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Waves and Raves (1989, rev. 2000)
A long-time member of the Cabrillo Music Festival Orchestra, Emily Wong
turns composer this season for the world premiere of her new work Waves
and Raves. A piano student since the age of three, Wong began early
musical training at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and received her
Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the California Institute of the Arts,
where she studied with Leonard Stein and Leonid Hambro. After winning two
first prizes at the Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition, she moved
to New York, receiving her Masters of Music and Doctorate of Musical Arts
degrees from Juilliard School of Music, where she studied with pianist John
Browning.
Wong's compositions include pieces for solo piano and chamber ensemble,
which have been performed at the Moab Music Festival and by such groups as
the Locrian Chamber Players and the Ragdale Ensemble. Marin Alsop first
heard Wong's Circle Dance for solo piano at a 1998 benefit
performance for the Cabrillo Music Festival at the UCSC Recital Hall, and
suggested an orchestral piece for the Festival. Waves and Raves,
originally composed in 1989 and revised this year for its world premiere,
is the result of that suggestion and is dedicated to Marin Alsop. Wong
writes the following comments about the piece:
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Having grown up with the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, John Coltrane and the
Grateful Dead as the music of my culture, I have developed an interest in
bringing to the concert arena the various strains of this music, which has
now fascinated and entertained several generations. Although combining
elements of jazz, rock, pop and Brazilian music with European classical
music, Waves and Raves maintains a distinctly American sound. My
objective was to create a piece of broad accessibility, using detail and
shaping to add quality without straying from its harmonic basis. The
interval of a fourth is used melodically, as a reflection of the age-old
relationship between tonic and subdominant chords, while riding over the
familiar progressions found at the core of jazz harmony.
The title comes from a dream I had while in the midst of composing this piece, which I recognized as a visual depiction of what I was trying to achieve musically. not recorded • Program notes by Lawrence Duckles  |
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