The Dahlia Flute Duo performs “Two Flutes and Tape” by Nomi Epstein at this year’s Electro-acoustic Concert. The composer provided the following notes about the piece: “Written for Australian flutist Janet McKay’s 2009 US Tour “Those Vanished Hands,” the work explores material as sonic block both as live player and prerecorded tape parts. Juxtaposition of blocks are presented through stratification and variation of durational properties.”
Jim Liddle narrates Inés Thiebaut’s work Forget Nothing and Forgive Me Anyway while accompanied by Janet Jacobson on violin. Inés writes the following:
This is the second major collaboration with poet and dear friend Molly Bain. She wrote this poem on commission, and my only instructions to her were: “just make it abstract, don’t tell a story…” But Molly always writes stories, for she is a storyteller, even when they are not linear. Her words are the sole inspiration for the music, which is just a sound representation of them. In conversation, the voice and the violin follow each other while narrating the sense of aloneness, the notions of past and future, and how sometimes the simple things in life are not that simple…
Another singer from the 2011 festival! In addition to being our guest composer for the 2011 festival (our first featured composer to speak around the Greater Hartford area), Gilda Lyons performed her cycle A Small Handful (2002), an emotionally powerful setting of Anne Sexton’s poetry, on the Concert Pro Femina. Of the piece Gilda writes:
Patrice Fitzgerald, accompanied by Barbara Robbins, singing in Concert Pro Femina as part of the 2011 festival. Her performance included Per la piu vaga e bella (Francesca Caccini, 1587-1641), Den Abschied schnell genommen (Josephine Lang, 1815-80), and L’Heure exquise (Lady Dean Paul, 1879-1932).
Sheri Brown on alto saxophone giving an amazing performance of Joan Tower’s Wings (1981) at December’s benefit concert. A virtuosic (and at times frenetic) piece, the composer writes:
Wings was written for my friend and colleague Laura Flax, who premiered the piece at her recital in Merkin Hall (New York City) on December 14, 1981. The image behind the piece is one of a large bird—perhaps a falcon—at times flying very high gliding along the thermal currents, barely moving. At other moments, the bird goes into elaborate flight patterns that loop around, diving downwards, gaining tremendous speeds.
Photo courtesy Mary Scripko.
