News

Contempo to perform Night Rituals May 18th

March 30, 2012

I just finished a 15-minute work for the Grammy-winning ensemble eighth blackbird called Night Rituals, which they will premiere as part of a Contempo (The Contemporary Chamber Players of the University of Chicago) concert May 18th at 7:30 in Fulton Hall at the University of Chicago. While it may go without saying that it is incredible to work with these musicians, I have a desire to sing their praises here anyway. Yes, they are all incredible musicians and are all wonderful performers, but what eighth blackbird has is something that few ensembles ever get to really achieve: they are a virtuosic ENSEMBLE. What I mean is, they operate as a seamless unit on stage, and the way they have gotten to that point is through a truly extraordinary maturation process fueled by focus, love of their craft, and countless hours of rehearsal. Rather than a collection of individual virtuoso performers playing in flawless concert, what I hear is six sensitive musicians operating as one exhilarating, dynamic organism.

The piece that I wrote for them is inspired by the simple idea that music in a concert hall is a very specific ritual. There is a sacredness to the space, a reverence to the performers and composers presenting their work, and a familiar pattern of behavior that has evolved out of late 19th Century concert practices. I took this idea and ran with it, all the way back to ancient Mayan, Celtic, and Greek rituals. The title refers not only to the time of day, but the time of year for specific rituals: the first two rituals are to be held at the end of autumn, to prepare for the longest nights of the year, a time of purification in Celtic and Mayan calendars. These prototypical cultures had much in common with modern concert aesthetics: the players purify themselves and give a part of themselves, hopefully inducing a transcendent state in the audience and performer alike. The rituals point heavenward, and always attempt to express in music and dance what cannot be expressed in words. These rituals are not safe, and blood may be lost in the process.

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Current Projects

A Gust Inside the God, for tenor saxophone and piano

I am returning to work on a commission from the Solaris Duo, made up of saxophonist Joel Diegert and pianist Mariam Vardzelashvili, who won third prize at last year’s Gaudeamus Interpreter’s Competition. The piece will be premiered at the World Saxophone Congress in St. Andrews, Scotland in July, 2012. It is an honor to be writing for such wonderful performers, and this particular piece will hopefully highlight their expertise as an ensemble dedicated to expanding the repertoire for saxophone and piano while still performing traditional works with verve.

During my search for texts for the Rilke cycle I started last year, I ran across the extraordinary third poem of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, and realized that it would make a terrific extramusical focus for a series of sketches that I had originally planned on writing for flute and harp. There is something about the resonance of the harp that seems to go well with Rilke’s poems, his sense of space and timing, and this poem is so overt in these associations that it requires no skill of interpretation to arrive at the harp. In the poem, Rilke contemplates the true nature of singing. He likens it to an aeolian harp, or rather to wind through a lyre’s strings. True singing, according to Rilke, is not about love or passion–it is about WIND. Like so many of Rilke’s best poems, this one seems to be just out of reach, and reading it is much like a meditation rather than a direct communication. I hope to capture some of that sense of wonder in this piece, and use some less-often encountered aspects of the tenor saxophone’s huge timbral range, combined with harp-like piano effects, to delve into this question of true singing.

Filed under: Current Projects