Tray Card – Tapestry

 

01        Vida Furtiva                 Pablo Ortiz                 10:57

 

Adrian Justus, violin

Frankie J. Kelly, clarinet

Elena Abend, piano

 

02        Loose Connections      Yehuda Yannay                       13:15

 

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

11        Bembe                                                 3:41

 

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

Liner Notes

 

 

“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