INVOCATION
MICHAEL ELLISON
Innova 766
track String Quartet # 2 (2002)
Borromeo String Quartet
Nicholas Kitchen, William
Fedkenhauer, violins
Mai Motobuchi-Rosenthal,
viola; Yee Sun Kim, cello
35:35
1. I. Moderato-Allegro 4:53
2. II Andante Mistico 5:20
3. III. Marcato 0:44
4. IV. Presto 5:20
5. V. Trs espresif 1:05
6. VI. Tranquillo-Adagio 9:42
7. VII.Allegro con fuoco 8:20
8. I. Invocation 1:54
9. II.
Meditation 6:14
10. III. Allegro 4:09
11. Elif (2003) for hafiz and chamber ensemble 10:58
Kani Karaca, voice
Ahmet Toz and Onur Trkmen,
neys, Hasan Tura,
violin, Emil Vilenescu, bass
clarinet, Jeff McAuley, cello,
Michael Ellison, conductor
Total duration 58:50
learning
to be human?
If a contemporary composer aims at
rightfully expressing the social or psychological background of his time, his
real struggle does not start with the formal or technical aspects of the
artwork alone. His artistic and personal challenge matches what John Blacking,
as early as 1973, addressed in his epochal publication How Musical Is Man? when
stating: it is a problem of attitude to contemporary society and culture in
relation to the basic human problem of learning to be human.
At the beginning of the new millennium,
it has become evident that most crucial aspects of musical creation, as much as
a general life-attitude, can equally be acquired from the cultural ethnoscapes
outside the boundaries of the Western world. As a result of the 20th centurys
westernization, composers from various extra-European countries have obtained a
command in Western classical counterpoint and harmony as well as in the most
recent trends of contemporary Western music. But in a globalized cultural climate
such as contemporary Western art-music, various individual composers in the
West have equally received inspiration from the East and its formerly exotic
traditions. These operate as a major factor of contemporary aesthetics and,
thus, have extended our understanding of human music-making to new and unknown
dimensions.
In fact, the same perspective applies to
the North-American composer Michael Ellison whose career and life-path are
profoundly connected with Turkey and its musics. As a young student at the New
England Conservatory of Music, and later at the University of California, he
received the main stimulus for this approach from the study of Sufi-music, in
particular the religious practice of the Turkish Mevlevi-Order. Field research in the Black Sea region
first brought him to Turkey. When, in 2002, he finally settled in Istanbul,
working as a teacher for music theory at the Centre for Advanced Studies in
Music of Istanbul Technical University, he had already obtained a remarkable
insight into Turkish music through performance and theoretic inquiry.
In addition to a primary awareness for
the social and private surroundings he accessed and belonged to, Ellison has
always felt major concern for his interaction with the people performing and interpreting
his music. As much as from his own social, aesthetic or philosophical
objectives, Ellisons compositions evolve through the mutual appreciation and
collaboration with performers.
Ellisons deep love for the open
reed-flute Ney, the main instrument of Turkish Sufi-music, resonates at the
center of his solo piece for flute, Invocation-Meditation-Allegro,
which he composed in 1996 at
the age of 27. The work was commissioned by the American flautist Helen Bledsoe
and premiered in September 2002 at Gaudeamus Week for contemporary music in
Amsterdam. The sound of the ney with
its spiritual connotation is, of course, not simply translated into a Western
idiom from a mere acoustic or technical perspective: Rather, the composer
develops it from within its own musical language, confronting genuine
Middle-Eastern maqm-principles with
inflections from his original background as an American composer. Within the
progression of the pieces three movements, various extended techniques,
uncommonly widened registers and sounds from other cultural spheres (such as
Japanese Shakuhachi-flute) unsettle this ambiance and, finally, manage to
re-create the Western flute as a sort of cross-cultural super-instrument.
The first movement, Invocation, opens the piece in the gesture of a dramatic
incantation. Following the initial, static motif, disruptive, gradually
accelerating motions open the acoustic space and, each time, suddenly stop, as
if awaiting a response in the subsequent silence. In a similar manner, the central
movement, Meditation, starts with a
simple musical idea in a Western-style, regularly rhythmic meter. According to
Ellisons own words, the sound-world travels through Japan...on its way to a
climactic arrival in Turkey. The mystical quasi-Ney cadenza, in fact, the
heart and most original part of the whole piece, opposes Occidental and
Oriental perception within a gesticulation profoundly inspired by
Middle-Eastern musical practice. The final movement (Allegro), again, breaks through this perspective by use of torn,
bebop-style textures that alternate with a multiphonic-based contrasting idea, consisting
of dramatic trills and techniques of overblowing that lead to a final climax.
Ellisons String Quartet #2, generally considered one of his most important
works, was composed in 2001, commissioned by the National Endowment for the
Arts for the Borromeo String Quartet. The first performance took place in 2002
at the Montecito Country Club in Santa Barbara, California. The form and
structural underpinnings of String
Quartet #2 are, in fact, profoundly inspired by the performers themselves,
and in particular by a performance of Beethovens late string quartet Opus 131
that the Borromeo Quartet presented in 1991 at Bostons Gardner Museum, an
experience that left an indelible impression on the composers musical
sensibilities.
The present seven-movement form of the
quartet, as Ellison recounts himself, is very much inspired by this work,
although its musical language is totally different. As much as in Beethovens work, the cyclic structure of the
whole composition reveals strong connections between its seven distinct
movements. Thus, the broken texture of the initial part recurs, in a completely
different attitude, in the final movement, somewhat transforming dreaminess
and airiness to a crashing-back-to-earth finish.
Each movement serves its own, distinct
purpose within the pieces integral formal conception, and the composer has
dedicated much of his attention to the exquisite articulation of the emotional
effect that his music shall exert on the listener.
The first movement evolves from a gesture
comparable to the previous works Invocation: An extremely chromatic gesture,
immediately jumping into the higher register, moves down in oscillating motion
and bursts off dramatically. Even later, when devolving in more subtle and
fluent textures, the movement does not progress without frequent stops and
silences. Volatile and fragmentary, in various ways it introduces the motivic
and gestural material for the following six movements.
The second movement begins with a
delicate 7/16 figuration that recurs over whole section, inflecting different
additional ideas over a constant pedal in the bass. Also when developing into
more concrete material and frequent changes of meter, it never departs from the
dreamy character with which it
finally trails away. The
third movement, a short fragment of a few seconds, based on two lapidary ideas,
leads directly to the fourth movements Scherzo where Ellisons main inspirational
sources (Turkish-style
rapid-firelimping rhythms and American-, or even Jazz-style
syncopated regular meter) alternate rapidly. Within the Second String Quartet,
the Scherzo constitutes at once the most virtuosic and characteristic movement. According to Ellison, its central
function within the piece is to transport the listener to a state perhaps best
described as pure joy. On the other hand, the tune that repeatedly meanders
through the piece is reminiscent of certain pentatonic figurations associated
with Indian Raga-music. The fifth movement, a brief interlude like the third
one, recalls the emotionally heavier disposition of the first movement and
reestablishes its basic key on A. It prepares the sixth, the real slow
movement (Ellison), written in E-flat Lydian, the tonal key opposite the
initial A. The last movement uses its inverse, Phrygian structure to a great
degree. Here, the heavy chromaticism of the earlier movements is released into
a fluid, mainly diatonic texture. The initial phrase of this movement recalls
the chromatic idea that introduced the first movement. However, it is gradually
transformed by its new, more light-hearted surroundings. At this moment, the
listener will finally understand how thoroughly Ellisons cross-cultural
journey with its gradual emotional change was planned from the beginning.
–Stefan Pohlit
the genius of Kni Karaca and the genesis
of Elif
The third recording on
the CD is one of the last testaments of a Master of Turkish vocal music. Elif,
for Turkish Hafiz and chamber ensemble, was composed for one of the greatest
Turkish musicians of the 20th century, Kni Karaca. Karaca, blind since childhood, had been a mainstay of
Turkish classical and sufi music since the 50s. As a Hafiz, he had memorized the entire Koran and was able
to recite it in the makam of his
choice. This collaboration marks a
startlingly adventurous epilogue to his storied vocal career. Startling, perhaps, because in a
Turkish classical music scene dominated by conservatism, Karaca was willing to
step onstage with musicians from a totally different musical culture than his
own, and play the key role in realizing a radically new sonic vision, which the
musicians would create together under experimental conditions. The demands on him were, if not
wholly unrelated to his experience in Turkish classical music, nevertheless unusual—to
modulate through a series of five makams,
related to one another sometimes in ways unconventional to Turkish
music—and to improvise kaside amidst
sounds he had likely never heard, let alone shared a sonic space with. But Karacas is a truly profound space
of its own. In consequence, the piece
attempts not so much a unificiation of east and west so much as the realization
of an image of sand washing over a precious archeological artifact, now
obscuring, now revealing. The
sands of time, of change, revealing ultimately the precarious reality of this deeply
cherished musical cultures position in our contemporary world. One of the reasons the (live) performance
captured on this recording is of such significance is that it represents
Karacas second-to-last concert appearance. He passed away four months later.
To make the sounds
fitting for the accompaniment of Karaca they themselves had to be decomposed,
eroded, washed away, stripped to their beginnings, as in the arpeggios of
breath in the ney which open the work, or the searing multidimensionality of
the bass clarinet multiphonics.
The violin, so high at the beginning, itself is heard only as breath
before it glissandos down into the realm of audible pitch. This was no harmonization, but
rather a marriage of sounds--sounds that would at times repel, at times melt
into one another, demanding in performance a sure sense of Karacas direction
and a very intense concentration and responsiveness in the moment by the
musicians. The key epiphany in the
pre-compositional phase was actually the decision to use bass clarinet with the
Hafiz. It is this combination that, elaborated by the neys and violins
above and the cello in similar registers, defined the sonic dialectic which was
to give the piece a distinct life and character that, with the addition of
Karacas voice, it would be able to inhabit as its own.
–Michael Ellison
HELEN BLEDSOE
Flutist Helen Bledsoe is a native of
South Carolina (USA). Since winning first-prize in the 1996 Gaudeamus
International Interpreter's Competition for Contemporary Music, she has had an
active career as a soloist, ensemble player, teacher and improviser.
She is currently a member of the ensemble musikFabrik
(Cologne) and an assistant instructor at the Conservatory of Bremen (Hochschule
der Knste). She has given masterclasses and workshops world-wide and has had
articles published by Fluit Magazine (official
publication of the Netherlands Flute Association) and the Contemporary Music Review.
Her broad musical education, beginning
age 9 with the harpsichord, is still in progress. Her teachers and sources of
inspiration have been Bernard Goldberg, Peter Lloyd, Kate Lukas, Harrie
Starreveld, Robert Dick and Aurle Nicolet. Helen also has particular interest
in Jazz and Carnatic music.
BORROMEO STRING QUARTET
Considered
"Simply the best there is" by the Boston Globe, the critically
acclaimed Borromeo String Quartet is one of the most sought after string
quartets in the world, performing over 100 concerts of classical and
contemporary literature across three continents each season. Audiences and
critics alike champion its revealing explorations of Schoenberg, Brahms,
Ligeti, Kurtag, and Jancek, and affinity for making challenging contemporary
repertoire approachable. Lauded for its absolute mastery of the complete
Beethoven and Bartk quartet cycles, the ensemble is currently focused on the
work of Dmitri Shostakovich.
The
Borromeo Quartet's long-standing and celebrated residency at the Isabella
Stewart Gardner Museum has been called one of the defining experiences of
civilization in Boston [Boston Globe]; and its ongoing concert series at the
Tenri Cultural Institute in New York has been hailed as one of New Yorks best
kept secrets [New York Sun].
They are faculty Quartet-in-Residence at the New
England Conservatory of Music as well as Dai-Ichi Semei Hall in Tokyo, and will
return this summer for a third season in residence at the famed Taos School of
Music in New Mexico.
In
2004 the Aaron Copland House honored the Borromeo's commitment to contemporary
music by creating the Borromeo Quartet Award, an annual initiative that will
premiere the work of important young composers to audiences internationally. It
has enjoyed collaborations with John Cage, Gyorgy Ligeti, Osvaldo Golijov,
Steve Mackey, John Harbison, Leon Kirchner, Gunther Schuller, Jennifer Higdon,
and is currently performing Hope Cycles a new work by Lior Navok commissioned
for them by the Serge Koussevitzky Foundation at the Library of Congress. In
2000 the Borromeo String Quartet completed two seasons as a member of Lincoln Center's Chamber Music Society
Two and served as Ensemble-in-Residence for the 1998-99 season of National
Public Radio's Performance Today. In
April 2007 the Borromeo Quartet was a recipient the prestigious Avery Fisher
Career Grant Other awards include
Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award in 2001, Chamber Music America's
Cleveland Quartet Award in 1998 and the Young Concert Artists International
Auditions in 1991, as well as top prizes at the International String Quartet
Competition in Evian, France in 1990.
www.borromeoquartet.com.
You could
have watched as four perfectly ordinary human beings strode onto the stage and
created magic. Naples Daily
News
KNI KARACA
Kni Karaca was born in
Adana in 1930. He lost his vision when he was two months old. He had already
committed the whole Quran to memory before he completed his primary education.
In 1950 he came to Istanbul, where he met various masters of religious and
secular music. He began training with Sadettin Kaynak, a renowned performer and
composer in the style and expression of religious music. Karaca later continued
with Hafz Ali skdarl, by whose singing style he was greatly impressed. From Sadettin Heper he learnt how to
play the kudm (circular drums used
in Mevlevi ceremonies) and a great number of compositions
from liturgical and secular music repertoire. He toured the world as a
performer of Ottoman religious music with Mevlevi
groups and other religious music ensembles. He made a great number of 45 and 33
r.p.m records, cassettes and CDs.
Kni Karaca is one of the best performers Ottoman-Turkish music who flourished
in the last fifty years. Although he performs both religious and secular music,
he is commonly known as a hafz, a
reciter of the holy Quran. In reciting the Quran, mevlid (Nativity poem), kasides
(eulogies), ezan (Muslim call to
prayer) and in other forms of vocal improvisation he is considered a great
master. The most remarkable aspect of his music is that he adheres to authentic
traditions of religious performance.
Credits:
Composition of String Quartet #2 was made possible by a grant from the
National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)
Invocation-Meditation-Allegro was commissioned by Helen Bledsoe
Thanks to Pieter
Snapper, MIAM Center for Advanced Studies in Music, Istanbul Technical
University, University of California Santa Barbara, Reuben de Lautour, Kevin
Kelly, Cevdet Erek, Can Karadoğan, Emine Karaca, Dr. Muhammed Şahin, Dolores Hsu, William
Kraft, Melih Fereli, Cihat Aşkn, Kamran İnce, Serhan Bali, Hakan
Şensoy, Robert Reigle, Mary Berkman, Ellison Family and Yasemin.
Elif: Recorded live
at the Istanbul International Spectral Music Conference, Nov. 20, 2003
Mustafa Kemal Anfisi, Istanbul Technical University
Recording Engineers: Kerem Aksoy, Ozan Yurdakal
Mixing and Mastering: Pieter Snapper
String Quartet #2: Recorded UC Santa Barbara Studios, Feb. 18, 2002
Recording engineer: Kevin Kelly
Edited by Cevdet Erek, MIAM
Mixing and Mastering: Pieter Snapper
Invocation-Meditation-Allegro: Recorded MIAM Center for Advanced Studies in
Music
Istanbul, Aug. 4, 2007
Recording Engineer: Taylan zdemir
Edited by Taylan zdemir and Helen Bledsoe
Mastering: Reuben De Lautour, Pieter Snapper
Cover photos by Vieri
Bottazzini 2007
www.madshutter.com
Borromeo Quartet photo by Susan Wilson
Innova Director:
Philip Blackburn
Operations Manager: Chris Campbell
Innova is supported by an endowment from the McKnight Foundation.
All music on this CD
published by Michael Ellison.
[email protected]
Michael Ellison. 1996, 2001, 2003, 2009 All Rights Reserved.
Innova Recordings,
332 Minnesota Street E-145, St. Paul, MN 55101, USA