Performed by Lahti Symphony Orchestra for Yle; Recorded by Anna-Kaisa Kemppi

Very captivating and well-written music. Kudos to Lara and Lahti Symphony Orchestra for great performance!

Kaamos

Program Note:

"Dreams of Flight" was inspired by Nancy Rubins’ colossal sculpture "Chas’ Stainless Steel, Mark Thompson’s Airplane Parts, about 1,000 lbs. of Stainless Steel Wire & Gagosian’s Beverly Hills Space." From a small metal plinth erupts an assemblage of scrapped airplane parts, chaotically billowing out in all directions—an explosion, frozen milliseconds after it has occurred. Every inch of the work contains its own maelstrom of metal objects and wires, poised as if slicing and striking blows against one another.

Up close, the sculpture is visually overstimulating, hard to fully comprehend. From farther away, the disjunct parts seem to form a whole: a confused spaceship, a madman’s flying machine, a strange, ungainly bird attempting to take flight. As much as Rubins’ sculpture is boisterous, it is also melancholic. It stretches upwards, yearning to fly but, tamped down by about one-thousand pounds of stainless steel, it never will. The sculpture is eternally stuck mid- takeoff.

"Dreams of Flight" plays out this struggle in ways both fanciful and sincere. The piece is comprised of three continuous sections. The first pictures the sculpture-plane-bird bolting down a runway. Just as it leaves the tarmac, however, it crashes back to Earth. The second section delves into the sculpture’s night-time dreams in which, if only in fantasy, it soars. The final section sees the sculpture make another attempt at flight, barreling down the runway with even more power—perhaps enough power this time...

Performances:

11/14/21 (Premiere)
New Voices for Orchestra Concert
Musical Arts Center, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, Bloomington, IN. 
Indiana University Jacobs School of Music Concert Orchestra
David Dzubay, conductor

Kaamos

BMI Foundation

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