FAULT LINES
The Quake Ensemble
SitkaSound Ensemble
Owen Underhill (guest conductor)

Sat. 1 Sept. 8:00 PM, JUNEAU, Northern Light Church
pre-concert talk at 7:15 PM

Sun. 2 Sept. 7:45 PM, HAINES, Chilkat Center for the Performing Arts
pre-concert talk at 7:00 PM

In 1999 as well as in 2000 I was invited to participate in the CrossSound Festival in Juneau and Sitka, Alaska. Both times the invitation came with a commission to write music for an ensemble of western and Asian instruments. 1999 I wrote for two concerts in Juneau " …there is none like thee among the dancers…" for flute, viola, kayagûm, and changgu. In 2000, this time for Sitka, I wrote "Two Songs” for soprano, baritone saxophone, trombone, marimba, and koto. As a thank you for the wonderful time I had there, by the Pacific Ocean, with salmon and whale, out of gratitude for the warm hearted hospitality of the Alaskans, I wrote this little musical greeting for trombonist Roger Schmidt. Roger premiered my “Two Songs” and was my host.

Peter Child (1953) Boston, Massachusetts
Bleak Light: Four Poems
by John Hildebidle
(2001) for baritone and piano

Three out of the four poems in “Bleak Light: Four Poems of John Hildebidle” concern the harried, joyful, ambivalent holiday season between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, under a New England deep freeze, and the music adopts a vernacular tone commensurate with the verse. The last poem, ‘Snow Buddha,’ takes a serious, contemplative turn.

John Hildebidle’s poetry celebrates everyday, commonplace experiences using colloquial language, but his poems infuse the familiar with feeling, and at times transcendence. He builds resistances into the language that prevent us from glossing over its easy surface (e.g., “Today / everything’s lists, best or worst,”) and assonances and concordances of sound and rhythm provide a supple scaffold underlying the freedom of the verse (e.g., the sibilant-plus-tongued-consonant combinations that recur motivically in ‘Snow Buddha:’ “The iced path squeaks under my boots, / wind sneers across the playground, / past swings, under a slide cold enough to burn.”) The vocal line in “Bleak Light” is sensitive to these qualities and reflects them in the rhythms, contour and pitch structures of the line.
“Bleak Light” was commissioned by the Los Angeles ensemble Music of Changes.

Garrett Fisher (1970) Seattle, Washington
CrossSound Fable
for violin, cello, flute, clarinet, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, trombone, euphonium, and piano

CrossSound Commission 2007

“I rely on a highly collaborative process to create each work, for I believe that a truly engaging performance comes, in part, from the ensemble’s deep commitment to the process. In ‘CrossSound Fable,’ I seek a balance between structure and freedom in order to give the ensemble solid grounding while at the same time enough ‘open space’ to individualize the role. I combine both specific notation as well as aleatoric “ragas,” inspired by the Indian classical tradition. I appreciate the open-minded and dedicated approach that is a trademark of the CrossSound festival, and am excited to develop this piece with the its performers.”

Philip Munger (1946) Palmer
Shards II
for bugle solo, cello, flute, alto saxophone, 2 trumpets, trombone, electronics, and recorded sound

CrossSound Commission 2007

In 2005, Philip Munger composed "Shards," for bugle, electronics and recorded sound, Opus 77.

Although Munger usually performs in the concert hall on trombone or tuba, or as a keyboard accompanist, he has been playing bugle since 1960. For over ten years, he has been playing "taps" at ceremonies for veterans in Wasilla and Anchorage. The composer, a Vietnam-era US Army veteran, is a member of Bugles Across America, a national organization of volunteer buglers, created during the Clinton administration as a response to a Pentagon proposal to replace live buglers at many ceremonies honoring veterans with a device called the "digital bugle," which looks just like a bugle, but plays an MP-3 file of taps at the press of a button. Thousands of organization volunteers now perform at funeral ceremonies for veterans whenever active service musicians are unavailable.

"Shards" is a fantasy on "Taps." The five-minute composition attempts to bring a human element up against the ongoing momentum toward robotization of our military, from airborne surveillance and rocket-firing drones, to automatic death condolence signature machines for Iraq and Afghanistan war dead. Munger will perform on a single-key Lawler bugle, custom-made for the US Army Fife and Drum Corps, and now on loan to the composer. The work is dedicated to Dennis Harris, a longtime friend, and a member of the Juneau chapter of Bugles Across America.

For the 2007 Crosssound Festival’s Fault Lines concert series, the composer has added an instrumental accompaniment to the original electronic background canvas.

Philip Munger (1946) Palmer
Nice Work Kid. Don’t Come Back!
for cello, flute, alto saxophone, 2 trumpets, and trombone

CrossSound Commission 2007

The concept of fault lines, earthquakes or tectonic shifts for the theme of an Alaskan musical event resonates on several levels. To be offered an opportunity to create live performance art around such a theme on the level of professionalism usually associated with the CrossSound ensembles is an honor on all those levels.
“Nice Work Kid” is based on my most memorable Alaska earthquake experience, 32 years ago. While gillnetting for Sockeye and Chinook salmon on the Copper River delta, our fleet was informed of a massive earthquake less than 200 miles away. The predicted tsunami forced the Coast Guard to issue an advisory for the gillnet fleet to immediately seek deep water. As I watched the rest of the fleet flee, I realized I could catch a lot of fish where one of the escaping fishers was now gone. I gambled, went to his “fishing hole,” and caught an enormous load of Chinook. The tsunami didn’t happen. Rather than being smashed by a huge wave, I paid for my boat in two hours.
When the fisher, nicknamed “Black Bart,” came back, he smiled wanly at me, and my catch. He laughed, and said “Nice work kid. Don’t come back.”

Stefan Hakenberg (1960) Juneau
Schafe Waschen (2001)
for piano solo

The programmatic background of this composition is a pastoral scene by a Scottish river. I found it depicted in William Wordsworth's 23rd sonnet from his 1820 cycle “The River Duddon”

Sheep Washing

Sad thoughts, avaunt! — partake we their blithe cheer
Who gathered in betimes the unshorn flock
To wash the fleece, where haply bands of rock,
Checking the stream, make a pool smooth and clear
As this we look on. Distant Mountains hear,
Hear and repeat, the turmoil that unites
Clamour of boys with innocent despites
Of barking dogs, and bleatings from strange fear
And what if Duddon's spotless flood receive
Unwelcome mixtures as the uncouth noise
Thickens, the pastoral River will forgive
Such wrong; nor need 'we' blame the licensed joys,
Though false to Nature's quiet equipoise:
Frank are the sports, the stains are fugitive

Owen Underhill (1954) Vancouver, British Columbia
Sakalaka
for violin, cello, flute, clarinet, trombone, and piano

CrossSound Commission 2007

It is an adventure to compose a piece for six musicians I have never met before. "Sakalaka" (the title is a playful reordering of letters used in Alaska) is written in the spirit of embracing the unknown. From an exuberant launch, the music proceeds rather intuitively through a series of sections, returning eventually to a variaton on the opening music. Rhythmic intricacies, surprising juxtapositions of contrasting materials, and layering of multiple scales and tonalities are prevalent. Throughout the journey, the instruments alternate between a chaotic independent presentation and a more uniform, cohesive relationship. My thanks go to Jocelyn Clark, Stefan Hakenberg and CrossSound for commissioning this work and inviting me to the festival.

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SoloSound Series
RECITAL
The Quake Ensemble

Robert Henson (1969) California
Graffika (2000)
for violin, cello, flute, clarinet, trombone, and piano

The improvised “game” piece Graffika is an output of involvement with Strategic Improv Labs 2000 (sil2k) without whose participation the structured improvisational piece would not have been properly developed.  Based largely on graphic notation, single improvisational skills and the ensemble, Graffika posits that the individual musician supercedes the ensemble, and visa versa.
As a layered process of loops, involving turns, each musician makes a selection of a graphic to interpret musically.  As each choice influences the development of the piece, there is a chance for musicians to deconstruct what was previously built. Such selfish acts assert individual voice, but at the cost of the ensemble as a whole.
Graffika calls into question the canon of concerti, which has postulated that the improvisatory aspect of the form (cadenza) be relegated into a convenient spot.  Graffika turns this inside out.

John Cage (*1912, California, †1992 New York)
Living-Room Music (1940)
for random objects

Living-Room Music is a quartet for players to use any household objects or architectural elements as instruments, playing them only with their fingers or fists.  A Gertrude Stein poem is used for the second movement, and is probably the first appearance of rap music.

Yoko Ono (1933) Japan
Sky Piece for Jesus Christ 1965
for violin, flute, clarinet, and trombone

“Sky Piece . . .” is a performance piece. In the 1960s, Yoko Ono was active in the New York-based Fluxus movement, which, in the words of Fluxus linchpin George Maciunas, "forgoes distinction between art and non-art, forgoes artists' indispensability, exclusiveness, individuality, ambition . . . complexity, profundity, greatness, institutional and commodity value . . . . It is a fusion of Spike Jones, gags, games, vaudeville, and Duchamp." About her “Sky Piece . . . , “ which belongs to the Fluxus movement, Ono says in an interview with Carolyn Boriss-Krimsky, “[At that time, John] Cage was a very established person in his own right. He was amongst us, you know, the younger generation in New York. He was called "J.C" -Jesus Christ. [. . . ] “Sky Piece for Jesus Christ,” [. . .] was a little pun -- kind of a double entendre. The younger ones (we) were thinking that we were doing something that was a little bit of a step forward from him. But we were all influenced by him, encouraged by him, inspired by him.”

Francis Schwartz (1940) Texas
Cannibal Caliban 1975/1987 rev.
for violin, cello, flute, clarinet, trombone, and piano

"I wish to give both the performer and the public the opportunity to explore new ways of enjoying and discovering an artwork. During the past centuries, we have become too rigid, too fearful of the total art experience. I want the players to bathe in the wonders of their corporeal expressiveness, to savor the communicative power of facial gesture as much as they delight in a beautifully produced vocal or instrumental sound. Both artist and public grow in this discovery,” says the composer Francis Schwartz.

His composition Cannibal Caliban is a piece that excels at this goal.  Written in 1975, it incorporates alternating sound and gesture blocks that engage the audience, finally exhorting them to scream with the performers near the end.  The plot loosely follows what could be a day in the life of Caliban, the Cannibalistic character from Shakespeare's “The Tempest.”

Peter Schickele (1935) Iowa
Quartet for Violin, Cello,
Clarinet, and Piano 1982

Peter Schickele's “Quartet for Clarinet, Violin, Violoncello and Piano” was composed from material that had been "around for years, looking for the proper setting." Two movements were composed in 1979, and two in 1982 for its premier at Chamber Music Northwest on July 17, 1982. The work is dedicated to Schickele's father, about whom he writes: "At one point during my teenage years, we tried to have a family 'orchestra,' with my brother on violin, my mother on piano, and myself on bassoon; my father could rarely be coaxed into getting out his old flute, but his passionate love of serious music (and I do not use the term 'serious' in any superficial, record store department sense) had a greater, and better, influence on me than I suspected at the time (since he wouldn't let me listen to Spike Jones records while he was at home, I was perhaps a little bit rebellious about seriousness)."

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