Name: MARCH from The Nutcracker by Ian Axness
Duration: 2 min 51 s
Description: Piano + string quartet arrangement by Ian Axness

Piano + string quartet arrangement by Ian Axness


MARCH from The Nutcracker

To watch video: http://vimeo.com/113718396

For Oboe, Piano, And ASL interpreter.
Premier in Eastman School of Music on November 22nd 2014.
Oboe: Carly Gordon
Piano: Alfonso Hernández
ASL interpreter: Daniel Zucker

“1. 2. 3.” is based on a poem by Zoe Sorrell (located below), and it is partially inspired by Lutoslawski’s “Epitaph for Oboe and Piano.” My friend and colleague Carly Gordon commissioned this piece for her senior recital at Eastman School of Music.

The piece tries to represent the drama between two converging opposites: freedom and containment.

The dramatic structure of the piece follows the stanza separations in Harrell’s poetry. In that sense, the piece is programmatic. But I wanted the aesthetic to be built upon my personal interpretation of Harrell’s words instead of trying to literally represent the words with music. For me, the poetry communicates a longing for freedom, and alludes to the act of writing as a method to achieve that freedom. That is what the aesthetic of “1. 2. 3” stands for.

Even though the piece does have direct aural connections to the words in the poetry (like the quote of Frank Sinatra’s “Come fly with me” in m.46), I tried to integrate these connections with the aesthetic that represents my interpretation of the words. In that sense, the direct connections to the words in the poem are hidden within the overall aesthetic, and even though they form part of the piece, they are not the driving force of it.

Another interesting component of the piece is the ASL (American Sign Language) interpreter. As part of Carly Gordon’s own research, the piece is to be performed with an ASL interpreter translating the words of the poetry to ASL. In stage then, the music is not the only interpretation of the words, but also the physicality of the ASL adds another layer of drama to the overall experience of the audience.

The name of the piece is an allusion to the act of composition itself. The whole piece is based on intervallic patterns of one, two, and three half steps. I also used that number set to produce rhythmic ratios that are present throughout the work.


I Never Heard a Caged Bird Sing by Zoe Sorrel

I never heard a caged bird sing.
Only a free bird once with wings wide open
Crowing a silent call that made me cringe
And cry and close my eyes so I wouldn’t know
What I couldn’t hear.

It is strange that you and I are the same
When you live in my stinging eyes
And I am curled up somewhere in my humid throat,
Twitching.
When I sleep, my world is cacophonous
And we walk through the warbling woods
And we talk through tiny telephones
And we sing songs by Frank Sinatra
And we drive like Daisy Duke
And we listen listen listen listen like lazy leper leopards lounging lackadaisically I love you listen lllll

I never heard a caged bird sing.
Does she have no song in her heart?
Or am I in the not-cage that sound does not penetrate,
That sound
Will
Never…

But no I am certain that when I see ellipses of finches
Stretched across a paper sky,
They are more than bean husks
Or dried up paint flakes
Or the bits of sponge that inevitably come off under a fingernail.
Even in the not-cage, there’s a chorus to the spheres.
There’s harmony in the crinkled cracks of colour that create this cosmos.
Looking out through tree branch bars,
This bird and I—
We may not sing, we may not hear
But we know it’s there.



MARCH from The Nutcracker

Ian Axness

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Elliott Grabill

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