|
an excursion into Contemporary Ragtime Compositions
Brass Knuckles
An Excursion into Contemporary Ragtime Compositions
Tony Caramia
Eastman American Music Series
Volume 4
Eastman School of Music
University of Rochester
A Message from the Director
The Eastman School of Music is pleased to be a partner with Albany Records in the production of this series featuring American composers. Beginning with the appointment of Howard Hanson as director in 1924 and proceeding consistently ever since, the Eastman School has stood for innovation in American music. While the Hanson era was characterized by consistency of genre as he established his concept of American music, succeeding generations of Eastman leaders and composers have promoted diversity in expressive means. These recordings are a fine example of this latter principle of exploration and discovery.
The series follows in Eastman's spirit of promoting opportunities for artists with significant voices to be heard in a society increasingly seduced by clutter. I salute Albany for its commitment to higher ideals.
James Undercofler
Acting Director, Eastman School of Music
Notes on the Program
From roughly the late 1930s through the early 1960s, most serious American composers worked within one of two basic musical encampments, continuing and expanding upon traditions established by the 20th century giants Schoenberg and Stravinsky. In striking contrast to this earlier era, today's younger generation of composers benefits from exposure to what has been called "a veritable salad bowl of styles," marked by an extremely wide range of character, aesthetics, and musical cross-currents.
The works represented in this Eastman American Music Series of new music recordings bear eloquent testimony to the effect this healthy and diverse musical diet has had on the work of American composers. Various auditory repasts offer composers a choice of forms and influences from such divergent sources as jazz, non-Western music, romanticism, dodecaphony, minimalism, pop and rock, asceticism, "cross-over," and spiritualism and all on the same menu!
This variety serves both as a high-calorie, vibrant sign of our own creative times, and as a demanding burden placed upon American composers seeking, indeed groping for, their own unique voices: "Red or green peppers? Radish? How much onion? What kind of lettuce? How do I choose my OWN language that will allow me to speak what I need to say?" The works recorded here present the distinct and often unusual offerings of a few leading, contemporary American "workers" in the sonic kitchen.
Sydney Hodkinson
Producer, Eastman American Music Series
The Composers and Their Rags
Trebor Tichenor has been a prominent and important contributor to the ragtime community for many years, as a performer, author, scholar, and teacher. His recordings provide the standard for many performers, and his books have helped to broaden awareness of a variety of aspects of ragtime music. Through his interest in Folk Ragtime, he has introduced us to the music of many little-known composers. Tichenor's The Show Me Ragis a marvelous example of contemporary folk writing, reflecting the composer's vast knowledge of an early ragtime style. There is a "down-home" quality to the writing, an earthy and folksy sound that makes foot-stompin' unavoidable.
William Albright, composer and performer, has concertized widely in Europe, Canada, and the United States, specializing in concerts of recent music for organ. While he has premiered over 30 new works by contemporary American and European composers, he is also highly regarded as an interpreter of Classic Ragtime and early jazz styles, including Harlem Stride and Boogie-Woogie. His Morning Reveries(from The Dream Rags ) defines the parameters of contemporary lyric ragtime composition. Albright has been the recipient of many composition awards, including the Queen Marie-José Prize, Fulbright Scholarships, Guggenheim Fellowships, and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Albright is currently professor of music and chair of the composition department at the University of Michigan.
William Bolcom, professor of composition at the University of Michigan, earned a Bachelor of Music degree in composition from the University of Washington. He pursued further study with Darius Milhaud at Mills College and at the Paris Conservatory of Music. Recent premieres of his compositions include the opera McTeague; the song cycle, I Will Breathe a Mountain, performed at Carnegie Hall in its centennial season by Marilyn Horne and Martin Katz; a Cello Sonata with Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax; and the Lyric Concerto for flute, with James Galway, soloist. In high demand both as a performer and composer, his current commissions extend beyond the year 2000. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 1988 for his 12 New Etudes for Piano.Recordings of two of his works, the Fourth Symphony, performed by Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, and After the Ball, with soprano Joan Morris, have received Grammy nominations.In 1994, Bolcom was named the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished University Professor of Music at the University of Michigan.
Brass Knuckles, by Bolcom and Albright, is one of the few pieces in the piano literature bearing a style indication of "brutish!" Although it represents a virtual assault on the piano, it is eminently pianistic, providing a decidedly visceral experience for both performer and listener. Bolcom's The Graceful Ghost, from Three Ghost Rags, is a reminiscence of the composer's father. Bolcom writes: "In it I have tried to imagine an extension of Louis Chauvin's gentle French-Creole quality. It was written in 1970, the year my father passed away." Dream Shadows, another piece in this set, ably demonstrates Bolcom's versatility and breadth of stylistic conceptions. It is somewhat dissonant, but always melodic in scope. The middle section is almost hymn-like in harmonic structure, while its mysterious coda fades away in a haze of tender triads. The Serpent's Kiss, from The Garden of Eden Suite, represents the "devil's piece," and takes us on a journey filled with guile, contrivance, cajoling, and even a tap dance.
Max Morath is a performer who occupies a unique position as an entertainer and spokesman for American life and music. Spearheading the ragtime revival in the 1970s, his one-man show "Turn of the Century" toured for several years after playing in New York for a full season. Other successes followed, including "Ragtime Years" and "Living the Ragtime Life," both shows exhibiting his characteristic blend of music, Americana and Max. Morath produced 26 programs for PBS on ragtime, which reveal his vitality, humor, and knowledge, and are now considered definitive works on the subject. The Golden Hourswas written as a tribute to Harriet Janis, co-
author of They All Played Ragtime, the first authoritative book on the subject of ragtime. This piece was so-named by Janis's co-author, Rudi Blesh, since, in his words, "all my hours with Harriet were golden."
Tony Caramia is associate professor of piano at the Eastman School of Music, where he is director of piano pedagogy studies and coordinator of the class piano program. He studied piano with Claudette Sorel and composition with Walter S. Hartley at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Fredonia, and taught at the University of Illinois from 1975-1990. After receiving commissions from the Hattiesburg, Mississippi Piano Teachers League Composers' Festival, and the Oklahoma Music Teachers State Convention, he served as National Chair for the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Columbia Pictures Publications/Belwin Student Composition Contest from 1991-1995. Caramia has conducted clinics and performed extensively in this country and abroad. He has recorded for the Stomp Off label, contributed articles to American Music Teacher Magazine, and published many jazz compositions and arrangements.
Caramia's rag Travelin' Two-Stepwas written as part of a series of teaching pieces, Adventures in Jazz Piano, vol. 2, published by Bärenreiter Verlag for the late-intermediate piano student. In this modern adaptation of Novelty characteristics, the accompaniment is sometimes played above the melody, usually in fourths, with hemiolas occasionally used for rhythmic support. This piece features a freer, more elaborate harmonic association than is found in Classic Ragtime.
Robin Frost is one of the foremost composers of contemporary ragtime. He has published two folios of highly inventive, pianistic, and original material. His style is lyrical, yet full of a rhythmic vibrancy that stems from his interest in the novelty/stride sounds of Rube Bloom, Zez Confrey, George Gershwin, and Fats Waller. According to pianist Matthew Davidson, Frost's "ear for harmony is acute and magnificent; his use of contrapuntal and rhythmic devices fresh and unusual. In addition, his rags easily rate among the most difficult ever written. In spite of this, the man has written music which is great fun for both the audience as well as the performer."
Frost's Olympic Stride Waltzwas written to commemorate the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Its use of cross rhythms is extraordinary. Nocturneis a richly satisfying, harmonically captivating excursion into extended ragtime writing. Satisfaction was influenced by Jelly-Roll Morton's The Crave, another piece with Latin rhythms.
Glenn Jenks is a teacher, composer, and performer of classic and contemporary ragtime from Camden, Maine. Jenks has recorded extensively for both his own Bonnie Banks label, and for Stomp Off Records. His compositions embrace both ragtime and classical idioms, and include dozens of piano rags, a string quartet, and a ragtime piano concerto. He currently tours the ragtime festival circuit, and teaches privately. Queen of Violets represents the quintessential example of contemporary ragtime lyricism.
Sydney Hodkinson received his Bachelor of Music degree in composition from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Louis Mennini and Bernard Rogers. He continued his studies at the Princeton Seminars with Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, and Roger Sessions. Hodkinson received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Michigan, studying with Leslie Bassett, Niccolo Castiglioni, George Wilson, and Ross Lee Finney. In 1973, he joined the faculty at the Eastman School, assuming direction of the Eastman Musica Nova Ensemble and the Graduate Chamber Orchestra. One of the most prolific and widely performed contemporary composers, his work has been supported by grants and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Cana Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the International Congress of Jeunesses Musicales Competition.
Regarding his Minnie-Rag, Hodkinson writes: "This brief bagatelle was composed on Thanksgiving Day in 1990 in Ormond, Florida, honoring a request from the American pianist and Eastman colleague Rebecca Penneys for a short recital 'opener'written for the right hand only. Perhaps the relative proximity to, and a recent return from, Disney World reminded me that also paying homage to one of America's 'leading ladies' might be fitting for such a work. While strongly tonal, with the second strain in the obligatory subdominant, the rag meanders around a bit, with a Trio in G-flat and a somewhat silly battle between C and E-flat occurring in the principal melody; 'C' finally wins."
Kevin Putz received a Bachelor of Music degree in composition from the Eastman School of Music, where his principal instructors included Samuel Adler and Joseph Schwanter. He also earned a Master's degree from Yale University, where he studied with Jacob Drucker, Martin Bresnick, and David Lang. He has won three grants from ASCAP, two student composer awards from BMI, and the 1996 BMI Young Musicians' Foundation Orchestral Premiere. He has been commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and was appointed Composer-in-Residence of both the California Symphony Orchestra and Young Concert Artists, Inc. He is currently completing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Eastman School. Minimalist Rag was written as a response to the music of John Adams and Steve Reich. The piece begins in a "minimalist" style, and gradually incorporates elements of ragtime until a full-blown rag is achieved.
Tony Caramia
Recorded in Kilbourn Hall and the Kresge Recording Studios of the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music on November 26-27 and 29, 1996. Recording engineer, John Ebert; piano technician, Joe Balconi. Producer for the Eastman American Music Series, Sydney Hodkinson. Production supervision, David Peelle, Director, Recording Arts and Services. Special production assistance, Suzanne Stover. Photography, John Widman; design, Marybeth Crider, Creative Arts Manager, Eastman School of Music.
Brass Knuckles:
An Excursion into
Contemporary Ragtime
Tony Caramia,
Piano
Trebor Jay Tichenor
Show Me Rag (A Missouri Defiance) (1976) (2:48)
William Albright
Morning Reveries (from The Dream Rags) (1967-70) (5:37)
William Albright/William Bolcom
Brass Knuckles (from Three Novelty Rags) (1968-69) (3:43)
William Bolcom
The Graceful Ghost (from Three Ghost Rags) (1970-71) (4:52)
Dream Shadows (from Three Ghost Rags) (1970-71) (6:46)
Serpent's Kiss (from The Garden of Eden)(1969) (5:58)
Max Morath
The Golden Hours (1966) (3:32)
Tony Caramia
Travelin' Two-Step (1982) (1:59)
Robin Frost
Olympic Stride Waltz (1984) (3:35)
Nocturne (1986) (6:52)
Satisfaction (1988) (6:03)
Glenn Jenks
Queen of Violets (1989) (4:58)
Sydney Hodkinson
Minnie-Rag (Kwazy Kwilt
for Minnie-Mouse's
Birthday) (1990) (3:16)
Kevin Putz
Minimalist Rag (1992) (5:19)
Total Time = 66:31
|
