FLUTE FORCE ·
EYEWITNESS
innova 556
1-8. Land of the Farther Suns (1995) for narrator, flute
quartet and piano by David Alpher
1. Three little birds . .
.(1:26)
2. Places among the stars . . .(2:58)
3. I saw a man pursuing the horizon . . .(2:14)
4. Think as I think . . . / Instrumental (1:16)
5. Once I saw mountains angry . . (0:27)
6. In heaven . . .(2:26)
7. The sage lectured brilliantly . . .(0:28)
8. Crimson clash/ Land of the farther suns/ Little birds of the night (7:46)
(Published by Brixton Publications, 4311 Braemar Avenue, Lakeland, FL 33813)
Garrison Keillor, narrator, David Alpher, piano
Sheryl Henze,piccolo and flute,Wendy Stern, piccolo and flute, Gretchen
Pusch, flute and alto flute, Rie Schmidt, flute and bass flute
9.
TRAVELOGUE (1995) for flute quartet by Elizabeth Brown (8:41)
(Published by Quetzal Music,
New York, NY)
Wendy Stern, flute, Sheryl
Henze, flute and piccolo, Gretchen Pusch, flute and alto flute, Rie Schmidt,
flute and bass flute
10-11. EYEWITNESS (1990) for
flute quartet by Robert Dick
10. Movement 1 (7:58)
11. Movement 2 (5:54)
(Published by
Multiple Breath Music, 3526 Washington Ave. St. Louis, MO 63101)
Gretchen Pusch,
flute and piccolo, Sheryl Henze, flute and piccolo, Rie Schmidt, flute, alto
flute and bass flute, Wendy Stern, flute and bass flute
12-14. NYMPHS (1994) for flute quartet by Gary Schocker
12. Gathering (1 :20)
13. In the Wood (3 :39)
14. In the Air (2 :06)
(Published by Theodore Presser Co., Bryn Mawr, PA)
Gretchen Pusch, Rie Schmidt, Wendy Stern, Sheryl Henze, flutes
15-17. TANTAMOUNTS (1996) for flute quartet and string quartet by Eric
Stokes
15. Movement 1 (2 :23)
16. Movement 2 (5 :05)
17. Movement 3 (3 :05)
(Published by Horspfal Music, 1611 West 32 Street, Minneapolis, MN 55408)
Sheryl Henze, flute, Wendy Stern, flute, Gretchen Pusch, flute and alto
flute, Rie Schmidt, flute and bass flute and the Meridian String Quartet :
Sebu Sirinian, Lisa Tipton, violins, Liuh-Wen Ting, viola, Wolfram Koessel, cello
Total time : 59 :41
OUTside BACK cover :
FLUTE FORCE ·
EYEWITNESS
1-8. Land of the Farther Suns (1995) for narrator, flute
quartet and piano by David Alpher (withGarrison Keillor, narrator, David
Alpher, piano)
9.
TRAVELOGUE (1995) for flute quartet by Elizabeth Brown
10-11. EYEWITNESS (1990) for
flute quartet by Robert Dick
12-14. NYMPHS (1994) for flute quartet by Gary Schocker
15-17. TANTAMOUNTS (1996) for flute quartet and string quartet by Eric
Stokes
(with the Meridian String Quartet)
Total time : 59 :41
Flute Force : Sheryl Henze, Gretchen Pusch, Rie Schmidt, Wendy Stern
Recorded and edited by Adam
Abeshouse
Recorded at: SUNY College at
Purchase in December 1998, June 1999, May and June 2000
Cover Art: Don Smalley, Quartet (green alabaster)
Photography by: Herbert Lotz
Inside liner notes :
“Eyewitness” is
Flute Force’s third solo compact disc and is a sequel to its debut
recording of American flute quartets on the CRI label. The performances on this
recording are the result of a close working association Flute Force developed
with each composer.
Garrison Keillor and
composer/pianist David Alpher join Flute Force in Land of the Farther Suns. The work is in eight movements and reflects David
Alpher’s jazz and classical background. Mr. Keillor’s reading of
poems by Steven Crane is woven into the texture of the musical score.
Land of the Farther Suns (1995) for narrator, flute
quartet and piano by David Alpher with Garrison Keillor, narrator and David
Alpher, piano
Poems by Stephen Crane
I have long been an admirer of Stephen Crane's bold poems, and wanted to work
with them musically. In 1992, I arrived at a format: essentially a song cycle,
but with the text spoken instead of sung. From Crane's 135 poems, I selected
ten which greatly affected me, and when placed in a particular
sequence, suggested an overall narrative structure. This piece exists in two
versions. In addition to composing a narrator/piano score, I decided to arrange
this version for narrator, four flutes and piano, thinking that the whole
complement of flutes, from bass to piccolo, would help bring out the
full emotive range of the texts, while at the same time expressing (as they are
a family of instruments) a fundamental unity. Stephen Crane (1871-1900) is best
known as the author of The Red Badge of Courage.
--David Alpher
David Alpher's (b.1947)
compositions are unique, eclectic mixtures of jazz, American folksongs, theater
music and the classical tradition. His multimedia work Las Meninas:
Variations, inspired by Velazquez and Picasso paintings, has been
performed on 25 occasions, in such diverse locales as Finland, Spain, Brazil,
Zion National Park and Harvard University. Pathways, a 1999 commission from The Verdehr Trio
(clarinet/violin/piano trio) received an enthusiastic review in the American
Record Guide. He composed The Field's Edge, a set of five songs
to poems by James Wright, for a commission from the James Wright Festival of
1997. Mr. Alpher’s current commissions are Songs on the Passage of
Time, for the Rockport Chamber Music Festival; and Songs of Witness,
a chamber piece incorporating ten haiku written by detainees in
Japanese--American internment camps during World War II for Crossroads Arts
Council. The Walrus and the Carpenter (1989), a jazz-influenced
setting of the Lewis Carroll poem, and Land of the Farther Suns (1995)
were finalists in the National Flute Association's Newly Published Music
Competition. The CD American Reflections: David Alpher Chamber Music
(Ongaku) contains five other works. David Alpher is a founder of the Rockport
Chamber Music Festival, and was for ten years its co-Artistic Director,
Composer in Residence, and frequent piano performer. On the Angel CD American
Dreamer: Songs of Stephen Foster, Mr. Alpher collaborated as pianist and
co-arranger with Thomas Hampson, Jay Ungar, and Molly Mason. Mr. Alpher is a
graduate with High Distinction of the Indiana University School of Music, where
he was a student of Menahem Pressler, pianist of the Beaux Arts Trio. He has
been a resident fellow at The MacDowell Colony and at the Virginia Center for
the Creative Arts.
GARRISON KEILLOR was born in Anoka, Minnesota, in 1942 and began his radio
career as a freshman at the University of Minnesota, from which he graduated in
1966. He went to work for Minnesota Public Radio in 1969, and on July 6, 1974,
he hosted the first broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion in St. Paul. (The show
ended in 1987, resumed in 1989 in New York as The American Radio Company, returned to Minnesota,
and in 1993 resumed the name A Prairie Home Companion.) Keillor hosts a daily
five-minute radio program, The Writer’s Almanac, is a frequent
contributor to Time, and writes a biweekly column of advice to the lovelorn for
Salon, the online magazine. He is the author of eleven books, including Lake
Wobegon Days (1985), The Book of Guys (1993), The Old Man Who Loved Cheese (1996), Wobegon Days (1997) and Me, By
Jimmy (Big Boy) Valente (1999). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences and recently was presented with a National Humanities Medal.
TRAVELOGUE
(1995) for flute quartet by Elizabeth Brown
Travelogue is a subtle, humorous and intricate gem reminiscent
of the composer’s childhood car trips across Alabama in the 1950’s.
Written for Flute Force in 1995, the piece uses microtones, multiphonics and
other extended techniques which are an integral part of the Elizabeth
Brown’s musical language.
When
writing Travelogue, I was thinking
about all the different aspects of travel- the exhilaration of movement, joy in
the scenery, anticipation of arrival, impatience over delays and occasional
homesickness. My earliest and fondest memories involve family trips, sitting
with my brothers in the back seat of our car, rolling through the Alabama
countryside. The flute language includes microtonal trills and progressions,
wheezy overblown tremolos, and a Doppler effect of falling pitch (to imitate
cars passing in the other direction). The piece was written in New York City
for my friends and colleagues in Flute Force, and was finished on Christmas
Day, 1995.
--Elizabeth Brown
Composer/flutist Elizabeth Brown (b. 1953) is a native
of Alabama and a Juilliard graduate, began composing in her late twenties.
Since then, her work has been performed at a variety of notable venues; the
Library of Congress, the Kitchen, the Los Angeles Museum of Art, the Houston
Center for Photography, the Ijsbreaker in Amsterdam, Bang on a Can, Lincoln
Center, and Kunstlerhsaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt. The Orpheus Chamber
Orchestra premiered Lost Waltz at Carnegie Hall in 1997; Newband premiered
Delirium (featuring the original microtonal instruments of Harry Partch) at the
Knitting Factory in NYC in 1998. Brown has been a fellow at the MacDowell
Colony and at the Liguria Study Center in Bogliasco, Italy and was
Artist-in-Residence at Acadia National Park in 1999. She has written for a
number of unusual instruments, including viola d’amore, glass harmonica,
and traditional Japanese instruments (she is an accomplished shakuhachi
player). Brown’s music can be heard on CRI’s Emergency Music:
Band on a Can Live Vol. II, Dance of the Seven Veils (Newband) on Music and Arts and The Aids Quilt
Songbook on Harmonia Mundi. Brown has
performed as flutist with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Brooklyn Philharmonic,
the American Symphony, the American Composers Orchestra, and Speculum Musicae.
She also frequently performs her own music. She is on the flute faculty of the
Juilliard School’s Music Advancement Program, and has recorded for CBS
Masterworks, Deutsche Grammophone, CRI, Musical Heritage, Opus One and Avant.
EYEWITNESS (1990) for flute
quartet by Robert Dick.
Robert Dick’s lexicon
of extended techniques for the flute is employed throughout Eyewitness,and has become a standard part of flutists’
vocabulary. The work was
commissioned jointly by three flute quartets: Flute Force, the Powell Quartet
and the CalArts Contemporary Chamber Players, and made possible with funds from
the Meet the Composer/Readers Digest Commissioning Program, in partnership with
the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lila Acheson Wallace-Readers Digest
Fund.
In Eyewitness, the four flutists are equals. They are called upon to master a
vocabulary of sonorities - air rushes, timbre and glissandi inspired by the
North Indian bansuri flute, whispertones, multiphonics, multiple tremoli,
tongue stops, voice/flute combinations - and to use these sonorities with full
emotional and dramatic command.
Expressively, Eyewitness is
reflective of complex emotional states.
My tastes run to maximal intensity, especially in music, and Eyewitness is composed in this manner. Each flutist plays as soloist, duo partner, and as
contributor to mass sonorities.
Whatever the context, every entrance has overt dramatic functions. Eyewitness is in two movements. The first is scored for four concert flutes, and the second
movement adds piccolos, alto and bass flutes.
--Robert Dick
Robert Dick
(b.1950) is internationally known as a composer, performer and improviser and as
a flutist who has revolutionized the soundworld of his instrument. Playing the
full range of flutes -- contra-bass in C, bassflutes in F and C, alto, flute
and piccolos in Ab and C -- Dick has performed his music throughout the United
States, Europe and Japan. He has earned wide recognition as a composer, and has
a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Composer's
Fellowships and many grants and commissions to his credit. His recent works
include Transdimensional Lending Library, a conducted improvisation for flute choir; Paint Your
Mammouth, for five
flutes, Air Alight,
for seven flutes, Parade to the Sky, for three flutists and percussion (commissioned by the Scottish
Flute Trio); Life Concert, for flutist and pianist (commissioned by the City of Lucerne,
Switzerland), and The Sea of Stories for flute soloist with flute orchestra, Fire's Bird, for ring-key piccolo and Fish Are
Jumping, for flute alone.
Robert Dick's multifaceted musical life includes composition, improvisation,
masterclass teaching, publication, and work on re-designing the flute itself.
He is currently collaborating with Bickford Brannen of Brannen Brothers
Flutemakers on the development of his invention, the "Robert Dick
Glissando Headjoint". This telescoping flute mouthpiece is inspired
directly by the electric guitar's "Whammy bar" and gives the flute a
vastly increased range of glissandi and coloristic possibilities. Mr. Dick
tours the world performing his music. He regularly performs in the United States
and throughout Europe, and has played and taught in Asia, Australia and South
America.
NYMPHS (1994) for flute quartet by Gary Schocker
1.Gathering
2. In the Wood
3. In the Air
In Nymphs, Gary Schocker integrates popular and classical styles
with his characteristic ease. This three-movement work is the only composition
on this recording using four C flutes.
Four
will o’ the wisps gather, fly, and flicker. All their music happens
secretly, drawn in the air like lightning bug-streaks, which can’t be
touched.
--Gary
Schocker
GARY SCHOCKER (b. 1959) is a flutist/composer/pianist of outstanding
versatility. As a flutist, Mr. Schocker has performed with the New York
Philharmonic, the New Jersey Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, in I Solisti
Italiani’s 1993 tour performing his Airborne, and in chamber music festivals
and recital halls around the world. Schocker has composed sonatas for piano,
oboe, bassoon, clarinet, horn, and two pianos, as well as numerous works for
flute, many songs, theatrical works, and musicals for children. James Galway
premiered Mr. Schocker’s three-movement concerto Green Places at Ireland’s Adair
Festival and has also performed this work with the New Jersey Symphony. His
musical Far From The Madding Crowd, written with Barbara Campbell,
received its world premiere in New Zealand in Fall 2000. Far From the
Madding Crowd is also a disc of selections from three of his musicals featuring an
all-star Broadway cast (Original Cast Records). Gary Schocker can be heard in
his debut recording Regrets and Resolutions for Jonathan Digital Recordings,
featuring three of his own compositions; on his CD of baroque music by Bach,
Telemann, and Handel; and in two recordings with Orquestra Nova on the Chesky
label. He has also recorded Mozart’s Flute Quartet with the Chester
String Quartet on the Chesky label. Another recent recording is the CD Airborne, which features several
of his own compositions for flute (Jonathan Digital).
TANTAMOUNTS (1996) for flute quartet and string quartet by Eric Stokes
In three movements
With the Meridian String Quartet
TANTAMOUNTS
Owing to Eric Stokes’ untimely death in 1999, no composer’s
notes could be found for Tantamounts. The Oxford English Dictionary
defines « tantamount » as an adjective
meaning equivalent as in value, force or effect. Since the ranges of C flutes,
alto and bass flutes are roughly equivalent to their string counterparts, the
two quartets are tantamount. Tantamounts was written for Flute Force in
1996 and received its premiere at the National Flute Association convention in
New York City that same year.
ERIC STOKES (1930-1999) was president
of the Minnesota (later ‘American’) Composers Forum’s Board
of Directors from 1991 to 1993. His opera Apollonia's Circus, written with longtime friend and collaborator Al
Greenberg, was produced in 1994 at the University. One of Eric's last
commissions was a large-scale work for chorus, band, and narrator titled Out
of the Cradle. He composed more than eighty
works including orchestral, chamber and vocal compositions that were
commissioned by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Cabrillo Music Festival,
the London Sinfonietta, the San Francisco Symphony, Vale of Glamorgan Festival
in Wales, the Cincinnati Symphony, and Chamber Music America. His music has
been performed throughout the US and Europe and is recorded on the Louisville,
CRI and innova labels.
Eric received his Bachelor of
Music degree in 1952 from Lawrence University in Wisconsin,
his Master of Music degree at the New England Conservatory in 1956 and then
began doctoral studies at the University of Minnesota. He was appointed to the
faculty there, and remained until his retirement in 1988. Eric's 29 years at
the University of Minnesota were the core of his creative life. In the '60's he
collaborated with Tom Nee to present new music in the pioneering Here Concerts
series at the Walker Art Center. His first opera, Horspfal, commissioned by the Center Opera Company (now the
Minnesota Opera) was produced in 1969 at the Guthrie Theatre. In 1970, he
founded the University's electronic music laboratory, and in 1971, he organized
the First Minnesota Moving and Storage Warehouse Band, a contemporary music
ensemble.
Founded in 1981, Flute Force
has distinguished itself as America's foremost flute quartet. As winner of the Artists International
Competition, Flute Force presented its Carnegie Recital Hall debut in 1985. Musical America has called Flute Force "an extremely persuasive
advocate for the flute quartet medium: four top-quality players in a perfectly
balanced and expressive ensemble."
Flute Force has performed
extensively in the United States and Canada. Highlights of past seasons have included performances at
Yale University, Dartmouth College, Johns Hopkins University, the Universities
of Tennessee, Florida, Washington, Iowa, Missouri and Pennsylvania, the San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Merkin Concert Hall and for the New York Flute
Club and the National Flute Association's annual conventions in Minneapolis,
Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta. Flute Force has collaborated in concerts
with renowned flutists Julius Baker, Paula Robison and Keith Underwood, as well
as Nexus and the Cassatt Quartet.
The group has also performed on American Public Radio's St. Paul
Sunday Morning, WQXR, WNYC and on New
York and New Jersey public television.
The group recorded six flute
quartets by American composers for CRI (1990). Their second release, Pastorale, on the VAI Audio label (1996) includes Rie Schmidt's arrangement of Daphnis and
Chloé by Ravel and features
guest flutist, Julius Baker. Flute Force was featured on a Windham Hill release
entitled Mozart Variations.
Excerpts from their recordings have been used in the HBO series, Sex and the
City.
Flute Force has received
recording, commissioning and residency grants from the National Endowment for
the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Chamber Music America, Meet
the Composer/Reader's Digest Commissioning Program, the New York Foundation for
the Arts, the Manhattan Community Arts Fund and the American Composers Forum.
Recorded and edited by Adam
Abeshouse
Recorded at SUNY College at
Purchase on December 20, 1998, June 11, 1999, May 25, 2000 and June 20, 2000
Flute Force, Inc.
711 Amsterdam Avenue, #10G
New York, NY 10025
(212) 662-8795 phone
(212) 864-9166 fax
Special thanks to: Peter Ader,
Richard Clark, Alan Murchie, Joseph Schwartz, Paco Underhill, Benjamin Verdery,
David Wechsler, Michael Yamin and Frederic W. Ziv.
Cover Art: Don Smalley, Quartet (green alabaster)
Art photograph by Herbert
Lotz
Group photograph by Warren
Ditmar