COLOURFUL WORLD
Friday, August 3, 8pm Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium
PROGRAM NOTES:
Stomp (with Fate and Elvira) (2006) (United States premiere)
James MacMillan (b. 1959)
Born in Ayrshire, Scotland, James MacMillan was educated at Edinburgh University and completed doctoral studies in composition at Durham University with John Casken. After serving as a lecturer in music at Manchester University, he returned to Scotland where he currently teaches at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. He was appointed affiliate composer of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in 1990 and also serves as the visiting composer of the London Philharmonia and artistic director of its contemporary music series, Music of Today. He has been composer-in-residence for the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and joined the BBC Philharmonic recently as its new composer/conductor.
MacMillan’s works include The Berserking, a piano concerto composed for Peter Donohoe and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra; Sinfonietta, commissioned by the London Sinfonietta; and Epiclesis, a trumpet concerto commissioned in 1992 by the Edinburgh Festival for John Wallace. Vocal works include the Seven Last Words from the Cross for chorus and strings, and MacMillan’s first opera, Inés de Castro, commissioned by the Scottish National Opera, which received its premiere in 1996.
MacMillan’s percussion concerto Veni, Veni, Emmanuel (1992) was featured at the 1996 Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music and The Confessions of Isobel Gowdie (1990), the first of MacMillan’s works to draw attention, was performed at the Festival in 1999, while the following year saw the American premiere of his Triduum. In 2001 the Festival performed the American premiere of MacMillan’s Symphony No. 2 (1999), his Tryst (1989) in 2004 and the West Coast premiere of his violin concerto A Deep but Dazzling Darkness (2001-02) in 2005.
Stomp (with Fate and Elvira) was composed in 2006 and first performed at London’s Barbican Centre on March 3, 2007 by the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Colin Davis. MacMillan has provided the following brief note:
The dark, brooding cloud of Fate that had been hovering over St Petersburg lifted and drifted west to Sweden, where it made an amorous encounter with a young tightrope walker, Elvira Madigan. They eloped, and headed west again, ending up at a ceilidh in Kilkenny or Kilmarnock, or somewhere . . .
Not recorded
Colourful World (2007) (World premiere)
David Heath (b. 1956)
British composer David Heath began as a performer and composer of jazz, but has since composed concertos for artists such as flutist James Galway and violinist Nigel Kennedy. The Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music performs the world premiere of Colourful World on the occasion of his first Festival appearance. Heath has written the following notes:
In 2005, my son Seamus, then aged six, gave me an extraordinary picture he called “Colourful World.” This year he gave me an oil painting he'd done of the earth from space. Kids have such amazing imaginations, and as I looked at Seamus's pictures, I began thinking of a concept for a piece—the earth as it would appear to a space traveler, this beautiful colourful globe, suspended in the darkness of space, overflowing with consciousness expressed in many different forms. I then imagined the traveler landing and seeing different parts of the world close up, having experiences and falling in love with the place and its people. He finally leaves the orbit of the earth and looks back at the planet, inspired and changed.
The solo trumpet links the sections together, which are: “Vision of Perfection”—“Teeming with Life”—“Earth Rhythms”—“Romance”—“African Crossing” and “Prayer.” In the final “Prayer” section the strings take over and develop the trumpet theme, and this becomes a kind of prayer that the major governments and corporations will come to their senses and start to care for this beautiful, colourful world, overflowing with diverse expressions of consciousness, in the way we should all care for it.
Colourful World is dedicated to Marin Alsop and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music.
Not recorded
Soprano Sax Concerto (2005/2006) (World premiere)
Jennifer Higdon (b. 1962)
This work began as Jennifer Higdon’s Oboe Concerto, originally commissioned by the Minnesota Commissioning Club and first performed on September 9, 2005 by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra conducted by Douglas Boyd with Kathy Greenbank as soloist. She has written the following notes about this arrangement for soprano saxophone:
I have always been struck by the range of power and beauty that comes from saxophones. I have seen a sax quartet bring a large schoolroom filled with hundreds of children come to a complete halt with one tutti note. Many people don’t realize just how much power exists in this group of instruments, and often they may not realize the potential for beauty.
The soprano sax, in particular, produces a tone of warmth and a real agility that allows it to sing like none of the other instruments in this group. So it seemed fitting, when I was approached by several saxophonists, to arrange my Oboe Concerto for this instrument. There are not a lot of works for the soprano sax in a concerto format, and the ranges of both oboe and soprano are similar. Because the saxophone has more power to it than an oboe, I thought that this instrument would balance the accompanying ensemble quite well, but give listeners a chance to hear its exquisite beauty.
Thank you to Maestro Marin Alsop for helping to bring this piece to life.
Not recorded either as the Oboe Concerto or the Soprano Sax Concerto
Symphony No. 1, Variations on Appalachia Waltz (2006) (World premiere)
Mark O’Connor (b. 1962)
Mark O’Connor’s first appearance at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music was in 1994, which saw the West Coast premiere of his Fiddle Concerto, a work which has gone on to become one of the most frequently performed contemporary violin concertos. Since then he has written five additional concertos and has released several best-selling albums, among them Appalachia Waltz and Appalachian Journey with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and bassist Edgar Meyer, as well as a solo album in 1998, Midnight on the Water. His most recent Festival appearance was in 2000, which also saw the West Coast premiere of his Double Violin Concerto.
The original idea for the Symphony No. 1 came about as a result of conversations with violinist and conductor friends who suggested that O’Connor was the composer to write “the great American symphony.” Over the next several months O’Connor and his publishers developed a consortium of fifteen symphony orchestras to underwrite the piece. The Cabrillo Festival world premiere of the Symphony No. 1 came about because O’Connor wanted, as he put it in a letter to Marin Alsop, “a summer booking to develop the musical performance of it. I would be honored to have you usher it in.”
The following notes for the Symphony No. 1 are taken from a much longer essay O’Connor wrote about the conception and gestation of this work:
THE WALTZ
In 1992, I composed Appalachia Waltz. Far from Appalachia at the time, I was visiting the New Mexican desert for some work I was doing on a violin concerto I was composing, a movement called Trail Of Tears. For the concerto movement I was working on the soundscape of a drum march, slow and lethargic tempos, searching for the melodies to reflect on why this tragedy to Native Americans in Tennessee took place. An episodic moment happened during my composing of it. A window that opened to the American optimism that I tend to look for, a melody appeared seemingly out of thin air. Quite literally, in about 20 minutes, I had all three parts organized on a solo violin, to what was to become maybe my most loved piece of music, Appalachia Waltz.
THE SYMPHONY
At the time of this writing, I have composed six symphonic concertos for soloists and orchestra: The Fiddle Concerto; Three Pieces For Violin and Orchestra (Call Of the Mockingbird, Trail Of Tears and Fanfare For The Volunteer); Double Violin Concerto; The American Seasons; Double Concerto for Violin and Cello (For The Heroes); and Concerto No. 6 (Old Brass). In the process, I have found that creating music for symphony orchestra was exhilarating. Each concerto took me nearly nine months to compose. Two of them are for chamber orchestra and four for large symphony orchestra. I came to realize that the process made me an orchestral composer. I had the bug.
I then began to search for musical ideas for the symphony. After contemplating various directions for the piece, I decided to go back to the well and revive one of my best themes, Appalachia Waltz. From the outset, I knew I wanted the symphony to be constructed with the use of traditional instruments, both in kind and in number. After thinking about my symphony in the more standard three or four-movement schemes, I decided that a “variations” form could be ideal for my piece. I ruled out using a grounded bass variation approach largely with the Appalachia Waltz theme in this case however. If I used it perhaps, it would not be for very long. The strict “ground bass” is a kind of variation form very common with fiddle music, so I use it a lot in other settings. But with this material, I wanted to reach for other forms of variation instead.
I began to develop ideas for the variations to be “characteristic” in nature, with additive material spun from figural and ornamental variations and development. Also, the use of contrapuntal applications in terms of canonic and fugal movements was on my mind. I had been writing a lot of fugues for quite some time, including a six-part fugue that lasts for about seven minutes in my latest concerto Old Brass. Both these kinds of imitative variations I felt very comfortable with and wanted to explore them here.
As I begun the composing process, I wanted to write a brass fanfare—maybe to open the symphony. The fanfare became figural and developmental as well as providing its own character too. I wanted to feature the textural variation component of this process, and of course the fanfare in the brass plays right in to that hand. The fanfare is the variation movement I started working on first, and it ends up being the opening variation movement for the Symphony.
For the Symphony I wanted to utilize different phrase groups for different movements. There are signature phrases that “pop” out to the ear in Appalachia Waltz’s skeletal shape and melodic curve (the places of the melody that are memorable). I used these phrases the most and exposed them as much as possible. The “waltz” dance is built in to this theme by its nature, so I have this ¾ dance already that would infiltrate the piece and set it apart, to distinguish it. Being the fiddler I am, I would be foolish if I did not approach a gigue of some kind in this variation scheme as well! And one will hear the hoedown unmistakably! These are my characteristic variations in full bloom. The shape was beginning to look like a sound artistic concept as well as a sound logical one.
For the next ten months I wrote music, nearly every day. The music of Symphony No. 1 came quite naturally. The variation phrases were sketched out for the most part early on, perhaps a 15-second strand, or even a 30-second or 60-second group of phrases that came to be the subject of each specific variation. I wrote most of these near the beginning of the compositional process, around August and September of 2006. The brass fanfare was the first variation I worked on. I had composed a full-scale brass fanfare for my second concerto called Fanfare For the Volunteer. In many ways I was really looking forward to working on this variation the most. I loved the way the fanfare from the concerto made me feel when I would perform it with orchestra. It was an American fanfare, the way that I heard the phrases in my head with the trumpets and horns. It would surely set the stage for celebration and the great spirit I wanted to roll in to this music.
The next movement was the “jig.” It was too delicious to hold down to a minute. It was impossible for me to even keep that variation to three minutes as well. Next variation; a fugue. One of the signs of a good fugue is how you extend it in terms of length. Of course this was going to go long! I realized that after I wrote an entire characteristic variation featuring mostly winds, I was going to have to cut it out of the piece. I was going to try to hold this symphony to 35 minutes. That had to be a goal.
Then next came the “hoedown” movement that I knew I wanted to do. It was an exciting variation indeed. I could not shortchange it. So I came up with a new scheme for the form. It was now four variation movements and the fifth movement representing the theme in its entirety.
When I came to the final movement of the symphony, the full statement of the theme, I first introduced the variation with an introduction depicting reflection. It consisted of yet one more variation from yet another phrase of the Appalachia Waltz melody. Then, as the power of the brass comes in to take the chorus of the theme, the principle line is tossed back to the strings. The strings play the recapitulation of the theme. Then, with each desk of players falling away, the last strain of the melody is revealed by the three very instruments that gave the first performance of Appalachia Waltz twelve years earlier; the solo violin, solo cello and solo bass. Just before the last chord resolves with the second degree of the scale changing to the third degree, the entire orchestra comes in for the final gesture, a long crescendo, towards the end.
Not recorded