My music at Bowling Green

I’ve saved this for a separate post.

Bowling

class=GramE>Green programmed two pieces, both by

chance world premieres. One was a fiendish little sonatina

for clarinet and piano, just four and a half minutes long, and bristling with

difficulty. The first two movements have the clarinet and piano playing separate

pieces at the same time, with independent forms, independent phrase shapes, and

bar lines and constantly changing time signatures that rarely intersect. The challenge

is to forget your normal ensemble instincts, and keep the two parts

independent. Then the third movement brings the players together in some tumultuous

unison craziness, modeled on a jazz solo, which goes as fast as it can be

played, involves jagged, irregular rhythms, and also features cruel leaps in

the clarinet part (as well as giving the clarinetist no time to breathe).

This got aced by Kevin Schempf

(who had the very smart idea to play the first movement, which goes very high,

on E flat clarinet), and Robert Satterlee. When they’d

finished, the large audience erupted in whoops and cheers, which didn’t exactly

make me unhappy. Then, the next day, a student with piercings

who worked at the town’s used bookstore told me she’d loved the piece. Small

towns are wonderful!

The other piece was a group of five songs for soprano and

piano, based on women’s monologues from Shakespeare. This also isn’t easy

music, ranging very high and low in the soprano part, and also featuring some

tricky, knotted rhythms and emotions that sometimes get fairly intense. The

first song, on top of that, lives in ambiguous territory midway between melody

and declamation; I’m not sure the balance of the two is easy to get right.

I hadn’t had a chance to work with the people who did these

songs, soprano Ann Corrigan and pianist I-Chen Yeh.

So when I sat down in the concert hall to hear them, I had no idea what to

expect. To my delight, the songs emerged exactly as I’d conceived them,

including some finely detailed nuances. All these were carefully notated in the

score, I’d hoped, but you never quite know how clearly a score is going to

speak to the people bringing it to life. In this case, there didn’t seem to be any

problems. Ann projected the drama and emotions of each song, with lots of

informed sympathy; I-Chen stood out for her firm and joyful precision (which

was really welcome in the tangled rhythms).

For anyone curious, I’ve put the scores of both pieces

online, along with computer realizations of the music. (When I get recordings

from Bowling Green,

I’ll put those online, too.) Here are the links.

Sonatina

for Clarinet and Piano

href="http://www.gregsandow.com/music/cl-pno.pdf">Score (which I’m

revising, to include the E flat clarinet in the first movement)

href="http://www.gregsandow.com/music/cl_piano_demo.m3u">Music

Shakespeare Songs

href="http://www.gregsandow.com/music/shakespeare.pdf">Score

href="http://www.gregsandow.com/music/shakespeare_demo.m3u">Music