Performed by Standing Wave

They Sing and They Clap and They Shout 
2019 | 12'

Commissioned by Standing Wave
for alto flute, bass clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, violoncello, and electronics

"They Sing and They Clap and They Shout" is based on the songs of Swedish-American labour activist Joe Hill (1879-1915). Hill was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, an international labour union founded on principles of “revolutionary industrial unionism”, and he contributed numerous protest songs to their “Little Red Songbook”. In 1915, Hill was executed for murder in Salt Lake City after a lengthy and widely-publicized trial. The IWW—and many subsequent historians—have maintained that Hill was framed, and he has since been held up as a martyr for the labour movement. After his execution by firing squad, his ashes were divided into 600 packets and sent to various branches of the IWW and their allies. The ashes were marked with the epitaph: “Joe Hill murdered by the capitalist class, Nov. 19, 1915”. 

"They Sing and They Clap and They Shout" incorporates many of Joe Hill’s songs, or, more specifically, many performances of his songs. The piece is peppered with transcriptions of tiny fragments from performances by Joe Glazer, Cisco Houston, Harry “Haywire Mac” McClintock, Pete Seeger, Earl Robinson, Barbara Dane and, particularly, Swedish folk singer Finn Zetterholm (drawn from his 1969 album "Joe Hill på svenska"). 

Joe Hill travelled across America lending his voice and his songs to IWW strikes and protests. In 1912 he travelled to British Columbia where he joined the Fraser River railway strikes and composed several new songs specifically for the striking workers. These included “Where the Fraser River Flows” based on the then-popular tune “Where The River Shannon Flows” by James I. Russell. They Sing and They Clap and They Shout incorporates a recording of “Where the Fraser River Flows” by the great American folk singer and activist Utah Phillips, used here with the generous permission of his estate.

"They Sing and They Clap and They Shout" takes its title from Joe Hill’s most famous song “The Preacher and the Slave” in which he coined the phrase “pie in the sky”:

Long-haired preachers come out every night
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right
But when asked how 'bout something to eat 
They will answer in voices so sweet

You will eat, bye and bye
In that glorious land above the sky
Work and pray, live on hay 
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.

"They Sing and They Clap and They Shout" was commissioned by Standing Wave.

They Sing and They Clap and They Shout

Composer / Performer / Improviser
This Soundcloud page focuses mostly on new music composition. For more about vocal work and performance, visit personal website, YouTube or Vimeo!

i tinker with electronic music and hope to someday understand how sound and music work.

I am a composer that is classically trained with broad interest and experience in world musics. MM New England Conservatory '86, BM University of Massachusetts at Amherst '76.

My compositions have won awards from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, New England Reed Trio International Chamber Music Composition Competition, a Bryant Fellowship from Harvard University, and a certificate from the 21st Century Music Project Competition of the the International Center for Japanese Culture in Yokohama, Japan. My works have been performed across the United States, Europe and Japan.

As a composer, I am interested in considering commissions and collaborations. Performing scores and parts are available to all my works here on SoundCloud through Universal Edition, J. W. Pepper Music, Frank Warren Music Service, or by contacting me.

I hope you enjoy listening here.

Rose Bolton, Sonic Landscapist

New album available on cassette and digital: Important Records: Cassauna
https://importantrecords.com/products/rose-bolton-the-lost-clock

https://cassauna.bandcamp.com/album/the-lost-clock

Rose Bolton is one of Canada’s most innovative and multi-faceted composers. She has been creating full-length film scores for broadcasters such as CBC, TVO, Arte and Super Channel for over a decade. She also has a thriving compositional practice creating electronic and instrumental music for innovative multimedia projects, as well as for concert performers. These concert compositions include major works such as Song of Extinction, a 45 minute work for Toronto’s Luminato festival and created in collaboration with filmmaker Marc de Guerre and Griffin Award winning poet Don McKay. Other recent concert and electronic works include a piece for the Kitchener Waterloo Symphony with ambient electronics, and a sound and video installation at the Canadian Music Centre for Toronto’s Nuit Blanche. Her concert music has been performed across Canada by Canada’s leading ensembles, including the Vancouver Symphony, the Esprit Orchestra. Rose Bolton has a Masters degree in composition from McGill University.

Canadian Composer finding the right notes.

John Kameel Farah is a composer and pianist based between Berlin and Toronto. He studied composition and piano performance at the University of Toronto, where he received the Glenn Gould Composition Award twice during his studies. In 1999 he had private lessons with Terry Riley in California, and later at the Arabic Music Retreat in Hartford. In 1998, he performed the complete solo piano works of Arnold Schoenberg in Toronto. Toronto’s NOW Magazine named his as Best Pianist 2006. John received the 2011 K.M. Hunter Artist Award for Music from the Ontario Arts Council.

Farah now focuses primarily on his own creative hybrid of improvisation, composition and electronic music. Simultaneously using piano, synthesizer, computer, and at times harpsichord, his solo performances exist somewhere between the concert hall and an experimental DJ set, mixing forays into free improvisation, jazz, electro–acoustics, middle-eastern modes, and ambient minimalism and distilling them into cohesive, surrealistic structures. 

Farah performs regularly in Berlin and Toronto, and has toured internationally across the U.K., Europe, USA, Canada, the Middle–East, Brazil, South Korea and Mexico. In 1999 and 2002, he visited the Edward Said National Conservatory in the West Bank, giving performances and masterclasses in Ramallah, East Jerusalem and Bethlehem. 
His newest solo album is called Time Sketches, released on the Neue Meister label. He collaborates with Peggy Baker Dance Projects, and in 2016 won a Dora Mavor Moore Award for his work with choreographer Peggy Baker. He has also been a member of the Canadian Electronic Ensemble since 2009.

They Sing and They Clap and They Shout

Christopher Mayo