President's Own

symphonic

Concert

Grande Musique

Film

Wind Ensemble

UNCG Summer Music Camp, Week 2, Taylor Senior Band

An Irish Rhapsody

This is a live performance with The President's Own Marine Band with Jason Fettig, conducting.

Program note:
My wife’s grandfather was an extraordinary man. He was an immigrant who walked around quoting poetry and whistling tunes from his childhood in Scotland. Like a character from a movie he always seemed to pull just the right verse for the occasion.

 
In the spring of 2007, he fell into a coma following a severe stroke. After weeks of being in this state he awoke and said: 

 
In mist or cloud…

 …on mast or shroud… 

…It perched for Vespers nine… 

…Whiles all the night… 

…through fog-smoke white, 

Glimmered the white moon-shine. 

 
These were the final words of a man who always chose the right words. Within the hour he was gone. 

 
Not recognizing the verse, I immediately ran to Google to decipher what message the old man could have been delivering.

 
The verse is from the famous poem of condemnation and redemption, “The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner”. The poem is the story of a mariner condemned to travel the earth telling his tale of hubris and punishment in search of redemption. The mariner shot an albatross for no other reason than he felt like it and then suffered the wrath of both death and living-death for his gall. 

 
The verse my wife’s grandfather quoted is the verse immediately before the one containing the ill-fated murder of the albatross. As they say, the calm before the coming storm. 

 
My work entitled, “It perched for Vespers nine,” on a surface level engages the imagery from the verse itself. But at the emotional core of the work is my trying to work out what my wife’s Pop Pop might have been trying to tell us about what awaits us “In mist or cloud”.

 
It perched for Vespers nine was commissioned by the American Bandmasters Association and the University of Florida. For performance materials or any additional questions please contact:

www.billholabmusic.com

Buy Studio Recording

It Perched For Vespers Nine (LIVE The President's Own Marine Band)

Credit to http://soundcloud.com/obacyan for the loan of the didgeridoo sample please check out his other recordings!! Art work "Elements" by Ian Jensen. Copyright Tai Inoue at Nature Sounds 2013

Soundscape - Elements

Loma Linda Academy Symphonic Band
Spring Concert 2013
Gio Santos Director
Meggie Evans Clarinet Soloist


Blue Shades by Frank Ticheli

The Battle Cry of Freedom - performed by the 'President's Own' US Marine Band

EDGES is inspired by several events in my life over the period of 1995-97.  Two are near-death experiences, while the third is the sudden passing of one of my closest colleagues and best friends, Professor Robert Cooper.  

The first movement, "BACK FROM THE EDGE", is a chronicle of the battle that I waged with "flesh-eating strep", which nearly cost me my life in spring, 1995.  A fragment of a line from French playwright Jean Genet’s “Prisoner of Love” served as additional inspiration: 

 “perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay in memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh.  A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me.”

In a sense, my life has re-emerged from where it lay, for a while, silent, in memory.

Movement II, "POSTCARDS", is inspired by my mentor and friend, composer Donald Erb, who had his own near-death experience about a year later in the same Ithaca, New York hospital (a bizarre coincidence).  I know that he shared many of the mental aberrations I experienced during the recovery process, and POSTCARDS reflects the strange visions, the elusive but more and more frequent moments of clarity, and the eventual return to reality that such experiences create.  For me, in retrospect, these thoughts were like vivid postcards of other realities, sent to me by another part of my mind and filtered through the pain, the fear, and the medications that I had been given.  There was also a highly obsessive quality to my thoughts during the reco-very, which is reflected in the primary melodic material which simply refuses to disappear, though it changes colors, dynamics, and tempos at every turn.

Postcards -- real postcards, that is -- also played a role in my experiences.  While recovering, I received a post card (often of questionable taste) every two or three days from Don.  When it was his turn to be in recovery, it was my turn to send him postcards (equally questionable)...they seem now to me to be a lifeline to reality from people who are eager to welcome us back.

A quote was inspirational for this second movement as well, this time from Hermann Hesse’s Damien:

“In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.”

The final movement is a reflection on the amazing, wonderful, and sometimes difficult life of my colleague, Robert Cooper.  Robert had, without a doubt, the speediest metabolism of anyone I have ever known.  Lunch with Robert could be defined as both of us eating for the first five minutes and Robert watching me finish eating for the last 45.  Robert had two computers in his office and a phone; often all three were busy at once, while he carried on at least one additional conversation with whomever was present.  Yet Robert had great depth too.  He was a living example to students and colleagues, especially in facing life’s travails with courage and conviction.  He was also funny as hell.  I suppose that Robert’s pace was impossible to sustain, and in fact he died suddenly at age 45 on September 18, 1997. 

No quotations needed with this movement.  This one’s for you, man.


EDGES Movement III OhMan for wind ensemble

EDGES Movement II Postcards for wind ensemble

EDGES Movement I Back from the Edge for wind ensemble

Mahler Symphony No.2  - 2. Satz: Andante comodo. Sehr gemächlich. Nie eilen

Mahler Symphony No.2  - 3. Satz: In ruhig fließender Bewegung

Mahler Symphony No.2  - 1. Satz: Allegro maestoso. Mit durchaus ernstem und feierlichem Ausdruck

Mahler Symphony No.2  - 4. Satz: Urlicht - Sehr feierlich aber schlicht. Nicht schleppen

NEC Orchestra conducted by Richard Hoenich perform excerpts of Holst's The Planets in Jordan Hall, Boston, MA.

Holst - The Planets -  Jupiter, The Bringer Of Jollity

Now Is The Time (A Song of Hope)performed by "The President's Own" U.S. Marine Band

RuhrTriennale production 2011, rehearsal cut for public relation purposes

Toshio Hosokawa | Hanjo (2004) Opera in One Act (6 Scenes) 
Libretto by Toshio Hosokawa | Based on HANJO, a No play by Yukio Mishima, translated by Donald Keene

Musikalische Leitung Garry Walker
Regie Calixto Bieito
Bühne Susanne Gschwender
Kostüme Anna Eiermann
Licht Reinhard Traub
Dramaturgie Xavier Zuber

Hanako: Kerstin Avemo
Jitsuko Honda: Ursula Hesse von den Steinen
Yoshio: Georg Nigl

Ensemble musikFabrik

Toshio Hosowaka: Hanjo, rehearsal cut from scene 3

Angels in the Architecture, as performed by the University of North Texas Wind Symphony.



Angels in the Architecture - Frank Ticheli

Heaven And Earth. A slow Meditation in F#- Major for two pianos . Hope, you like it!

Johannes Heinen - Heaven And Earth

Shutter Cave - Ambience

05 Edmar Castaneda - Entre Cuerdas

Tatreal - Collapse

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross - A Familiar Taste

A brief departure from soundtracks and music libraries, a midnight-hour improv for you.

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Oliver Sadie - Improv By Night Light

Joel Puckett is a composer leaving both audiences and the press buzzing. His music has been described as, “soaringly lyrical” (Minneapolis Star Tribune), “Puccini-esque” (Wall Street Journal), and “containing a density within a clarity, polyphony within the simple and – most importantly – beautiful and seemingly spiritual.” (Audiophile Audition). Parterre Box recently proclaimed, “Puckett should be a household name” and the Philadelphia Inquirer’s David Patrick Stearns mused, “if the name Joel Puckett isn’t etched into your brain, it should be.” In 2011 NPR Music listed him as one of the top 100 composers under 40 in the world.

Hailed as “visionary” (Washington Post) and “an astonishingly original voice” (Philadelphia Inquirer), his music is performed by the leading artists of our day and is consistently recognized by organizations such as the American Composers Forum, BMI, Chorus America, National Public Radio, and the American Bandmasters Association.

Puckett’s music attracts diverse performers and listeners through its emotional energy and commitment. Melding tradition with innovation, his distinctive style grows from his power to create transcendent experiences using charismatic musical language.

The Fix, a grand opera commissioned by Minnesota Opera, premiered in the March 2019 to packed houses, enthusiastic audiences, and largely effusve praise. With a libretto by Academy Award and Tony Award winner, Eric Simonson, the work depicts the rise and fall of the 1919 Chicago White Sox. It is a tragedy ripe with power, romance and redemption, set against the backdrop of America’s favorite pastime. Puckett’s earlier commissions have been premiered and performed worldwide, to exuberant critical acclaim.

His flute concerto, The Shadow of Sirius, premiered in 2010 and has received more than 200 performances and been recorded multiple times, including 2015’s Naxos Surround Sound disc, “Shadow of Sirius,” which received a 2016 Grammy Nomination. Currently the Chair of Music Theory, Ear Training, and Piano Skills at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Puckett presents workshops nationwide and frequently serves as an adjudicator at competitions for rising composers. His music is represented worldwide by Bill Holab Music.