EllenSong came about as a result of the passing of one of our most treasured colleagues on the faculty of the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance in 2011.  Ellen Campbell brought so much to all of us – artistic excellence, thoughtful and creative teaching, unfailing collegial support, organizational leadership, strength of character, warmth of personality and a delightfully mercurial sense of humor.  EllenSong begins with a tune – Ellen taught her students first and foremost to sing with their instruments – played by both the ensemble horns and the soloist/leader.  After that, the music shifts into the mercurial, with sections of music of differing character, but always guided by Ellen’s sense of joie de vivre.  Among the many lovably unexpected things that Ellen did was her recent acquisition of a set of bagpipes.  Hence it seemed absolutely appropriate to quote a piper tune.  The choice, The Rowan Tree, was determined by the tune’s simple beauty, but also by association – the Conservatory planted a tree near her studio to honor her life and work.  As with the tree, her legacy remains with us.

I was moved beyond words to be asked by my colleagues to create this piece, with deepest gratitude for all of the gifts that Ellen shared with us so freely.  I was doubly grateful that this work should be written for the UMKC Wind Ensemble (including many of her students), conducted by another dear colleague Joseph Parisi, with maestro Thomas Bacon, long-time friend of Ellen’s and hornist par excellence, as soloist.


Ellensong for Wind Ensemble with Horn Solo

2013, fixed media

Over the last several years, I have worked to simplify my music as much as possible--at first from a desire to avoid cluttering it up with "extra notes," and increasingly out of an impulse to get down to the most basic, essential idea I can. Pentecost is one manifestation of that drive. Its genesis lies in the contemplation of a handmade tapestry I own, a deep blue field divided by two interlocking grids of white lines. My first quick sketches--wavering pencil on blank paper--tried to take in too much; but, as I pared it down, I came to a band of interweaving lines moving across the page, individual and yet one gesture.

The title Pentecost refers to both the event and the feast in Christian tradition: the descent of tongues of flame onto the heads of a waiting, wondering band of disciples. The weaving lines of my sketches circle and descend, a moment suspended in time, imagined in sound.

(the present version of Pentecost is a stereo remix based on an octophonic remix I did in February 2014, replacing the original stereo file from October 2013)

Pentecost

Pentecost (2013)

EDGES is inspired by several events in my life over the period of 1995-97.  Two are near-death experiences, while the third is the sudden passing of one of my closest colleagues and best friends, Professor Robert Cooper.  

The first movement, "BACK FROM THE EDGE", is a chronicle of the battle that I waged with "flesh-eating strep", which nearly cost me my life in spring, 1995.  A fragment of a line from French playwright Jean Genet’s “Prisoner of Love” served as additional inspiration: 

 “perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay in memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh.  A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me.”

In a sense, my life has re-emerged from where it lay, for a while, silent, in memory.

Movement II, "POSTCARDS", is inspired by my mentor and friend, composer Donald Erb, who had his own near-death experience about a year later in the same Ithaca, New York hospital (a bizarre coincidence).  I know that he shared many of the mental aberrations I experienced during the recovery process, and POSTCARDS reflects the strange visions, the elusive but more and more frequent moments of clarity, and the eventual return to reality that such experiences create.  For me, in retrospect, these thoughts were like vivid postcards of other realities, sent to me by another part of my mind and filtered through the pain, the fear, and the medications that I had been given.  There was also a highly obsessive quality to my thoughts during the reco-very, which is reflected in the primary melodic material which simply refuses to disappear, though it changes colors, dynamics, and tempos at every turn.

Postcards -- real postcards, that is -- also played a role in my experiences.  While recovering, I received a post card (often of questionable taste) every two or three days from Don.  When it was his turn to be in recovery, it was my turn to send him postcards (equally questionable)...they seem now to me to be a lifeline to reality from people who are eager to welcome us back.

A quote was inspirational for this second movement as well, this time from Hermann Hesse’s Damien:

“In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.”

The final movement is a reflection on the amazing, wonderful, and sometimes difficult life of my colleague, Robert Cooper.  Robert had, without a doubt, the speediest metabolism of anyone I have ever known.  Lunch with Robert could be defined as both of us eating for the first five minutes and Robert watching me finish eating for the last 45.  Robert had two computers in his office and a phone; often all three were busy at once, while he carried on at least one additional conversation with whomever was present.  Yet Robert had great depth too.  He was a living example to students and colleagues, especially in facing life’s travails with courage and conviction.  He was also funny as hell.  I suppose that Robert’s pace was impossible to sustain, and in fact he died suddenly at age 45 on September 18, 1997. 

No quotations needed with this movement.  This one’s for you, man.


EDGES Movement III OhMan for wind ensemble

Pathétique: A Tale of Two Rabbys (Overture - Chp.3)

Tom Waits (on Jim Wilson): "Wilson, he's always playing with time. I heard a recording recently of crickets slowed way down. It sounds like a choir, it sounds like angel music. Something sparkling, celestial with full harmony and bass parts - you wouldn't believe it. It's like a sweeping chorus of heaven, and it's just slowed down, they didn't manipulate the tape at all. So I think when Wilson slows people down, it gives you a chance to watch them moving through space. And there's something to be said for slowing down the world."

Source: "Woyzeck to run at Freud Playhouse". Daily Bruin (USA), by Andrew Lee. December 3, 2002

Find more on the recording on this link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023815586

Tom Waits on Tom waits talking about this recording - http://gloriousnoise.com/2008/tom_waits_interviews_tom_waits

More on the recording - http://hearingvoices.com/transcript.php?fID=142

You can buy original recording here - http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Chorus-Crickets-Jim-Wilson/dp/1932192077?tag=viglink124132-20

Original recording from the author - http://www.constancedemby.com/godscricketchorus_f.html

And more: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2013/10/13/weekend-diversion-is-this-an-amazing-chorus-of-slowed-down-crickets/

Jim Wilson | God's Chorus of Crickets | crickets audio recording slowed way down

These four songs are excerpted from music written for a production of Bertolt Brecht’s epic play, The Caucasian Chalk Circle. In the context of the play, they are all sung by the heroine, Grusha Vachnadze, a servant girl working in the governor’s kitchen at the time of a bloody coup. In the confusion, the murdered governor’s infant son is left behind by his horrible mother, who is more interested in which dresses she can save. The child is found and rescued by Grusha, who flees the city, hunted by soldiers who wish the child heir dead. Over the course of her travels and travails, Grusha falls in love with the child, finally claiming him as her own. The Song of the Rotten Bridge, Lullaby, and Song of the Child reflect a progression from her loving and claiming the child, to seeing in him a future of redemption for the sins of his father. In the second song, Song of the Center, Grusha sings of her fiancé Simon, who has been conscripted into the military to fend off the invading armies. 

The music for The Caucasian Chalk Circle was commissioned by the Dordt College Theatre Department. The texts are from Frank McGuinness’ adaptation of Stefan S. Brecht’s translation of the original play. Where the original play indicated titles (Song of the Rotten Bridge, Song of the Center, and so on), they have been retained in the score. 

Texts used by permission.

Pathétique: A Tale of Two Rabbys (Overture - Chp.3)

Brian Padavic

Related tracks