PIPE DREAM for string quartet, Op. 32, No. 9

Soprano HSIN YI LIN and pianist ASYA GULUA perform GARY LLOYD NOLAND'S setting of ALEXANDER THEROUX'S poem PIMP (Op. 111).

Acclaimed novelist/poet/essayist Alexander Theroux has given the composer permission to set as many of his poems as he wishes from his Collected Poems (published by Fantagraphics in 2015). Noland originally scheduled a recital of a number of these songs to be performed by soprano Hsin Yi Lin and pianist Asya Gulua on April 11th, 2020 at Classic Pianos in Portland, Oregon, but that recital was cancelled in the eleventh hour on account of the (then) escalating pandemic. The recital was finally rescheduled at Lincoln Hall Room 75 at Portland State University on December 4th, 2022 under the umbrella of CASCADIA COMPOSERS (a chapter of NACUSA). This recording is one of the raw takes from the recording sessions immediately following the concert.

Here is Alexander Theroux's poem "Pimp":

As a literary agent
you hustle books like flesh,
a working burke for money,
an English snob in a coat,
2 percent castle, 98 moat.

The difference between
the preening you and a pimp,
since both of you are frauds,
when the arithmetic is done,
is simple: there is none.

Music copyright © 2019 by Gary Lloyd Noland
Text from Collected Poems copyright © 2015 by Alexander Theroux
Permission to set this poem to music has been granted by the author.

GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

The December 4th, 2022 recital and recording sessions that took place at Portland State University were made possible in part by the selfless generosity of former co-owner of the Willakenzie Estate Winery and well-known and influential benefactor of the arts in Oregon: Ronni S. Lacroute.

A special heartfelt thanks also goes to my thirteen Facebook friends who responded with incredible kindness and generosity by donating to my Facebook Fundraiser almost three years ago (in the early months of 2020). Some of them are from the Portland (Oregon) region and others from different parts of the U.S., as well as from other countries and continents abroad. They are (in alphabetical order):
Dennis Bathory-Kitsz, Randi Botnen, Gerald W. Braden, Michel Bril, Tony Leonardo Cimino, Jean-David Coen, Leonid Korelstein, Huii Hu, Ruta Kuzmickas, David Lasocki, Leslie Sawyer, Johnoscar Nagum Villa, Matt Weiss

A special thanks to my friend Jack Gabel for recording/videographing this event and the scheduled sessions thereafter!

Also a special thanks to the entire Cascadia Board and membership for their help and support with publicity and other particulars related to this event! I would especially like to thank Jeff Winslow for his help and to Nicholas Yandell for assisting in getting the word out.

For more information on composer GARY LLOYD NOLAND, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

For more information on novelist/poet/essayist ALEXANDER THEROUX, please consult the Internet for numerous articles, reviews, interviews, etc.

PIMP for soprano & piano (poem by ALEXANDER THEROUX)

Soprano Deborah Harrington and harpsichordist Michael Dewart perform I DARE NOT ASK A KISS (setting of Robert Herrick's poem "To Electra"), Op. 7, by Gary Lloyd Noland. For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

I DARE NOT ASK A KISS for soprano & harpsichord (Op. 7)

Gary Lloyd Noland performs his VIENNESE NIGHTMARE RAG for piano, Op. 4. This is from a home-made cassette recording with the composer playing on the Baldwin Hamilton upright piano he grew up with. This piece was composed in 1978 and published in the composer's own manuscript in 1985. Copies of the original published version of this rag may be purchased on request. For more information on composer Gary Lloyd Noland, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

VIENNESE NIGHTMARE RAG for piano, Op. 4 (1978)

Soprano Deborah Harrington and pianist Gary Lloyd Noland perform Noland's FOUR HEINE LIEDER, Op. 19, Nos. 1 & 2. This performance took place at the Boston Conservatory on April 7th, 1983. 1) Aus meinen Tränen Sprießen, 2) Im wunderschönen Monat Mai. Coincidentally, the composer was surprised to read in Alma Mahler's biography of her husband, Gustav Mahler, that he had set the same two poems in his youth, both songs of which have been lost. These are the first two of the poems that were set by Robert Schumann in his famous song cycle Dichterliebe. For more information on composer Gary Lloyd Noland, please visit his website at: garynolandocomposer.com

FOUR HEINE LIEDER, Op. 19, Nos. 1 & 2 (1981-83)

The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble performs DIE FLEDERMAUS PSYCHO FLIP, Op. 142, No. 11, by Gary Lloyd Noland (1984, revised 2023). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

DIE FLEDERMAUS PSYCHO FLIP, Op. 142, No. 11

The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble performs CONSTELLATION OF NERVOUS SPASMS, Op. 142, No. 7, by Gary Lloyd Noland (March 8th, 2023). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

CONSTELLATION OF NERVOUS SPASMS, Op. 142, No. 7

Composer Gary Lloyd Noland performs his BYGONE FANCIES for piano, Op. 142, No. 2 (March 16th, 2023). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

BYGONE FANCIES for piano, Op. 142, No. 2

The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble performs STURM UND DRANGULAR POINTS OF DISSENT, Op. 142, No. 3, by Gary Lloyd Noland (March 17th, 2023). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

STURM UND DRANGULAR POINTS OF DISSENT, Op. 142, No. 3

The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble performs COCKROACH CORONATION SLOG, Op. 142, No. 6, by Gary Lloyd Noland (March 18th, 2023). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

COCKROACH CORONATION SLOG, Op. 142, No. 6

The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble performs THE DEBONERIZATION OF AMERIKA by Gary Lloyd Noland, Op. 142, No. 4 (March 19th, 2023). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

THE DEBONERIZATION OF AMERIKA, Op. 142, No. 4

The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble performs ANGELIC EFFLUVIATIONS, Op. 142, No. 12, by Gary Lloyd Noland (March 21st, 2023). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

ANGELIC EFFLUVIATIONS, Op. 142, No. 12

The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble performs THE ADVENTURES OF A PHILANDERING F CHORD by Gary Lloyd Noland (March 21st, 2023). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

THE ADVENTURES OF A PHILANDERING F CHORD

Composer Gary Lloyd Noland performs his VARIATION ON AN INVISIBLE THEME for piano, No. 1, Op. 142, No. 5 (March 22nd, 2023). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

VARIATION ON AN INVISIBLE THEME for piano, No. 1, Op. 142, No. 5

Composer Gary Lloyd Noland performs his VARIATION ON AN INVISIBLE THEME for piano, No. 2, Op. 142, No. 8 (March 25th, 2023). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

VARIATION ON AN INVISIBLE THEME for piano, No. 2, Op. 142, No. 8

The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble performs BUT HE SEEMED LIKE SUCH A NICE YOUNG MAN… by Gary Lloyd Noland, Op. 143, No. 1 (March 27th, 2023). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

BUT HE SEEMED LIKE SUCH A NICE YOUNG MAN…

Composer Gary Lloyd Noland performs his VARIATION ON AN INVISIBLE THEME for piano, No. 3, Op. 142, No. 10 (March 31st, 2023). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

VARIATION ON AN INVISIBLE THEME for piano, No. 3, Op. 142, No. 10

The New Quartet (with Leslie Sawyer, 1st violin [names of other players currently unavailable) performs PIPE DREAM, the ninth movement from STRING QUARTET No. 2, Op. 32, No. 9 (1993) by Gary Lloyd Noland.  This performance took place on a Seventh Species concert under the umbrella of the University of Oregon’s Music Today Festival at The Unitarian Church in Eugene, Oregon on April 22nd, 1995.

PIPE DREAM, 9th movement from String Quartet No. 2, Op. 32, No. 9 (1993)

The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble performs GOSSAMERY PRECIOSITIES by Gary Lloyd Noland (April 7th, 2023). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

GOSSAMERY PRECIOSITIES

Ukrainian pianist Maryna Buksha performs MARCH, Op. 1, No. 17, by Gary Lloyd Noland (April 13th, 2023). This is one of a set of Twenty Piano Pieces. For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

March, Op. 1, No. 17 (1983)performed by pianist Maryna Buksha

The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble performs STOCK EXCHANGE EXODE by Gary Lloyd Noland (April 14th, 2023). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

STOCK EXCHANGE EXODE

Resides in Portland, Oregon. Grew up in Berkeley, CA. Born in Seattle.  PhD, Harvard. “Gary Noland is one of the great composers of the 21st century.”—JACK RUMMEL, KGNU 88.5 FM, Boulder CO, “...iconoclastic, stylistic potpourri standards of giddy humor, no holds barred soup to nuts and high spirits.”—ROBERT LEVIN, pianist, musicologist, composer, "...a fleet-fingered, ebullient performer ... bright, witty and engaging.”—CHRISTIAN CAREY, SPLENDID MAGAZINE, “...distinctive, inventive ... subversive ... You can hardly be indifferent to Noland’s music and so I would urge you to try it.” —ROGER BLACKBURN, MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL, “...set in a dizzying harmonic language that loops uncontrollably through a wide-ranging gamut of possible and impossible tonalities ... The general effect is like watching wet paintings of 19th Century musical memorabilia drip into frazzled 21st Century oblivion...” —ALLEN GIMBEL, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, “Mr. Noland writes as a ‘time traveler’ in styles long abandoned by most composers as well as styles so new as to not have been imagined but by him. This he accomplishes naturally, convincingly, with originality and true passion. His command of all musical languages and his ability to traverse musical time is nothing less than remarkable. Listen!”—DONALD MARTINO, Pulitzer Prize winning composer, “...mind-bending spiraling of focus which is truly breathtaking ... spectacular...”—CHARLES AMIRKHANIAN, composer, sound poet & radio producer, “I'm amazed at your harmonic skill. Haven't seen or heard anything like it from any one else—except yours truly—certainly not from your generation. It falls somewhere between Strauss and Mahler. Especially like how you are able to slip in and out from the tonal to the atonal—or near atonal...”—GEORGE ROCHBERG, American composer, Pulitzer Prize finalist, “...court jester to the classical establishment...”—PAYTON MACDONALD, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, “...florid and juicy...” —RICHARD BUELL, THE BOSTON GLOBE, “...an incredible aural web ... a great ostinato of American kitsch. Sul pont never sounded so good.”—RUSSELL STEINBERG, composer, conductor of the LOS ANGELES YOUTH ORCHESTRA, “...I am bowled over by the expertise of your music: you use certain elements from the 19th century and from jazz, etc., and just at the moment when I am about to say, OK, what else is new?, you do a number of things, such as speeding up, becoming wildly dissonant, modulating to a distant continent, stopping completely and throwing some kind of total surprise ... you seem to know exactly when to do what and how much. I don’t know anybody else who can do it!” —ANDREW IMBRIE, American composer, Pulitzer Prize finalist, “... remarkable stuff...”
—MAX MORATH, American ragtime pianist, composer, actor & author, “...a loony composer from Oregon...” —MAX SHEA, WMUA 91.1FM, Amherst, MA, “Gary Noland is one of those 21st Century composers seeking to forge a new aesthetic based on older models that do not traffic in serialism or minimalism ... Zany waltzes, ragtime riffs, chorales, toccatas, and much else romp and tear through these depictions of superheroes and villains from his ‘chamber novels’; other pieces spoof serial music ... to grand operas ... and Jewish guilt.” —JACK SULLIVAN, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, “...Paranoid Ravel...”—ALEX DUNN, KZSU FM90.3, Stanford, CA, “...It’s a romantic romp, rhythmically robust yet melodically flirting with the nostalgia of cabaret, minus the sleazy diminution of spilled drinks and smelly ashtrays. Its elegance recalls Elgar, and the serious sides, a synthesis of those strange bedfellows Schubert and Ives. Composers hate it when their music reminds you of someone else’s, but writing within a tradition, Noland has incorporated divergent styles that, woven together, work. Cosmopolitan without snobbery, it’s intelligent, pleasurable and convincing.” —ROCKY LEPLIN, THE BERKELEY VOICE

PIPE DREAM for string quartet, Op. 32, No. 9

Gary Lloyd Noland, composer