PROGRAM #1: American Voices
Wynton Marsalis: "At the Octoroon Balls"
Ben Johnston: "Amazing Grace" (String Quartet No. 4)
Adam Silverman: "Corrie Q's Jigs and Reels" (String Quartet No. 3) [hear mp3]
Dan Visconti: "Black Bend"
this program is currently available
Earthy yet refined, and drawing on many of the traditions that define this country's music, the Corigliano Quartet's American Voices concerts plumb the roots of American music as viewed through a classical lens. The composers of these works range from America's most celebrated to its freshest talent, all presenting invigorating and authentic views on folk traditions.
As
a trumpeter and bandleader, and one of the world's most renowned musicians,
Wynton Marsalis has heeded no obstacles, lending his unmistakable
stamp to works from throughout the history of jazz and the classical eras.
In 1995, he entered the arena of classical composition as well, composing
his string quartet "At the Octoroon Balls." Inspired by the music
and culture of Marsalis' native New Orleans, this quartet is saturated
with blues, untamed energy, and soulful ebullience.
Ben
Johnston's "Amazing Grace" places one of America's most cherished
melodies at the core of a set of kaleidoscopic variations, ranging between
extremes of delicacy through modernist invention. Johnston is a maverick
of modern music, best known for his exploration of novel scales based
on music's most "natural" harmonies, harmonies that were stunted by the
temperament of modern pianos at the time of Beethoven. In "Amazing Grace,"
he pushes a familiar tune into unexplored territory, bringing listeners
on a journey of potent intensity and transcendent clarity.
In
"Corrie Q's Jigs and Reels," composer Adam Silverman, whose
music is most often marked by vocal lyricism, minimalist invention, and
driving pulsation, turns his pen to exploring music that serves as a source
for much American folk music: the fiddle music of the Celtic isles. The
lively vigor inherent in traditional Irish music is found throughout Silverman's
composition, which was created expressly for the Corigliano Quartet and
has been an audience favorite since its 2005 premiere.
Dan
Visconti turns to the American vernacular in "Black Bend,"
a work that explores Visconti’s infatuation with blues and early
rock music. His piece transforms the string quartet into a distorted blues
band, with distant, mournful sounds giving way to a slow blues, and accelerating
to a wailing frenzy, only to dissolve into nothing as quickly as it materialized.
The imagery of the piece was inspired by legends surrounding the collapse
of a railroad bridge over a meandering stretch of the Cuyahoga river,
and the thought of the victims' eerie moans rising up from the river is
given voice in Visconti's transformation of the voice of a blues singer.