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An Introduction
As a duo team, we have performed throughout the United States and Europe since 1988. In exploring the traditional duet literature, we came to realize the scarcity of twentieth-century vocal duet music, and decided to do our own small part to rectify the situation. We commissioned two new works, one from Stephen Jaffe (1990 for Carnegie Recital Hall premiere) and one from Timothy Hoekman (1994). Additionally we wanted to introduce our audiences to other new works by composers who also deserve to be heard. We consider it a vital part of our responsibility as performers to champion the works of living American composers and to create a venue for duet music, an art form that encourages a camaraderie of spirit and the sharing of musical ideas.
This compact disc contains five pieces, none of which has been previously recorded. They range in accompaniment from piano to orchestra, with interesting combinations in-between. We hope that in this eclectic mix, there is something for each of our listeners.
- Terry Rhodes &Ellen Williams
Soprano Terry Rhodes has performed throughout the United States, Central America and Italy. As a 1993 Fulbright lecturer/artist-in-residence, she performed American music throughout Eastern Europe with concerts in Macedonia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Greece. She has appeared with the Duna Symphony Orchestra of Budapest, in the Ohrid International Summer Music Festival in Macedonia and at the Muzyka w Starym Klasztorze Festival in Lódz, Poland. Ms. Rhodes received her training at the Eastman School of Music where she earned masters and doctoral degrees in vocal performance and literature. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is now on the faculty teaching voice and directing the opera program.
Mezzo-soprano Ellen Williams has performed extensively in the United States in operatic roles and on the concert stage. She has also made orchestral and recital appearances in Europe, namely Italy, Austria and the Czech Republic. While studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London, she performed programs of living British composers which was broadcast by the BBC. Ms. Williams received her doctoral degree in vocal performance from Florida State University, her masters of music from New England Conservatory and her undergraduate degree in voice from Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she now coordinates the vocal division.
Timothy Hoekman
Timothy Hoekman is an Associate Professor of Vocal Coaching and Accompanying at the Florida State University, where his duties include coaching graduate students, teaching diction and vocal literature classes, teaching the techniques of vocal coaching, and accompanying faculty recitals. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Calvin College, a Master of Music degree from Peabody Conservatory, and a doctoral degree in piano performance from the University of Michigan. He has performed as soloist and accompanist in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Europe, and has appeared as soloist with orchestras in California, Michigan, and Florida.
In addition to his work at Florida State, Hoekman was the artistic director of the South Georgia Opera Company from its inception in 1986 until the spring of 1993. He spends his summers in Cooperstown, New York, working as a pianist, harpsichordist and coach for Glimmerglass Opera. He has also worked for the Des Moines Metro Opera, Michigan Opera Theater, Opera Grand Rapids, and the Peter Harrower Summer Opera Workshop in Atlanta.
Other compositions by Hoekman include two song cycles published by Recital Publications: Seven Housman Songs and American Lyrics; The Nativity for soprano and orchestra; choral anthems; hymn preludes for organ; and works for trumpet and organ.
Margarets
These two songs for soprano, mezzo-soprano and piano were written at the request of Ellen Williams and Terry Rhodes. When the request came, I immediately began to look for lyrical poems that had a woman (or girl) as the subject. I was delighted to find two Margarets, both of whom seemed musical.
I have long been an admirer of the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) and was happy to finally set one of his poems to music. The poem's title is "Spring and Fall: to a young child." The song attempts to express some of the sadness associated with a young girl's first inklings of mortality.
John Skelton was court poet to both Henry VII and Henry VIII of England. His poem "To mistress Margaret Hussey" is part of a larger work entitled Garland of Laurel, written in 1521-22. Although the images of falcon and hawk seem rather severe (at least to our modern ears), the tone of the poem is most pleasing and merry indeed. It is this tone that I have tried to capture in the music.
- Timothy Hoekman
To a Young Child
Margaret, are you grieving,
Over Goldengrove onleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter child the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was horn for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Merry Margaret
Merry Margaret
As midsummer flower,
Gentle as falcon or hawk of the tower:
with solace and gladness,
Much mirth and no madness,
All good and no badness;
So joyously,
So maidenly,
So womanly
Her demeaning
In everything.
Far, far passing
That I can indite,
Or suffice to write
Of Merry Margaret
As midsummer flower,
Gentle as falcon or hawk of the tower.
So maidenly and so still
And as full of good will
As fair Isaphill,
Coliander
Sweet pomander
Good Cassander
Steadfast,
Well-made, well-wrought,
Far may he sought,
Ere that ye can find
So courteous, so kind
As Merry Margaret,
This midsummer flower,
Gentle as falcon or hawk of the tower.
Stephen Jaffe
The music of Stephen Jaffe has been widely performed throughout the United States, Europe and China by ensembles including the R.A.I. of Rome, the San Francisco and New Jersey Symphonies, the New York New Music Ensemble and Spectrum Concerts Berlin; it has also been recorded on CR1, Albany and Neuma. Jaffe received his training in composition at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied with George Crumb, George Rochberg and Richard Wernick, and at the Conservatoire de Musique in Geneva, Switzerland. In addition to a Premier Medaille from that institution, he has been the recipient of the Rome Prize, Kennedy Center Friedheim Award, fellowships from Tanglewood, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and commissions from the Fromm and Naumburg Foundations, the New Hampshire Symphony and the Orchestra of St. Luke's. Honoring his "eloquent and individual voice" in 1989 Brandeis University awarded him its Creative Arts Citation.
Jaffe is on the faculty at Duke University where he directs the contemporary music series Encounters: with the Music of our Time.
Fort Juniper Songs
The American poet Robert Francis lived most of his life in and around the town of Amherst, Massachusetts in relative solitude, earning his living from poetry and an occasional newspaper column or violin lesson, living "not ungenerously" by growing much of his own food, providing for himself as cook, tailor, and handyman. Unlike other poets who have only metaphorically built the worlds in which they live and work, Francis literally did build the home in which he lived for the last forty years of his life. This modest house he called "Fort Juniper" (hence the title of my song cycle).
In addition to its clever, finely honed language and its universal themes, Francis' poetry is interesting for its sonic and metric playfulness, and for a use of irony remarkable for its light, but often trenchant, tone. The poems I have chosen trace a progression from the comic to the tragicomic, and nearly back again.
O World of Toms and The Pope are fun - roguish and characteristic wordplay - nothing more or less profound. With Diver, the third in my set, a transition towards a heavier sort of lightness begins. Irony is absent here, but wordplay remains, gaining poetic intensity through a beautifully transparent symmetry. Following the brief and impish Gloria, invented with a handful of syllables (Bach, praise, our Father, etc.), irony takes on a more stinging and poignant tone in two anti-war poems, Blood Stains and Light Casualties. In Blood Stains, Francis' poetic technique of the fragmented surface illuminates a series of striking and recurrent images, suggesting at once the frenzied panic of political figures (such as Richard Nixon) and the true record of history - indelibly recorded, as the poet leaves to metaphor, by actual deeds rather than by press releases. Light Casualties, with its understated and haunting irony, reminds us of another Amherst poet, Emily Dickinson. In the gentlest way it deconstructs another euphemism of war and the news media: the "light casualties" suffered by troops in Viet Nam. The concluding Waxwings provides a connection in tone with the playful poems opening the set and the hauntingly light verses which precede it.
-Stephen Jaffe
1. O World of Toms
O world of Toms - tomfools, Tom Peppers,
Dark Peeping Toms and Tom-the-Pipers,
Tom Paines, Tom Jones, Tom Aquinases,
Undoubting Toms and Doubting Thomases,
Tomboys, Tom Thumbs, and Tom-Dick-and-Harriet,
Tom Collinses and Tom-and-Jerries,
Tom Wolfes, Tom Jeffersons, Tom Bardies,
Tomcods, tomcats, tomtits, tom turkeys
O hospitable world! And they still come
In every shape and shade of Tom.
2. The Pope
The Pope in Rome
Under St. Peter's dome
Is the Pope at home.
Pomp is his daily fare
Poised in his papal chair
Quite debonair.
The great hell pealing,
The cardinals kneeling,
The soaring ceiling.
All that display
Does not dismay
The Pope a single day.
3. Diver
Diver go down
Down through the green
Introverted dawn
To the dark unseen
To the never day
The under night
Starless and steep
Deep beneath deep
Diver fall
And falling fight
Tour weed-dense way
Until you crawl
Until you touch
Weird water land
And stand
Diver come up
Up through the green
Into the light
The sun - the seen
But in the clutch
Of your dripping hand
Diver bring
Some uncouth thing
That we could swear
And would have sworn
Was never born
Or could never he
Anywhere
Blaze on our sight
Make us see.
4. Gloria
Bach praising God the Father we now praise
Who praise no more the Father. We now praise
Our Father Bach. Our praise is for his praise
Of God the Father. Ah, butt praising him
Do we not praise with him our Father God?
For praise itself is God and praise the Father.
5. Blood Stains
blood stainshow to removefrom cotton
silkfrom all fine fabricsblood stains
where did I readall I remember old stains
harder than freshold stain often indelible
blood stainswhat did it sayfrom glass
shatteredfrom metalmemorial marble
how to remove a clean soft clothwas it
and plenty of tepid wateralso from paper
headlinesdispatchescommuniqués history
white leavesgreen leavesfrom grass growing
or deadfrom treesfrom flowers from sky
from standing from running waterblood stains
6. Light Casualties
Light things falling - I think of rain,
Sprinkle of rain, a little shower
And later the even lighter snow.
Falling and light - white petal-fall
Apple and pear, and then the leaves.
Nothing is lighter than a falling leaf.
Did the guns whisper when they spoke
That day? Did death tiptoe his business?
And afterwards in another world
Did mourners put on light mourning,
Casual as rain, as snow, as leaves?
Did a few tears fall?
7. Waxwings
Four Tao philosophers as
cedar waxwings,
chat on a February berrybush
in sun, and I am one.
Such merriment and such sobriety—
the small wild fruit on the tall stalk—
was this not always my true style?
Above an elegance of snow, beneath
a silk blue sky a brotherhood of four
birds. Can you mistake us?
To sun, to feast, and to converse
and all together— for this
I have abandoned
all my other lives.
Nos. 1-7 reprinted from Robert Francis Collected Poems, 1936-1976 (Amherst University of Massachusetts Press, 1976), copyright © 1944, 1972, 1974 by Robert Francis '.Waxwings'. reprinted from The Orb Weaver © 1960 by Wesleyan University Press Used by permission of University Press of New England, Inc.
Penka Kouneva
Penka Kouneva (b. 1967 in Sofia, Bulgaria) graduated with degrees in music theory and piano from the Bulgarian Academy of Music and a degree in history form the Cl. Ohridsky University of Sofia. In 1990 she was awarded a Mary Duke Biddle Fellowship and came to the U.S. to study composition with Stephen Jaffe at Duke University where she became the first-ever doctoral candidate in composition. Commissions have included a string quartet by the Lark Quartet, Beyond Words for flute, viola and harpsichord by the Mallarmé Chamber Players and Five Songs of Edwin Muri by George Gopen. Her Raga for harpsichord won the Aliénor Prize and has been performed in music festivals in Holland, Finland and the U.S. Ms. Kouneva has also written incidental music for critically acclaimed theatrical productions with the Archipelago Theater of Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Duke Drama for works by Beckett, Shakespeare, Handke, Jarry, Ghelderode and Chekhov.
Aeon
In the fall of 1990 I sang in a concert with Barbara Thornton, performer and director of Sequentia, an ensemble specializing in Medieval music. Due to the amazing performances of Sequentia, my encounter with this music had a formative influence on my vocal writing. In Aeon (written in February 1993) I experimented with the expressive capabilities of the female voice. The vocal lines reinterpret the powerful, free-floating and very florid style of the Medieval vocal music. Audi, pontus, in particular, is based upon a 14th-century lament from the royal women's cloister, las Huelgas, which has been recorded by Sequentia. The unusual instrumental ensemble (marimba, timpani, cymbals, electric bass-guitar and piano) create a soft ambiance for the voices. Aeon in Greek means 'time filled with good deeds.'
Penka Kouneva
Dolcissima mia vita
Dolcissima mis vita,
A che tardate la bramata aita?
Credete forte che'1 bel foco ond'ardo
Sia per finir perché torcete'l guardo?
Ahi, non fia mai, ché brama ii ml desire
O d'amarti, o morire.
Gesualdo di Venosa, 1596
Sweetest life
Sweetest life,
Why do you withhold the longed-for help?
Think you perhaps that my consuming ardor
Will end, because you torn your face away?
Alas, this cannot he, for I must
Either love you or die
Audi, pontus, audi, tellus
Audi, pontus,
audi, tellus;
audi, maris magni limbus;
audi, homo;
audi, omne quod vivit sub sole;
prope est, veniet.
Ecce iam dies est,
dies illa, dies invisa, dies amara,
qua celum fugiet,
sol erubescet,
luna fugabitur,
sidera super terram cadent.
Heu, miser, heu, miser,
heu, cur, homo ineptam
sequeris leticiam?
Codex Las Huelgas,
Burgos, Spain, 10th c.
Hear, O Sea, Hear, O Earth
Hear, O sea;
hear, O earth;
hear, O great earth-girdle of the ocean;
hear, O man;
hear, all that lives beneath the sun.
He is near, he will come.
See: that day is already here,
that day, that hated day that hitter day
when the heavens will flee,
the moon be put to flight,
the stars fall to earth.
Alas, O wretched;
alas, O man, why
do you pursue false happiness?
© 1992 by Harmonia Mondi Vox Iberica II: Codex Las Huelgas. Translation used with kind permission of Deutsche Harmonia Mundi/BMG Classics
L'ora di musica
Vezzosi augelli in fra le verdi fronde
Temprano a prova lascivette note.
Mormora l'aura e fa le foglie e l'onde
Garrir, che variamente ella percote.
Quando taccion gil augelli, alto risponde,
Quando cantan gli augei, più lieve scote.
Sia caso od arte, or accompagna ed ora
Alterna I versi lor la musica, is musica ora.
Vezzosi augelli,
Torquato Tasso (1554-1595)
The Hour of Music
Graceful birds among the green branches
shape in contest their lascivious tones.
The breeze murmurs, and variously striking
the leaves and waves, makes them to stir.
When the birds are silent, loud it answers;
when they sing, more lightly it moves.
Whether by chance or art it now accompanies them—
now breeze and music alternate their verses,
the hour of music.
Lee Hoiby
Lee Hoiby composed Bermudas, a Song of Praise in 1980 for performance on a program of then-recent work given at New York's 92nd Street Y with Kristine and Katherine Ciesinski. That program also presented the first performance of O Florida, a cycle of songs on poems by Wallace Stevens, and the Schubert Variations for piano solo. The press noted the presence of Leontyne Price in the audience and, on stage, baritone Will Parker turning pages for the reclusive composer. Mr. Hoiby's principal operas are A Month in the Country, Summer and Smoke and The Tempest. He has also set Ruth Draper's The Italian Lesson and Julia Child's cooking class, Bon Appetit! for the voice of Broadway and television star Jean Stapleton. More recently he has written a melodrama on texts by Virginia Woolf for actress Claire Bloom, and a chamber opera setting of Lanford Wilson's This is the Rill Speaking. Hoiby's vocal works are published by G. Schirmer, Southern Music and Rock Valley Music, Long Eddy, New York.
Bermudas
In 1653 at the apex of the temporarily successful "Glorious Revolution," twenty-one year-old Andrew Marvell was tutor in the family of the Lord Protector himself, Oliver Cromwell. Lessons were in the home of John Oxenbridge, a Puritan who had shared the experience of the Massachusetts Mayflower colonists, fleeing England to escape religious persecution. Oxenbridge led his group to the formerly Spanish Caribbean Island, Bermuda. When Cromwell triumphed, Oxenbridge returned to England, serving the government in administrating Bermuda, and selling shares in a venture to exploit the island economically. A public relations problem: Bermuda and the sea around it were commonly believed to be bewitched, as in the Bermuda Triangle stories. None less than Shakespeare, in The Tempest, cited them as "still-vex'd [i.e. ever stormy] Bermoothes," quite erroneously, as any modern vacationer can attest.
Young Marvell's elegant poem neatly dispelled the lurid legends that were plaguing the island's reputation with investors, replacing them with a fairly accurate list of its natural resources, in language drawn from the Psalms of David and the Song of Solomon. In effect, the poem transplants the island from the realm of low superstition into that of pious economics. We see it radiating divine emblems and gifts as the hymning pilgrims approach. The naiveté of the poem is artful, however. Marvell was perfectly aware that a large cache of "ambergris on shoar" had provoked the island's first recorded crime; that safety from "the Prelat's rage” had quickly given way to doctrinal violence; and that for some "the Gospels pearl" was no consolation for the disappointingly small pearls of the local oyster. But Bermudas is no less a charming masterpiece for being a stock prospectus as well. It blithely transcends historical truth and transforms the island into a metaphor for the blessings given the faithful.
Mark Shulgasser
Bermudas
Where the remote Bermudas ride
In th' Oceans bosome unespy'd,
From a small Boat, that row'd along,
The listning winds receiv'd this Song.
What should we do but sing his Praise
That led us through the watry Maze,
Unto an Isle so long unknown,
And yet far kinder than our own?
Where he the huge Sea-Monsters wracks,
That lift the Deep upon their Backs.
Be lands us on a grassy Stage;
Safe from the Storms, and Prelat's rage.
He gave us this eternal Spring,
Which here enamells every thing;
And send the Fowl's to us in care,
On daily Visits through the Air.
Be hangs in shades the Orange bright,
Like golden Lamps in a green Night.
*[And does in the Pomgranates close,
Jewels more rich than Ormus show's]
He mades the Figs our mouths to meet;
And throws the Melons at our feet,
But Apples plants of such a price,
No Tree could ever bear them twice.
With Cedars, chosen by his hand,
From Lebanon, he stores the Land.
And makes the hollow Seas, that roar,
Proclaime the Ambergis on shoar.
He cast (of which we rather boast)
The Gospels Pearl upon our Coast.
And in these Rocks for us did frame
A Temple, where to sound his Name.
Oh let our Voice his Praise exalt,
Till it arrive at Heavens Vault:
Which thence (perhaps) rebounding, may
Eccho beyond the Mexique Boy.
Thus song they, in the English boat,
An holy and a chearful Note,
And all the way, to guide their chime,
With falling Oars they kept the time.
Andrew Marvell
*The two tines encimed in hrac ets are out set to masic
Robert Ward
Robert Ward was born in 1917 in Cleveland, Ohio. He studied with Howard Hanson and Bernard Rogers at the Eastman School of Music; with Frederick Jacobi, Bernard Wagenaar, Albert Stoessel and Edgar Schenkman at the Juilliard Graduate School; and with Aaron Copland at the Berkshire Music Center. He has served on the faculties of Queens College, Columbia University and the Juilliard School of Music, where he was also Assistant to the President from 1952 to 1956. He was Director of the Third Street Music School Settlement from 1952 to 1955. He was Executive Vice President and Managing Editor of Galaxy Music Corporation and Highgate Press until 1967, when he became President of the North Carolina School of the Arts. Until his retirement in 1987, he was the Mary Duke Biddle Professor of Music at Duke University.
Mr. Ward's large and distinguished musical creation has, in large measure, 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.
Act II duet, from Lady Kate (after the novel by Homer Croy; libretto by Bernard Stambler)
In the 1876 rough frontier town of Elkhorn, Colorado, the spirited Irish laundry owner, Katie, meets and marries Cecil Moon, an Englishman of the upper crust, who has emigrated to the new world to find a life for himself, as he was a second son and not likely to succeed to a title. The couple, though, decide to return to England, in search of respect and nobility, hot having met with heartache and disappointment there, have returned to Elkhorn to begin anew. Katie confides in her old friend Eve St. John, a kind, though unsophisticated woman. Eve then consoles Katie with words of hope and inspiration.
"Eve, I can't lie to an old friend..." from Lady Kate
Katie:Eve, I can't lie to an old friend...those things I wrote were lies, most of them, or dreams...all the same anyhow. And maybe all we have to live on.
Eve:Katie, what do you say
Katie:I say that dreams are only for breakin' and that life's a game in which fate's stacked the deck. I went to England full of the thought that at last I was winning the game; a "have," a "winner" with title and all; not a "have not," a loser, a shanty Irish clod, But there I found I was nothin' but dirt under their fancy, noble heels, What happened is too painful to tell, But that's why we've come hack, Eve, hack here to Elkhorn, Here at least we're all startin' from scratch, And this time I'm stackin' the deck my way. Seen like this, maybe life ain't so pretty, but it's better than lies and hopes and dreams that will only be shattered,
Eve:Oh, Katie, what have they done to you? My poor child, Oh, I ain't one for speakin' from stumps, nor am I one for preachin' from pulpits. And I don't hold with those breast-beatin' hypocrites who go around paradin' religion. And yet, underneath it all, deep down I know there's good in men and things. But faith and hope don't travel by theirselves...they come with heartache and often with pain. This I know, Kate, this I know, There's answers to pray'rs of them as works and I feel there'll be a day of reckonin'. Good deeds and faith earn a just reward; I know, for I've seen His hand beckonin'. I know, Kate, I know.
Katie:A pretty dream, my dear old friend. And one I wish I could share, But ev'ry time I've stretched out my hand to touch my dreams they've shattered, shattered and crumbled into nightmare.
Eve:My poor, poor child, no, no. Deep down there is hope for them as trusts and prays. I know, Kate, I know. This I know.
Opening Duet from Roman Fever (based on the story of the same name by Edith Warton; text by Roger Brunyate)
Two recently widowed American ladies, Grace Ansley and Alida Slade, are taking tea on the terrace of a Roman hotel, overlooking the Forum. They are both in their forties, both well-to-do. Mrs. Slade is the more dynamic of the pair, a born organizer. Mrs. Ansley has the charm and quiet confidence of one who comes from an old family. It is an early spring afternoon in the year 1924.
Roman Fever opens with this duet in which the ladies reminisce about their first meeting in Rome as girls, some twenty years before. Alida was engaged to Deiphin Slade; Grace had been attracted to Deiphin also, but had married Horace Ansley only a few months after. The two couples had returned to New York, and largely lost touch in the intervening years. What a coincidence now to meet again, in Rome, at the same hotel, and each with a daughter in tow, as young as they were at their first meeting!
"It's still the most beautiful view in the world..." from Roman Fever
Alida:It's still the most beautiful view in the world.
Grace:It will always be to me.
Alida:When we first met here we were younger than our girls are now. Do you remember?
Grace:Yes, I remember.
Alida:IIt was also springtime then...
Grace:We were just nineteen.
Alida:Eager to encounter life.Grace:Eager to encounter life.
Alida:And Rome, new and exciting,
Grace:...a world full of secrets,
Alida:...and surprise. Though many years have passed...
Grace:and we have been in turn brides,
Alida:...mothersGrace:...wives
Together:...now widows.
Grace:Yet Rome, the ancient city, is still the city of our youth.
Alida:And this the most beautiful view,
Together:...the most beautiful in the world!
Grace:For more than twenty years I was almost afraid to return to Rome, I suppose for fear it had changed. But you've been back?
Alida:Yes, several times with Delphin: conferences, meetings...after the war. It was here he bought me these pearls...for our fifteenth anniversary, you know. Well, what a coincidence, our meeting here, in the very same month,
Grace:At the same hotel.
Alida:And each with a daughter in tow, you with Babs,
Grace:And Jenny with you.
Alida:Like history repeating.
Grace:Like history repeating? Perhaps, but we have changed you know; it's been a long time.
Aiida:Twenty-two years. But I know you'd never stray far. Eight-third street, the same old house; we were neighbors there for awhile.
Grace:Yes, we read about you as you moved: in society papers, "Who's Who," "Who's Who About Town."
Alida:Then Delphin died...
Grace:And Horace died; just eighteen months ago.
Alida:You know, I never really thanked you: you were good to come to the funeral.
Grace:It was something I had to do.
Together:But let's forget all the years that have kept us apart! We're back where it all began. We can almost imagine we're girls again, in the springtime, in Rome.
Performers for the Robert Ward duets include: Violins: Yolanda Murrell, Sylvia Arnett, Randolyn Emerson, Andrea Johnson, Young Lee, Hjordis Tourian, Susan Via, Michelle Wilt-Pell, Danna Kostroun; Viola: Paul Emerson, Annalee Wolf, Marilyn Budrow; Cello: Jane Salemson, Phil Warren, Katherine Eckerson; Bass: Dan Zehr; Trumpet: Anita Cirba, Paul Neebe; Bassoon: Ron Folles; Trombone: David Fulton, Sean Timmons; Flute: Allison Dimsdale, Jill Shires; Oboe: Bo Newsome; Clarinet: Don Debler, Michael Votta; Horn: Todd Dimadale, Pam Halverson; Timp/Perc.: Chris Deane; Synthesizer: James Anderson
Assistance for this recording was provided, in part, by the Durham Arts Council Emerging Artist Grant, City of Raleigh Emerging Artist Grant, Meredith College, Faculty Development & Music Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University Research Council & Music Department, Duke University Music Department, St. Stephen's Epsicopal Church, Lisa Blackledge, Timothy Sparks, and Sidney Corbett. The recording of Aeon was made possible through a generous grant from the Duke University Graduate School. Recording assistants for Aeon: Christopher Adler and Roe-Mm Kok. Special thanks to Jack Stewart, Douglas & Caitlin Williams.
Recording Engineer & Editing: Dwight Robinette
Cover Art: Pamela Toll
ALBANY RECORDS U.S.
P.O. Box 5011, Albany, NY 12205
Tel: 518.453.2203 FAX: 518.453.2205
ALBANY RECORDS U.K.
Box 12, Warton, Carnforth, Lancashire LA5 9PD
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WARNING: COPYRIGHT SUBSISTS IN ALL RECORDINGS ISSUED UNDER THIS LABEL.
© 1995 TERRY RHODES & ELLEN WILLIAMS
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