Blog

My administrative position in the School of Music and my work on a new composition have kept me from making regular entries in my blog. I now find it ironic, that, when I am able to carve out the time to write about my new piece, The Sound of Light, the opportunity to blog at the Clarice Smith Center's wonderful Engagement Project website will result in my referring you here to read about this piece.

The Center's website is a beautiful venue, so I hope that you will follow me there for some thoughts about my piece and the process of bringing a new piece to life.

My composition Concordia for cello sextet was recently performed in St. Paul by a wonderful group of cellists (pictured above from left to right): Tony Ross, principal cellist of the Minnesota Orchestra, Eugena Chang, Tanya Remenikova, Sally Dorer, Arek Tesarczyk, and Marcia Peck. The concert was part of The Bakken Trio Concert Series in the very attractive Huss Music Room of the historic Hamm Building in downtown St. Paul.

An Exhuberance of Cellos (the title of the Bakken Trio concert) was the dream of cellist Mina Fisher of The Bakken Trio and the Minnesota Orchestra. About this concert Mina wrote: "When I fell in love with the cello, I fell in love first with the sound of a mass of cellos, imbibing the sound floating up to me where I was lying in the hayloft of a barn at music camp. No one who's not a cellist gets to experience close-up the richly vital sound of groups of cellos, so I wanted to share that luxuriant sound, and the sheer fun of this repertoire, with all of you."

My first live experience of a cello choir was when my sister Sally (Dorer) performed in the Georgia Academy Cello Choir as a high school student. I was, like Mina, completely enthralled with the sonic possibilities and the amazing range of the cello, which can cover the range of all "voices" from soprano to bass. I decided to write a piece for cello choir and was fortunate in receiving a grant from the University of Maryland Graduate School for the commission and in having the support of Martha Gerschefski, director of the Georgia Academy Cello Choir. The piece was premiered by this group on August 4, 1983, with the composer as conductor, and with my sister as part of the ensemble of 18 cellos who presented the premiere (three on a part).

The performance in St. Paul by this exceptional group of cellists was with my original conception of a sextet, and the transparency and fluency of this intimate and impeccable St. Paul ensemble was a composer's dream. I am grateful to Tony, Eugena, Tanya, Sally, Arek and Marcia for their beautiful performance and to Mina for including my piece on this outstanding concert. The live performance on February 15, 2009 can be heard here (scroll down to the concert info).

Every once in a long while a musician arrives on the planet who changes the way we experience music.

I was recently in Seattle attending the Annual Meeting of the National Association of Schools of Music and had the opportunity to visit the aptly named Experience Music Project, which includes at present an exhibition of one of the city's native sons: "Jimi Hendrix: An Evolution in Sound."

Spending a couple of hours in this exhibition reminded me again that I have never heard or seen (film only for me, unfortunately) a more fluent musician than Jimi Hendrix. It's not just that he was visionary and an innovator in his use of the electric guitar, which is the focus of this exhibition, but that he was able to use the technology so magnificently in the service of musical expression. Sure, he was high; but the music was higher, and sometimes reaches a place where you still believe that Hendrix himself might just leave the ground. It was impossible to imagine this visceral, sexual energy waning gradually into old age and frailty, and, alas, this brightest of luminaries was burned up at age 27.

Like all great musicians, Hendrix had several musical frames of reference, but the one that is central, in my opinion, is the vocal singing style of the blues. In his best songs, he creates a universe around a simple and repetitive vocal line doubled on his guitar, punctuating this refrain with the thunderous power and wailing of his overdriven Stratocaster.

Growing up in the suburbs of Atlanta and listening to Jimmy Smith, Horace Silver, James Brown and Junior Walker in high school, I was completely spellbound when I first heard the Jimi Hendrix Experience ("Are You Experienced") in 1967. But it was with "Electric Ladyland," the third album, that the essence of why so many of us found this man's musicmaking so potent was fully displayed. The recording of "Voodoo Child (Sight Return)" on this LP was an anthem, and if you watch the Woodstock video of his performance of this song (which is regularly posted at YouTube and withdrawn because of performance rights), you will see a sorcerer at work.

There may be, for aught we know, infinite inventions of art, the possibility whereof we should hardly believe if they were forereported to us. Had we lived in some rude and remote part of the world, and been told that it is possible, with only a hollow piece of wood and the guts of beasts stirred by the fingers of man, to make so sweet and melodious a noise, we should have thought it utterly incredible, yet now that we see and hear it ordinarily done, we make it no wonder.

—Bishop Joseph Hall, 1574-1656

The Bishop of Norwich was writing about the sound of the Elizabethan lute, one of the most delicate and intimate of instruments, and yet, one of the most emotionally powerful sounds in music. There is a certain sense of fragility related to the conditions that must be in place for the lute to have this power in performance—for instance, a large space can break the intimate connection between performer and listener that allows this instrument to sing.

But then there is an element of fragility and incredulity in all musical performance. How is it possible that any person can make all the necessary physical, mental and emotional connections that are required to play a Bach Invention? And yet we do sometimes "make it no wonder" that these elements come together with such remarkable synchrony and frequency.

I imagine that Bishop Hall might have similar words about the place of wonder in considering recent reports on the bar-tailed godwit (Limosa lapponica) : tracking by satellite has confirmed that one of these quail sized birds identified prosaically as "E7," flew from Alaska to New Zealand in nine days without eating or sleeping, and without ever touching land or sea.

As we move through our days in varying degrees of ease with the flow of work and home life, it is humbling to think of the godwit's migration, which "appears to be without precedent in the annals of vertebrate physiology." The little bird may weigh up to 1.5 pounds at the start, and will lose half its body weight by the end of the migration expending energy at 8-10 times the rate it does at rest (an unmatched metabolic rate).

It is tempting to think that time stops for the godwit on these flights. The commitment is literally a matter of life and death. Of course we can't know if this is so, and there are no ceremonies at the end of a successful trip. Since godwits live up to 20 years, it's possible that these small wings may record over 280,000 miles in a lifetime. How is it that this delicate collection of bone, flesh and feathers is so perfectly suited for this repeated epic journey?

We don't know. But thinking about these questions does stop time for us, just as music can stop the noise of daily routine and transport us to a place of wonder.