Marin Alsop opens the program with the World Premiere of a work by young Canadian composer and pianist Zosha Di Castri. The piece, titled Alba, was commissioned by renowned composer John Adams and his wife Deborah O'Grady in honor of Alsop’s 20th anniverary season. Dutch composer Robin de Raaff’s Entangled Tales was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and tonight it receives its West Coast Premiere. The experience of Entangled “is ebb and flow of musical density and intensity, from active hyperactive tutti orchestra to transparent, chamber-music like passages and back again, with all entangled details sparkling.” The recipient of two of the most prestigious awards in all of classical music–the Grawemeyer Award and the Ives Living award–George Tsontakis is most often recognized for his longer movements within larger musical forms. In contrast, his work tonight, Laconika, is a 15-minute work that, true to its Grecian title, consists of five short, pithy or “Spartan” pieces, each with an identifiably “catchy” character.
Then 2011 Grammy Award-winner Michael Daugherty returns to the Festival for the West Coast Premiere of his electric guitar concerto titled, Gee’s Bend, featuring guitarist D.J. Sparr. Inspired by the quilters in Gee’s Bend, Alabama, Daugherty describes his composition as a “patchwork of various cross currents. I intertwine American guitar rock and southern folk music with contemporary classical music to create a colorful and unique tapestry of sound.” The evening closes with Daugherty’s tribute to the Maestra, the World Premiere of his anniversary “nightcap,” Fever.
The concert is followed by an outdoor dessert reception for the entire audience and orchestra!
This concert will be delay broadcast and webstreamed on KUSP radio, date TBA. Program Notes may be read below.
Program Notes
Alba (2011) - World Premiere Zosha Di Castri (b. 1985)
Canadian composer and pianist Zosha Di Castri combines instrumental, mixed and purely electronic music. A student at McGill University, she is currently pursuing doctoral studies at Columbia University in New York. She has composed works for the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National de Lorraine and the JACK Quartet, among others.
When the Cabrillo Festival asked a handful of Marin Alsop’s favorite composers to write the brief works comprising the “Nightcaps” scattered throughout this season, John Adams was at the top of that list. Though his schedule prohibited his participation, he and wife Deborah O’Grady graciously offered to commission a promising young composer to write a new work in honor of Marin’s 20th anniversary season. It was a splendid and befitting idea, and Adams, in turn, recommended Di Castri. Alba is dedicated to Marin Alsop. About it, Di Castri writes:
Alba represents an orchestral reflection on the idea of dawn. Often poetry and images depicting the break of day evoke a spring atmosphere, dew on the grass, bird calls, a fresh sense of possibility. But what about dawn in the dead of winter?
Taking inspiration from the frozen landscapes of the prairies of Northern Alberta, I wanted this piece to explore an alternative atmosphere of the coming of day. I tried to capture the startling emptiness one feels stepping out into a cold morning, the air clutching you by the throat it is so crisp. Yet there is a majestic beauty in this stark quilted silence and stunning flatness.
The intrigue of dawn for me also extends to the notion of the moment something begins to appear or develop, the instant of starting to perceive or understand, and the gradual unfurling towards elated flashes of discovery. Here we stand on the quivering threshold between rest and wakefulness, dark and light, immobility and activity. But of course the light seeps through, even before it cuts the horizon. In a way, the anticipation leading up to the moment of reveal is in fact what makes the experience, more than the sight of the sun itself.
My current compositional obsessions lie in creating intricate musical textures and finding unusual timbres, all within a framework of clearly delineated directional gestures. To this end, I make use of several extended playing techniques, employ various odd percussion instruments to expand the orchestral palette, and put into motion ascending and descending vectors of sound (i.e. glissandi, runs, etc).
Finally, Alba indirectly makes a nod to its historic roots, linking past dawns, from lyric poetry to troubadour aubades, to a modern interpretation of dawn. Perhaps this is a strange piece to present in the middle of summer in California, but what good is music if it cannot transport us?
Entangled Tales (2007) - West Coast Premiere Robin de Raaff (b.1968)
Entangled Tales was commissioned for the Boston Symphony Orchestra with financial support from the Fund for the Creation of New Music, The Netherlands. It is dedicated to conductor Edo de Waart, Boston Symphony Orchestra Artistic Administrator Anthony Fogg, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It received its premiere on August 6, 2007, the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ludovic Morlot. The following notes are taken from those written for the premiere by Robert Kirzinger, Assistant Director of Publications, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and are used with his gracious permission. “As might be understood from the title of the piece, Dutch composer Robin de Raaff wrote his piece specifically for Tanglewood. The composer credits his experience at Tanglewood as the Senior Composition Fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center in 2000 as an important stage in his career, and he also remembers fondly the time he spent working and attending concerts there.
“De Raaff was approached about writing a new work for premiere at the Tanglewood Festival in 2005. About Entangled Tales, he writes,”
A newly commissioned work always starts from an utter and complete void. But as I sketch, more and more the important material separates itself from the lesser material, and in the end I always seem to end up with the “proper” material that enables me to write an entire work, for whatever length; but that is a long journey.
“Asked whether the experience of working on his large-scale opera had changed his music, he replied, ‘The oeuvre of a composer always splits itself into before and after the first opera…. While writing my opera I felt that the timing, from moment to moment, needed to be free, while the overall timing of the entire opera was carefully planned. After my opera I really let go of the constructivist approach to structure and the music that flows through it, and found that I had actually made a big step forwards. This piece [Entangled Tales] and many other newer pieces are much more free again. I use the same musical grammar, but now more freely.’
Kirzinger describes the piece as follows: “In Entangled Tales the composer employs a large orchestra with a full complement of percussion plus harp. Alto flute adds a touch of exoticism to the woodwind section. Instruments are grouped together for complex collections of musical gestures, which are themselves combined to form what might be thought of as multilayered ‘supermotifs,’ as opposed to a simpler melodic or harmonic theme-group. Several of these dynamic gestures are used to form a fluid mosaic of rhythms, brief melodies, and timbres in an ever-changing texture, enhanced further by intricate attention to dynamics and articulation (accents, muting, tremolando, strings ‘col legno’ or played with the wood of the bow, and so forth throughout the orchestra). In the largest sense, the experience is ebb and flow of musical density and intensity, from active hyperactive tutti orchestra to transparent, chamber-music like passages and back again, with all entangled details sparkling.”
George Tsontakis made his first appearance at the Cabrillo Festival in 1994, when he was a Festival Guest Composer and three of his works were performed, Three Sighs, Three Variations (1981) and the West Coast premieres of Fiesta Habañera (1984)and Perpetual Angelus (1992). After a long absence, in 2009 the Festival performed a new work, Clair de Lune, composed in 2007.
Laconika was commissioned by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra through their unique Sound Investment program and introduced on May 15 and 16, 2010 with Tsontakis conducting. The fifteen-minute work is true to its Grecian title in that it consists of five short, pithy or “Spartan” pieces, each with an identifiably “catchy” character—this from a composer most often recognized for his longer movements within large musical forms. Tsontakis writes:
In Laconika, I sought to challenge myself to compose five shorter movements, each with as much individual color as I could muster within the space of, let’s say, the average “historical” song––pop, classical, troubadour or other styles of the world’s most popular musical idiom. This with musical economy of means ever in mind. The characters of the movements reflect their titles, two of which alter real words to suit the first performances by LACO, the acronym for the LA Chamber Orchestra. Indeed, my “Laconicrimosa” incorporates a very famous snippet of the world’s most recognized Lacrimosa, here rendered with a degree of respectful poetic license.
Gees Bend for Electric Guitar and Orchestra (2009) – West Coast Premiere Michael Daugherty (b. 1954)
Much of the music of Michael Daugherty reflects various aspects of American culture, ranging from popular icons to ethnic sub-cultures. His works have been featured at many previous Cabrillo Festival concerts, beginning in 1995 with a performance of his Dead Elvis (1993). In 1998 the Festival performed two works, Metropolis Symphony (1988-93) and Motown Metal (1994), and Le Tombeau de Liberace (1996) the following year. Three Daugherty works were performed in 2002: Bells for Stokowski (2001), Route 66 (1998) and UFO (1999), and two more in 2003, Rosa Parks Boulevard (2000) and the violin concerto Fire and Blood (2003). Many of these performances have been West Coast premieres, as was Daugherty’s Time Machine (2003), performed at the Cabrillo Festival in 2006. The 2008 Festival saw the West Coast premiere of his Troyjam (2008)
Gees Bend received its world premiere on April 16, 2009 in Jemison Hall, Birmingham, Alabama with D.J. Sparr, electric guitar and the Alabama Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Hege. Daugherty writes:
Located on the Alabama River in one of the poorest areas of the South, Gee's Bend, Alabama (also known as Boyken) is a small, isolated town inhabited primarily by African-Americans who are descendents of Civil War slaves. Living in isolation forced the residents of Gee's Bend to develop their own traditions and find ways to survive. This included creating unique quilts that incorporated bold colors, abstract patterns and leftover fabrics. In recent years, the quilts of Gee's Bend have gained significant national attention. They have been shown in museums and heralded as “some of the most miraculous works of modern art in America,” which “blur the boundaries between folk and contemporary art.” My composition is a patchwork of various crosscurrents: I intertwine American guitar rock and southern folk music with contemporary classical music to create a colorful and unique tapestry of sound.
The first movement, Housetop, takes its name from a popular quilting pattern often used as a point of departure by the Gee's Bend quilters. In my “Housetop,” winding melodies are framed by striped syncopated grooves, patterned triadic chords and Jimi Hendrix-like psychedelic guitar riffs colored with fuzz box and distortion.
Grandmother's Dream is a slow blues which expresses the memories and feelings of generations of Gee's Bend quilters who have endured poverty and hardship, but hope for a better life to come through their creation of inspired quilts. I utilize lush string chords, bowed cymbal and vibraphone and ringing crotales to produce a vision of quilts made of faded remnants and scraps of clothing worn by loved ones. To remind us of the hard labor endured by generations of Afro-American workers in the fields of Gee's Bend, the guitar's dream-like, soaring melodic lines, colored with delay, phaser and compression, evoke a painful cry for hope and salvation.
Washboard is my homage to the quilting bees of Gee's Bend. Using quilting methods passed on from generation to generation, the unique quilts by the Afro-American women of Gee's Bend are often created collaboratively in quilting bees. Washboard is another kind of quilting bee for singing, soulful woodwinds, scrappy washboard, and guitar playing “southern blues” licks.
The final movement is a blazing virtuosic tour de force entitled Chicken Pickin’. The title refers to a southern style of plucking the guitar strings made famous by guitarists such as Bo Diddley, Chet Atkins, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Duane Allman. The title also alludes to the fact that most of the residents of Gee's Bend continue to inhabit small, modest farms where their ancestors were once slaves. For most Gee's Bend quilters, the singing of African-American spirituals and an active church life are important parts of the gospel of inspired quilt making. To honor this tradition, I have threaded spirituals, such as "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" and "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen," into the orchestral fabric of my musical quilt, which is dedicated to the quilters of Gee's Bend, Alabama.
