TAMARACK
Alexandra Gardner


TEODORO ANZELLOTTI - accordion solo, BOB BANGHART - mandolin, JULIA BASTUSCHECK - viola, NATHAN BASTUSCHECK - euphonium, JOCELYN CLARK - koto, DAVE GLAZIER - violin, BOB KING - violin, HALE LOOFBOURROW - violin, BILL PAULICK - French horn, SALLY SCHLICHTING - flute, DAVID SEID - cello, JOHN STAUB - bass, STEVE TADA - violin, RICK TROSTEL - trumpet, STEFAN HAKENBERG - conductor



Alexandra Gardner: Tamarack (the name of a tree common in North America) is written for and dedicated to the CrossSound players and Teodoro Anzellotti. I am particularly inspired by the ability of the accordion to serve as a powerful solo voice, and at the same time to blend amazingly well with a variety of instruments. As a result, this work is mainly an exploration of timbral transformation: pitches and sonic textures are shared and passed around between instruments, both individually and in groups. Throughout the piece, certain rhythmic and melodic elements serve as signals for this process. For instance, fast upward flourishes in the accordion always bring about activity in other instruments, such as undulating sustained tones in the strings, or syncopated rhythmic patterns from the brass section. Articulations played by the koto give rise to swelling trills in the flute or a strumming mandolin. Periods of shimmering calm are contrasted with fast scurrying activity. Initially the ensemble seems to grow out of the accordion solo, then through a series of shifts and turns the accordion is woven into and around the overall texture, and ultimately a fade to the sounds of metal and wood reveal the solo line once again as it runs off into the distance.


SOUND CROSSING
Elliott Gyger



NATHAN BASTUSCHECK - euphonium, BILL PAULICK - French horn, RICK TROSTEL - trumpet, STEFAN HAKENBERG - conductor

Elliott Gyger: The punning relationship between the two words in my title is brought out in the music in a number of ways. Sometimes two or three different layers of music are combined, either running simultaneously (e.g. in parts of the first piece, “Triple Fanfare”) or alternating (e.g. in “Scherzo with Distractions”). Elsewhere, a single line of music will be broken up among different instruments: this is particularly important in “Signals with Echo,” where the horn’s solo is gradually taken over by trumpet and euphonium. Both techniques are prominent in the final movement, which reworks a traditional form in Western music, the passacaglia. The physical positioning of the players is different for each movement. The technique of dividing the performing forces for a piece into spatially separated groups is particularly associated with the music of 16th-century Venetian composer Giovanni Gabrieli and his contemporaries. While Sound Crossing is not influenced by Gabrieli’s musical style, the basic reasons and principles for the use of spatial separation remain much the same: creating call-and-response patterns, dramatic entrances, echo effects, and more generally surrounding the listener with festive cascades of sound.

SIHEYUAN
Hiroko Ito

LIU JING - erhu, TEODORO ANZELLOTTI - accordion, JULIA BASTUSCHECK - viola, NATHAN BASTUSCHECK - euphonium, JOCELYN CLARK - koto, DAVE GLAZIER - violin, BOB KING - violin, HALE LOOFBOURROW - violin, BILL PAULICK - French horn, SALLY SCHLICHTING - flute, DAVID SEID - cello, JOHN STAUB - bass, STEVE TADA - violin, RICK TROSTEL - trumpet, STEFAN HAKENBERG - conductor

Hiroko Ito: Siheyuan is a traditional building style for houses in China. A set of four structures is located in a North, South, East, and West direction, facing each other with an open-air courtyard in the middle. This piece was inspired by the image of evening scenery with the moon moving through the sky as time passes, creating shadows of Siheyuan in different directions, in different sizes, in different contrasts, all in similar shapes. I imagined two different time frames: 1. Dusk 2. Between dusk and dawn. Wind instruments ornament the lines played by string instruments which imitate the melody played by the erhu. This melody uses a traditional Chinese scale with accordion providing the harmony.

Mary Watson: When I listen to your piece I hear more tangible interferences in the courtyard. The first movement evokes a quiet time, perhaps, in this deserted courtyard where small breezes swirl around leaves on a hot sultry afternoon. The second movement increases the activity. Many types of visitors enter the courtyard, some bustling and hurried, some leisurely taking their time. One can imagine birds or butterflies fluttering and larger visitors creating their own disturbances until finally disappearing and allowing calm to return.

DIVERTIMENTO d.C.
Martin Brody

NIMBUS: SALLY SCHLICHTING - flute, STEVE TADA - violin, JULIA BASTUSCHECK - viola, NATHAN BASTUSCHECK - euphonium

Mary Watson: Much like a classical string quartet Divertimento d. C. presents a quickly varying conversation between its four instruments. Commissioned for Juneau's performing group Nimbus which often performs transcriptions of string quartets, it has three movements without breaks. All three are held together by the idea of repeat: literal repeat, similar repeat, and paraphrased repeat. The first movement, Automaton, uses the four instruments like a mechanism at first tightly wound but gradually relaxing. As the motion winds down we are prepared for the second movement, Canto. It opens with the strings and flute playing accompaniment to the euphonium solo. As the piece progresses the other instruments begin taking a more equal role until the flute ascends into the upper register and the three instruments carry the tune with the euphonium accompanying. In the third movement, Parallax, the flute becomes the principal instrument. Here we find variations of earlier ideas in nostalgic snippets of material. The idea of repeat is also reflected in the title d. C. indicating da Capo or return to the head, the top of the piece, but also suggesting a memory from the head.



SEQUENZA XIII FOR ACCORDION (solo)
Luciano Berio
TEODORO ANZELLOTTI - accordion solo

Teodoro Anzellotti: The virtuosity which is typical of all Berio's Sequenzas is in this case perhaps less obvious. The performers acrobatic effort is unobtrusive, serving the work's elegance, lightness, and rich sonority. The typical and sometimes rough sound of the accordion is thus transformed. The especially interesting thing about Sequenza XIII is its inclusiveness: it incorporates sounds from the Parisian nightclub as much as the avant-garde concert hall..


SPEC
Volker Blumenthaler

LIU JING - erhu solo, BOB BANGHART - mandolin, JULIA BASTUSCHECK - viola, NATHAN BASTUSCHECK - euphonium, JOCELYN CLARK - koto, DAVE GLAZIER - violin, BOB KING - violin, HALE LOOFBOURROW - violin, BILL PAULICK - French horn, SALLY SCHLICHTING - flute, DAVID SEID - cello, JOHN STAUB - bass, STEVE TADA - violin, RICK TROSTEL - trumpet, STEFAN HAKENBERG - conductor



Mary Watson: When I heard a rehearsal of your piece I liked very much the way the erhu was counterbalanced by the other instruments and I liked the unusualness of the mixtures of sounds.

Volker Blumenthaler: SPEC is a solo concerto for erhu and chamber ensemble. The piece starts by introducing all participating instruments, comparable to gradually observing the different features of a landscape. The main section of the piece is an extended outburst which calms down slowly like a wave. The epilogue is a remembrance of the beginning and concludes with the image of a leaf floating down. Thus the name of the piece is a contraction of the phrase speculations of an imagined landscape.


VARIATIONS ON A JAPANESE CHILDREN SONG
Keiko Abe

PAUL COX - marimba solo

Keiko Abe: Flutes and drums echoing from a distant summer festival, the sound of my wooden clogs clacking along an empty street - the sounds and memories of my childhood, linked with traditional children's songs, are constantly in my mind. I have tried to portray these songs not just as melodies providing fond memories of the past but as my own music with its roots in the earth and the present.R>
Hiroko Ito: This piece indeed took me back to my childhood in Japan. I relived the night of the summer festival, the only time I was allowed to be out at night without an adult supervisor. My stroll in the dark street was a lonely, anxious, and scary, but exciting experience. The only clues to the location of the festival were the echoes of the taiko drum. We were all drawn to the magical magnetic field of the beat. I recognized a folk tune I sang as a child. The combination of the tune and the beat of the matsuri
taiko in the piece produces a nostalgic feeling of excitement of and sorrow in me.

Volker Blumenthaler: Listening to the piece, I was fascinated by the image of flowing water. Dark murmurs sluggishly floating around stones, shrill hissing of eddies, fragments of melodies like small islands, in between. The torrent builds and then it releases all the different speeds of water.


SANKA (Song of Praise)
Tadao Sawai

MASAYO ISHIGURE - koto solo


Tadao Sawai: This piece is played without interruption, however it is divided into three sections with a slow section in the middle. The first section is lyrical. The second section introduces a freer more irregular rhythm. In the third section, very small sets of pitches appear sequentially. A unique sound world is developed. A song of praise may emerge in response to the beauty of nature, love of humanity, and depth of art. When the experience of the sublime within oneself overflows, dreams and poems are produced.

MEMO 7
Bernard Rands

SUSANNE SERFLING - soprano solo

Terry Quinn: The text of MEMO 7 is a brief poem by Emily Dickinson:

Bind me - I still can sing -
Banish - my mandolin
Strikes true within -

Slay - and my Soul shall rise
Chanting to Paradise -
Still thine.

In this 8 minute piece, the musical notation includes the following instructions for the vocalist: closed mouth, voiced, unvoiced, normal speech, muttering, voiced exhaling, unvoiced inhaling and exhaling, cough, unvoiced sound but articulating a 't' sound against the teeth with a slight sucking action, and clap the hands together. There are over 70 emotions or actions to be expressed by the singer, including laughter, chuckle, giggle, stuttering, confused, anxious, confident, strident, angry, childish mocking, joyous, prayerfully. The composer mixes previous words or even letters of those words with the current part of the poem. For example, bind, bind me, and the letter b recurs frequently during the first half of the piece.

Bernard Rands: MEMO 7 is not a setting of text to music but rather an exploration, even an analysis, of the text through a spectrum of vocal behavior which ranges from conventional (bel canto) singing to non-verbal utterances. Thus, Emily Dickinson's poetic intention is supported and illuminated at the same time as it gives rise to realms unimagined and unintended by the poet. This is music's unique capacity.

STRANDS
Stefan Hakenberg

MASAYO ISHIGURE - koto, ROGER SCHMIDT - trombone


Terry Quinn: Strands has two movements. The tempo markings are calm for the first and vivid for the second. The first movement starts with buzzing tremolos played on the koto. While executing the tremolos with the right hand the koto player pushes down and releases the strings with the left hand, creating a bending of the pitches, a particular characteristic of koto technique. Several silences punctuate the sequence of koto melodies. About half way through the piece, the trombone appears, briefly at first, but then with a long didjeridoo like sound which requires the player to practice a technique called circular breathing in which he breathes in air through his nostrils while simultaneously releasing air that he had kept in his mouth into the instrument. Toward the end of the movement the trombone takes over the leading role.

The second movement is more concise than the first. The music is driving and energetic and sometimes is tongue-in-cheek in character. In contrast to the first movement, both instruments interweave throughout as if engaging in a conversation. In the end the piece circles back to its beginning evoking the opening sounds without a formal recapitulation.


GALE IN CROSS SOUND
Paul Cox

ROGER SCHMIDT and his students: MIKE BAGLEY, LAURINDA MARCELLO, JENNY MACDOUGALL, KARI PERENSOVICH, and LOGAN WILD- on trombone, PAUL COX - conductor




Mary Watson: This piece is definitely programmatic in nature (no pun intended!). It is made up of two states of the ocean: in calm water and in gale. The first half of the piece portrays the calm before a storm. Calmness is evoked by slow moving changes in the four independent voices but there are occasional ripples foreshadowing the impending storm. In the second half harmonic tension increases and propels the listener towards the culmination of the storm. The dissonant turmoil subsides as the piece ends.

TWO SONGS
Cord Meijering

MASAYO ISHIGURE - koto, SUSANNE SERFLING - soprano, SUSAN BRANDT-FERGUSON - baritone saxophone, PAUL COX - marimba, ROGER SCHMIDT - on trombone, CORD MEIJERING - conductor

Cord Meijering: The texts for my Two Songs were written at Sitka's Island Institute I chose Berry Pickers' Shadows by Jane Leer because of its many familiar moods. While reading the verses I smelt the grass of North Sea dunes, felt softly breathing wind, and tasted berries. The unchanging tuning of the koto represents a kind of inner calm. The marimba - originally an African instrument, constructed to play dance-like polyrhythms - here plays melodies and chords. In the second song In The All-Verbs Navaho World (text by William Stafford), the marimba regains a dance-like power and draws all the other players into its atmosphere: even the voice is treated like a percussion instrument imitating the marimba.

Berry Pickers' Shadows
Jane Leer

Something happens when the smell of crushed
cranberry leaves and mosses rises up
around your knees, when the stoop of your back
freezes and the bent elbow straightens, then returns
to the bucket, when the corners of your eyes
watch for the bear's black shadow”
the sense of women here before,
the same stoop and bend, the same basket
bucket plopped berry-full between hunkered
thighs, the same full sour scent of a decomposing
blanket of earth beneath your feet, and the shadows
you sense are not bear, but the ground's
memory of those gathering before.

In the All-Verbs Navaho World
William Stafford





Left-alone grow-things wait, rustle-grass, click-
trunk, whisper-leaf. You go-people miss the hold-still
dawn, arch-over sky, the jump-everywhere glances.
This woman world, fall-into eyes, reaches out her
makes-tremble beauty, trolls with her body, her
move-everything walk. All-now, our breathe-always
life extends, extends. Change. Change your live-here,
tick-tock hours. Catch all the flit-flit birds,
cat the offer-food, ride over clop-clop land,
our great holds-us-up, wear-a-crown kingdom.

NACHTGESÄNGE (Night Songs)
Bun-Ching Lam

MASAYO ISHIGURE - koto, SUSANNE SERFLING - soprano, PAUL COX - marimba, ROGER SCHMIDT - trombone, BUN-CHING LAM - conductor

Volker Blumenthaler: The poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) was one of the masters of German literature.



1. Hälfte des Lebens (One-half of Life)
The first song is divided into two sections. After a short introduction the vocal line begins expansively and is imitated in a free manner by the instruments. The second section presents more contrasting material. The connection between voice and instruments breaks off. In the end only the voice remains.



2. Der Winkel von Hahrdt (The Shelter of Harhrdt)
One musical gesture is dominant: a struck sound followed by a slowly swelling sound which disappears rhythmically in a series of echoes or a fleeting movement.



3. Lebensalter (Ages of Life)
The short ornamental gesture from the previous song controls now the melodic line at the beginning. A sequence of sharply punctuated pitches give a feeling of loss and loneliness. In the end soft static and exhaling lines delineate an image of death.

Hälfte des Lebens_____________________One-half of Life
Mit gelben Birnen hänget_______________With its yellow pears
Und voll mit wilden Rosen______________And wild roses everywhere
Das Land in den See,__________________The shore hangs in the lake,
Ihr holden Schwäne,__________________O gracious swans,
Und trunken von Küssen_______________And drunk with kisses
Tunkt ihr das Haupt___________________You dip your heads
Ins heilignüchterne Wasser.____________In the sobering holy water.

Weh mir, wo nehm' ich, wenn_______Ah, where will I find
Es Winter ist, die Blumen, und wo________Flowers, come winter,
Den Sonnenschein,____________________And where the sunshine
Und Schatten der Erde?_________________And shade of the earth?
Die Mauern stehn_____________________And speechless, in the wind
Sprachlos und kalt, im Winde___________Walls stand cold
Klirren die Fahnen.____________________The weather vanes creak.


Der Winkel von Hahrdt_________________The Shelter at Hahrdt
Hinunter sinket der Wald,_______________The forest sinks off
Und Knospen ähnlich, hängen____________And like buds, the leaves
Einwärts die Blätter, denen_______________Hang inward, to which
Blüht untht unten auf ein Grund________Flowers up the valley floor below,

Nicht gar unmündig___________________Not much under-age
Da nemlich ist Ulrich___________________This is where Ulrich has
Gegangen; oft sinnt,____________________Walked; often broods over his
über den Fußtritt,_____________________________________footprint
Ein groß Schiksaal______________________A great destiny
Bereit, an übrigem Orte.________________Ready, among the remains.

Lebensalter___________________________Ages of Life
Ihr Städte des Euphraths!________________Cities of the Euphrates!
Ihr Gassen von Palmyra!________________Streets of Palmyra!
Ihr Säulenwälder in der _________________Columns wooding
Ebne der Wüstste, ____________________________________the desert plain,

Was seid ihr?___________________________What are you?
Euch hat die Kronen,____________________You are stripped of your crowns,

Dieweil ihr über die Gränze____________As you crossed beyond
Der Othmenden seid gegangen,____________The bounds of breath,
Von Himmlischen der Rauchdampf ________By the smoke
und___________________________________________and
Hinweg das Feuer genommen;____________Fire of the gods;
Jetzt aber siz ich unter Wolken,___________But now I sit under the clouds,
darin ________________________________________in which
Ein jedes eine Ruh hat eigen, _____________Each thing finds its peace,
unter_________________________________________under
Wohleingerichteten Eichen, auf____________A fine stand of oaks, by
Der Haide des Rehs, und fremd___________The deer meadow, and strange
Erscheinen und gestorben mir_____________And dead, they appear to me,
Der Seeligen Geister.___________________The spirits of the blest.

GLOSSARY OF MUSICAL TERMS

Chanson
Although "chanson" simply means "song" in French, it refers more specifically to a type of cabaret music, such as that sung by Edith Piaf.

Didjeridoo
Australian aboriginal instrument. The performer uses circular breathing to produce a sound like a giant Jew's harp.

Fanfare
A fanfare is a tune for trumpets originally used as a signal for ceremonial, military or hunting purposes.

Passacaglia
This is a dance in slow triple time with variations on a melody which often appears in the bass.

Rondo
A form which was probably derived from folk music. The design is based on a main theme A and contrasting themes (which can be labelled B and C, which form the sequence ABACA.

Scherzo
A lively, sometimes humorous or surprising, instrumental work in quick triple time usually in ABA form.