Tag Archives: David Patrick Stearns

The Nobility of Women, Philadelphia Inquirer

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The “kind of musical layering that makes his choral works so entrancing” spoke to the Philadelphia Inquirer’s David Patrick Stearns in his review of The Nobility of Women, my premiere with Mélomanie this past weekend. It’s a dance suite for Baroque flute, oboe, violin, cello, and viola da gamba and harpsichord, and is about 20 minutes long in eight dances.

He said that the piece hit its stride when “a big, interesting harpsichord flourish invaded the third movement,” and continued to say that the “Sarabande had an oboe solo full of eloquent, Italianate longing, while the final-movement Ciaccona was packed with individual star turns.” He relates Nobility to the line of “works as diverse as Stravinsky’s Agon and Respighi’s popular Ancient Arts and Dances.“

There were small and not-so-small solos throughout the piece. Daughter Priscilla (the oboist) played beautifully in that Sarabande solo, as did everyone, who weaved the lovely sounds of these instruments into the ensemble. Stearns rightly singled out “the poised soulfulness of Boismortier’s Suite in D minor, played with particular depth by the wonderful viola da gamba player Donna Fournier.”

I liked the Telemann more than he did, but I realize that I may be in the minority. Telemann just doesn’t miss with me, the Dvorak of the Baroque. But lots of people, I’ve found, think of Telemann’s output as they do of much of Hindemith’s. And I can’t say I’ve ever been bored by Hindemith, either. Even the notey stuff I love.

Mark Hagerty’s clever and delightful Variations on a Theme by Steely Dan rounded out the concert, along with Couperin dances for Priscilla.

I had a blast writing for this wonderful group. Their commitment to the piece revealed little explosions of surprise that captivated me.

Vespers in Condemned to Music, Arts Journal

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David Patrick Stearns compares Monteverdi and me. He went to recent performances of a “Vespers” (not 1610), put together from later Monteverdi works by the Green Mountain Project, and my Vespers, and believes that both the master and I resolve dichotomies by bringing “enemies together.”

Monteverdi brought a new kind of music—less contrapuntal, more operatic—into the Church. My piece comes from someone Stearns describes as an “ultra-devout” composer who writes “almost anti- evangelical,” or not preachy, music. It “speaks to him without histrionics.”

“There’s absolutely no guile or strategy behind it…. There’s plenty of joy – though not with anything as superficial or as potentially vulgar as jubilation. Smith’s Magnificat is full of wonderful canonic writing that has a simple, straightforward effect – achieved through a complexity of means that could only be the work of an extremely accomplished composer… De-dramatized, de-politicized spiritually-oriented music is no stranger to admirers of Arvo Pärt. But even at his most secular, Pärt seems to echo, however distantly, the asceticism of the Eastern Orthodox Church. If Smith is writing for a church, it’s one without walls.”

I don’t know what that means, though people of all faiths have told me marvelous things about their experiences listening to it. I see, simply, a Lutheran Vespers, a traditionally formed Christian work with Psalms, hymns, a Lord’s Prayer, and so on. What I tried to put in it was what I have felt from the inside: the power of a chant, of a hymn, that churns and overwhelms. Many, many greater ones than I feel this, the saints from books, the saints who I sit next to. He says it speaks to his “integration-starved soul.” I bow my head at those kind words.

Profile in the Philadelphia Inquirer

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Some scattered thoughts on the interview with David Patrick Stearns in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer.

Generous remarks by him, and by Donald Nally. Very generous. Am I notoriously self-effacing? Notoriously? I mentioned the Hi-Lo’s in a Broad Street Review article on Milton Babbitt (Stearns had done his homework), and don’t you know, in the living room right next to the sofa where he sat, the LP leaning against the turntable stand, “The Hi-Lo’s and All That Jazz.” Well, Gene Puerling’s chops do make it into Vespers, but more as an approach to counterpoint than anything else. Or…?

Knowing your own influences is tricky. I hear more Praetorius, Nicolai, Lutheran in Vespers, he hears Anglican. Go figure. I sent a new photo and they used the scruffy one from the recording sessions. Ugh (self-effacing, ha), but somebody likes it, I guess. Shout-out to Mélomanie, good! Can’t wait for those concerts.

I’m no pushover? Thought I was. He liked the birds, that’s good. And it’s true, we have German names for all the wildlife: Fritz, Hunding, Steffi, Gottlob (although him I’d like to trap and release in Pennypack, enough’s enough already). I’m incredibly blessed. All around. NY press, probably won’t be any, that’ll teach me to worry.

Apparently I said the word “butt.”

The Waking Sun in a Spring season preview

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In the Sunday 30 Jan 2011 Philadelphia Inquirer, David Patrick Stearns and Peter Dobrin highlight Philadelphia-area performances coming up in the next half-year. Mentioned is the Seneca Sounds project in The Crossing’s Month of Moderns, in particular the 18 June concert with my new piece for them and Tempesta di Mare, The Waking Sun.

My work, and the other commissioned music from Ēriks Ešenvalds, Kamran Ince, and Gabriel Jackson, will set texts by Seneca the Younger (3 B.C. – 65 A.D.). Seneca is just a part of it; knowing the work of The Crossing, and Donald Nally’s ear for finding new pieces, I know it will be an amazing three concerts.

The Waking Sun is scored for choir, positiv organ, theorbo, and Baroque string quintet. I’m composing it now, so all the text isn’t set in concrete, but I can let you in on the beginning. The six sections of the half-hour work are all from choruses from Seneca’s dramas. The first is from his Oedipus:

The gates have sounded, and he himself, with none to guide and sightless, gropes his way.

I then impose a line from Troades:

In whose kingdom shall you die?

And so it goes from there. I can’t wait to hear The Crossing and Tempesta in this. Can’t wait to finish writing it!

Where flames a word, July 2010

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For the last Month of Moderns concert, Donald Nally included Where flames a word with works by Paul Fowler, Lansing McLoskey, Frank Havrøy, and David Shapiro. I loved the premiere performances of Where flames last year; this year was even better. Donald seemed to move the piece along in places without speeding up the tempo—an Einstein thought-experiment, that. At least that’s how it sounded to me. But it became so much more conversational, while losing none of the intensity and quality of sound The Crossing is known for.

One thing surprised me that I hadn’t noticed before. In the concert and at the recording sessions the following week this occurred to me: these 22 singers can get loud. Not wild, wobbly, shouty loud, but serious wheelhouse power, controlled. When Donald calls for it, and just when you think they can’t possibly give any more, they slip into a fifth gear and leave you shaking your head and smiling. This happened a few times, in my piece and others. It may seem like a silly observation—that they can sing really loud—but when you hear it live, silly it’s not.

Yes, yes, they can sing soft, too!

In the July 19 Philadelphia Inquirer, David Patrick Stearns wrote:

Frank Havroy’s Psalm, David Shapiro’s The Years From You to Me, and Kile Smith’s Where Flames a Word (all Celan-based pieces heard Saturday) were mercurial in manner and form, and they shared a harmonic sense in which innovation was born of intense expressive necessity. At times, the fusion of words and music was staggering.

Shapiro’s fine piece (which was a premiere) was full of dreamy motivic echoes. Smith’s peaked emotionally with a soprano-section outburst on the words, “I understand, I do…” suggesting a profound union of souls. Performances were particularly savvy with a clarity of diction that revealed the singular progression of each piece, thanks to conductor Donald Nally.

The recording sessions went very well. The CD, of all Paul Celan-based works, mostly from last year’s Month of Moderns, will be released on Navona. The Crossing will turn heads with this.

The Best in Classical Music, 2009

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It’s thrilling to be included in the year’s Top Ten list—two years running—of the Philadelphia Inquirer’s David Patrick Stearns. His survey of things musical in the area lists events I wished at the time I could have gotten to, now even more so, as I read about them again. But I was fortunate to be a part of the Paul Celan project in The Crossing’s Month of Moderns, and to hear exciting music by David Shapiro and Kirsten Broberg. My offering was Where flames a word, a setting of two poems and one largeish bit of prose by Celan. You can read the text and my notes about the piece here.

What Stearns wrote:

Where do you start with the Crossing’s Month of Moderns Festival? Founder/director Donald Nally culled and commissioned lots of pieces based on the troubled poetry of Paul Celan during May and June at Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill. Besides yielding great pieces by Dane Bo Holten and Philadelphian Kile Smith, new forms of musical expression surfaced, such as the hallucinatory spirituality of Joby Talbot’s Path of Miracles.

After the premiere, they reprised my piece at the opening concert of Chorus America’s annual conference, which happened to be in Philadelphia this year. More about the piece, and excerpts from the premiere:

Where flames a word (Paul Celan)

SATB div. 13′. Program notes. Reviews

1. Before your late face, page 5. View excerpt

2. Conversation in the Mountains, page 13. View excerpt

3. I know you, you are the deeply bowed, page 23. View excerpt

Two Laudate Psalms, Inquirer review

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In the Philadelphia Inquirer today, David Patrick Stearns reviews the premiere of Two Laudate Psalms:

… natural, un-ostentatious simplicity. Close inspection revealed subtle deviations in its agreeable melodiousness that never allowed the ear to slip into a mental autopilot that comes with having heard like-minded pieces.… The God-is-in-the-details adage holds true… The music’s spiritual conviction was amplified by these near-invisible touches.

Read the entire review here.