Kristi Licare (Clarinet) on DBR

The two main challenges I have encountered in DBR's The Order of an Empty Place have been counting rests and "singing" some of the solo lines. At first, rests were difficult to count because of the complex rhythmic motives happening around the ensemble. In one section, the same theme is played by four players, but each displaced by an eighth note, so they are never moving together. As with many other pieces, the more familiar we get with the piece, the more easily navigated it is. My main challenge, however, is figuring out how to "sing" the solo lines - playing them accurately both rhythmically and pitch-wise, yet gracefully. While the lines aren't particularly technically challenging, they seem to be better-suited for string players, which is not surprising, as DBR is a violinist. I am determined to meet these challenges.

I am excited to continue the rehearsal process with UMWO this week, for the premiere on Thursday, and for our trip to New York on Saturday. Although entire process will be exhausting (we have ten hours of rehearsal between Monday and Thursday), it will be rewarding to have worked as an ensemble with a well-known artist and and up and coming composer. Much of the music we perform is by composers who are no longer living. It is an honor to work with a living composer, as we can receive immediate feedback and learn more about the personal aspects of the work.

Andrew Rudderow (Horn) on DBR

Playing this new premiere piece by Daniel Bernard Roumain has been a very interesting experience. As the 3rd horn player, I play the first notes of the piece. By myself. Just a solo horn line, soon to be followed by some speaking text. You might think this would be nerve-wracking, but for me I just ry and focus on getting good sound to come through the horn and try and make as much of a musical phrase out of it I can, and I really don't have any nerves. Overall the piece is very deep, and powerful, and DBR does some really cool things with his violins that I've never seen/heard done with a violin before

Ian Dahlstrom on "The Order of an Empty Place"

The DBR is an interesting piece. Technically it is very easy, but overall and musically it is very hard. The mostly simple rhythms require a lot of focus and the long stretches of rests make finding my entrances hard. But the best part of the piece is when it is put together. Each instrument has a specific role to play and the way that each line matches up is truly interesting. 

The hardest part, for me, are the religious chants. I am not a very religious person, so when DBR makes us recite those lines, I am kind of uneasy. It's hard not because of the timing, but just because I have a hard time putting my faith in a higher being. These moments really require me to focus on getting the job done, and not over thinking the meaning of the words. The other hard part is just the duration of the piece. My slightly ADHD mind has a hard time focusing on long pieces. The extended measures of rest also test my mental focus. 

My favorite part of the piece is at the end when you hear just the synthesizer, two flutes, a bass drum, and the electric violin. Just the way everything works together just is incredible. I enjoy the fact that DBR improvises his part and each run has a unique feel. That excitement from not knowing what's next is what makes the ending such an incredible experience.

Emily Knaapen on the Martinu experience

     Preparation for the upcoming UMWO concert has been a unique challenge. One piece in particular, Martinu's Nonet, is  scored for only nine players and requires a different form of chamber musicianship than is normative for Wind Orchestra.

      We began learning the Nonet with the Help of Dr.Votta's conducting, which laid the foundation for the piece. Later, we experimented with removing the conductor and playing the Nonet as chamber music. This presented new challenges. We learned to watch and listen to our colleagues so that each movement would maintain a steady tempo, uniform articulations, tight rhythms, proper balance and cleanly executed transitions.

   Playing without the help of a conductor has been a veritable but rewarding challenge. It allows us a greater measure of spontaneity and gives the audience a chance to see communication between players. Hopefully, both the hard work we have invested and the fun we have had working on the Nonet will be apparent come concert time!

DBR- in his own words

We finally have a working title, and music for our commissioned piece from Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR). His new work is titled "The Order of an Empty Place". Below are DBR's program notes on the piece, hot off the presses. The Wind Orchestra is very excited to premier this new and exciting new work for full instrumentation wind orchestra plus solo electric violin, and we hope to have a great showing in the audience for this concert on the 29th of March!

THE ORDER OF AN EMPTY PLACE WITHIN THE COMPLEX COMFORT OF YOUR HEART AND MIND

Zachary Daniel Roumain was born on June 21, 2009, at 1:03 am.  It was Father's Day, and Zachary was surrounded by his parents, both sets of grandparents, and our many extended family and friends on-line.  Like any young father, I was concerned for his mother, nervous for my new responsibilities, and elated at the birth of our son! Just months prior, I attended Passover with Jill Arkin Roumain's parents, and at that table, we talked about the first official Passover at the White House, the "Blessing of the Sun" (Birkat Hachama), and Zachary's coming birth all happening within months of one another.  We could not have known then what specific day Zachary would be born, but at that time I discussed with my father-in-law, Charlie Arkin, a new work for an ensemble of musicians, solo violin, and Rabbi, one that would express those aspects of Passover within a setting of the Haggadah, or the Jewish text which gives instruction and order to the Seder, or the ritual feast that marks the beginning of Passover.

As Zachary's father, I felt a particular responsibility towards the complex nature of his DNA.  He is a child of black, white, Catholic, Jewish, Haitian, and American parents.  He embodies all of the hopes and dreams of his ancestors, and I felt ill-equipped to teach him in the ways of being a responsible Jewish person, not being a Jewish person myself.  As a composer, I felt that setting the Haggadah afforded an opportunity for me to learn with my son, side-by-side, in the creation of a new work.

Coincidentally, Paul Brohan at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center invited me to create a new work for their wind orchestra.  After discussing the new commission with their brilliant conductor Michael Votta, it was agreed that my first religious work would be a setting of the Haggadah, and that an important commissioning partner in the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan, would be established.  Without this important collaboration, this work would not have been possible.

I spent two years at the JCC attending workshops, classes, round-table discussions, and private dinners and conversations with Rabbi Joy Levitt, the Executive Director of the JCC.  Those months of study proved invaluable in helping me understand the importance of Passover towards Jewish life and learning, and the importance of ritual and repetition in my own life and family.  The text was compiled from Rabbi Levitt's own Haggadah, A Night of Questions, and an interview with her in the fall of 2011.  The Cleveland-based writer Margaret Lynch developed and composed the libretto, and the score was completed in February 2012.

The Order of an Empty Place is scored for wind ensemble, solo violin, and Rabbi, and takes its title from the words of Rabbi Levitt's father, and his call to his family that, "I want to remind everyone that seder means order.", this in response to the "chaos" of his children, grandchildren, and their parents running around the home in excited anticipation of the night's ritual and conversation.  These words appear throughout the work as narrated by the Rabbi, as well as Jewish folk music (Dayenu), fragmented and re-imagined for the ensemble.  Additionally, there are antiphonal speaking roles for the ensemble and audience, extended instrumental passages for violin and ensemble, and a reliance on repetition in the use of a passacaglia motif that appears in the first few measures of the work.  All of these musical devices hope to express the rites and rituals of Passover by focusing in on the memories and stories associated with the holiday itself, and more specifically, those memories and stories of Rabbi Joy Levitt.  She has become and integral part of this piece, and her world-premiere performances with me, side-by-side, embodies all I could hope and ask for as a Haitian-American composer with a mixed-race son, creating work in an increasingly rich and interrogative manner.

While I was composing this work, I experienced the pain and trauma of a divorce from Jill.  I was thrown into a situation where so many aspects of my life where beyond my control.  Throughout this time, creating this work for Zachary became my guiding light, and he continues to inspire and comfort me as much as I might do those things for him.  Like any divorce, you face an array of struggles and silence---you feel alone. But the last few words of our libretto proved to be particularly meaningful to me:

Listen to the silence of the night. What do you hear? Love? Regret? Indifference? Suffering? Stand ready to build a place of peace. Listen and say: here I am.

This work is for my own son, but I hope you hear and feel this work with your own sons and daughters beside you---within the complex comfort of your heart and mind.

___

Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR)

Harlem, New York

February 13, 2012

Prokofiev's Private Joke

At our next concert, titled "Czechs and Balances", UMWO will be performing a wind work that does not get much time in the sun, so to speak, perhaps because of its unorthodox instrumentation, or perhaps because it can be difficult to place the meaning, or double meaning, of the work. Dr. Michael Votta will be conducting this work, and he has created a very interesting insight in his program note below. and Here is a portion of the opening of this piece. Enjoy!

Ode to the End of the War

According to the Shostakovich of Testimony Prokofiev had “the soul of a goose” and was “frightened out of his wits” by what happened to him after his return to the USSR. Since the alleged author of those remarks confessed to having been himself suicidal with fear during 1936, this hardly seems fair.

There is, however, somewhat less evidence of panic in Shostakovich's output after 1938 than in that of Prokofiev, whose penchant for working on several pieces at once degenerated into an undignified scramble to come up with something—anything—to please the authorities. This turmoil prevented continuous work on a number of substantial works, and the overall coherence of some of these (the so-called “War Sonatas,” in particular) may have suffered as a result.

In spite of his fear, Prokofiev took revenge on his tormentors in small ways, and the Ode To The End Of The War is an excellent example of this sycophantic animus.  For no apparent musical reason, Prokofiev scored the work for giant wind orchestra, four pianos, and eight harps, thus ensuring that this Paean to Stalin required extraordinary effort to produce.   The work rather ingeniously manages to be bombastic and trivial at the same time—the whole thing being presumably a private joke at the expense of the apparat.

Vladimir Jurowski, a Russian conductor noted for his interpretations of Prokofiev, says that “you cannot understand the art of the time without analyzing its political and social background.”  He says of the “ambiguities” built in to Prokofiev's Ode to the End of the War:  “Yes, it's about jubilation. But there's irony in its use of eight harps, three saxophones and four pianos.”  Jurowski maintains that the aural extravaganza's meaning would not have been lost on an audience subsisting on starvation rations just months after Hitler's defeat: “and here is Prokofiev employing the elements of jazz, of American bourgeois music, in a piece intended to celebrate the Soviet people's great victory.”

All of these criticisms aside, the work does have elements of Prokofiev’s great dramatic works, his musical humor and ability to write captivating melodies.  Although perhaps not one of his best works, it is a captivating glimpse of an enigmatic society and provides a “balance” to the delicacy of our “Czechs.”

Corigliano: Circus Maximus

See the video below, which has John Corigliano speaking to an audience about his Third Symphony, "Circus Maximus". UMWO is performing this piece tonight and tomorrow night at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at 8:00 PM. Come out and see this piece, which is brilliant, and in many ways a spectacle in the best meaning of the word!