Tray Card – Tapestry
Adrian
Justus, violin
Frankie J.
Kelly, clarinet
Elena Abend,
piano
Eric Segnetz,
violin
Frankie J.
Kelly, clarinet
Michael
Cameron, doublebass
03 Color Prayer Patricia
Repar 7:16
Patricia
Repar, vocals
Frankie J.
Kelly, vocals, clarinet
Jayne Latva,
piano
Preludio y Danza Leonardo
Velaquez
04 1:34
05 1:59
Adrian
Justus, violin
Diasporan Dances Matthew
Nicholl
06 Partido
Alto (Samba) 3:22
07 Bolero/Cha 1:25
08 Guaguanco
(In the Distance) 0:51
09 Interlude
(Innerlude) 1:19
10 Guajira 3:01
Adrian
Justus, violin
Frankie J.
Kelly, clarinet
Eliot
Wadopian, doublebass
Five Pieces For Three
Players Yehuda Yannay
12 Coming Full Circle 3:28
13 Raindrop Variations 3:16
14 Hyperbreath 1:50
15 Duetting in Light Winds 3:03
16 Short-Long-Short Dance 4:42
Jonathon
Helton, saxophone
Frankie J.
Kelly, clarinet:
Linda Siegel,
marimba
“Tapestry: New
Music From the Americas” has been an ongoing project since 1996. Its essence is best reflected in the
spirit of collaboration it has inspired among its participants and producers. As the project’s visionary and
coordinator, I wish to thank the following people and institutions for making
it possible.
The University of
Wisconsin – Milwaukee: Dan Gnader, Yehuda Yannay, and the Department of
Music
Western Carolina
University: Department of Music and the Office of Research and Grants
Southeastern Louisiana
University: Department of Music, Fanfare, and the Office of Research and Grants
Pianists Elena Abend and
Jayne Latva (UWM and the Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra)
Bassists Eliot Wadopian
and Michael Cameron (Asheville Symphony Orchestra and
The
University of Illinois)
Violinists Adrian Justus
and Eric Segnitz (freelance artists: Tel-Aviv and Milwaukee)
Saxophonists Jonathon
Helton (University of Florida)
Marimbist Linda Siegel
(Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra)
Composers Yehuda Yannay
(UWM), Pablo Ortiz (UC-Davis), Leonardo Velazquez (Mexico City),
Patricia
Repar (U of New Mexico), and
Matthew Nicholl (Berklee College of Music)
Special thanks to Yehuda
and his wife Marie for their faith in my abilities and their constant mentoring
and friendship. Thanks to Dan Gnader for his guidance and input throughout the
recording process.
Artwork: Marie Mellott
Assistant Editor: Fred
Langenfeld
Executive Producer,
Graphic Design: Philip Blackburn
Argentinean-born Pablo
Ortiz was first trained in his
native Buenos Aires, where he received a degree from the Universidad Catolica
Argentina. At 27, he came to New
York to study with Mario Davidovsky at Columbia University. He also studied composition with Jack
Beeson, Chou Wen Chung, Jacques Louis Monod, Fred Lerdahl, Gerado Gandini, and
Roberto Caamano. At present, he is
Associate Professor of Composition at the University of California, Davis. He taught composition and was co-director
of the Electronic Music studio at the University of Pittsburgh from 1990 to 1994. Among those who have performed his
compositions are the Buenos Aires Philharmonic, the Arditti String Quartet,
Speculum Musicae, the Ensemble Contrechamps of Geneva, Music Mobile, Continuum,
the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and Theatre of Voices. His music has been heard at
international festivals in Salzburg (Aspekte), Geneva (Extasis), Strasbourg
(Musica), Frankfurt, Zurich, Sao Paulo and Mexico City. He has received commissions from the
Fromm and Koussevitzky foundations, and is the recipient of Guggenheim and Charles Ives fellowships. His works include chamber and solo
music, vocal, orchestral, electronic compositions, as well as music for plays
and films.
I composed
Vida Furtiva in 1992. The idea was to create an environment where very fast
changes in textures, densities, speeds and affects would be the norm. I hoped
to make those changes as extreme and inevitable as, for instance, those in
Haydn’s late piano sonatas where things can go from black to white,
figuratively speaking, in a matter of seven or eight measures. I also tried to
generate a piece that would feel somewhat classical and vaguely tonal, in
consonance with the Haydn-esque inspiration. The piece is dedicated to my wife,
Ana Peluffo.
Yehuda Yannay, is a composer, conductor and professor of music
theory and composition at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. A musician of international repute, he
is the creator of more than 100 works for virtually all musical media. Yannay is the co-author and performer
in several films, videos and stage works.
In 1994 he formed with visual artist Marie Mellott the intermedia
performance duo Mindbender Theater.
Yannay is also devoted to the organization and conduction of
performances of music by living composers. In 1971 he founded the "Music From Almost
Yesterday" concert series and continues to present every season numerous
concerts of 20th Century music to the Public. His music is published by Levana Music, The Israel Music
Institute and Media Press.
"Loose
Connections" and the companion piece, "Five Pieces for Three
Players" were commissioned by clarinetist Frankie J. Kelly for this
recording. In writing Loose
Connections I was influenced by an observation of the novelist Milan Kundera
(who is also trained as a composer) on Leos Janacek, the great Czech composer.
Kundera claims that Janacek pioneered a novel composition technique consisting
of the introduction of a stream of fresh and contrasting musical themes in the
course of a piece that are not followed by the "obligatory"
development section. The main challenge to a composer was--as I interpreted
it--to make the "loose connections" between consecutive musical ideas
in a piece of music work as a convincing narrative continuum.
Patricia Ann Repar was born in the Niagara Region of Ontario,
Canada. She earned her B.F.A.
(composition/ethnomusicology) from York University in Toronto. The pursuit of this degree, however,
was frequently interrupted with performance tours as a professional musician:
rock and roll, piano bars, musical theatre and jazz. Returning to academia, she earned an M.A. (composition) from
Brown University and a D.M.A. (composition/theory) from the University of
Illinois. Alongside her study of
music she has gained substantial experience in contemporary theatre, dance and
video production. Having traveled
in Cuba, Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, Central and South-East
Asia, her pieces reflect not only an interest in multimedia but in
multiculturalism. Challenging
traditional relationships (composer-performer, performer-performer, and
performer-audience), her works are also frequently collaborative in nature,
employ alternative performance spaces, and require virtuosity on the part of
the performers in non-traditional ways.
The text of Color
Prayer is comprised of excerpts
from the following sources: Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman, the
Islamic Call to Prayer, Mexican folk songs as sung by Linda Ronstadt, the
Ordinary of the Roman Catholic Mass, and Memoirs from the Women’s Prison by
Nawal El Saadawi. This piece was commissioned by clarinetist Frankie J. Kelly for
the Tapestry project.
“The body was now a
broken, twisted piece of meat.
Carrion, birds, rodents, insects, and worms came to feed on the
decomposing flesh [Allahu akbar] that I had once imagined to be me. Time passed faster [Mata me cielo] and
fate and the days flashed by and the sky became a rapid blinking, an alteration
of light and darkness [A donde estas?]
flickering faster and faster into a blur. The seasons changed and the remains of the [Hablan me montes
y valles] body began to dissolve into the soil enriching it. The frozen snows of winter preserved my
[Christe eleison] bones for a [Speak to me valleys and mountains] moment in
time but as the seasons flashed by in evermore rapid cycles even the bones
became dust. From the nourishment
[Donde?] of my body [Lord have mercy.
Gritenme piedras del campo] flowers and trees grew and died in that [A
donde?] meadow. Finally even the
meadow disappeared. I had become
part of the carrion birds that had feasted on my flesh, part of the insects
[Kyrie eleison] and rodents, and part of their predators in great cycle of life
and death. I became their
ancestor—
Hablan me montes y
valles. Speak to me. Gritenme piedras del campo. Allahu Akbar. Christo. A donde? Christo. Traga me tierra.
Donde? Donde? Traga me tierra. Christo.
Every dawn I wait for him
and I hear him. I raise my head
towards the piece of sky visible through the bars. Can’t see the curlew. I’m satisfied just to hear him without seeing
him. Enough that I hear and that I
can move my arms and legs and jump up and down on the floor of the cell, that
my heart beats, the sweat pours, my body goes under and shower and the thick
water falls, and that I dry my hair and light the gas…”
Leonardo Velazquez (b. Oaxaca, 1935) is considered to be one of
Mexico's "nationalistic" composers. The major influences in his writing can be traced to Rodolfo
Halffter, Blas Galindo, Jose Pablo Moncayo, Morris Ruger, and Carlos Jimenez
Mabarak. He studied later in the National Conservatory of Music of the City of
Mexico and in the Conservatory of Los Angeles, California. In addition to music
for concert, he has composed for theater, dance, television and cinema
(including over 22 film scores).
Preludio y Danza is a
short work for solo violin in neoclassical style. This piece is often included as part of the required
repertoire for the National Violin Competition in Mexico City.
Mathew Nicholl has been a member of the faculty at Berklee
College of Music since 1996, teaching courses in harmony, arranging, music
production and ensembles.
Previously, Nicholl was a member of the faculty of Western Carolina
University, in Cullowhee, North Carolina, where he developed a new program in
applied music technology.
CPP/Belwin published his textbook on music technology, Introduction
to MIDI/Synthesis, in 1993.
Sine 1980, Nicholl has worked as a composer/arranger and keyboardist. He has composed soundtracks for films by the National Geographic Society, NASA, the US Postal Service, the Marriott Corporation, and Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and scored station ID and promotional packages for PBS, as well as numerous local television and radio stations. He has provided music for the national advertising campaigns of Maybelline, Radio Shack, Subway Sub Shops, and United Way. He also composed scores to TV spots for the presidential campaigns of Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis, and George Bush.
Moulin D'Or Records
released Nicholl's first CD, "Windborne", featuring the Dallas Brass,
in 1994. His second CD, "From
Here to There", released in 1995, is a collaboration with Grammy-winning
bassist Eliot Wadopian. He just
finished work on a third CD, trumpet player Wayne Naus's "Journey to
Inland", in collaboration with bassist Michael Farquharson.
Yehuda Yannay’s Five Pieces For Three Players (1994) is a prime
example of his mature style. The composition exemplifies two familiar
topographical features of his music: repetitive gestures and the continuous transformation
of thematic material. The synergy of these techniques, in a context of almost
continuous contrapuntal writing, weaves colorful sonic tapestries that glitter
with instrumental brilliance.
There are five movements:
Coming Full Circle, Raindrop Variations, Hyperbreath, Duetting in Light Winds,
and Short-Long-Short Dance. These
titles point the listener towards the poetic content of the music. In Hyperbreath, Yannay quotes from
himself (Nine Branches of the Olive Tree) which is on his first innova CD (#509).
In the marvelously exuberant final movement, the Mediterranean
atmospherics of Nine Branches echoes in this joyous celebration of Judaic
revelation. (Note by Burt Levy.)
Clarinetist
Frankie J. Kelly is Assistant Professor of Clarinet at
Southeastern
Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. She has extensive
orchestral,
chamber, and solo experience in the Southeastern and Midwestern
states
and has performed in Mexico, Germany, Austria, Italy, Costa Rica,
and
Honduras as well. This project is
her attempt to bring these
experiences
to a logical and thoughtful conclusion.
Dr.
Frankie J. Kelly
Assistant
Professor of Clarinet
SLU
Hammond,
LA 70402
(504)549-5183
(504)549-2892 fax