For the 4th of July, here’s the wonderful Sovereign Brass performing my Rouge Bouquet. The inspiration was a poem with the same name written by Joyce Kilmer about duty, honor and sacrifice. The poem was first read to commemorate the death of 19 American soldiers as a result of an intense German artillery bombardment during WWI. Less than 5 months later, when Kilmer himself was killed by a sniper’s bullet, it was read again at his own service.
My Suite for String Quartet and Flute was premiered on Mar. 24, 2024.
Special thanks to the performers:
Emma Koi – Flute
Lisa Ferrigno – Violin 1
Joni Hanze – Violin 2
Scott Knopf – Viola
Adriana Stenvik – Cello
and to Benoit Glazer & the Timucua Arts Foundation for the venue and the recording.
There are 3 movements:
Foretold
Quest
Processional
Probably one my most difficult pieces is for choir: In the Sight of Angels. Several different groups have attempted it over the years, with varying degrees of success. This is probably the only decent recording I have of it.
What makes it so difficult? The piece is a cappella, and the music is hypertonal and contrapuntal, because I was trying to convey the awful, terrifying nature of Angels (something we usually gloss over most of the time). Anyone in the bible who encounters an Angel is always afraid. Angels always have to reassure people: “Fear not”, etc. So my idea was that anyone who can hold it together to actually sing in front of these astounding, supernatural creatures has something pretty special going on. In this case, it is the singers faith that gives them the courage to perform with Angels looking on.
The text is pretty simple, based on the 138th Psalm, with some repetitions:
In the sight of Angels.
In the sight of Angels I will sing.
I will sing.
In the sight of Angels I will sing.
I will sing.
I will confess you Lord
with all my heart.
For your mercy
For your mercy and your truth.
In the sight of Angels
I will sing
your praises.
I will sing your praises
For your mercy and your truth.
Listen to:
In the Sight of Angels
If you missed the 9th Annual Composers Salon concert on Sunday, Oct. 23rd 2022 in person or via streaming here’s the wonderful Confetti Trio performing the new piece I wrote for them: Fête.
It was a great program, with a delightful variety of works by terrific composers and performers!
Orlando is so lucky to have that kind of talent here!
There are 4 movements. Here are the titles and start times::
Big thank you, as always, Benoit Glazer and Timucua!
I wanted to do a project for my grandchildren. After much thought, I decided performing Poulenc’s The Story of Babar would do nicely. I’d always admired Poulenc’s Babar music, and think it contains some of his best material. My only disappointment with Babar was that Poulenc used an abridged version of the story. I always wondered what other great music we missed out on because Poulenc didn’t do the whole thing.
Then I had a crazy thought. “I’m a composer. Why don’t I just fill in the bits Poulenc didn’t do? That will make the gift of the Babar story that much more personal and special !”
If I hadn’t been thinking about who is was for, I’d have thought about it too much and would never have had the courage to put my music side by side with Poulenc’s. Fortunately, I just naively pressed ahead and intimidation never set in.
I didn’t try to imitate Poulenc in any way. I just wrote as I naturally would. The result holds up just fine, I think. And Poulenc’s music and mine go together surprisingly well. (Considering how much I love his music, and what an influence he’s been, maybe not so surprising?)
The resulting music is about 50% Poulenc and 50% me. If you’re not already familiar with the Poulenc, and are curious who wrote what, here’s a breakdown showing the composer for each scene:
Poulenc Babar is born 00:25 digging in the sand 02:08 riding on his mother’s back 02:47 Babar’s mother is shot 03:50 Babar runs away 04:10 Cording the city and two gentlemen 04:53 Poulenc the Old Lady gives Babar her purse 06:18 riding the elevator 08:00 the Floor Manager 08:50 buying clothes 10:01 having a picture taken 10:40 dining with the Old Lady 12:02 going to sleep 12:46 Poulenc exercise and bath 13:35 riding in the car 14:42 Cording lessons 15:03 stories of life in the forest 16:31 Poulenc Babar remembers his mother 17:22 buying Arthur and Celeste clothes 18:28 the pastry shop 19:09 Arthur and Celeste’s mothers are worried 19:55 the old stork returns with news 20:27 mothers scold Arthur and Celeste 20:45 Cording packing the trunk 21:09 saying goodbye 21:54 Poulenc leaving for the forest in the car 23:01 the Old Lady misses Babar 23:39 the King of the elephants eats a bad mushroom 25:09 Cording the three oldest elephants have a meeting 26:21 Babar arrives at the forest 27:35 Cornelius speaks 28:22 PoulencBabar accepted as King 30:05 birds invite animals to wedding 31:01 guests arrive 31:33 the marriage and coronation of Babar 32:24 dancing 33:50 after the party 34:33 Cording leaving in a balloon for the honeymoon 36:10 Poulenc the end 37:48
The bold items are my favorite Poulenc sections.
The entire story is about 38 minutes, so settle in before giving a listen.
Listen to: The Story of Babar..
So if you missed the CF2 Preludes and Serenades concert on Friday night, Oct. 1st, I’m terribly sorry! What a great program of piano music it was! I’m always proud to be associated with such fine composers, but never more so than after such a wonderful program! Orlando is so lucky to have these people locally!
Everything was great, but a particular shout-out to Erik Branch, Troy Gifford and Charlie Griffin! What fabulous works!
Dr. Rose Grace gave a slightly different interpretation of my Serenade than my own (which you can find posted here earlier). Honestly, I wish that happened more often. She even found a way to re-finger part of it to avoid crossing hands. It is such a luxury to hear one of my own piano works without having to perform it myself!
Big thank you to Dr. Grace and, as always, Benoit Glazer and Timucua! And congratulations to all the composers on the program!
So if you missed the 8th Annual CF2 Salon Concert on Aug 29th, no worries. Here’s a video of the premier of Seven Wonders, a set of songs about the 7 wonders of the ancient world, with text by Al Rocheleau. Bri Anna Davis is the mezzo-soprano and I’m at the piano. Special thanks to Al and Bri Anna! And, as always, thanks to Benoit Glazer for the recording!
Here’s a recording of Gigue performed by the wonderful Fernwood String Quartet. After many delays due to Covid, the premier performance finally took place Jan 23rd, 2021 at the Dr Phillips Center (with proper precautions and social distancing of course). Big thank you to the members of Fernwood: Julia Gessinger – violin 1, Andreas Volmer – violin 2, Daniel Cortes – viola, and Hanrich Claassen – cello.
The epigraph to the work is a quote from the Irish poet William Allingham (1824 – 1889) – “She danced a jig, she sung a song that took my heart away.”
Listen to: Gigue.
During the covid lockdown one of my piano pieces, Serenade, was published in the Timucua Arts’ Piano Anthology. Benoit Glazer did some recordings of some of the pieces in July of 2020 to help promote the book. Originally, I thought I only had an audio recording of mine, but I recently realized that I had this video copy. So here it is. Special thanks to Benoit for recording and providing this.
With the Covid-19 lockdown, I really miss audiences and the energy they provide! So I decided to post an old performance (Sept. 2014) from my archives that I haven’t posted before. It has that great quality of group shared experience, which is one of the wonderful things about going to concerts and movies don’t you think?
This recording is the first performance of my Billy Collins songs. Anytime art is converted from one medium to another some features of the original are lost. Some things are added by the new medium in compensation, but it’s the nature of the beast that those changes or additions are added by the artist doing the conversion or translation and are outside the original artist’s control. So to allow a derivative work the original artist has to be willing to let go of his creation and let it “have a life of its own”. Billy was very kind to give me permission to use these poems, despite his not being a big fan (to put it mildly) of his poetry being turned into song. Of course, I always try hard to stay true to the original spirit of the poetry and I’m proud of how these songs turned out. But see for yourself.
I can’t say enough nice things about the singer here: Suzanne Gifford. Not only does she have a beautiful voice, but there were a lot of behind-the-scene challenges that she handled with charm and grace. It was a long program and we were near the end. The was no place to warm up so she just had to step up and do it. The songs themselves are not as easy as she makes it seem. And the last song was “hot-off-the-press”, completed maybe a day before, so there really wasn’t enough rehearsal time. Entirely my fault and lead to both of us making minor errors in the third song. Despite all that, she sang wonderfully as you will hear.