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Albany Symphony Orchestra
Albany Symphony Orchestra
David Alan Miller, conductor
Life is Like a Box of Chocolates
Concerto for Fiddle &Violin
Fest for Chamber Ensemble &Orchestra
Richard Adams has received repeated recognition for his music through awards and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP, the Society of Composers Inc., the MacDowell Colony, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Charles Ives Center for American Music. He has been commissioned by, and received performances from, numerous professional ensembles including the Memphis Symphony, the Tulsa Philharmonic, the Albany Symphony, the Louisiana Sinfonietta, Sequitur, and the Dogs of Desire. Adams' compositions draw on both classical and popular musical elements. His music has been described by the Cleveland Plain Dealer as “effectively integrating the physicality of rock with the structure of classical music.”
Adams is a member of the composition faculty at Western Michigan University, and has also taught at the Oberlin Conservatory. He has studied composition at the University of Michigan, the Yale School of Music, Louisiana State University, and the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France. His teachers have included some of the most prominent composers in the country: William Albright, Leslie Bassett, William Bolcom, Martin Bresnick, Dinos Constantinides, Michael Daugherty, and Jacob Druckman.
It happens every now and then that a composer is faced with the challenge of titling a new work prior to its completion. In the case of Brutal Reality, circumstances necessitated not only the choice of a title but also a draft of the work's program notes — all prior to putting the first musical note on a staff. This is not as impossible as it might seem. Composers usually have an idea of how they want a work to unfold, and a predetermined title may even help the compositional process by clarifying the direction of a piece. The expression “brutal reality,” which suggests an intrusion or harsh realization in the midst of an otherwise peaceful situation from which this work evolved.
At the time I began to contemplate Brutal Reality, I was finishing another orchestral commission, beginning a full-time teaching appointment, and completing a doctorate. While this was a time of unparalleled compositional activity and new beginnings for me, it was also a living hell. I was confronting head-on the brutal reality of the intense days, weeks, and months that lay ahead, and wanted to write a work that expressed my state of mind. The original thought was to inject harsh intrusions into a peaceful musical setting; however, the more I wrote, the more the intense music devoured the serene. The work was ultimately consumed by the aggressive motivic material, leaving very little of the calm setting behind. Other factors influenced the piece as well. The instrumentation was limited to that of Mozart's Prague Symphony; inevitably, this led me to take a Classical approach to orchestrating the work. While outside influences offered an initial direction for the piece, in the end the work took on a life of its own — one of mystery, drama, and unrelenting intensity.
Born in 1964, Arthur Bloom enjoys creating pieces that are often salads of diverse musical styles. While his compositions have been performed by the likes of the Albany Symphony Orchestra, the Tulsa Philharmonic, and the Israel Chamber Orchestra, he has also worked with film, radio, and popular recording artists.
Mr. Bloom has composed several works for the Albany Symphony Orchestra's Dogs of Desire new music series, and created An Orchestra's Guide To The Young Person for the premier of its “Yo Peter, Yo Wolf” educational outreach series.
A documentary broadcast on National Public Radio for which Mr. Bloom composed and produced the music was awarded the 1996 Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award in Radio Journalism. His music has also been heard on NPR's “Weekend Edition” and “Performance Today” programs. Mr. Bloom has taught sociology at Yale University where he earned degrees in literature and music, and is active in the field of audio engineering as a studio owner and regular contributor to MIX Magazine.
Life is Like a Box of Chocolates
Life is Like a Box of Chocolates is based on the form of a box of chocolates, which is similar to the form of a Baroque concerto. In a Baroque concerto the music goes back and forth between a “ritornello,” played by the orchestra, and solos, played by either an individual or a group. The ritornello becomes a familiar theme, beginning, ending, and “returning” throughout the piece. The solos, however, vary. A box of chocolates involves the box itself, which, like the ritornello, holds the solo-like chocolates together in one place.
One difference between a Baroque concerto and a box of chocolates is that music based on the box-of-chocolates form involves a bit more mystery. In the box-of-chocolates musical form, anything can happen, anyone can be the soloist, and any style of music can be featured. Some chocolates, like champagne truffles, are delicious. Others, like the ones with stale, dried fruits inside, are not so good. Sometimes there is more than one chocolate of a particular type, and sometimes each one is different. And just as “life is like a box of chocolates — you never know what you're gonna get,” Life is Like a Box of Chocolates is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.
Evan Chambers is Assistant Professor of Composition and Director of Electronic Music Studios at the University of Michigan. A traditional Irish fiddler as well as a composer, he appears frequently as a performer of his own works. He was twice awarded first prize in the Cincinnati Symphony National Composers' Competition, and in 1998 was awarded the Walter Beeler Memorial Composition Prize by Ithaca College. His works have been performed by the Cincinnati, Kansas City, Memphis, and Albany Symphonies, and recognized by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the International Luigi Russolo Competition, the Vienna Modern Masters Orchestral Competition, NACUSA, and the American Composers Forum. He has been the recipient of commissions from the Albany Symphony, members of the Cleveland Orchestra, members of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Quoroum, the Greene String Quartet, and the University of Michigan Bands, among many others. He has also been a resident of the MacDowell Colony. Chambers received a M.M. and D.M.A. in composition with highest honors from the University of Michigan. His works have been released on recordings by the Foundation Russolo-Pratella and on the Cambria label, and have been recorded by the Greene String Quartet, and Quorum.
Concerto for Fiddle & Violin
This concerto features two soloists playing the same instrument in two very different styles. Yet the piece does not pit them against each other in the kind of titanic struggle one often finds in many concertos. Rather, the fiddle player and violinist are more like two complementary halves of a personality — they and the orchestra support each other and take the leading role in turn without conflict. At the center of the piece, however, lies an essential tension between the two brands of virtuosity; the work is founded on the contrasts in inflection, timbre, rhythm, and articulation, that exist between traditional and classical music at the same time it strives to integrate them.
The first movement was inspired by the death and funeral of a fiddler whom I never met or heard play. His son described the events surrounding his wake with such emotion, though, that I wanted to write a piece for all the fiddlers like him who play for the sheer love of it, those who won't be seen in the record bins or on television — all the forgotten ones who live shyly, quietly, without celebrity, holding a musical center in their communities. The word “crack” in the fourth tune title is Irish slang for a good time: glowing good fun and companionship. I had a picture in my mind of the hush that falls over a session when a respected elder sits down to play — somewhat severe and old-fashioned-sounding at first, with everyone gradually warming to the task until the music propels itself along on its own energy.
The second movement is a lullaby for my daughter Elena. It was completed on the day after the death of my friend, mentor, and colleague, Bill Albright; as a result, the final section of the piece also bears some of the grief I felt at his untimely passing. I once heard a story about the “gentle places” in Ireland: fairy mounds where magical beings are said to abide. As I contemplated my unborn child and the gentle place she inhabited in the months before her birth, I imagined a still point in the landscape where birth and death merge in enchantment.
The final movement is a set of four reels. The first, “So Tear Into One,” takes its title and its character from an exhortation often heard at traditional music sessions. The almost goofily cherry mood and expansive goodwill of the second tune gives way almost immediately to a more edgy pair of reels that begin to spiral out of control, as sessions sometimes do, getting wilder and wilder until even the tune itself begins to go askew and get lost, taken over by frenetic driving rhythm. The titles of the tunes for all the movements, taken in sequence, form a poem and an exhortation in themselves — a recognition of loss and a celebration of life in peace and unrestrained good humor.
John Fitz Rogers was born in Wisconsin in 1963. He holds degrees from Cornell University, the Yale School of Music, and Oberlin College, where he studied composition, conducting, and piano. His music has been performed by ensembles throughout the United States, including the Louisville Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra (Whitaker New Music Reading Session), Synchronia, Philips Collection Concert Series (Washington, DC), artsEdge Festival (Seattle), National Flute Association, Society of Composers, Portland International Guitar Festival, Boston Chamber Ensemble, Composers in Red Sneakers, and the Syracuse Society for New Music. His commissions include those from the Albany Symphony, Tulsa Philharmonic, New York Youth Symphony, Dogs of Desire, the American Composers Forum and the Jerome Foundation, Music at the Anthology and the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, and the Dale Warland Singers.
Rogers has received numerous grants and prizes for his music; among them are awards from ASCAP, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the American Music Center, MacDowell Colony, and the Heckscher Foundation Composition Prize for his orchestra work, Symphony of Cities. Rogers has taught at Cornell University and currently lives in Boston, where he teaches on the faculty of the Longy School of Music.
Verge draws its inspiration from manysources. I wanted to create a kind of tapestry that weaves together several musical ideas from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. This tapestry both mirrors the many images that inspired Mussorgsky's work, and “frames” his work by taking motives out of their original context and reworking them using techniques derived from medieval music, West African drumming patterns, pop music rhythms, etc. I was also keenly aware of Ravel's brilliant orchestration of Mussorgsky's piece, and this in no small part influenced the orchestral fabric of my work. The result, I hope, is not merely a pastiche, but a synthesis of ideas and techniques that at once pays homage to Mussorgsky and Ravel and to the many disparate genres of music that are important to me as a composer.
The title, Verge, has to do with the idea of borders between genres and the blurring of those distinctions.
Kamran Ince has emerged as one of today's most exciting and original voices on the new music scene. Major orchestras, from Chicago to Istanbul, from San Francisco to Lithuania, have performed his work. Concerts devoted to his music have taken place at the Holland Festival, CBCEncounter Series, and the Istanbul International Festival. His numerous prizes include Prix de Rome, Guggenheim Fellowship, and Lili Boulanger Prize. His works include music for orchestra, chamber ensemble, ballet, and film. Recordings of his works appear on the Argo/Decca label, Albany Records, and the RAKS label (Polygram/Turkey). Works commissioned for 2000 include The Sun That Never Sets, a large work for orchestra and chorus (commissioned by archeologist Crawford Greenewalt); Lydia, and Millennia (commissioned for the opening of the new wing of the Milwaukee Art Museum). Ince was born inn 1960 in Montana to American and Turkish parents. Between 1966 and 1980 he lived in Turkey. He holds a doctorate from the Eastman School of Music. He is Professor of Composition at the Unversity of Memphis.
Fest for Chamber Ensemble & Orchestra
In this work Ince is interested in mingling exuberant Anatolian (Asia Minor) folk music with Western elements.
Prologue: Creating a sonic framework, the brief Prologue contrasts a sturdy repeated pattern against the solo ensemble's descending modal scales. The music progresses directly to…
Dance 1: Launched by the solo ensemble this joyful dance of Anatolian feeling whirls toward its conclusion with ever-greater intensity.
Dance 2: A perpetual motion with constantly shifting meters, the second dance soon reveals a theme in the flute and violins akin to the descending scales of the Prologue. The accompanying rhythms suddenly become quiet before a surprising moment of silence…the music resumes, grows again, becomes quiet, then ceases.
Reflection: Filled with longing, this slow movement provides respite from the dominant mood of celebration. With materials played by the solo ensemble, the melodic motion turns upward for a moment. A contrasting, somewhat trio-like section is begun by low range rhythmic activity. After a silence, the opening rising patterns return to round out the movement.
Dance 3: This exuberant movement is characterized by the composer as being the “most dramatic, persuasive, in your face” of the three dances. Solo synthesizer is joined by cellos and basses in a frenetic ostinato; shortly, an angular theme unfolds above. The movement's opening material returns and the ostinato resumes, for the moment bustling quietly beneath bird-like ornamentation. Suddenly louder, the ostinato now witnesses an expanded version of the angular theme. Driving onward to new heights of intensity, the music ultimately returns to an elaboration of the opening materials. Alternating moments of silence and sound continue without further ado to…
Epilogue: The gestures first stated in the Prologue are here given fuller treatment. Ultimately, the music settles upon a resonant C major chord.
Albany Symphony Orchestra
The Albany Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1931 by John Carabella. Since its inception, the Orchestra has evolved both artistically and financially under the leadership of music directors Rudolf Thomas, Ole Windingstad, Edgar Curtis, Julius Hegyi, Geoffrey Simon, and David Alan Miller.
Under Maestro Miller's direction, the Albany Symphony has continued a tradition of championing 20th-century American music through commissioning and recording new works. In 1997 the Albany Symphony Orchestra won its 13th consecutive ASCAP award for adventuresome programming of contemporary music.
Recordings of the Albany Symphony Orchestra appear on New World Records, CRI, Albany Records, Argo and London/Decca.
Since becoming Music Director and Conductor of the Albany Symphony Orchestra in 1992, David Alan Miller has initiated a period of remarkable artistic growth, including family concerts, school outreach programs and a new music group, “The Dogs of Desire.” Miller's fresh approach to reaching new audiences garnered him a front-page feature article in the Wall Street Journal in 1996. Before coming to Albany, Mr. Miller served as Assistant and then Associate Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. While in Los Angeles, Miller conducted subscription concerts and programs at the Hollywood Bowl as well as educational concerts.
David Alan Miller has guest conducted orchestras throughout the United States including the Detroit, San Francisco Symphonies and the Philadelphia Orchestra, among others. Abroad he has led the Berlin Symphony, the London Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic and the Dresden Philharmonic. Mr. Miller has conducted recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, Decca/London, Argo and Albany Records.
Jill Levy, concertmaster of the Albany Symphony Orchestra, is a graduate of the Curtis Institute where she studied with Arnold Steinhardt and Jascha Brodsky. She is a former member of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Il e Orchestra del Maggio of Florence, Italy.
Nollaig Casey has an international reputation as one of the finest exponents of Irish traditional fiddle playing. A featured soloist in more than 20 feature films, she has played and recorded with Rod Stewart, Kate Bush, U2, and Van Morrison, among others.
Present Music was founded in 1982 by its Artistic Director, Kevin Stalheim. The Milwaukee-based ensemble is one of the United States' foremost new music groups, having commissioned and premiered works of composers such as John Adams, Michael Torke, Michael Daugherty, and Kamran Ince.
This recording is made possible in part by the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State council on the Arts, Paul Underwood, Betty Freeman, and Vanguard, the volunteer organization of the Albany Symphony Orchestra.
Produced, engineered, edited and mastered by Squires Music Productions
Cover Art and Design:Bates Miyamoto Design Services
Albany Symphony Orchestra
David Alan Miller, conductor
2. Life is Like a Box of Chocolates (9:00)
Concerto for Fiddle &Violin
4. II. (Air/Waltz) (8:00)
Fest for Chamber Ensemble &Orchestra
Recorded in the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Troy, New York, 1998 and 1999.
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