The Manhattan Trio
Mandy Wang - Violin
Sunnat Ibragimov - Cello
Slawomir Dobrzanski - Piano
Great Spaces Concert Series
Grace Cathedral, Topeka, KS

The Road Is All - Ingrid Stolzel

Live performance Stella Markou, soprano and Ellen Sommer, piano at the Wunsch New Music Festival, September 25, 2022.

Poem by Sara Teasdale.

SILENCE by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

(To Eleonora Duse)

We are anhungered after solitude,
Deep stillness pure of any speech or sound,
Soft quiet hovering over pools profound,
The silences that on the desert brood,
Above a windless hush of empty seas,
The broad unfurling banners of the dawn,
A faery forest where there sleeps a Faun;
Our souls are fain of solitudes like these.
O woman who divined our weariness,
And set the crown of silence on your art,
From what undreamed-of depth within your heart
Have you sent forth the hush that makes us free
To hear an instant, high above earth's stress,
The silent music of infinity?

From “Helen of Troy and Other Poems by Sara Teasdale” (1911)

Silent Music Of Infinity (2021) for Soprano and Piano

Ingrid Stolzel LIVE 8th Nov 2024

Live performance: Trio Lawrence (Daniel Velasco -flute, Boris Vayner - Viola and  Erin Wood - harp) - March 14, 2025, Kansas City, MO.

Program Notes:
Words are the inspirational seeds for much of the music I compose.  The Voice of the Rain takes its title and inspiration from Walt Whitman’s poem “The Voice of the Rain” from Leaves of Grass. Whitman beautifully describes the world as an everlasting cyclical process of giving birth to itself and giving back life to its own origin. I was especially drawn to the last line of this poem where Whitman reveals a deeper truth about the creative process. He equates the everlasting cyclical nature of life, with the creative process, where - like the rain - the creation changes form but is always the same at its core and eventually returns to the poet as love from those who read the words.  It is my hope that the music captures the essence of Whitman’s powerful meditation on nature and humanity.

The Voice of the Rain was commissioned as part of a New Music USA Project Grant and written for Sarah Frisof - flute, Hannah Collins - cello and Michael Compitello - percussion. The Harp Version was written for Trio Lawrence (Daniel Velasco -flute, Boris Vayner - Viola and  Erin Wood - harp).

The Voice of the Rain 

And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:

I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,
Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,
Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely formed, altogether changed, and
yet the same,
I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,
And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;
And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin,
and make pure and beautify it;

(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering,
Recked or unrecked, duly with love returns.)


The Voice of the Rain (Harp Version)

Babette, the World Traveler

Lightenings (2016)
for violin, clarinet, percussion and piano

Lightenings

Janus Reflecting.Live Performance

Ingrid Stölzel's With Eyes Open 
Live Recording, USF Barness Recital Hall, October 12, 2019

sax, Katherine Weintraub
pf, Eunmi Ko

With Eyes Open, Ingrid Stölzel

The second movement of the five-movement cycle, "Jasmine arrow music" (2009), composed by Forrest Pierce (b 1972), setting texts from the Dhammapada, or the “Wisdom of the Buddha.”

Here is the text:

II. Freedom (Verse 5)
Hatred is never settled by hatred.
Hatred is settled by freedom from hatred.
This is the everlasting law.

This concert recording was made on 19 October 2019 at Holy Rosary Catholic Church in West Seattle.

Jasmine arrow music - Forrest Pierce - 2 - Freedom - The Esoterics

Casey Cangelosi, percussion
Video performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMBCd9PfuMA
Casey's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIw9gkSYmyj21uAd85Ydu8g
Casey's Website: https://www.caseycangelosi.com/

Hypernova (2020) for percussion solo and electronic playback was written for Casey Cangelosi.  In outer space, a hypernova is a type of stellar explosion which ejects material with unusually high kinetic energy, an order of magnitude higher than most supernovae.  The piece is centered on broad and expansive explosive gestures that give birth to sparkling and technically virtuosic phrases.  The soloist plays a small kit of vibratone, five tuned gongs, tamborim, hi-hat, and kick drum.  The accompanying electronic part is made entirely of acoustic hand-stopped or bowed piano samples that were recorded during and assembled as digital instruments.  There are four main types of these samples used throughout the piece:
 
- Piano with the string hand-muted and the pedal up.  The most agile tape parts are primarily made with these sound samples.
- Piano with the string hand-muted and the sustain pedal down.  Most low, resonant tones and some mid-range notes use these samples.
- Bowed piano, modified with post-production effects to give it an organ-like quality.
- Hand-muted, no-pedal piano samples with the envelope reversed to play backwards as a swell gesture.  You hear this sound at the very beginning of the piece.
 
Check out and follow along with the performance part: https://issuu.com/ericguinivan/docs/guinivan_hypernova_performance_part
 
Please contact the composer at https://www.ericguinivan.com if you are interested in purchasing a physical copy of the music for performance.

HYPERNOVA for percussion and electronics

Strata

Composer Ingrid Stölzel has been described as having “a gift for melody” (San Francisco Classical Voice) and “evoking a sense of longing” that creates “a reflective and serene soundscape that makes you want to curl up on your windowsill to re-listen on a rainy day.” (I Care If You Listen)  

Stölzel’s compositions have been commissioned by leading soloists and ensembles, and performed in concert halls and festivals worldwide, including Carnegie Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, Kennedy Center, Seoul Arts Center, Thailand International Composition Festival, Festival Osmose (Belgium), Vox Feminae Festival (Israel), Dot the Line Festival (South Korea), Ritornello Chamber Music Festival (Canada), Festival of New Music at Florida State (USA), Beijing Modern Music Festival (China), Festival of New American Music (USA), and SoundOn Festival of Modern Music (USA). Her music has been recognized in numerous competitions, among them recently the Suzanne and Lee Ettelson Composer's Award, Red Note Composition Competition, the Robert Avalon International Competition for Composers, and the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra Competition. Recordings can be found on various commercial releases including her portrait album “The Gorgeous Nothings” which features her chamber and vocal chamber music. Stölzel teaches composition at the University of Kansas School of Music.

The Voice of the Rain (Harp Version)

Ingrid Stölzel | Composer