Daron Hagen - Koto Concerto “Genji”, Mvt. 1 (New York Premiere)

Composer Daron Hagen discusses his life and work, and his upcoming opera, "A Woman in Morocco." (Originally aired 01/01/2014)

Daron Hagen: Running Toward the Knife

HAGEN, D.: Everyone, Everywhere: I. Rude Awakening (excerpt) [Naxos 8.579180]

University of Maryland Wind Orchestra
Michael Votta, conductor
Shuying Li, piano
The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland
College Park, MD
May 9, 2025

In This Breath

Commissioned and premiered by Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia, May 15, 2022.

Nijioma Grevious, violin
Suliman Tekalli, violin
Celia Hatton, viola
James Wilson, cello
David Lemelin, clarinet
Kevin Newton, horn
Thomas Schneider, bassoon
Andrew Sommer, bass

Eight Immortals and the Sea draws inspiration from the Chinese Taoism mythology. The Eight Immortals are considered to be signs of prosperity and longevity, so they are popular themes in ancient and medieval art. Among the literature on the subject, one of the work made during the Ming Dynasty (c. 14th–15th centuries) is called The Eight Immortals Cross the Sea. It is about the Immortals on their way to attend the Conference of the Magical Peach when they encounter an ocean. Instead of relying on their clouds to get them across, Lü Dongbin suggested that they each should exercise their unique powers to get across. Derived from this, the Chinese proverb “The Eight Immortals cross the sea, each reveals its divine powers” indicates the situation that everybody shows off their skills and expertise to achieve a common goal.

In the composition, the eight players who each musically represent one of the legendary Immortals depict a more abstract and loose-structured picture of the story. The music takes over its own logic beyond the inspiration and focuses on the collaborative and dramatic elements represented in the story. It also treats the “sea” as an equally important aspect to present the relationship between individual Immortals (each musician) and the Sea (composite sound world contributed by the entire ensemble).

Eight Immortals and the Sea

The orchestral version of "la flor más linda" was commissioned by Wintergreen Music, Erin Freeman, Artistic Director, for premiere by Wintergreen Festival Orchestra, Miguel Harth Bedoya, conductor, July 27 & 28, 2024. This is the unedited recording of the July 27, 2024 dress rehearsal.

PROGRAM NOTE
In September 2018, as protesters from Nicaragua’s Carazo region prepared to march against the increasingly dictatorial Ortega government, blockades and armed forces awaited protesters. A world away, I responded by recording and posting a verse of Carlos Mejía Godoy’s "Nicaragua, Nicaragüita," a song that has become as clear a symbol of the resistance as the blue and white Nicaraguan flag. It was a cry into the abyss, but, to my surprise, it actually landed with dear ones and their friends in Nicaragua who wrote that they felt our family standing with them. From this urgent sense of reaching across distance through music grew la flor más linda, written for Glen Adsit, Edward Cumming, and the Foot in the Door Ensemble. With arms outstretched through sound, sonic images I associate with Nicaragua are slammed together: the Basílica bells that toll freely during the Festival of San Sebastián; the pito and chischiles of the dance of the Toro Huaco, for which stand in flute and maracas; the firecrackers that announce celebration; scalar gestures that conjure the strong wind that blows through my mother’s home town; fragments from de la Cruz Mena’s "Los Amores de Abraham," a tune my grandfather and his brothers played in their ensemble Marimba Diriangén; and a single gesture from Godoy’s "Nicaragua, Nicaragüita." Despite an impulse to center on vibrant imagery, celebratory sound mutates into the sinister, and song becomes lament. Estamos con la gente de Nicaragua, siempre. Viva Nicaragua libre. —GL

la flor más linda - orchestral version - Miguel Harth Bedoya, conductor DRESS REHEARSAL 7.27.2024

The protagonist in AMELIA loses her pilot father as a young girl, and is forever after haunted by a dream alter-ego of a brave young woman pilot of the 1930s who disappeared into the unknown. In the opera’s first scene, as news of her father’s demise is heading towards their home, young Amelia falls asleep and dreams herself into the final moments on earth of The Flier, sung by a high soprano because the character is always way up in the clouds. In this passage The Flier, recognizing the inevitability of her fate, sings a melody associated in the opera with the romance and beauty of flight. Meanwhile, in the next room, Amelia’s mother Amanda rages at her missing husband for sacrificing himself in war. 

THE FLIER: We are flying at an altitude of 1000 feet. Soon the shudder and hush of the sea.

AMANDA: You could have said no, Dodge. 

THE FLIER: We are circling but cannot see you.

Gerard Schwarz conducts Jennifer Zetlan as the Flier, Luretta Bybee as Amanda, and the Seattle Symphony. Music posted by special arrangement with the publisher, Burning Sled Music. Photo by Rozarii Lynch.

AMELIA 'We Are Flying At An Altitude'

AMELIA is about life and death; finding the strength to create new life, and also letting go and mourning those we lose. The Act Two quintet weeps for the loss of the Boy, Amelia’s hospital neighbor and an incarnation of Icarus who dies of injuries sustained when he fell from a great height. Composer Daron Hagen cast this quintet as a fugue because, as he said, “There’s nothing more terrifying than a fugue!” There’s something mechanical about the inevitability of the fugue, intensified in this particular fugue by the ostinato sound of the Boy’s heart monitor, an unsettling repetitive figure which we hear over and over again in the accompaniment. That motif’s pinched high B flat is actually played by a dead-stick Vibraphone, meaning the percussionist hits the bar but never releases his mallet. The machinery in the orchestra sets up an eerie atmosphere, while the five voices lament the Boy’s imminent death.

FATHER: Hmm...

AUNT HELEN: A testament to faith and power,
To dream of life, to give it birth;
Each woman knows her strength on earth.
With will and heart she casts off fear
To soar into the atmosphere. 

FATHER: A testament to faith and power:
Creation in its finest hour.
To dream of flight, to leave the earth,
Each flight an essay in rebirth.
I’m right here, son...

BOY: Father, don’t leave me.

FATHER: With will and heart, son,
cast off your fear.

DODGE: A mission you cannot desert...
And life, like death, you can’t rehearse.
I traded what was far for near:
I never meant to disappear.

THE FLIER: A testament to faith and power:
Creation in its finest hour.
To have a dream, to know its worth,
Informs a life with weight and mirth.
Though obstacles, of course, appear,
You simply have to persevere.

With Jordan Bisch as the Father, Jane Eaglen as Aunt Helen, Nicholas Coppolo as the Boy, William Burden as Dodge, and Jennifer Zetlan as the Flier. Gerard Schwarz conducts the Seattle Symphony. Music posted by special arrangement with the publisher, Burning Sled Music. Photo by Rozarii Lynch.

Amelia Broadcast

AMELIA Quintet

Composer Daron Hagen wrote several orchestral interludes for AMELIA, following the model of Benjamin Britten’s “Sea Interludes” from PETER GRIMES. The first interlude, a sweepingly romantic piece based on Dodge’s soaring melodies about the allure of flight, tells the story of Amelia growing up. 

Gerard Schwarz conducts the Seattle Symphony. Music posted by special arrangement with the publisher, Burning Sled Music. Photo by Rozarii Lynch.

AMELIA Interlude - Amelia Grows Up

AMELIA opens with a little girl gazing up at the starry sky. Her brief opening aria sings of her love for her father as well as the allure and romance of flight. Its four-square poem and block chord accompaniment are reminiscent of one of the opera’s principal motifs, the Navy Hymn, “Lord, guard and guide all those who fly / Through the great spaces of the sky.” 

YOUNG AMELIA: When I am grown, let me fly, too, swift as a wind-blown leaf or jay, clear as the soaring Pleiades, unbound by earth and troubles of day. 

Gerard Schwarz conducts Ashley Emerson as Young Amelia and the Seattle Symphony. Music posted by special arrangement with the publisher, Burning Sled Music. Photo by Rozarii Lynch.

AMELIA - Young Amelia's Fantasy Of Flight

Performed by:
Grace Mittleman, Soprano
Samantha Norman, Alto
Matthew Bridgeman, Tenor
Sawyer Harrington-Verb, Bass
Dawson Atkin, Synthesizer,
CJ Diogaurdi, Sound Design

Pilgrimage

Composer, Songwriter, and Musician who defies genre.

Pilgrimage

Dawson Atkin

Related tracks