CD project
agevolmente, my solo CD on Albany Records featuring performances by Mimmi Fulmer, Judith Kellock, Jakub Omsky, Christopher Taylor, Marc Vallon, and other wonderful performers. Liner notes graciously written by Lee Blasius (read Lee's notes).
Available for digital download at ClassicsOnline, eMusic.com, iTunes, and Amazon.com ( ~.co.uk, ~.fr, ~.de, ~.jp)
CDs available at Amazon.com (and Amazon's international sites), ArkivMusik.com, Barnes and Noble, Tower Records and other online classical music retailers.
Romantic aesthetics would locate the spirit of music in either the dance or lyric, in motion or breath, in the things of the body. At the same time, though, it would have music transcend embodiment: it is not coincident that the Romantic aesthetic finds its apotheosis in the destruction of the body and loss of the self, in the dance unto death, the song without words. One might argue that the commercial music of the past half century has taken on this aesthetics and this vocation, just as one might argue that the inheritors of the classical tradition have for for a half century resisted the same, transformed it, attempted a resurrection of the embodied. In this regard, we need hear the music of David Dies as dance, as lyric. But dance or lyric of another order of being. There are moments when we slip into convention, when we are lapped up by memory. These moments, though, do but make us aware of the possibility of an embodied present. Listen to Kai-’r. This is dance. But dance which seeks not the sacrifice of self but an awareness of self as situated in the world. Such had been the ideal of the classical Greek chorus, with its welding of complex meter and formalized gesture. That Kai-’r is scored for solo bassoon counts for little: the music that reveals its choreography through the most limited of means. We hear a multitude, with the recurrence of intervals (both in pitch and time) standing almost as words, stylized words. And when, with this composer, actual words return to the voice, they do so almost magically. Thus the Lorca Songs. We might at first describe them as “picturesque,” somehow incorporating that weird mix of saturated colors and sepia tints that is our imagined Andalusia. Yet this is not an aural postcard. There are scratches on the negative, discolorations. It is not the composer who is here expressing himself, but rather a Lorca who refuses to be dismissed as folkloristic, who refuses the translation of the body to spirit just as he refuses the translation of Spanish to English. Thus the Prayers and Meditations. There is always danger when a male composer appropriates the voice of a woman (one to which the Romantic composer was particularly susceptible), danger also when secular music appropriates the sacred (yet another Romantic temptation.) But here, Teresa of Avila sings not for us, not with us, rather at us. Her vision pours out in a torrent of words--alive, accusatory, absolute. Hildegard of Bingen stands in proud isolation as the intellectual prodigy of her age, her poetry shimmering in internal assonance, the warmth her own music breaking through. Of Rabi’a al-Adwiyyah it is said that she ran through the streets holding in one hand a torch, and in the other a bucket of water, declaring that it was her intention to douse the fires of Hell and burn the gardens of Paradise so that humankind might worship Allah not out of fear or desire but out of love. The voices of this trio are reembodied in the music, but reembodied as their voices rather than that of the composer. This (and all of David’s work) is music that is unafraid to step aside, is sure enough to see through its own ambitions, is confident enough to let its seams show, to hold its own secrets close, to trust in a truth that glimmers through the cracks.
The CD program:
| piece |
performers |
| The Garden of Song, from Songs of the Sephardim for cello solo |
Jakub Omsky, cello |
| Lorca Songs for soprano & cello |
Judith Kellock, soprano,
Jakub Omsky, cello |
Dance Variations on a Theme by Persichetti
for piano solo |
Christopher Taylor, piano |
| un(bee)mo for two sopranos, unaccompanied |
Mimmi Fulmer & Judith Kellock, sopranos |
| Kai-'r / xhqt(i)s for bassoon solo |
Marc Vallon, bassoon |
| Prayers and Meditations for soprano, violin & cello |
Judith Kellock, soprano, Elizabeth Larson, violin, Jakub Omsky, cello |
| White Tea for cello solo |
Jakub Omsky, cello |
| Reference (Collection) for soprano & chamber ensemble |
Mimmi Fulmer, soprano
Elizabeth Marshall, flute, Marc Fink, oboe,
Katrin Talbot, viola, Karl Lavine, cello |
| tinnitus for flute, violin & viola |
Elizabeth Marshall, flute, Suzanne Beia, violin,
Katrin Talbot, viola |
