Compositions

Knoxville Symphony NEA commission. Optionally brass in balcony.

The title, From Afar, most immediately refers to the composer's memory of the four months she spent studying Japanese music near Kyoto in Fall, 1990. Other senses of distance are found in the temporal distances of the few direct references to Japanese music (for example, to the ancient honkyoku for the Japanese vertical bamboo flute, the shakuhachi) and to near and distant spatial densities in the orchestra (echoings and shadowings).

The piece opens with a slow, meditative, introduction (andante declamato) which is dominated by a single line in the trumpets. It then divides into two large wave-shaped sections, each of which begins with propulsive rhythms in the percussion (energico). Each of the large sections is transformed at its climax, somewhat in the manner of the Japanese jo-ha-kyu aesthetic. The first climax dissolves into a lighter interlude (danza), while the second retrieves a previous woodwind-dominated solo line and presents it, ardente e cantabile, with all the warmth of the strings before echoes of the meditative opening return to close the piece.

In writing From Afar the composer's intent was not to transpose Japanese sonorities directly onto the orchestra, rather her concern was to contrast meditative time (as in the opening) with narrative time (as in the danza) and propulsive time (as in the energico sections). A second concern was to contrast more traditional Western orchestral sonorities with a single "landscaped" line inspired by the ancient instrumental traditions of Japan (including gagaku ). – HT

From Afar is in one movement, approximately twenty minutes long. The piece was commissioned by a consortium of orchestras consisting of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, Women's Philharmonic Orchestra, Augusta Symphony Orchestra, University of South Carolina Symphony Orchestra, Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra, and Columbus Pro Musica. Commissioning of From Afar was made possible by a grant from the Meet the Composer / Reader's Digest Commissioning Program in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lila Wallace -- Reader's Digest Fund. The first performance was November 14 and 15, 1996, by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Kirk Trevor.

Performed here by the Slovak Radio Orchestra, Kirk Trevor, conductor. (Audio is the beginning.)

Recording: North/South Recordings HERE, THE CLIFFS

The image of the title comes from a recorded statement by artist, Arnie Bittleman - "I found a feather while walking down a road. The feather, if you look closely, has a landscape, a cloudscape in it" (Cambridge, NY, 1970). The piece is in one continuous movement with three main sections -- cloudscape (fast, light, woodwind-dominated), landscape (slow, string-dominated), and mountain-scape (fast, rhythmic, brass and percussion to the fore). "Walking" passages (with hints of NY folksongs) link the sections. – HT

From the Feather to the Mountain was composed in 2004 in response to a commission from the Empire State Youth Orchestra to celebrate their 25th anniversary season. The premiere took place March 20, 2005 in the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall with the Empire State Youth Orchestra conducted by Helen Cha-Pyo.

Performed here by the Slovak Radio Orchestra, Kirk Trevor, conductor. (Audio is the beginning.)

Recording: North/South Recordings HERE, THE CLIFFS

The word, reibo, appears in the titles of many solo pieces for the Japanese vertical bamboo flute – the shakuhachi. Rei means “bell” and bo means “yearning”, so a rough translation is “Yearning for the Bell”. The tone poem, Reibo, takes the idea of “bells” and applies it to the bells of journeying (opening section), the bells of prayer (slow middle section), and the bells of meditation (closing section). – HT

Composed in 2009-2010, Reibo was commissioned by the Community Women's Orchestra directed by Dr. Kathleen McGuire, for its 25th Anniversary Season, with funding provided by the Open Meadows Foundation and the San Francisco Foundation, Jacqueline Hoefer Fund. – HT

Dedication: Reibo is dedicated to intrepid conductor and women’s music advocate, Karla Lemon, 1954-2009.

Recording: Community Women's Orchestra WOMEN’S WORK AND PLAY

Sarsen is in three movements, each inspired by a particular “standing stone” or “sarsen.” The first movement, “Adirondack,” suggests the powerful presence of a wind-swept erratic in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. The Bat Rock in the Garden of the Master of the Nets in Suzhou, China, inspired the second movement. The standing stone of the last movement, “Avebury,” is part of an avenue of such stones leading to the largest stone circle in Europe. It is a ritual stone set in a ceremonial landscape, quite different from the natural wilderness setting of the first movement and the stylized, formal garden of the second movement. Each of the movements nay be performed separately, although there are echoes of the first in the second and third; in particular, the brass fanfare which opens “Adirondack” returns at the conclusion of “Avebury.” – HT

Sarsen was composed during the autumn of 2001 in response to a joint commission from the Saratoga Springs Youth Orchestra and the St. Croix Valley Symphony Orchestra at the University of Wisconsin-River-Falls.

In his short poem, “Boundaries”, R. S. Thomas writes, “Where does the town end / and the country begin? / Where is the high-water mark / between the grey tide and the green?’ These lines led the composer to recall the lichen-covered, low stone walls which crisscross the high mountain moorland behind her childhood home in Ferndale, Rhondda. In turn, the local image suggested the textural contrasts which underlie the piece as a whole – contrasts between fast, string-dominated passages (“moorland”) and resonant, brass-dominated passages (“stone boundaries”). The presence throughout the piece of bell-like sections is again inspired by the poem. When Thomas writes of farming within “the sounds of the bell / of the worshipping cathedral” he evokes a time when the mountain-top walls were monastic boundaries. – HT

The Grey Tide and The Green was commissioned by St. David’s Hall, Cardiff with financial assistance from the Arts Council of Wales and premiered 28 July 2001 for The Last Night of the Welsh Proms by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Owain Arwel Hughes.

The Open Field was commissioned by the Schenectady Symphony Orchestra with funds provided by the New York State Council on the Arts. The piece was premiered on 22 April 1990 by the Schenectady Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Schneider. The commissioning body had asked for a piece, approximately ten minutes long, which featured the brass. I was already at work on the fanfare- like figures of the opening and closing sections when news came, first of the incredible, then of the terrible events in Tiananmen Square of June 1989. The freedom of mind which I had been celebrating in the opening of the piece seemed called into question and this questioning is reflected in the darker inner sections of the piece. When I first received this commission, I did not set out to write any kind of "documentary." In fact, the earliest "field" was from a poem by Robert Duncan (the first in his 1960 collection called The Opening of the Field, which begins "Often I am permitted to return to a meadow / as if it were a scene made-up by my mind, / that is not mine, but is a made place, ... "). However, I think it was inevitable that the piece became caught up in that unbelievable year which ultimately led to the breaking down of the Berlin Wall. It is for this reason, with deep respect, the piece is subtitled "in memoriam Tiananmen Square (June 1989)." – HT

Short, dramatic, needs good brass.