ART SONGS FROM CAROLINA
Soprano MARILYN TAYLOR was born in Louisville, Kentucky, where she began her professional singing career as artist-in-residence with the Kentucky Opera. Appearing with the Des Moines Metro Opera, Nashville Opera, Dayton Opera, Piedmont Opera, and Lyric Opera Kansas City, Ms. Taylor has received accolades for many roles including Pamina, Marguerite, Micaela, Musetta, Sophie, the Governess, and Donna Elvira. Noted for the beauty of her voice and realistic interpretation of a wide range of repertoire, Ms. Taylor is equally at home performing music from the baroque or the avant-garde. The New York Times praised her “warm and focused performance” of Mahler's 4th Symphony under the baton of Dennis Russell Davies, and the Bonn General-Anzeiger called her a “figure commanding respect” after her performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion with the Bonn Orchestra. She was the recipient of a career grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and a George London Grant, given to artists who demonstrate “a full range of professional acting, musical and vocal talent.” Taylor possesses an avid interest in contemporary music and has collaborated with composers William Bolcom, Warren Benson, John Harbison, and George Rochberg. Recorded on discs of G. Schirmer and Koch, Ms. Taylor has appeared most recently on the Albany label featuring The Kona Coffee Cantata, a chamber opera written by composer Jerre Tanner and recorded with the Prague Chamber Orchestra.
At home in North Carolina, Ms. Taylor performs frequently with the Winston-Salem Symphony and at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where she has taught since 1992. She obtained her BME and MM degrees at the University of Louisville, and undertook doctoral studies at the famed Indiana University in Bloomington, where she studied with Virginia Zeani, Nicola Rossi-Lemeni and Giorgio Tozzi.
ROBERT BREWER holds the degree of Master of Music in organ from Indiana University. He is in wide demand as a choral conductor, clinician, vocal coach, accompanist, chamber musician, and keyboard soloist. Organist and choirmaster at the St. Paul's United Methodist Church in Houston since 1980, his work with professional choral ensembles have included posts as director of the Houston Concert Chorale, Houston Masterworks Chorus and Chamber Choir, and guest conductor of the Houston Bach Choir. He has served as organ professor at the University of Houston, and gave organ recitals in 1989, 1992, and 1997 at Westminster Abbey, concluding a weeks' residency by the St. Paul choir under his direction. Most recently he led this ensemble in a performance at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, Germany and a week's residency at York Minster in York, England. The choir also serves as chorus for the Houston Ballet, which Brewer has conducted professionally in performances of Daphnis and Chloe and Poulenc's Gloria.
The events leading to the creation of this disc took place over many years. A motivating factor in producing it was bringing the songs of Charles Vardell to light, as well as other unrecorded works of composers either born, or living in North Carolina. Synchronicity has proven that a link exists between myself and each group of songs, sometimes becoming obvious only after the fact. Moving to Winston-Salem in 1992 to teach at the North Carolina School of the Arts was made easier because the terrain and homes reminded me of Louisville, Kentucky, my birthplace. Here I discovered I share with Frazelle and Vardell a love of land and hills and an appreciation of rural life and music, instilled in me by childhood visits to relatives in “the country” and long jaunts in the woods there. The songs of Robert Ward do not evoke these types of images; however, a connection between Millay and myself exists in the passion for a younger man, which in my case became a marriage and musical collaboration lasting fifteen years now.
All of the songs look back in terms of sentiment, text, and harmony. Consequently, when Rick Mashburn suggested entitling this CD Return: Art Songs from Carolina, it seemed entirely appropriate.
“My voice sat down in this music. It kicked its shoes off and felt cold bare earth and said `this is home.” (Marilyn Taylor—May `94, Moravian Music Journal, referring to the music of Charles Vardell.)
Kenneth Frazelle (b.1955, Jacksonville, North Carolina) is a composer whose music, according to The San Francisco Examiner, “came straight from—and went straight to—the heart, an organ too seldom addressed by contemporary composers.” His distinctive voice blends structural and tonal sophistication with a straightforward lyricism. He has been influenced not only by his study with the great modernist Roger Sessions, but also by the folk songs and fiddle tunes of his native North Carolina. Frazelle's heartfelt compositions have been commissioned by reknowned performers Dawn Upshaw and Yo-Yo Ma, and by Bill T. Jones for a score for the internationally acclaimed dance work, Still/Here, which premiered in Lyon, France. He is Artist-in-Residence with the Santa Rosa Symphony and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and his works have been performed by the Israeli Chamber Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Colorado Symphony, the Spoleto Festival U.S.A., the Kennedy Center and the Montreal International Music Festival. Frazelle was recently awarded a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an award given to young composers of exceptional gifts.
Frazelle's studies with Roger Sessions took place at the Juilliard School. His high school studies were with Robert Ward at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where Frazelle now teaches.
Folksongs. In 1988 Frazelle began to compose formal pieces based upon the Southern Appalachian folk music he had heard throughout his life. The tunes upon which these works were based were entrenched in Scottish-Irish traditions of his family, which had resided in Onslow County, North Carolina for three centuries. Out of the desire to have audiences hear not only these compositions, but the original tunes, grew the inspiration for a folksong book. With the aid of his grandmother to refresh his memory and Rick Mashburn to help arrange the texts, he wrote Naomi Wise and Groundhog in 1989. Bonnie Blue Eyes followed in 1993, and six years later, he completed an additional five songs for the Appalachian Songbook, published in 2000.
Groundhog and Bonnie Blue Eyes represent folksong traditions in the simplest sense, enhanced by inventive piano writing: Groundhog begins with a “slapstick” figure reminiscent of a banjo, and the hauntingly beautiful Bonnie Blue Eyes suggests a dulcimer or guitar. More challenging perhaps was the task of arranging Naomi Wise, in which Frazelle dramatizes the 14-verse narrative with text painting of immaculate Schubertian style. The legend of “poor Omie” is based on a true story; her grave can be found in Randleman, North Carolina, and the Deep River, in which her body was found, is pictured on the front cover (compliments of the composer).
Return. Frazelle first became acquainted with the poetry of A. R. Ammons while living in New York in 1977. Frazelle wrote to him to express admiration of his work, beginning a correspondence that would last a year or two before Frazelle actually met Ammons at a writers' workshop in North Carolina. Frazelle would learn that the two men shared many North Carolina connections: Ammons was born in North Carolina, and coincidentally, Frazelle's grandmother and Ammons' brother-in-law were cousins.
Frazelle composed I Went Back for Ms. Taylor in 1997, asking her to perform it at the celebration of Ammons' 71st birthday on February 18 (which happened to be Taylor's birthday as well). The song, commissioned by the Reynolda House Museum of American Art, was premiered there with Frazelle at the piano. Ammons, obviously moved, uttered a gasp of appreciation at the end of the performance. Inspired by her collaboration with Frazelle, Taylor commissioned a song cycle from him. Together they searched through Ammons' poetry to find two selections they felt would complement the personal nature of I Went Back. Father and Retiring were chosen, and the songs were premiered as a cycle at Taylor's debut recital in Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall on June 8, 1997.
Many of Frazelle's earlier compositions reflected the complexity prevailing in twentieth- century modernism, but Return relies on more traditional harmonies and forms. Keenly sensitive to Ammons' poetry, Frazelle uses quasi-orchestral accompaniments in musical language which in places he calls “Mahleresque” to convey images of dreams and bittersweet memories; implying, in a musical sense the “return” suggested by the text of the last song: “I went back to my old home”.
Charles (Gildersleeve) Vardell Jr. (1893-1962), born in Salisbury, NC, was a nationally celebrated composer, an accomplished organist and pianist, a beloved teacher, a respected administrator, and an arts visionary. He served as Dean of the School of Music at Salem College in Winston-Salem, NC (1928-1951), and of Flora MacDonald College in Red Springs, North Carolina (later St. Andrew's College in Laurinburg, NC) from 1952 until his death.
Vardell began his early musical training with piano lessons from his mother, a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music and founder of Flora Macdonald's Conservatory of Music. He received an AB in Philosophy in from Princeton in 1914 and his Artist's and Teacher's Diploma in piano from the Institute of Musical Arts (Juilliard) in 1916. In 1937 he completed requirements for the MA and PhD in composition at the Eastman School of Music. There he wrote his first symphony, The Carolinian, which was performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Ormandy and received at least four other performances by major orchestras during his lifetime. His most successful orchestral work was “Joe Clark Steps Out,” a piece based on an Appalachian folk tune. A commissioned composer, he was one of the founders of the Winston-Salem Civic Music Association, the Symphony Orchestra, and the Arts Council in Winston-Salem, which was the first Arts Council established in the United States. He is survived by his daughter, Margaret Sandresky, organist and composer, who resides in Winston-Salem with her husband Clemens Sandresky, pianist and former Dean of the School of Music at Salem College. Vardell's extant works include over forty songs, a violin sonata, a symphony, orchestral pieces, several piano sketches, organ works, cantatas, and choral works.1
1 Adapted from notes compiled by Margaret Sandresky for “The Vardell Chamber Series; Music for the Piano, Voice and Violin” 1994; The Charles G. Vardell Centennial Celebration; A special project by the Moravian Music Foundation.
The Songs. The majority of Vardell's songs were written before 1920; many of those chosen for this recording were composed between 1918 and 1921. Elegy for a Tired Cook, his latest song composition, was written in 1948. After graduation from the Institute of Musical Arts, Vardell undertook fulltime employment at the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut before beginning his tenure at Salem College. One can surmise that, after assuming the duties of school administrator, teacher, concertizer, orchestral composer and cultural crusader, the composing of songs became a more erratic hobby. A collaboration with baritone Cecil Fanning, however, led to the public performance of some of his songs, particularly Nocturne and Dark Days or Fair (for which Fanning wrote the lyrics) in New York and London. The latter was published by the Boston Music Company in 1925.
Ms. Taylor first became acquainted with Vardell's music in 1993, when approached about performing a selection of his songs commemorating the centennial of his birth. At the home of the Sandreskys, Taylor traced the life of the `large, genial man' whose heritage was steeped in rural North Carolina, the Presbyterian Church and two generations of piano teachers. A poetry scrapbook dating from 1905 unearthed many of the texts, extracted from literary magazines, that were chosen for his songs. Perhaps most informative was a diary of his freshman year at Princeton (1911-1912), wherein programs of concerts, his responses to them, and a narrative of summer days spent in the mountains of Blowing Rock, North Carolina revealed sources of inspiration for the young man. Artistic reviews, current events from magazines and newspapers, letters, essays, etc., disclosed many of the influences that typically shaped American song in the first half of the twentieth century, but as importantly, the material establishes that Vardell's love of North Carolina was instrumental in defining his musical voice, blended as it was with these sources.
The twelve songs chosen for this recording display an extraordinary cross-section of Vardell's diverse compositional style. The songs convey influences of Scotch -Irish fiddle tunes, traces of blues and spirituals, impressionism, German lieder, the sensual, often bizarre imagery of the fin-de-siecle poets'2 and the turn-of-the-century fascination with Chinoisery, to name a few. Exquisitely wrought, these songs are worthy of taking their place alongside those of other noted early romantic American composers.
2 Barbara Lister-Sink, program notes for Moravian Music Journal, volume 39, number 1, spring 1994: “Charles Vardell Centennial”, pg. 7.
Robert Ward The Pulitzer Prize winning composer was born in Cleveland, Ohio on September 13, 1917. He received his early musical training in Cleveland's public schools and graduated from the Eastman School of Music where he studied under Bernard Rogers and Howard Hanson. His graduate work was completed at the Juilliard School studying composition with Frederick Jacobi and conducting with Albert Stoessel and Edgar Schenkman.
He has served on the faculties of Queens College, Columbia University, and the Juilliard School of Music, where he was assistant to the President from 1952-55. He later became music director of the Third Street Music School and conductor of the Doctor's Orchestral Society of New York. In 1956 he became Executive Vice-President and Managing Editor of Galaxy Music Corporation and Highgate Press. In 1967, he was named President of the North Carolina School of the Arts, and in 1979 became the Mary Duke Biddle Professor of Music at Duke University, the position from which he retired in 1987.
Ward has always taken an active part in musical organizations across the country and continues to serve on many distinguished panels, boards and advisory committees. He holds an honorary degree in Fine Arts from Duke University and an honorary Doctorate of Music from the Peabody Institute. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he has held three Guggenheim Fellowships as well as grants from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has received the North Carolina Award for Fine Arts, the Eastman School Achievement Award, the Cleveland Arts Prize, and the Morrison Award from the Roanoke Island Historical Society.
Ward's large and distinguished musical creations have been commissioned by the New York City Opera, Broadcast Music, Inc., the New York Philharmonic, The Friends of Dumbarton Oaks, the Juilliard Musical Foundation and many others. His opera, The Crucible, based on the play by Arthur Miller, won both the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Music and the New York Music Critics Circle Citation for the same year. He has composed six other operas, six symphonies, major choral works, songs, and concerti for piano, violin and saxophone.
Love's Seasons. Late in 1928, Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote on the back of a telegram a poem that would later become the second in a collection of sonnets entitled Fatal Interview. The poem was written for a man nearly fifteen years her junior whom she had recently met, and with whom she would have a prolonged personal and professional relationship. “If one may assume that Fatal Interview generally conforms to their affair, it seems likely that it flourished and then diminished during 1929 and early 1930...before Fatal Interview came out on 15 April 1931.”3 Four years after their publication, Robert Ward read the sonnets for the first time while a composition student at the Eastman School of Music. Struck with the “superb imagery and profound emotional power of the sonnets”4, he immediately composed two songs from the collection intending to complete a cycle, but never doing so. When in 1994 he received a commission from soprano Kay Lowe for a group of songs, the sonnets quickly came to mind. Abandoning his earlier efforts, he started afresh, and the songs were premiered in their current form in November of the same year. Ms. Taylor first performed the cycle in November of 1997 at the North Carolina School of the Arts, in a concert celebrating the 80th birthday of Chancellor Emeritus Ward.
In rereading the sonnets, Ward observed that “one of the pervasive images of the Millay cycle is the changing seasons...I therefore chose four of the sonnets reflecting this aspect of Millay's work, with the fifth as a kind of epilogue.”5 Drawing upon his skills asan operatic composer, Ward paints with deft strokes the picture of a love affair, progressively sentimental, passionate, turbid, and at last, funereal. With yellowed edges his portrait compellingly speaks, through Millay's writing, of gardens, Carian hills, and lost loves.
3 Norman A. Brittin, Edna St. Vincent Millay: Twayne Publishers, Boston, Ma. pg.24.
4 Notes by composer, postscript, Love's Seasons..... Vireo Press
Three Folk Songs from the
I'll tell you a story about poor Omie Wise
And how she got deluded by John Lewis's lies.
He told her to meet him at Adam's spring
He said he'd bring money and other fine things.
He brought her no money, but to flatter the case
He said, “We'll get married, 'twill be no disgrace.
Come get up behind me and away we will ride.
We'll go into town and I'll make you my bride.”
She lept up behind him and away they did go
off to Deep River where the dark waters flow.
“John Lewis, John Lewis, please tell me your mind.
Do you intend to marry me or leave me behind?”
“Little Omie, little Omie, I'll tell you my mind.
my mind is to drown you and leave you behind.”
“O, pity your infant and spare me my life.
Let me go rejected and not be your wife.”
“No pity, no pity,” John Lewis did cry,
“Down in Deep River your body shall lie.”
He kissed her and hugged her, then turned her around.
He kicked her and choked her and held her head down.
He jumped on his horse and away he did ride.
The screams of poor Omie rode along by his side.
They found her body floating where the water was deep
It caused all the people to sigh and to weep.
John Lewis left the country, they brought him back to try.
But they could never prove that he caused her to die.
They say on his deathbed John Lewis did not deny;
“I murdered my true lover, I can still hear her cry.”
Shoulder up your gun and whistle for your dog.
Goin' to the woods to catch a groundhog.
Groundhog in the berry patch, he run into a log.
Suppertime come, we'll have a groundhog.
Here comes Fergus with a forty foot pole.
To run that groundhog outa his hole.
Skin that groundhog, save his hide.
Makes the best shoestring I ever tied.
Birdy was screaming and Birdie she cried.
She loves her groundhog stewed and fried.
Yonder comes Clarence with a snigger and a grin.
Groundhog gravy all over his chin.
(Fergus, Birdy and Clarence are dogs.)
Goodbye, my Bonnie Blue Eyes,
Goodbye, my Bonnie Blue Eyes,
I'm goin' out west where times is best.
Goodbye, my Bonnie Blue Eyes.
I asked your Mama for you,
I asked your Papa for you,
They both said “No,” so now I'll go,
I asked them both for you.
Don't cry, my Bonnie Blue Eyes,
Don't cry, my Bonnie Blue Eyes,
`cause if you cry you'll spill your eyes.
(texts arranged by Kenneth Frazelle and Rick Mashburn)
Fireflies flicker in the tops of trees,
Flicker in the lower branches,
Over the moonwhite lillies
Is a flashing and ceasing of small, lemon green stars.
As you lean against me, moonwhite,
The air all about you is lit and pricked and painted
with sparkles of lemon green flame
Starting out of a background of vague, blue trees.
(Amy Lowell, from “Pictures of a Floating World”)
I dreamed of a still grey pool within the wood;
Into its depths the dusk was falling ever.
And waking slowly in the night
I felt thy hair, they dim cool hair
Like falling dusk about me.
And through it from the spacious night
Glimmered one lucid star.
Ah, like a wood anemone thy face, thy curving throat
Shone faintly through the enfolding gloom
I dream of a still grey pool in the lonely wood;
Into its depths the dusk is falling ever.
Then come home, my children
The sun is gone down and the dews of night arise.
Come, come, leave off play and let us away
Til the morning appears in the skies.
Well, well, go and play `till the light fades away
The little ones leaped and shouted and laughed
And all the hills echoed.
(William Blake - from Songs of Innocence)
(from The Dowager Duchess)
That rascally thief of a butler
has stolen my emerald necklace.
You know, the famous de-Effleuried emeralds
that used to belong to the Sultan of Nanki-Poo.
he was such a delightful man.
I never shall forget what beautiful manners he had!
I paid him twenty thousand pounds for those emeralds
and you positively must find them for me.
I simply have to have them to wear to the coronation!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air,
No mist obscures, nor cloud nor speck nor stain
Breaks the serene of heaven.
In full orbed glory, yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths.
Beneath her steady ray the desert circle spreads
Like the round ocean girdled by the sky.
Why do the lillies goggle their tongues at me
And writhe, and twist, and strangle themselves against my fingers,
So that I can hardly weave a garland for your hair?
Why do they shriek your name
When I would cluster them?
And send you a wreath of lolling corpses
(Amy Lowell, from “Pictures of a Floating World”)
Robert Ward Love's Seasons from “Fatal Interview” by Edna St. Vincent Millay)
I. Not in a silver casket cool with pearls
Not in a silver casket cool with pearls
or rich with red corundum or with blue,
Locked, and the key withheld,
as other girls have given their loves,
Not in a lovers' knot, not in a ring
and the legend plain, Semper Fidelis,
Kennels a drop of mischief for the brain.
Nothing but that, ungemmed, unhidden,
As one should bring you cowslips
in a hat swung from the hand,
I bring you calling out as children do,
and these are all for you.”
II. Moon, that against the lintel of the west
Moon, that against the lintel of the west
Your forehead lean until the gate be swung
Longing to leave the world and be at rest,
being worn with faring and no longer young,
Do you recall at all the Carian hill
where worn with loving, loving late you lay,
Halting the sun because you lingered still,
while wondering candles lit the Carian day?
Ah, if indeed this memory to your mind recall
some sweet employment, pity me,
that with the dawn must leave my love behind,
that even now the dawn's dim herald see!
I charge you, goddess, in the name of one
you loved as well, endure,
III. Clearly my ruined garden as it stood
Clearly my ruined garden as it stood
Before the frost came on it I recall
Stiff marigolds, and what a trunk of wood
the zinnia had, that was the first to fall;
These pale and oozy stalks,
these hanging leaves nerveless and darkened,
Cannot gainsay me though the spirit grieves
and wrings its hands at what the frost has done.
If in a widening silence you should guess
I read the moment with recording eyes,
Taking your love and all your loveliness
Into a listening body hush'd of sighs...
Though summer's rife and the warm rose in season
Rebuke me not: I have a winter reason.
IV. Summer be seen no more
Summer be seen no more within this wood;
Nor you, red Autumn, down its paths appear;
Let no more the false mitrewort intrude,
Nor the dwarf cornel nor the gentian here;
You too be absent, unavailing Spring,
Nor let those thrushes that with pain conspire
from out this wood their wild arpeggios fling,
shaking the nerves with memory and desire.
Only that season which is no man's friend,
You, surly Winter, in this wood be found;
with sleet those branches bend
though rasps the locust in the field around,
Now shrieking blizzard, blow!
Blow, blow! Farewell sweet bank;
be blotted out with snow.
V. Now by the path I climbed, I journey back
Now by the path I climbed, I journey back.
The oaks have grown; I have been long away.
Taking with me your memory and your lack
I now descend into a milder day;
Stripped of your love, unburdened of my hope,
Descend the path I mounted from the plain;
Yet steeper than I fancied seems the slope
And stonier, now that I go down again.
Faintly ascends upon this heavier air;
I do recall those grassy pastures well:
In early spring they drove the cattle there.
And close at hand should be a shelter, too,
From which the mountain peaks are not in view.
(Edna St. Vincent Millay—from Fatal Interview)
Flock of Dreams (Charles Vardell)
Frail sleep, that blowest by fresh banks
beside whose brink the varicolored dreams
like cattle come to drink.
Cool sleep, thy reeds in solemn ranks
that murmur peace to me by midnight streams
and dayward pipe my flock of dreams
Pack clouds away and welcome day!
With night we banish sorrow.
Sweet air blow soft; mount lark aloft
and give my Love good morrow!
Wings from the wind to please her mind
Notes from the lark I'll borrow
Bird prune thy wing, nightingale sing!
and give my Love good morrow!
Notes from them all I'll borrow
To give my Love good morrow.
Wake from thy nest, robin redbreast,
Sing birds, in ev'ry furrow!
And from each bill let music shrill
Give my fair Love good morrow!
Blackbird and thrush in every bush,
stare, linnet, and cock sparrow
You pretty elves, among yourselves
Sing my fair Love good morrow.
Sing birds in every furrow
To give my Love good morrow!
The moonlight is shining so white through my
the moon has been walking all night
The way that my mother comes softly on tiptoe
When I'm thinking how slowly the dark's going by.
The sun is the father, the moon is the mother
And the stars are the children asleep in the night.
She stoops down to kiss them, and tuck them in covers,
And when she is going, she leaves me her light.
The moonlight is shining so soft through my window
the moon has been walking all night through the sky,
the way that my mother comes softly on tiptoe,
when thinking how slowly the dark's going by.
With never a future nor a past,
Delia Crane is dead at last,
the present all she ever knew,
a here and now of ladling stew.
I doubt she ever saw a star, wished on one
or looked afar beyond the sink;
the steaming brew she cooked for others,
It was good and so was she
(a word used indiscriminately.)
So call the priest, read from the book
May Jesus take this tired cook.
Take her to his gracious breast
Make her lovely, let her rest,
rest with the saints, then let her share
a feast that she did not prepare.
The flowers all stood curtseying
The blushing poppies hung their heads
And whispered Mary's name
And all the wood anemones
Hung down their heads in shame.
The violet hid behind her leaves,
And veiled her timid face
And all the flowers bow'd adown,
Only a little common flow'r
Looked boldly up and smiled
To see the happy mother come,
The little child he laughed aloud
To see the smiling flow'r
And as he laughed, the Marigold
Turned gold in that same hour.
For she was gay and innocent,
And from the splendor of her face
She caught a golden glow.
At evening, when the western wind
Uprises from the earth's deep bowl,
It murmurs through the flick'ring stars:
“There will be starlight in her soul.”
At morning, when the sun's red shafts
Upon the eastern ladder start,
they promise me in accents clear:
“There will be sunlight in her heart!”
Dark days or fair, black nights or bright,
One pray'r my mind and spirit troll:
“May there be sunlight in your heart,
And starlight in her soul!”
Return by Kenneth Frazelle
I dreamed my father flicked
then like a fish in water
through woods, roots, mires
re-entered in the ground:
I said to my mother I still
dream I know she died sixteen years before his
as I become a child again
a longing that will go away
only with my going grows.
I'll keep the brook watched,
I'll sort the clouds into
nimbostratus, cirrocumulus—
till so many fine distinctions
I'll probably get the sun
the stars through the round
sprinkling sheets, become essential
at all the wind's swerves,
surf across the place had
A. R. Ammons: “Father” from Briefings (1971), “Retiring” from Lake Effect Country (1983), “I Went Back” from Worldly Hopes (1982)
Grateful acknowledgment to:
Bill Huesman, piano technician, North Carolina School of the Arts
Barbara Lister-Sink, Artist in Residence, Salem College, for introducing me to the Vardell songs, and for the gift of her artistry in numerous performances of same
The Moravian Music Foundation, for making the Vardell concert tour possible
Margaret Sandresky for permission to record Vardell's songs, and for the research and historical background on her father, Charles Vardell
Robert Ward for his songs, his experience, and his help in advancing this project.
Kenneth Frazelle and Rick Mashburn for limitless help and support in this project.
THIS RECORDING WAS MADE POSSIBLE IN PART BY GENEROUS FUNDING FROM:
The Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County
The Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University
The Semans Art Fund at the North Carolina School of the Arts
Alex C. Ewing, Chancellor Emeritus, North Carolina School of the Arts
Recorded by Frank Martin, Media Production Associates, Winston-Salem, NC
Edited and Mastered by Tim Riley, Tim Riley Productions
Produced by Marilyn Taylor
Michael Shell, artistic consultant
Recorded October 1999 in Crawford Hall, North Carolina School of the Arts
Appalachian Songbook, Return Notevole Music Publishing, a division of Subito Music
Love's Seasons, Vireo Press - Agent, ECS Publishing: Boston
Dark Days or Fair, Boston Music Co., 1925 (out of print)
Ballads spun for nearly two centuries about Naomi Wise's mysterious end inspired Frazelle's setting [Pictured here is her grave in Randleman, North Carolina.] Photo by Kenneth Frazelle.
Three Folk songs from the
3 Bonnie Blue Eyes [2:52]
5 Tristram in the Woods [3:13]
6 Song of Innocence [1:34]
7 Plight of the Duchess [1:21]
10 Not in a silver casket [2:55]
11 Moon, that against the lintel of the west [3:10]
12 Clearly my ruined garden as it stood [3:23]
13 Summer, be seen no more [2:19]
14 Now by the path I climbed I journey back [3:52]
15 Flock of Dreams [1:55]
18 Elegy for a Tired Cook [2:58]
20 Dark Days or Fair [2:04]
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