Concerts

Program notes:

Text:
The Vast Hour
Genevieve Taggard
From For Eager Lovers

All essences of sweetness from the white
Warm day go up in vapor, when the dark
Comes down. Ascends the tune of meadow-lark,
Ascends the noon-time smell of grass, when night
Takes sunlight from the world, and gives it ease.
Mysterious wings have brushed the air; and light
Float all the ghosts of sense and sound and sight;
The silent hive is echoing the bees.
So stir my thoughts at this slow, solemn time.
Now only is there certainty for me
When all the day’s distilled and understood.
Now light meets darkness: now my tendrils climb
In this vast hour, up the living tree,
Where gloom foregathers, and the stern winds brood.

Program notes:

I’ve chosen to arrange Dolly Parton’s “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” for the Dogs of Desire–an optimism anthem if there ever was one! The symphony meets pep band in this celebratory bop. As Parton puts it, “I can see the light of a clear blue morning, and everything’s gonna be alright. It’s gonna be ok.”

Program notes:

Pulp Anthem: Reflected Glory is a nurse’s anthem. I refer to it as a Pulp Anthem because I composed it quickly, and because it is meant to be broadly distributed, like the old pulp paperback books of the twentieth century. The poem “Reflected Glory” was written by Margaret Helen Florine, an American nurse, and published in a 1917 collection of her poetry entitled “Songs of a Nurse.” This piece is meant to remind us that the urgent work of nurses has long been in the shadows, but is as vital and important in our current pandemic as it was a century ago.

Program notes:

Founded in 1956, Dear Abby is a newspaper column in which readers ask for advice on a variety of topics, including etiquette, relationships, sex, health, and career guidance. A historical survey of Dear Abby and other advice columns paints a distinct portrait of the evolution of societal views on identity. Most expressed misogynistic and heteronormative opinions about gender and sexuality.Columns frequently advised women to obey their husbands, give up their careers, tolerate domestic violence, and always smile. Reading these old columns is telling of society’s limited perception of gender roles and how the definition of gender has evolved. This piece, DEAR ABBY, explores how society often attempts to pigeonhole others into fitting into narrow gender roles that may or may not contradict with their own identity and the internal reactions that one might face as a result.

Program notes:

“Getting Better” was written throughout the month of May 2020, and serves as something of a journal for that time. As a consequence of the world changing so rapidly throughout those weeks, my intentions changed completely each time I sat down to write. Although it felt impossible to settle on a singular idea to explore, what remained constant was an intention to write a piece that felt close, communal, vulnerable and intimate. The resulting work reflects my attempt to override my own feelings of distance and coldness that come with virtual performance, and I hope it can provide similar comfort to the listener.

Program notes:

“Se Tirar Nem Pôr” is the journey of a song- in this case, a samba, which began as an idea with very basic ingredients ( melody, rhythm and harmony). But, though it started small, it ended up being massively big. Upon realizing it had a life of its own (the song),it left the composers’ mind and went on to become something a lot bigger, not content with being a tiny little thing no longer. It’s an homage to the Dogs and Albany Symphony, I’m so grateful for this long and fruitful collaboration we’ve had and was very touched when asked to be a part of this online project.

Letra: Mauro Aguiar, Clarice Assad

Eu fiz um samba porque tava a fim

Curtinho assim que nem pipi de querubim
Só pra mim
Nem quis mostrar no botequim.

Mas o meu samba não se conformou
Mal despertou, saiu de mim, me abandonou
Disse assim:
“É que eu nasci pra ser um show.”

E desde então não para em casa
Fica só batendo perna por aí
Atrás da fama em que se deitou.

Meu Deus, criei cobra com asa!
“Que que” eu faço com esse aqui
Que diz que é bamba e bandeia?

Queria um samba sem tirar nem por
A cara e a fuça do meu mais molambo amor
Deu ruim!
Ele me fez de trampolim.

De tudo um pouco o samba açambarcou
Quem é que vai guardar de cor um samba assim?
Olha só
Me encalacrou!

Isso que dá criatura
Tu ficar maquinando besteira
Cê queria uma miniatura
Toma agora uma baita carreira a pé…

Volta samba meu
Que por mim já deu!
Meu amor não é tal carnaval.

Fiz um samba assim só de zoeira!
Não era pra ser descomunal.
Era só mais um
Samba bem banal
Desses de quem nada espera.
Quero meu samba sem eira nem beira!
——————————————–
Mas o meu samba não quis voltar não
E ainda tá botando som pelo ladrão
Sem noção
Quer cutucar a imensidão.

Acho que um dia ele me dá razão
E volta a ser meu samba bom de pé no chão
Miudim, só pra mim
Era só mais um, era só mais…

Fiz um samba assim só de zoeira!
Não era pra ter fama nem capital.
Era só mais um
Samba bem comum
Indefectível, todo igual!

Fiz um samba que só faz crescer
Eu por mim, o fim botava aqui.
Sei que pode haver
Obra sem final
pra quem gosta de dar asa à cobra
tem pra caramba, tem samba de sobra.
————————————
Fiz um samba assim só de zoeira!
Não era pra ter fama nem capital.
Era só mais um
Samba bem banal
imperceptível grão de sal!

Fiz um samba que não volta atrás.
Eu por mim, o fim fincava aqui.
Sei que vão surgir
Obras imortais
Tanto faz se eu conseguir.
Mas se a caçamba tem corda demais
Bamba é quem corta essa asa do samba.

Translation by Clarice Assad

“Without Taking Away”

I made a samba just because I wanted

Short like a cherub’s pipi
Just for myself
I didn’t even want to show it at the bar.

But my samba didn’t conform
Barely woke up, left me, abandoned me
And said:
“It’s just that I was born to be a show.”

And since then it doesn’t stop at home
And it lives behind the fame in which he lay.

I wanted a samba without even taking
The face and face of my loveliest love

Come back samba of mine
My love is not such a carnival.
I made a samba just for fun!
It wasn’t supposed to be huge.
It was just another
Samba, very banal
Of those who expect nothing.

Program notes:

After writing the text for Persist (2020), I realized that it read like a combination of a bedtime story and a call to action. This reflects the way in which the poem and the opening of the piece came to me. I was awake at 3am, my mind racing, trying to sort through the many problems of the world during this time, punctuating each with “everything will be okay.” Listing both our fears and hopes can be cathartic, and to achieve these hopes—safety, health, equality, kindness, progress, and empathy—we must persist. We must support those who need a moment to rest and take care when the burden of change-making feels too great. My hope is that this piece gives strength and light to those who need it. Endless thanks to David Alan Miller and Dogs of Desire for commissioning and premiering Persist.

Text:
I am running
But I am not sure
If I am running to or away.
The way we are,
We are apart,
But we are not alone.
When you cry, also cry out
And our crying will meet
And become shouting,
And this shouting will shake the earth. It will shake small at first and build As we demand new landscapes Expansive enough
To house our dreams.
It begins as a whisper—
Or worse, a death (or many),
Or better, a poem, a chant— Something for the next ones to read To speak,
To shout,
Whether privately to themselves
When the moon is full
And their covers envelope them, Or loudly,
Relentlessly,
Proclaimed to thousands,
Those who seek new homes
For the dreams their mothers Dreamed.

Program notes:

Program notes can equally serve to elucidate as well as constrict the potential of music, yet the nature of this music remains relatively clear. The first few weeks of quarantine was both the conclusion of my time at Yale, as well as a new beginning of entering wild dreamscapes. Apparently, the overwhelmingly wild and vivid dreams seemed to be a widespread phenomenon as people began to experience new lives in isolation, harkening back to the sensory deprivation techniques of monastics in search of ecstasy and enlightenment. This work strives to extract many different musical forms from the same, distilled, monistic motif which unites it, in such a way that reflects the sort of delirium of wandering thoughts popping in and out of existence, similar in quantum creation annihilation pairs, when the mind drifts in the waking, hypnagogic stasis –often a byproduct of sleep deprivation.

Program notes:

From Embers is a meditation, beginning small, then growing and unfolding with compound meters, mimicking the uneven beats of a pumping heart. It expands with a burst of energy, then contracts and returns to its origins.