Art of Influence: America—Part II
Saturday, March 18th @ 7:00pm
Sunday, March 19th @ 4:00pm
Stewart Auditorium, Longmont Museum
Enjoy this varied program of music that shaped the American sound—from the Colorado Premiere of Artist/Designer Ursula Kwong-Brown’s “Cover the Walls”, to the dulcet tones of George Gershwin's Lullaby, and Aaron Copland's jazz influenced clarinet concerto—Featuring returning clarinet soloist, Jason Shafer, alongside French composer Maurice Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin!
Featured Guest Soloist, Jason Shafer
Jason Shafer joined the Colorado Symphony as Principal Clarinet at the start of the 2013-2014 season. Previously, he performed for four years as a fellow with the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, FL. He received his Bachelor of Music with Highest Distinction from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, where he studied with Kenneth Grant. His other major musical influences include Mark Nuccio, Burt Hara, and Dr. Kyle Coughlin...
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Jason has appeared in guest principal roles with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Cincinnati Symphony; he is also Principal Clarinet at the Sun Valley Music Festival, where he has been a regular member since 2012. Always looking for opportunities to travel, he has performed abroad in Austria, Estonia, and Russia. Jason has collaborated in chamber music performances with many distinguished musicians, including Yefim Bronfman, Jessye Norman, Jeremy Denk, and Laura Aikin; as a concerto soloist, he has performed with the Colorado Symphony, the Sun Valley Music Festival, the New World Symphony, and the Eastman Philharmonia, among others. In 2021, he appeared as A soloist on the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with the Longmont Symphony in a virtual-only presentation. He is passionate about teaching and is on the faculty of the University of Northern Colorado and the International Festival-Institute at Round Top; he also taught at the Metropolitan State University of Denver from 2015-2016. In addition, Jason studied piano during his time at Eastman, and loves to accompany other musicians.
About the Program
URSULA KWONG-BROWN
(1987): Cover the Walls—Colorado Premiere
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Ursula Kwong-Brown is a composer, sound artist and designer, originally from NYC but recently located to Los Angeles. Described as ‘atmospheric and accomplished’ by The New York Times, her work has been performed in the United States, Europe, and Asia in diverse venues including Carnegie Hall, le Poisson Rouge, Miller Theatre, the Manhattan Movement & Arts Center, the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Sound designs include Head Over Heels at Pasadena Playhouse, Holiday at Arena Stage, The Wickhams at Arizona State Theatre, and the world premiere of Stonewall with NYC Opera. Honors include ASCAP and NACUSA awards, a Berkeley Symphony Composer Fellowship and grants from Chamber Music America and the Sloan Foundation. Ursula received her B.A. in Music & Biology from Columbia University, and her Ph.D. in Music Composition & New Media from the University of California, Berkeley.
“Over the last few years, I have become increasingly fascinated by the little known story of the Immigration Detention Station on Angel Island, located in the middle of the San Francisco Bay.” Sometimes referred to as ‘The Ellis Island of the West,’ Angel Island served as the entry point for virtually all American immigrants of Asian descent between 1910 and 1940. Unlike it’s East-Coast cousin, though, where most people were processed into New York in a matter of hours, because of the overtly racist Chinese Exclusion Act, many hopeful immigrants were held on Angel Island for weeks, even months, in a kind of hellish purgatory, as they underwent lengthy interrogations meant to objectively prove a relationship with an existing citizen. During their seemingly-endless detentions, some immigrants carved poetry into the walls of their dormitories as a way to pass the time, and to express their unhappiness, homesickness, and fear. In the interceding years, these poems were painted over and lost to history until 1970, when, during a final inspection just before the center was due to be demolished, a park ranger stumbled upon a few faint poems and was intrigued by their potential historical significance. With the support of the local Chinese community, demolition was halted, the center was subsequently turned into a museum, and the poems - more than two-hundred of them - have been translated into English by Him Mark Lai, Judy Yung and Genny Lim.
“My piece, Cover the Walls draws its inspiration both generally from the idea of these poems, and more specially from their actual text. When writing this work, I would sing the words of some of the poems to myself, and then adapt their melodies to the instruments. If you listen carefully, you may hear these two poems ‘quoted’ melodically in this piece for orchestra:
“I. Over a hundred poems are on the walls.
Looking at them, they are all lament the slow passage. What can one lonely man say to another?”
“II. I have lingered here three days moving again and again. It is difficult to compare this to the peacefulness at home. Life need not be so demeaning.”
AARON COPLAND
(1947-49): Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra with Harp & Piano
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“The King of Swing,” Benny Goodman, commissioned the Clarinet Concerto in 1947. Copland was on a good-will tour of South America that year and began work on the Concerto in Rio de Janeiro. He finished the piece in New York during the fall of 1948. Goodman was the soloist at the first performance, on November 6, 1950, with the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Fritz Reiner’s direction. The Clarinet Concerto is in two movements, with a cadenza for the soloist in between. “The general character” of the opening movement, said Copland, “is lyric and expressive. The cadenza that follows provides the soloist with considerable opportunity to demonstrate his prowess, at the same time introducing fragments of the melodic material to be heard in the second movement. Some of this material represents an unconscious fusion of elements obviously related to North and South American popular music.” In his book on Copland, Arthur Berger notes that since the work was written for Benny Goodman, “it inevitably exploits the ‘hot’ jazz improvisation for which that clarinetist is noted. But the very episodes that evoke the sharp-edged, controlled, motoric style of Goodman’s brilliant old sextet are often the ones recalling most strongly the stark, dissonant devices that gave Copland the reputation for being an esoteric in the early thirties.” Berger notes that jazz elements first appear in the soloist’s cadenza and “they dominate the fast second part of the work.”
GEORGE GERSHWIN
(1898-1937): Lullaby
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Gershwin’s academic training in music was sporadic. He had already written numerous popular songs and Broadway shows when he began studying with Edward Kilenyi. As a harmony exercise he wrote Lullaby for string quartet in 1919. In 1923, during one of only three lessons with Rubin Goldmark, Gershwin showed him the Lullaby. “It’s good. Yes, very good,” said Goldmark. “It’s plainly to be seen that you have already learned a great deal of harmony from me.” David Ewen says the Lullaby “provided evidence that Gershwin was already making notable progress in part writing, in tasteful harmonization, and in grateful writing for the four strings. The principal melody, which appears at once in the first violins, is a dolorous theme in the blues style.” That theme was used in the song “Has Anyone Seen Joe?” from Blue Monday, part of George White’s Scandals of 1922.
Lullaby was played at various private parties by friends of the composer. The first public performance took place in 1963, when Larry Adler played a version for harmonica and string quartet. The première of the original version was given by the Juilliard String Quartet on October 19, 1967 in Washington, D.C.
MAURICE RAVEL
Le Tombeau de Couperin
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In 1914 Ravel was working on a French Suite for piano. “No, it’s not what you think” he wrote to a friend, “the Marseillaise doesn’t come into it at all, but there’ll be a forlane and a jig; not a tango though.”
World War I interrupted Ravel’s plans. He was desperate to enlist, but repeatedly flunked the physical for being underweight. After rejection by the air force, he was finally accepted as an army truck driver.
After his discharge—for health reasons—he set to work on the piano suite again, changing the name to Le Tombeau de Couperin and dedicating each movement to a different friend killed in the War. He finished it in November of 1917. It was first played on April 11, 1919 by Marguerite Long, whose husband received the dedication of one of the movements.
Ravel then orchestrated all but two of the movements of the original piano suite. The orchestral version was introduced by Rhené-Baton and the Pasdeloup Orchestra in Paris on February 28, 1920. When asked about the title of the work, Ravel explained: “In reality the homage is not so much to Couperin himself as to French music of the 18th century.” He never specified which of the many musical members of the Couperin family he meant by that, but probably it was Francois.
Le Tombeau de Couperin has four movements. After the build-up of the Prélude comes the Forlane, a kind of jig. The witty Minuet leads to the breezy Rigaudon.
