An incredibly hectic week is going on! The Wife had carpal tunnel surgery the other day, so I have to pick up the slack and actually do stuff around the house. Do you believe this crap? The horror!!!
Also, at work I’m in the long-delayed, long-planned process of moving my work area from one part of The Store to another. This will be lovely when I’m done, but right now I’m in the “All my crap is where it’s going so now I have to move around piles of my crap while I try to organize it and put it where it goes” stage of moving, which is not a fun part of the moving process to be in. But we’ll get there.
Meanwhile…as is my oft-used practice when I’m too busy to write about music, I drop in an overture by Franz von Suppe. Enjoy!
I hope that worked, I’m always a bit nervous about embedding video playlists.
Anyway: Carlos Simon is a composer who originally hails from Atlanta, GA. He completed doctoral work at the University of Michigan and has since enjoyed a varied career of composition and performance; according to his bio he is currently on the faculty at Georgetown University, and he served recently as Composer-in-Residence at what was the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. I don’t know what Dr. Simon’s current status is regarding that, since the Kennedy Center has been one of many Grounds Zero for our current President being a complete and utter calamity, but that post was a great honorific at one time. Dr. Simon has had a number of his works recorded, and he has been performed by quite a few of the finest music ensembles in America.
The work featured above, Tales: A Folklore Symphony, is “a four-movement piece for orchestra that explores African American folklore as well as Afrofuturist stories.” Dr. Simon’s website has an entire page devoted to this work, so I recommend going there for more! He even provides a perusal copy of the score which you can explore virtually as you listen. It’s a fascinating, inventive, energetic, and emotional work that plays out fascinatingly over its four movements.
It’s St. Patrick’s Day, which means I’m going to take a quick break from American Black composers. (Sadly, a brief attempt to locate Irish Black composers did not turn up much of anything at all. I did not dig super-deeply, though.) We’re going to dig back to the music of one Charles Villiers Stanford, an Anglo-Irish composer whose music has been overshadowed since his lifetime (1852-1924) by the likes of Edward Elgar and the British masters who followed. Stanford’s music is lyrical and Romantic, and it’s always pleasing. Not necessarily pleasant, as he brings a lot of good Romantic fire to his work, but pleasing. I’ve never heard a work of Stanford’s that left me thinking anything other than, “I’m glad I heard that.” This work is a good example. Stanford wrote six tone poems that he called “Irish Rhapsodies”, and this is the fourth of those. It is subtitled “The Fisherman of Lough Neagh”, and what a wonderful work it is–brooding and melodic and, in the end, just wonderfully triumphant.
As I was listening to this work, I read that George Bernard Shaw criticized Stanford’s music as lacking passion. I’m not sure what Shaw was listening to when he said that, because it sure as hell wasn’t this.
Jonathan Bailey Holland is a composer originally from Flint, MI who is currently the Dean of the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University. According to his bio, he has had music performed by ensembles all over the world, and he has taught at a number of universities as well as at many music festivals and arts schools. And like many of the other composers in this ongoing mini-series of mine, I never heard of him until now. I have thus far only heard the work presented below, so I can’t discuss Dr. Holland’s general approach, but this work is minimalistic and haunting in its evocative use of a very small ensemble (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, percussion) and its use of moody dissonances throughout. The work is chillingly meditative, befitting its title: The Clarity of Cold Air. This work does seem to me to fit the mood of the streetscape photo I posted the other day….
I couldn’t decide which of three pieces to feature today, so I said to myself, “Why limit myself to one?” That’s right, you get all three.
Composer and flautist Valerie Coleman has had a deeply impressive career already. A native of Louisville, KY, Coleman was steeped in music from an early age, and her trajectory seems to have mainly pointed in one direction her entire life, as far as I can tell: up. She has been an accomplished performing flautist as well as a highly-regarded composer; her work Umoja–which began as a work for woodwind quintet but then was re-arranged by the composer for many varying ensembles–eventually became the first work performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra by a living Black woman composer. Honestly, I’m not even going to try to sum up Coleman’s life; for more on her, I highly encourage visiting her official website. I’m just going to feature some music.
First, we have a work for an ensemble I’ve never encountered before: the flute choir. The piece is called Juba, and according to Coleman’s site, “JUBA for flute choir gives homage to its namesake: a rhythmic dance found in the origins of both African-American and West African cultures.” It is certainly rhythmic and dancelike…and the melding of various tonal colors of different kinds of flutes creates a unique kind of magic here.
Next is a work that is obviously inspired, at least in part, by the example set by Aaron Copland. Coleman provides a fanfare for brass and percussion, called Fanfare for Uncommon Times. That certainly captures the era in which we live, doesn’t it? Also from her site:
It begins not with a typical fanfare salute, but a quizzical, searching line for solo trombone that soon is cushioned by pungent, soft-spoken brass chords. Unrest amid determination stirs as the music shifts into agitated episodes for percussion. The mood seems at once reflective and restless, uplifting and ominous. The elements of the Black experience during a challenging time that Coleman described come through during a passage alive with riffs for mallet percussion instruments, hints of dance and bursts of anxious frenzy. By the end, with spurts of four-note brass motifs, echoes of Coplandesque affirmation arise, but also a breathless flurry that feels bracing yet challenging.
Finally, what is likely Coleman’s most well-known and performed work to date, the afore-mentioned Umoja. Subtitled “Anthem of Unity”, I found this work challenging and contemplative and moving as I listened to it several times in the last few days alone. The notes on Coleman’s site are well-worth reading:
In its original form, Umoja, the Swahili word for Unity and the first principle of the African Dispora holiday Kwanzaa, was compose a simple song for women’s choir. It embodied a sense of ‘tribal unity’, through the feel of a drum circle, the sharing of history through traditional “call and response” form and the repetition of a memorable sing-song melody. It was rearranged into woodwind quintet form during the genesis of Coleman’s chamber music ensemble, Imani Winds, with the intent of providing an anthem that celebrated the diverse heritages of the ensemble itself.
Almost two decades later from the original, the orchestral version brings an expansion and sophistication to the short and sweet melody, beginning with sustained ethereal passages that float and shift from a bowed vibraphone, supporting the introduction of the melody by solo violin.
There’s more there, go read it…but listen to Umoja. This is music as balm for the soul.
Oh, is THIS piece a “banger”, as the kids say! (A really good song is a banger now. Up ’til now, if you said “banger” to me, I’d have assumed you were talking about a British breakfast sausage.) Composer Kevin Day‘s Concerto for Wind Ensemble is a thrilling virtuoso showpiece that puts every section of the wind ensemble on full display. It is energetic and jazzy and rhythmic and lyrical, and it’s one of the most purely enjoyable pieces I’ve listened to as a new (to me) work in a long time. I have really enjoyed hearing this piece, and I’m sure I’ll be returning to it and to Dr. Day’s music quite a bit moving forward.
From Dr. Day’s bio:
Dr. Kevin Day (b. 1996) is an award-winning, multi-disciplinary composer, jazz pianist and conductor based in Las Vegas, Nevada. Internationally acclaimed as one of the world’s leading musical voices, Dr. Day’s work is known as a vibrant exploration of diverse musical traditions from contemporary classical, cinematic, jazz, R&B, Soul and more. A unique voice in the world of classical music, Dr. Day takes inspiration from a broad range of sources, including romanticism, late 20th century music, jazz fusion and gospel. Across all areas, his work explores the complex interplay of rhythm, texture and melody across genres.
After several fruitful conversations with Dr. Cynthia Johnston Turner, director of bands at the University of Georgia, the concept for the Concerto for Wind Ensemble began to take form. We had talked about doing a potential commission for the UGA Hodgson Wind Ensemble, and ultimately the conversation led to the idea of doing a substantial work to further the wind band repertoire. I knew off the bat that I wanted to write something that reflected my upbringing as a young black man and the musical culture that I grew up in, which hasn’t always been represented in concert band music.
My experience and the inspiration for this work come from a world of various intersections. My father, born in West Virginia, was a hip-hop producer in the late 1980s who worked in Southern California, and my mother (also from West Virginia) was a gospel singer. During my childhood, I grew up listening to hip-hop, R&B, jazz, and gospel music. Simultaneously, I was learning classical music through playing in band, and later orchestra. I was playing jazz and gospel music on piano, while also playing classical music on euphonium and tuba. This dual learning environment had a huge impact on my musicianship and my development as a composer. While these words had been separated in my head when I was growing up, in this work I intentionally wanted to merge them together in new fusions, paying homage to my parents, the culture I grew up in, and to the wind band world.
What came from this concept is this Concerto for Wind Ensemble, a five-movement work for band that is my most ambitious composition to date, and a work that took almost two years to compose. The movements entitled Flow, Riff, Vibe, Soul, and Jam reflect the various musical styles that I have been immersed in. Vibe and Soul are specifically dedicated to my parents, without whom I could not have made it this far. I am immensely grateful to Dr. Turner and to the consortium members of this work, who believed in my vision and sought to bring this work to life. I’m happy to share this contribution and love letter to the wind band and to the culture.
Once again I note that the concert band and wind ensemble never seem to get the respect they are due as expressive music ensembles in this country and maybe beyond. Wind ensembles are typically seen as “student” groups, and professional ones are few and far between. I truly wish that would change, and works like Kevin Day’s Concerto for Wind Ensemble are a big reason why. This is fantastic music!
Courtney Bryan is a composer from New Orleans, born in 1982, who is currently a professor of music at Tulane University. She holds a doctorate and was a 2023 MacArthur Fellow. She is also, by the evidence of the piece featured here today, an amazing composer with a thrilling approach of mixing Gospel, jazz, and soundscapes to create something modern and new.
Sanctum is meditative and haunting, which is almost certainly exactly what Dr. Bryan was attempting to achieve. The following is from her website:
Sanctum, for orchestra and recorded sound, explores the sound of improvisation in Holiness-preaching traditions. I drew inspiration from recorded sermons: The Praying Slave Lady by Pastor Shirley Caesar, The Eagle Stirs Her Nest by Reverend C. L. Franklin, and Reverend Charles Albert Tindley’s hymn, Stand By Me. Included are the voices of Marlene Pinnock and of activists in Ferguson, Missouri from 2014. Sanctum is my artistic response to recent events of police brutality. By employing techniques of layered repetition, rhythmic intensity, sounds of moaning and whooping, and voices of the past and present, Sanctum invokes solace found in the midst of persecution and tribulation. Sanctum was commissioned and premiered by American Composers Orchestra with the generous support of The Jerome Foundation and The Peter Heller Fund. The chamber version was commissioned by the London Sinfonietta.
The performance of Sanctum featured below, by the London Sinfonietta, takes place at a socially-distant concert from 2020, if you’re wondering why the audience is so sparse. I recommend listening on earphones or earbuds, if you can; the work is deeply immersive with its blend of live musicians and recorded sounds.
I kind of screwed up my calendar this year, which means that I missed the start of Black History Month when posting last week’s selection. For the last bunch of years I’ve been using this month to feature Black music in this space, and I’ll be doing that for the balance of February here (and probably into March). As is often the case, I’ll be featuring composers I’m not familiar with but should be. I’m starting with a work that is featured on an album that was suggested to me by the YouTube Music algorithm, and now, reading about the composer as I write this, I’m struck by the sad experience of this composer’s life and the fate of her music after her life ended. The composer is Margaret Bonds, and the piece is Montgomery Variations (1964).
Margaret Bonds (1913-1972) was among the first generation of great Black American musicians to achieve genuine renown in the classical music world. She was a close friend of Langston Hughes as well, to the point that his death plunged her into a depression that she never really managed to overcome. Bonds died of a heart attack at only 59 years of age, and because she had no will, the disposition of her archives–her compositions and her papers–was messy, to put it mildly. Many of her compositions were lost and some were literally rescued from refuse piles. To this day the copyrights of Bonds’s surviving works are murky, providing a stark example of the absurdity of extending copyrights as long as we have. Margaret Bonds has been dead for over fifty years, and she has no living descendants or heirs…and yet, we are still over a decade from the earliest her works might reach the public domain.
The work today, Montgomery Variations, is just that: a series of variations on a theme, in this case the Black spiritual “I Want Jesus To Walk With Me”. Bonds composed this work as tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. after visiting Montgomery, AL in 1963. Montgomery was a key location in the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s, and the Montgomery Variations are a meditation on those struggles and the way they played out. Bonds wrote her own program notes for the work (via):
“The Montgomery Variations” is a group of freestyle variations based on the Negro Spiritual theme, “I want Jesus to Walk with Me.” The treatment suggests the manner in which Bach constructed his partitats – a bold statement of the theme, followed by variations of the theme in the same key – major and minor.
The words are as follows:
I want Jesus to walk with me. I want Jesus to walk with me. All along my pilgrim journey, Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me.
In my trials, Lord, walk with me. In my trials, Lord, walk with me. When my heart is almost breaking, Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me.
When I’m in trouble, Lord, walk with me. When I’m in trouble, Lord, walk with me. When my head is bowed in sorrow, Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me.
[Bonds continues:] Because of the personal meanings of the Negro spiritual themes, Margaret Bonds always avoids over-development of the melodies.
“The Montgomery Variations” were written after the composer’s visit to Montgomery, Alabama, and the surrounding area in 1963 (on tour with Eugene Brice and the Manhattan Melodaires).
In December 1960, “The Ballad of the Brown King” was dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr., and presented at Clark Center, YWCA in New York, by the Church of the Master and Clark Center as a benefit to Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Langston Hughes, the author of the text, was present on this occasion.
Decision Under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. and SCLC, Negroes in Montgomery decided to boycott the bus company and to fight for their rights as citizens.
Prayer Meeting True to custom, prayer meetings precede their action. Prayer meetings start quietly with humble petitions to God. During the course of the meeting, members seized with religious fervor shout and dance. Oblivious to their fellow worshippers they exhibit their love of God and their Faith in Deliverance by gesticulation, clapping and beating their feet.
March The Spirit of the Nazarene marching with them, the Negroes of Montgomery walked to their work rather than be segregated on the buses. The entire world, symbolically with them, marches.
Dawn in Dixie Dixie, the home of the Camellias known as “pink perfection,” magnolias, jasmine and Spanish moss, awakened to the fact that something new was happening in the South.
One Sunday in the South Children were in Sunday School learning about Jesus, the Prince of Peace. Southern “die-hards” planted a bomb and several children were killed.
Lament The world was shaken by the cruelty of the Sunday School bombing. Negroes, as usual, leaned on their Jesus to carry them through this crisis of grief and humiliation.
Benediction A benign God, Father and Mother to all people, pours forth Love to His children – the good and the bad alike.
Here are the Montgomery Variations by Margaret Bonds.
Today we conclude the exploration of Music Inspired By Water, with a gigantic work by English master Ralph Vaughan Williams. From what I’ve learned, I could keep doing Music Inspired By Water for months! But I think it’s time to move on for now, and we’ve heard a pretty solid selection during this focus period.
So, Vaughan Williams: what a wonderful composer he was! He lived a long life, from 1872 to 1958, dying at age 85. He lived through the end of Romanticism in music and well into the rise of Modernism and the avant garde; he also lived through the height of the British Empire and its fall, and the collapse of the one-time world order through two cataclysmic world wars. All these events played out in Vaughan Williams’s musical life, heavily influencing his development. Vaughan Williams should also be seen as a patron saint for the late-bloomers in life: where many of the greatest composers were prodigies from whom music poured in their earliest years, Vaughan Williams did not really blossom as a composer until he was in his 30s. The work we have today premiered when RVW was 37. It is his first symphony, of an eventual nine. RVW’s first symphony arrived when RVW was older than Mozart had been when he died.
The piece is called simply A Sea Symphony. Is it really a “symphony” in the most formal sense? Maybe not…but I think Hector Berlioz would have heard this work and been proud. It is scored for large orchestra, full chorus, and soprano and baritone soloists. The text is various poems by Walt Whitman (whose work was apparently quite popular with this generation of British composers), each about the sea or some aspect of it. The work’s four movements are titled A Song for All Seas, All Ships; On the Beach At Night, Alone; Scherzo: The Waves; The Explorers.
A Sea Symphony is captivating right from the opening bars. Just listen to the intro! For sheer power, that’s a hugely grand and vast a start to a work as any I know; it’s even more direct and to-the-point than Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra. I, for one, can’t hear that opening fanfare, followed by the chorus declaiming “Behold the SEA!”, with the full orchestra crashing in on the word “sea”…as much as I try to avoid visual parallels when writing about music, it’s virtually impossible not to hear this as RVW’s depiction of a wave crashing against the rocks. The remainder of the work is often every bit as grand as that again, though there are also moments of intimate introspection…like the sea.
I’ve always had a fascination not just with waters around the world in all forms–lakes, rivers, streams, forest pools, and the oceans–but hanging above all that is the concept of the sea, which is somehow a larger concept, isn’t it? The sea seems a characterization of a vast part of the entire world and how it all comes together. When we think of the sea, I’m not sure that we’re envisioning a specific part of a specific ocean. The sea is a larger thing, a vaster thing. It’s a concept, an idea, a feeling, as much as it is a place. And that, for now, is where I’ll leave things.
The recent theme here, Works Inspired By Water, will be wrapping up next week…not for lack of works to continue presenting, but because I want to move on to other things! This particular theme, which occurred to me almost randomly one day, has proven even more fruitful than I expected. It turns out that water has inspired a lot of wonderful music!
But how about a work that isn’t just inspired by water but which literally uses water as an instrument?
Enter the always fascinating Chinese-American composer Tan Dun.
Tan is a prolific composer of whose work I have both heard a lot and not enough. Throughout his career he has written a great deal of music utilizing mixtures of traditional orchestras and instruments and very, very different non-musical sound sources to create some amazing soundscapes in his work. For this piece, called Water Concerto, he incorporates sounds using water that are captivating and enervating as the piece progresses. Just looking on the scene at the beginning here, before the work even begins, is preparatory: there’s a standard orchestra there, but in front, surrounding the conductor, is a wide variety of percussion instruments along with large basins of water. The “water performer” does amazing things throughout, making this piece one that you watch as much as hear. If you are tempted to turn this off because of the lack of traditional melody, please don’t! I promise you will hear something amazing if you stick it out.
Water is an element you can’t block. You can block land, you can say this is China and this is Russia, but water has no such frontiers.
What I want to present… is music that is for listening to in a visual way, and watching in an audio way. I want it to be intoxicating. And I hope some people will listen and rediscover life’s elements, things that are around us but we don’t notice.
