A Wind Ensemble Wishlist

Pale Blue On Deep - Aaron Perrine

Tears Of St. Lawrence

Score and more: http://www.stevenbryant.com/music/catalog/nothing-gold-can-stay

Nothing Gold Can Stay was commissioned as a surprise gift for Kevin Sedatole in honor of his first ten years at Michigan State University. His conducting students spanning that decade, led by Jamal Duncan and Armand Hall, banded together and approached me at the 2015 College Band Directors National Convention in Nashville about writing the work, and I knew immediately that I couldn’t refuse this special project, made all the more appropriate because my wife, Verena, was one of Kevin’s very first students at MSU.

The music is my deliberate attempt to write a chorale – something simple, beautiful, and familiar. The deceptive surface simplicity of Robert Frost’s poem seems to coincide with this music, particularly the paradoxical descending of dawn to day, all embodying the concept of felix culpa, or “lucky fall” – the idea that loss can bring greater good, and is in fact necessary.

Nothing Gold Can Stay (MSU World Premiere)

A Glimpse of the Eternal

For Large or Medium Wind Ensemble Fixed Media, Horn Solo and Melodica (or Accordion), and guided improvisation

Dedicated to all those who have lost a loved one without a chance to say goodbye.

Death’s thin melody too…is a set of variations that began with the sound of a squeaky
escalator in Arezzo, Italy. The sound itself seemed to be reminiscing about the days when a lone monk wandered the hillside dreaming of a way to help people remember melodies. There is a hidden simple chord progression in this squeak, and yet, there are tones that rise beyond that simple progression into a harmonious other world: they belong, even if they do not fit. Death’s thin melody too…returns to Arezzo, in the footsteps of Guido of Monaco, and invites musicians to let go of notation and return to using their ears as a primary instrument for music-making. This work asks something different of the musicians: that they make music in community using all of the skills they have developed on their instruments, but guided by their unique sensitivities of each person as a listener.

Death’s thin melody first appeared as “Up/Down” in a Kansas City multi-media dance production called WE! (Jane Gotch and Mark Southerland, Spring, 2012), and as part of my epic series called 2012 Stories in live performance and appearing in forthcoming CD No. 7, Chanes. This version invites other instrumentalists to perform along with the haunting, simple tune that I originally improvised along with Arezzo’s escalators. Death’s thin melody too… was commissioned by Joseph Parisi for the UMKC Wind Ensemble.