WMV Music Web Log

Nice insight practising Brahms tonight: something has been wrong with the way these variations sounded, and I couldn't figure out what it was. Very frustrating, since over the years I seem to have searched under every note, and polished every figure in this piece. It reminds of the time I worked in a DNA lab, and after a week of good success, suddenly nothing worked. In the end it turned out that we had gotten too compulsive about cleaning up the DNA: it needed the tiniest bit of salt contamination in order to precipitate. We were getting the samples too clean! The slightly casual approach had worked much better. With the Brahms, it turns out that it also is too clean - I am changing the pedal too often. The entire set of variations is essentially written over a pedal tone, and his first words on the score are "con pedale". Changing pedal for each chord change truncates the sonority, and the piece emotionally loses steam every time I clear up the sound. So - put the pedal down, and more or less keep it there - it works much better.

The YouTube clip from Chris Royal's Ellington arrangements has drawn 101 views, and one comment:

"Oh My God!... I have heard this music from the PC game 'Mafia', and I have been trying to find out what songs they were for a long time. Would you be able to list their names? Excellent playing, that would have been awesome to see live."

I think we are reaching a new audience.

Might as well post the materials from the program and press packet for Sunday's concert at the Atlas. Here are the Dickinson poems Larry Moss set for Gary Poster and Joel Borelli-Boudreau, and Charley's notes for "Had Us at Hello":

“Emily’s Song” by Lawrence Moss,
on two poems by Emily Dickinson

Poem 1:

He fumbles at your spirit
As players at the keys
Before they drop full music on;
He stuns you by degrees,

Prepares your brittle substance
For the ethereal blow,
By fainter hammers, further heard,
Then nearer, then so slow

Your breath has time to straighten,
Your brain to bubble cool, —
Deals one imperial thunderbolt
That scalps your naked soul.

Poem 2:

He touched me, so I live to know
That such a day, permitted so,
I groped upon his breast—
It was a boundless place to me
And silenced, as the awful sea
Puts minor streams to rest.

And now, I'm different from before,
As if I breathed superior air—
Or brushed a Royal Gown—
My feet, too, that had wandered so—
My Gypsy face—transfigured now—
To tenderer Renown—

Into this Port, if I might come,
Rebecca, to Jerusalem,
Would not so ravished turn—
Nor Persian, baffled at her shrine
Lift such a Crucifixial sign
To her imperial Sun.


“Had Us At Hello:” What It Means to Me (Or Doesn’t)
by Charley Gerard

I love to create jarring contrasts. My aim is to create an aesthetic surprise, like the punch line of a good joke. I’m also fond of nearly forgotten musical styles that overflow with charm like French and German cabaret music. I’m challenged by the ridiculous. I ask myself, “Do I have enough nerve to compose a piece of music using a style nearly everybody considers corny?” How about using a text that’s obviously over-dramatic and pretentious? Why not translate a puff piece into two languages, and add layers of meaning that have nothing to do with the original?

Selena Roberts’ article "A Faint Denial Amid a Culture of Deception" NY Times (Aug. 26, 2005). p. D1. is about sports heroes whose behavior disappoints. First I set the lyrics so the text would sound like poetry, not prose. The song opens with a piano figure developed by Herbie Hancock for his composition “Maiden Voyage.” The melody is my own. In the following section, the text is translated into German (by Zoltan Csaplovits) using a waltz melody I found on a CD of pre-WWII Austrian cabaret music. Next, the text is in French (translation by Michel Gohler) with an accompaniment taken from an Edith Piaf recording. The piece finishes by returning to the English with the phrase “Had Us Hello” repeated to an absurd length, as if it were an important statement. It’s not.

Here are the biosketches of the participant composers and musicians:

Carl Banner, piano, is founder and executive director of Washington Musica Viva, with whom he has produced and performed more than 100 chamber music concerts in the Washington area since 1998. He is founder and director of the Czech Music Series at the Embassy of the Czech Republic, and also produces several other concert series in the Washington metropolitan area. Dr. Banner is a winner of several music competitions, including the Washington DC National Society of Arts and Letters Competition. He has performed as soloist with the St. Louis Symphony, and at Carnegie Hall with the Creative Associates, a new music ensemble. His teachers included Thelma Stein, Harold Zabrack, Leon Fleisher, Edith Schiller, Leonard Shure, and Leo Smit. Dr. Banner has recorded for AmCam, WMV, and Mapleshade records.

Joel Borrelli-Boudreau is Director of Music at Galilee Lutheran Church, and Band Director at St. Andrew's United Methodist Day School. He has performed as trombonist with the Baltimore Symphony, the Boston Symphony, and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestras. He served as a two year fellow in the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and is presently Principal Trombone of the U.S. Naval Academy Band.

Rhonda Buckley, alto saxophone, was Director of Instrumental Music at Central Florida Community College and has taught at Albion College, Olivet College, and Michigan State University. From 1989-1992 she performed with the Walt Disney World Bands, and has also performed with the Brooklyn Heights Orchestra, Virginia Chamber Orchestra, Traverse City Symphony, Brevard Symphony, and the Central Florida Symphony. She is the founder and executive director of The Patricia M. Sitar Center for the Arts in Washington, DC, which as of this month owns its space at 1700 Kalorama Rd NW.

Charley Gerard is a composer, saxophonist, author and editor. Mr. Gerard studied composition and saxophone with Jimmy Giuffre and conducting with Harold Farberman and David Leibowitz. Gerard’s music is published by the Hartelu Publishing and Dorn Publishing companies. Awards include Outstanding Academic Title from Choice Magazine, finalist for the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) in the category “Best Research in Recorded Folk and Ethnic Music,” and several ASCAP Standards awards. Mr. Gerard is the director of the Broken Reed Saxophone Quartet. The group toured Austria in Fall, 2005 and appeared on the Manhattan Cable Channel. The BRSQ has performed at the Rubin Museum, Donnell Library, Solar One, the Boulton Center (Bay Shore, NY), North Pointe (Kinderhook, NY) and the JCCS (Sherman, CT). Mr. Gerard’s compositions will be performed in 2005-2006 by Golden Fleece, Ltd. , The Irrelevants (a viola and saxophone duo) and Washington Musica Viva, and the BRSQ. The Golden Fleece is staging an excerpt of his musical "The Shoestring Symphony" at the Goldman Y in NYC. He is the author of Salsa: The Rhythm of Latin Music (White Cliffs Media) and Jazz in Black and White: Race, Culture and Identity in the Jazz Community (Praeger) and several other books on jazz and Latin music, and holds a degree in ethnomusicology from Columbia University.

Masatoshi Mitsumoto’s works have been performed in recent years by Washington Musica Viva, Washington chapter of the Composers Forum, the Friday Morning Music Club and Composers Society of Montgomery County. They include “Songs of Innocence”, “Songs of Experience”, “Two Japanese songs”, “Elegy” for clarinet (or viola) and piano, “Washington Triptyque” for violin, marimba and piano, and “Divertimento” for flute, viola and piano. He conducted the Toru Takemitsu celebration at the Library of Congress in 2005 and a Martinu concert at the Czech Embassy for Washington Musica Viva in 2004. Mitsumoto started his career as a cellist. He is a former student of Paul Tortelier and Gregor Piatigorsky. Before relocating to the Washington DC area in 2002, Mitsumoto had been actively involved in the musical scene of the Los Angeles area and Las Vegas. He was music director and conductor of the Laguna Beach Summer Music Festival (1977-1984), Concordia Orchestra (1986-1998) and Las Vegas Chamber Symphony (1978-1985). He has made several CD recordings as conductor for the MMM records and Cambria labels. He has also served on the music faculties at California State University, Los Angeles, Whittier College, and University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Lawrence Moss
Born in 1927 in Los Angeles, he received his doctorate from the University of Southern California (1957) where his principal teachers were Leon Kirchner and Ingolf Dahl. He has been a professor of composition at Yale University (1960 – 1968) and the University of Maryland, where he still teaches. He received a Distinguished Scholar/Teacher Award from the University in 1982. He has been commissioned by, among others, the Fromm Commission, the Chamber Music Society of Baltimore, the Kindler Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has held grants from the Guggenheim Foundation (twice) and the Fulbright Association. His works have been performed by such distinguished performers as Phyllis Bryn-Julson, Harry Sparnaay and Esther Lamneck. Performing groups have included the Baltimore Symphony, Theater Chamber Players of Kennedy Center, Continuum, Speculum Musicae and the new Juilliard ensemble of New York, as well as Monday Evening Concerts of Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. His opera, The Brute, was the US. entry to the “20th International Youth Festival” held in Bayreuth in 1971. In addition he has been invited to the Bourges 1989 Electronic Music Festival, the British Royal Academy’s “American Music Festival” of 1990, and the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, Italy.
Korea for Kwartludium, based on Moss’ piece for tape, Korea, was commissioned and premiered by the Warsaw Autumn Festival in 2005. His most recent work, Quartet #IV was premiered Oct. 7, 2006 by the Left Bank Quartet, for whom it was composed.
Other works include: From Dawn to Dawn, a setting of 5 Tang Dynasty poems (in the composer’s translation) for baritone, oboe soloists and orchestra (1996), New Dawn, a tone-poem for orchestra (2001), Another Dawn for Soprano and large chamber ensemble (2002, Rivermusic for saxophone quartet (1996), Racconto for piano solo (1996), Into the Woods for flute and tape (1996), Conversations for oboe and string trio (1997), Lifelines for clarinet and tape (1998), Dao Ditties for clarinet, violin, percussion and piano (1998), A Bird…, A Sleep…, A Thought… for chorus and piano (1998), Harried for bass clarinet and tape (1999), Three Chinese Poems for cello and soprano (1999), The Swan for violin and cello (2000), Chiaroscuro for clarinet and piano (2001), Nature Studies for piano, violin and cello (2001), Suite for flute, clarinet and piano (2002), Flutepaths for flute and tape (2003), East/West for erhu, clarinet, cello and piano (2004).

Gary Poster, Bass: Originally from Greenville, South Carolina, bass Gary Poster has sung professionally across the country, from Anchorage Opera (Alaska) to Bronx Opera (New York). He and his wife, mezzo-soprano Karyn Friedman, moved from New York City to Fredericksburg, VA in 2002. He works now as a computer programmer at Zope Corporation and sings oratorio and vocal chamber music in the greater DC area. The Washington Post recently praised Mr. Poster's “excellent musical command,” and “fluid, vibrant voice”. Gary is a graduate of Furman University and the Eastman School of Music, with further study at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and in New York City with Patricia Misslin.

Ben Redwine, a native of Oklahoma City, is the e-flat clarinet soloist with the United States Naval Academy Band. He has performed in numerous foreign countries and as featured soloist at several International Clarinet Conventions. Ben leads the RedwineJazz Band, a group dedicated to the performance, perpetuation, and promotion of traditional jazz. He can be heard on the Mapleshade and AmCam record labels. Ben is dedicated to performing new classical and old jazz music.

Chris Royal, trumpet, has performed and/ or recorded with many artists such Henry Mancini, Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, The 4 Tops, Barbara Streisand, as well as with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, The Baltimore Symphony and the Soulful Symphony. Theatre credits include The Gospel At Colonus (original Broadway cast), Sophisticated Ladies, Cabaret, Guys and Dolls to name but a few. As a composer his credits include "America's Most Wanted," "The Nancy Hanks Lecture on the Arts" and the "1996 Olympic Games." Chris is currently a professor at Howard University Jazz Studies department teaching Jazz Arranging, Jazz Theory, and Electronic Music.

Linda Kay Smith, violin, is a performer/teacher in the Washington, DC area. Linda has performed in many orchestral and chamber music settings. Included in them are; the National Philharmonic, Alexandria Symphony, The Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, Baltimore Opera Orchestra, Divertimento Trio and many others. Linda also is a studio teacher.

Harold F. Summey, Jr., a Newport News, Virginia native has performed with many great artists and ensembles since completing academic studies at Hampton University, Eastman School of Music, and Howard University. The list includes James Ingram, Patti Austin, Frank Sinatra, Jr., Aaron Neville, Ray Charles, Arlo Guthrie, Whitney Houston, Sonny Rollins, Wynton Marsalis, Gary Bartz, Geri Allen, David “Fathead” Newman, Bobby Watson, The Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, The Kennedy Center Opera Orchestra, the Annapolis Symphony, the Virginia Symphony, and the Richmond Symphony. He is presently a member of The United States Army Band “Pershing’s Own” in Washington, D.C. where he performs with the concert band primarily but also performs with the Army Blues jazz ensemble, the Army Ceremonial Band, Army Orchestra, and various small groups. In 1992 he won first prize in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition.

Mr. Summey was also a member of the United States Navy Band in Washington, D.C. where he was a percussionist in the Concert Band from 1989 to 1993. He has also been timpanist and percussionist with the Kennedy Center Opera Orchestra and been involved as percussionist on other premiers and performances of works in the Washington metropolitan area. These include the premier performance of Arnold Saltzman’s Israel Symphony and two performances of David Fanshawe’s work African Sanctus. African Sanctus combines elements of European sacred music and indigenous African musical traditions with a cross mixture of voices and western European style percussion.

Beyond performing, Mr. Summey is also an educator. He is presently on the jazz faculty of George Mason University as adjunct drum set instructor. He was on the faculty of the Mile High Jazz Camp at the University of Colorado in Boulder from 1999 to 2003 and was the percussion instructor at Howard University from 1997 to 2000. Additionally, he has done clinics and master classes on jazz and percussion at Howard University, Suitland High School for the Visual and Performing Arts in Suitland, Md., McDonogh School, and various other schools in and around Washington, D.C.

Greg Watkins is a Washington, D.C. area bassist. Having received a classical training at The Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland, studying with John Hood of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Greg has performed as an orchestral musician with various major symphonies throughout the United States and abroad, including The National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., The Baltimore Symphony, The National Philharmonic, The North Carolina Symphony, and The Singapore Symphony, as well as dozens of regional orchestras and chamber ensembles, under such Maestros as Mstislav Rostropovich, Leonard Slatkin, and Lorin Maazel.

An active bass recitalist, Greg was recently the soloist for the world premiere of award-winning composer, Charlie Barnett’s Serenade for Bass, at the Lincoln Theatre in Washington, D.C.; a beautiful and well received concerto scored for double bass solo and full string orchestra, written for Greg.

Also a jazz musician, Greg is the bassist for The Radio King Orchestra, a swing-style big band that had a recent performance on NBC’s The West Wing television series. Greg was also a member of Doc Scantlin and His Imperial Palms Orchestra, featured in Forbes Magazine billed as “The Best Band in America.” He has performed both classical and jazz at such venues as Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, The Rainbow Room, and Cipriani’s. He currently has his own jazz quartet that performs often in the Washington, D.C. area.

Greg also plays both electric and acoustic basses and sings with the rising star rock group, The Sketches; a richly harmonized and beautifully crafted song writing based band, whose music can be heard on XM Radio's Unsigned Channel 52 and on DC 101's Local Lix. (101.1 on D.C. area FM stations) The group has just completed its second studio album, “Secret Alphabets”, which will be released in Spring 2007. The album was mixed by legendary producer, Michael Barbiero, whose recording credits include John Lennon, Madonna, Guns N Roses, and Maroon 5.

Greg rounds out his musicianship as a studio recording artist. His playing can be heard on numerous film, television, and radio soundtracks, having completed recordings for NBC, CBS, Miramax Films, and National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. He also performed on the album, The Artist in the Ambulance, for the "Scremo" rock group, Thrice.

He is a newlywed living in Northern Virginia with his wife, Kimberly, and a few too many basses in his house.

Jazz is all new to me; everything is a revelation. So Chris Royal shows up with parts for eight players, one of whom is not there. None of us have ever seen the arrangements, but four are experienced jazz guys. One, two, three, four, and we're off; no problem, it sounds terrific. I think jazz must have evolved as a music that required no rehearsal and had maximum tolerance for any vicissitude. Ben arrived from his gig just in time to join the third run-through - and here is a clip. See what I mean? mooch_7.mp3

Downstairs Gary, Linda, Ben, and Greg are rehearsing Charley's arrangements of Duke Ellington songs - they make me smile every time I hear them. It's the third and final rehearsal of the day - there was even supposed to be a fourth rehearsal (for the Czech Embassy concert), but it was mercifully cancelled. Chris Royal arrived at 3:00 and handed out the parts for his Ellington arrangements, for violin, alto sax, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, bass, piano, and drums. You couldn't fit another player in the living room. Ben and Greg had to move the couch out and I brought Gabe's drum set up from the basement for Harold. He set it up, wiping off at least a couple years of dust. Chris' arrangements sounded great from the very first note. I am pleased, excited, and relieved - this concert is coming together just like I had imagined. Linda was beaming - "no one ever asks me to play music like this!", she says. Earlier, Larry Moss spent an hour and a half refining the details of his Emily Dickinson songs with Gary and Joel, while Mar and I sat with tea in the kitchen. For a small Bethesda house, it sure sees a lot of action.

The folks on the program at the Czech Embassy on February 27:
Karyn Friedman, mezzo, Elizabeth Kluegel, soprano, Natasha Bogachek, violin, Ben Redwine, clarinet, David Teie, cello.

Linda Smith and Greg Watkins at today's rehearsal of Charley Gerard's Ellington song arrangements. (You can hear mp3s from the rehearsal on the website).

Marilyn's new painting, one of a series of singers. This is Gary Poster, in encaustic.