Patterns
Ripple - ted hearne
cond. David Rentz
soloists: Alice Dryden, Drew Corey, Ariana Stultz
soloists: Alice Dryden, Drew Corey, Ariana Stultz
Ripple uses as its text just one sentence from one of the 400,000 internal military cables known as the Iraq War Logs. It is part of a cable that describes an incident that took place on July 22, 2005, wherein an American military officer opened fire on an unidentified vehicle that was driving toward a checkpoint in Fallujah. As the cable plainly states, "The marine that engaged from Post 7 was unable to determine the occupants of the vehicle due to the reflection of the sun coming off the windshield." The occupants were in fact a family of Iraqi civilians - a mother was killed, her husband and two children badly injured. -Ted Hearne
TEXT
I. The marine that engaged from Post 7 was unable to determine the occupants of the vehicle due to the reflection of the sun coming off the windshield.
II. due to the
III. of the sun
IV. The marine that engaged
V. determine
VI. the reflection of the sun
VII. occupants
VIII. The marine that engaged from Post 7 was unable to determine the occupants of the vehicle due to the reflection of the sun coming off the windshield.
I. The marine that engaged from Post 7 was unable to determine the occupants of the vehicle due to the reflection of the sun coming off the windshield.
II. due to the
III. of the sun
IV. The marine that engaged
V. determine
VI. the reflection of the sun
VII. occupants
VIII. The marine that engaged from Post 7 was unable to determine the occupants of the vehicle due to the reflection of the sun coming off the windshield.
About the Composer: Composer, singer, bandleader and recording artist Ted Hearne (b.1982, Chicago) draws on a wide breadth of influences ranging across music's full terrain, to create intense, personal and multi-dimensional works. The New York Times has praised Mr. Hearne for his "tough edge and wildness of spirit," and "topical, politically sharp-edged works." Pitchfork called Hearne's work "some of the most expressive socially engaged music in recent memory -- from any genre," and Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker that Hearne's music "holds up as a complex mirror image of an information-saturated, mass-surveillance world, and remains staggering in its impact." Recent and upcoming commissions include orchestral works for the San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New World Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and A Far Cry, chamber works for Eighth Blackbird, Ensemble dal Niente and Alarm Will Sound, and vocal works for Conspirare, The Crossing and Roomful of Teeth.
again (after ecclesiastes) - david lang
cond. Ariana Stultz
Loosely based on text from the Book of Ecclesiastes, where the narrator laments the inherent cyclical nature of life and death, again observes the endless equilibrium of hope and futility in life, and humanity.
TEXT
people come and people go
the earth goes on and on
the sun rises, the sun sets
it rushes to where it rises again
the wind blows round, round and round
it stops, it blows again
all the rivers run to the sea
but the sea is never full
from where the rivers run they run again
these things make me so tired
I can’t speak, I can’t see, I can’t hear
what happened before will happen again
I forgot it all before
I will forget it all again
people come and people go
the earth goes on and on
the sun rises, the sun sets
it rushes to where it rises again
the wind blows round, round and round
it stops, it blows again
all the rivers run to the sea
but the sea is never full
from where the rivers run they run again
these things make me so tired
I can’t speak, I can’t see, I can’t hear
what happened before will happen again
I forgot it all before
I will forget it all again
About the composer: David Lang is one of the most highly esteemed and performed American composers writing today. Lang has often been categorized as a post-minimalist, but his style is deeper and more complex than that term might suggest: though he has broadened minimalist techniques like other post-minimalists, he has employed a variety of disparate elements in his compositions, including rock and Bachian compositional forms. Lang won a Pulitzer Prize for his choral composition The Little Match Stick Girl Passion (2007), a work formally modeled on Bach's St. Matthew Passion but containing music so highly individual that some critics expressed astonishment at how to categorize or describe its imaginative character.
i have asked to be where... - david garcìa saldaña
cond. Marcus Carline
soloists: Krista Schaeffer, Vera Lugo, Jeff Greif
soloists: Krista Schaeffer, Vera Lugo, Jeff Greif
I have asked to be where... uses a spectral image of the initial melody, filtered for specific collections of overtones, as the thematic material for each loop. The piece takes stylistic influence from both Minimalist composers, especially Julius Eastman, and Spectral composers (Spectral composition is attributed to 20th century French composers Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail). Unlike either of these influences, though, the sonic theme is then processed through standard audio production plug-ins for creative effect and finally transcribed for choir to create a circular form that encourages a meditation on the line fragment from Gerard Manley Hopkins' iconic poem, "Heaven-Haven,” communicating the heart piercing desire of the text through simple directness of both the music’s pitch and rhythm.
TEXT
guard my tongue - julia wolfe
cond. Alexandra Grabarchuk
Guard My Tongue takes its text from Psalm 34. It was composed for the 2009 Commissioned Composer Project of the University of Wisconsin River Falls.
TEXT
Guard my tongue from evil, and my lips from speaking deceit.
Guard my tongue from evil, and my lips from speaking deceit.
About the composer: Julia Wolfe’s music is distinguished by an intense physicality and a relentless power that pushes performers to extremes and demands attention from the audience. She has written a major body of work for strings, from quartets to full orchestra. Her music has been heard at venues throughout the world and has been recorded on Cantaloupe Music, Teldec, Point/Universal, Sony Classical, and Argo/Decca. In addition to receiving the Pulitzer Prize, Wolfe was a 2016 MacArthur Fellow, she received the 2015 Herb Alpert Award in Music, and was named Musical America's 2019 Composer of the Year. She is on faculty at the NYU Steinhardt School and is co-founder/co-artistic director of New York’s legendary music collective Bang on a Can. Her music is published by Red Poppy, Ltd. (ASCAP) and is distributed worldwide by Ricordi/Universal Music Classical.
now the hazy mirage is up - david avshalomov
cond. Alexandra Grabarchuk
Now the Hazy Mirage is Up depicts the daily midmorning misty haze over the Southern Gulf of Mexico, as seen from shore by a village of native pearl fishers (from a scene in a well-known American novella). The chorus, singing softly all together throughout in a slow trance-like series of oddly-varied close harmonies, tries to embody the surreal haze itself as sound, while describing how this vision affects the Indios' perception of what is real and what is not. The effect is hypnotic and haunting.
TEXT
Now the hazy mirage is up
In the uncertain air that magnifies some things and blots out others
All sights are unreal and vision cannot be trusted.
Sea and land have both the sharp clarity and the vagueness of a dream.
Here we may trust things of the spirit and things of the imagination
But we do not trust our eyes to show us distance or clear outline.
The far shore disappears into a shimmer that looks like water.
There is no certainty in seeing,
No proof that what you see is there, or not there.
We expect all places are like this
And it is not strange to us.
Now the hazy mirage is up
In the uncertain air that magnifies some things and blots out others
All sights are unreal and vision cannot be trusted.
Sea and land have both the sharp clarity and the vagueness of a dream.
Here we may trust things of the spirit and things of the imagination
But we do not trust our eyes to show us distance or clear outline.
The far shore disappears into a shimmer that looks like water.
There is no certainty in seeing,
No proof that what you see is there, or not there.
We expect all places are like this
And it is not strange to us.
leonora - vera frances lugo
cond. David Rentz
Leonora came to life in three stages: as a poem written during the 2011 Southwest blackout, as a song for toy piano and solo voice, and finally as a choral piece featuring a cyclical ostinato and tongue-in-cheek yawning. Leonora is a little girl who doesn’t want to go to bed; meanwhile, the omniscient moon watches over the Earth. A diorama of the small and the large, the micro and the macro, humanity and the universe.
TEXT
Leonora wept and said,
“All the world is in my head!
How am I to sleep?” she cried
as the world went slowly by.
All the colors, lights, and sounds
keep the girl from settling down
into her waiting bed.
Will she ever rest her head?
No one in the world will know
when she finally sleeps; and so
Leonora cries and says,
“I will never go to bed!”
In dreams we see ourselves
from a different perspective
and the things that we knew have changed.
But somewhere beyond the horizon that glows
the moon is the same.
She watches us sleep.
She follows our stories.
She knows of our triumphs and fears,
and keeps them safe.
And nobody knows of the moon’s devotion
as she glides over the ocean.
But one little face is watching her back.
Leonora is watching her back from the twilight of sleep.
She heaves a great sigh and opens her eyes wide.
Leonora cries and says,
“All the world’s STILL in my head!
Why must I be forced to sleep
when the moon is watching me?”
No one but the moon will know
when she finally sleeps and so
Leonora cries and says,
“I will never go to bed!”
The Passing of the Year, VI and III - jonathan dove
cond. Drew Corey
piano: Wells Leng
piano: Wells Leng
The Passing of the Year is dedicated to the memory of Dove’s mother and sets seven texts that take the listener literally and metaphorically through the changing seasons.
The cycle’s emotional climax is found in movement 6, a setting of Thomas Nashe’s "Adieu! farewell earth’s bliss!" Over an ostinato that bares a passing resemblance to the final minutes of Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, one of the choirs intones “Lord, have mercy on us,” as the other choir sings, in achingly beautiful harmonies, about the inevitability of death.
The third movement sets Emily Dickinson’s "Answer July" as a call and response between female and male voices that perfectly captures the playfulness of the text.
TEXT
VI. Adieu! farewell earth’s bliss!
Adieu! farewell earth’s bliss!
This world uncertain is:
Fond are life’s lustful joys,
Death proves them all but toys.
None from his darts can fly:
I am sick, I must die –
Lord, have mercy on us!
Rich men, trust not in wealth,
Gold cannot buy you health;
Physic himself must fade;
All things to end are made;
The plague full swift goes by:
I am sick, I must die –
Lord, have mercy on us!
Beauty is but a flower
Which wrinkles will devour:
Brightness falls from the air;
Queens have died young and fair
Dust hath closed Helen’s eye:
I am sick, I must die –
Lord, have mercy on us!
-Thomas Nashe
III. Answer July
Answer July –
Where is the Bee –
Where is the Blush –
Where is the Hay?
Ah, said July –
Where is the Seed –
Where is the Bud –
Where is the May –
Answer Thee – Me –
Nay – said the May –
Show me the Snow –
Show me the Bells –
Show me the Jay!
Quibbled the Jay –
Where be the Maize –
Where be the Haze –
Where be the Bur?
Here – said the Year –
-Emily Dickinson
VI. Adieu! farewell earth’s bliss!
Adieu! farewell earth’s bliss!
This world uncertain is:
Fond are life’s lustful joys,
Death proves them all but toys.
None from his darts can fly:
I am sick, I must die –
Lord, have mercy on us!
Rich men, trust not in wealth,
Gold cannot buy you health;
Physic himself must fade;
All things to end are made;
The plague full swift goes by:
I am sick, I must die –
Lord, have mercy on us!
Beauty is but a flower
Which wrinkles will devour:
Brightness falls from the air;
Queens have died young and fair
Dust hath closed Helen’s eye:
I am sick, I must die –
Lord, have mercy on us!
-Thomas Nashe
III. Answer July
Answer July –
Where is the Bee –
Where is the Blush –
Where is the Hay?
Ah, said July –
Where is the Seed –
Where is the Bud –
Where is the May –
Answer Thee – Me –
Nay – said the May –
Show me the Snow –
Show me the Bells –
Show me the Jay!
Quibbled the Jay –
Where be the Maize –
Where be the Haze –
Where be the Bur?
Here – said the Year –
-Emily Dickinson
About the composer: Jonathan Dove’s music has filled opera houses with delighted audiences of all ages on five continents. Few, if any, contemporary composers have so successfully or consistently explored the potential of opera to communicate, to create wonder and to enrich people’s lives. Dove’s innate understanding of the individual voice is also exemplified in his large and varied choral and song output, and his confident optimism has made him the natural choice as the composer for big occasions. In 2010 A Song of Joys for chorus and orchestra opened the festivities at the Last Night of the Proms, and in 2016 an expanded version of Our Revels Now Are Ended premiered at the same occasion.
