyes Open” was commissioned by Keith Bohm and the 38^th Annual Festival of New American Music.