Such a fine concerto!  I loved listening to it.

SPIDER BABY (1996)
- by Michael Schelle

KAMMERORCHESTER BASEL (Switzerland)
Kirk Trevor, conductor
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"Spider Baby" was commissioned for the 1996 Calderfest (honoring Alexander Calder) and premiered by the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra. Calder loved collage and spiders.

"Spider Baby" is a 'collage' piece that musically depicts the chaos of Alexander Calder's studio. After the 'theatre' @ 8:55 - 9:05 (spiders on stage), lights gradually fade, solo tenor sax player (wearing sunglasses) stands and plays his line, the brass section (also wearing sunglasses) light up and smoke cigarettes (where permitted by law ;) ... with the passing references to 1950's coffeehouse beatniks, an alternative title might be "Spider, Baby" .... bis bis

European premiere: Kammerorchster Basel (Switzerland)

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Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra: https://soundcloud.com/rimsky-1/michael-schelle-spider-baby

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In February 1998, "Spider Baby' was choreographed by the great West Coast choreographer Donald Byrd 
http://spectrumdance.org/about-2/donald-byrd/ - and presented w/ LIVE orchestra. For that production, Byrd called his piece: "spider babies". Very cool.

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Michael Schelle's website: schellemusic.com/1.html

SPIDER BABY (1996) for orchestra

Composed by Tom Nazziola
Performed by:
Wade Culbreath - Marimba
Tom Nazzioa - Djembe
Mastered by William Weisbach
Engineered by Wade Culbreath and Tom Nazziola

Created by Grammy®-nominated composer Tom Nazziola, “Immovable Do” (pronounced "dough") features a soaring, relentless marimba pattern (almost etude-like), which is joined by an equally aggressive and supportive djembe part - both exploring different accents and phrases governed by elements of African and Indian music. The “tongue-in-cheek” title refers to the anchoring of harmony by a recurring low “C” or “Do” (as used in solfege). The stable repetition of C eventually makes its way to C# (still considered “Do” in the solfege system) allowing for a shift in harmonic perspective thanks to a play on words and pitch license (if you will).

Immovable Do

Year of Composition: 2012
Nick Diodore, Cello and Chester Englander, Cimbalom live in Cleveland, OH
No Exit Ensemble concert, 2019
Commissioned by Andre Emelianoff
Saint Elizabeth Bells is a duet for cello and cimbalom honouring the memory of Sándor András Agócs (1932-2011)
About the piece:
Saint Elizabeth Bells takes its inspiration from bell sounds of the Saint Elizabeth Cathedral in central Budapest. The cathedral is named after Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, a Catholic saint who served the sick. The piece was written in memory of my father, Sándor Agócs (1932-2011). He spent his final days over Easter in Saint Elizabeth Hospital, which stands next to the cathedral. His room faced the cathedral, and through the open windows he would have heard, in semi-consciousness, the tolling bells drifting and resonating. Every phrase of the work’s nine-minute trajectory comes out of the natural intervals of the bell sounds as I mis-remember (and imagine) them, with the purest version—and the part that I composed first—heard near the end. The piece is not mournful, but has a light, evanescent, delicate quality. Inhabiting a meditative space populated with memories just out of reach, the work is a dialogue of colours in which time is suspended. Saint Elizabeth Bells was commissioned by the New York-based cellist André Emelianoff, who encouraged me to explore my Hungarian roots by writing a piece that included the cimbalom, the concert hammered dulcimer, in its scoring. Those roots originate with my father, who came from a family of watermelon farmers—the first of his family to be educated—and who fled the county as a political refugee after the 1956 uprising (he returned to Budapest in the 1990s). The work was premiered by Paul Katz and Nicholas Tolle on the New England Conservatory’s First Monday series in 2013, and is about ten minutes in duration.

-	Kati Agócs

http://www.katiagocs.com

Saint Elizabeth Bells (Violoncello and Cimbalom)

These two works represent different views of how the external metaphors of wind and earth may be shaped to reflect the more intimate internal worlds of the human heart and mind.

Tempest, my flute concerto, was shaped by the thought of wind—such an essential element to the flute and flute playing—and how, in the natural world, this courses across the planet in different ways from benign to hostile. The three movements reflect different wind patterns found around the globe and served as a departure point for a three movement work cast in a quasi-classical frame of fast-slow-fast structure. Each movement engages a message, I hope, beyond mere tone painting, to reflect deeper aspects of the human condition, the human experience, thought, reflection, psychology and emotion.

Unfinished Earth is a longer and deeper work, again cast in three movements, and delving into the constant degradation and reformation of earth and sea. Just as the earth slowly changes and evolves, we ourselves are constantly evolving through the deepening of our life experience, the processing of life’s joys and tragedies, and the inner passage of our turmoils and triumphs. Tendering, the first movement, is about the formation of earth and the molten rock that is risen from the subterranean earthen smelter to become land. For me, this is a movement about becoming, and through such becoming, firming in our senses of self, just as earth does as it becomes land. Eternal Ocean, the second movement, evokes the shifting currents of deep ocean, again, as a metaphor for the unfocussed and at times even conflicting currents of the inner emotional worlds of the human experience. The final movement Tearing Drift is again a work with multivalent meanings: some referring to the ripping apart or fractures in the earth’s surface as might happen in an earthquake perhaps; to the alternative meaning of the first word of the title not as being torn but as crying. This notion of an earth cry or deep subterranean swell of grief was a central image and intent of this movement. The strident wind and brass microtonal peals and screams against the strong percussive thrust of this movement was intended to reflect such an earth cry—or even the Munchian silent scream of isolated man.

Knehans—Unfinished Earth

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Tempest-Concerto for Flute and Orchestra—3. Etesian

Michael Schelle

VIRUS (2019), for large orchestra
Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra
Neal Gittleman, music director and conductor
Schuster Performing Arts Center, Dayton
October 19, 20, 2019

www.schellemusic.com

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VIRUS (2019), for large orchestra

Douglas Knehans is an American/Australian composer of orchestral, chamber, choral and electronic music as well as works for stage, film and television.
http://www.douglasknehans.com/


Tempest-Concerto for Flute and Orchestra—3. Etesian

Douglas Knehans

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