@TAK-Ensemble www.TAKensemble.com
3/16/2019
The ARCH, University of Pennsylvania

Charlotte Mundy, soprano http://www.charlottemundy.com
Laura Cocks, flute http://www.lauracocks.biz
Carlos Cordeiro, clarinet https://carloscordeiro.org/
Marina Kifferstein, violin http://www.marinakifferstein.com/
Ellery Trafford, percussion http://www.ellerytraffordpercussion.com/

"The closer you come" to is a non-linear setting of an excerpt from Don DeLillo’s White Noise. Murray, a to-the-point colleague of the protagonist, has some blunt things to say about collective nostalgia.

[excerpt]

Murray said, “I don't trust anybody's nostalgia but my own. Nostalgia is a product of dissatisfaction and rage. It's a settling of grievances between the present and the past. The more powerful the nostalgia, the closer you come to violence. War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country.”

Excerpt from WHITE NOISE by Don DeLillo
Copyright © 1984, 1985 by Don DeLillo
Used by permission of Robin Straus Agency, Inc. All rights reserved.

The closer you come to

Boreal is a work for clarinet, piano, violin, and cello that was composed for the 2019 Copland House CULTIVATE Institute and the musicians of Music from Copland House. 

The piece started with a melody I’ve had in my head for a quite a long time: the piobaireachd tune MacCrimmon’s Sweetheart.  I did some work on canntaireachd (the vocable system for highland piping tunes) a while ago, and this particular tune has stuck with me. Once I would have been resistant to letting a borrowed tune pervade and drive a work like this, but this melody felt like an old friend it was about time I invited in. In many ways this piece is the opposite of traditional canntaireachd: while canntaireachd is about singing the sound of an instrument, this piece aims to let instrumentalists “play” a voice. Along the way some long-remembered environmental sounds crept in alongside this long-remembered tune. These are mainly familiar sounds from my hometown in Minnesota, though I’m not aiming for any particular kind of veracity in evoking this landscape.

Boreal

progressively smaller TVs

Performed by NOW Ensemble live at the Red Note New Music Festival
2/11/20

"for Ellis and the chaotic joy you will bring"

Program Note:

The mind wanders was written during a time of significant transition and excitement in my life. As my wife and I await the birth of our first child, I find that I am struggling to focus. My mind wanders towards thoughts of anticipation, joy, nervousness, and an ever-present urge to get up and do something to prepare. This is not a mindset compatible with the slow, contemplative compositional process to which I am accustomed. I decided to accept that, and let the little bursts of creative energy I had be valid on their own and disregard their relation to previous materials. More importantly, I allowed myself to disregard how my initial plan disagreed with whatever was coming to me in the moment. I think that disregarding my plans in favor of being present in the moment will be a continued allowance in this new chapter.

The mind wanders

I'm a composer and musicologist. I write a lot of vocal and chamber music, both with and without live electronics. I try to write and study music that surprises and excites me. Take a listen if you like!

Boreal

Flannery Cunningham

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