The second movement is an infectious, jumpy little Gavotte with its suddenly serious, drone-laden Musette. And Gavotte da capo, of course.

Gavotte/Musette

The first movement is a Fantasia that gradually gets more explosive the further it careens along.

Fantasia

The Jester Sings is scored for flute with live digital effects, such as delay to create a canonic effect, reverb to lengthen certain notes into a secondary melody, and multiple delay to suggest a polyphonic sea of flutes. The piece also attempts to capture the energy of a friend I lost to AIDS -- Hal Hudson, an immensely talented actor and director. His personality was a rich mixture of capriciousness, in-your-face surprises, and compassion -- jester-like qualities that seemed to linger in the air after his death.

Musically, the contrast of flute alone with processed flute amounted to a metaphor for Hal's presence and then sudden absence in my life. As the piece progresses, a dance-like quality emerges as the flute literally synchronizes with its own echoes. Toward the end, a veiled reference to the opening of Brahms' Intermezzo, Op. 119, No.1 is heard, a passage that evokes for me, against reason, a sense of simultaneous joy and melancholy.

Recording is of the premiere performance in March 1995, at The Next Stage, New York, NY:

Hugh Williams, flute
Perry Townsend, digital effects

The Jester Sings (an elegy)

Music for Two Pianos began on a whim in 1997, with the 90-second Frontispiece written to fill out an upcoming program, and eventually grew into a 20-minute monster. In fact, Frontispiece, an obnoxious shrink-wrapped sonata movement, contains all the kernels of the rest of the work. In the manner of a crazed houseguest, this dance of hobgoblins stumbles into the room, slaps us silly, then just goes away.

The second movement, Layers, stretches out the harmonic implications of Frontispiece into enormous proportions, proceeding hypnotically with no hurry whatsoever. It is rudely interrupted by the third movement, Raucous, which takes off like a bat out of hell, spinning new fabric from the Frontispiece motifs. At one point, the two instruments are like dueling saloon pianos deep in their cups, getting more and more brazen and ham-fisted. Out of this, a Fugue movement inexplicably erupts, leading to more chases, train wrecks and Explosions, until finally the energy recedes, trying to remember what happened in a haunted denouement. These movements are played without pause.

Stark chords usher in the sixth movement, Epiphanies, and the Frontispiece tune now becomes a dreamy rhapsody set against luxurious cascades of arpeggios. Something has changed, as the chaos of before morphs into fond memories, gauzy lyricism, and a passing ice cream truck. Finally, the closing bookend, Backispiece, reprises the 90-second Frontispiece sequence from the beginning, but this time its quicksilver music is hushed, veiled, and basically upside down.

Recording is from the premiere performance, given on March 26, 2002, at the Union of Bulgarian Composers, Sofia, Bulgaria:

John Root and Perry Townsend, pianos

1. Frontispiece (0:00)
2. Layers (1:28)
3. Raucous (6:53)
4. Fugue (8:42)
5. Explosions (10:30)
6. Epiphanies (15:36)
7. Backispiece (18:58)

Music for Two Pianos

This extended aria is the emotional climax of the Dialogue Scene of Act II of the opera-in-progress, "Christine," and a turning point in the opera itself. Christine lays everything on the line, appealing both to Jim Jones' vanity and to her friends' desire to complete their good work in the world. For a moment she seems to have convinced them; they appear to be in the palm of her hand. At the end, high violin tones capture the tension of wondering what will happen next. 

*Heads-up* ... This is a first attempt at capturing this music, not a high-fidelity recording! I am a baritone, not a mezzo or countertenor, and am singing Christine's part in my falsetto. The orchestra part was multi-track-recorded using synth sounds.

Text:

Dad, I believe. *
Dad, I believe in us,
in what you’ve always said,
that we can reach our full potential
if we stay with you.
I still want that!
I been workin’ for that this whole time,
we all have!
We ain’t there yet, Dad!
Can’t get to there if we don’t survive.

Who’s gonna hear your words,
who’s gonna share our vision
in forty years,
if we call it quits now?
How’s it gonna advance The Cause,
lying down dead in Guyana?
How we gonna fight for truth and justice then?

We’ve come too far,
too far to leave all you built here,
here and in California too.
[hums quietly to herself]
I’m not afraid to die,
I just ain’t done living yet.


(* People's Temple members frequently addressed Jim Jones as Dad or Father.)

Christine's Aria (from opera-in-progress "Christine")

Poetry: William Butler Yeats, Wendy Stern, A. E. Stallings

Premiere performance by C4: The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective
Elizabeth Derham, violin
David Wozniak, alto and tenor saxophones
Daniel Andor-Ardó, conductor
	
Recorded live at the Church of St. Luke in the Fields, NYC, May 31, 2014
Noriko Okabe, recording engineer

Poems:

1.  He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with the golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams…

– William Butler Yeats

2.  To the Buddha

May I devote my life to learning from you.
I may be slow, I will stumble,
But if I use my breath to move closer to you,
And if I use my mind to glimpse you,
And if I use my heart to
Soften to you,
Then perhaps I will achieve
Some moments
Free from, and beyond,
These ever-turning realms
In which we are embedded,
And some change,
At least,
To this being, this form,
That lies here.

– Wendy Stern

3.  Triolet on a Line Apocryphally Attributed to Martin Luther

Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night,
The swaying in darkness, the lovers like spoons?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes?
Does he hum them to while away sad afternoons
And the long, lonesome Sundays? Or sing them for spite?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night?

– A. E. Stallings


“To the Buddha”, copyright © 2013 by Wendy Stern. Published 2013 by Buddhist Poetry Review. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

“Triolet on a Line Apocryphally Attributed to Martin Luther” from Olives: Poems, copyright © 2012 by A. E. Stallings. Published 2012 by TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Upward - St Luke's

Two Devotions and a Heresy

Premiere performance: July 20, 2005
Bowdoin International Music Festival, Brunswick, Maine

(Note: turn volume up for this track)

John Root, piano soloist
Rachel Choi, flute
Sarah Huebsch, oboe/English horn
Ryan Yuré, clarinet/bass clarinet
John Hunt, bassoon
Joshua Gates, percussion
Maria Alanen, Hilary Castle, violins
Matthew Barwegen, viola
Rachael Arnold, cello
Perry Townsend, conductor

Journey for Piano and Ensemble was commissioned by the Bowdoin International Music Festival, and written for my friend John Root. It is a chamber concerto in several ways. The accompanying group consists of 4 winds, 4 strings and 1 percussionist, so an orchestra in microcosm. But perhaps more importantly, throughout the piece, each member of the accompanying group gets moments in the spotlight, through various duets and trios sprinkled through the score. In this way, the roles of soloist and ensemble member are blurred.

The opening movement, evoking the mysterious feel of Romanian mountains, includes a piano cadenza which turns into a duet for English horn and piano. The second movement, a rhythmically joyous romp, includes towards its end a trio for violin, bass clarinet and piano. The third movement exists entirely in small ensembles: bassoon and piano, then flute/percussion/viola, then clarinet and cello. The last movement features brief duets for bassoon and percussion, and also two violins, before a final piano soliloquy leads to a "clearing" for the full ensemble.

1. Transylvania (0:38)
2. Thwack (7:35)
3. Intimacies (13:33)
4. Clearing (19:30)

Journey for Piano and Ensemble

Performed by C4: The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective
Karen Siegel, soprano
Maya Ben-Meir, alto
James Kennerly, organ
Daniel Andor-Ardó, conductor

Recorded live at St. Ignatius of Antioch Church, NYC, June 9, 2016
Noriko Okabe, recording engineer

Text: Psalm 117

Laudate Dominum omnes gentes,
laudate eum omnes populi.
Quoniam confirmata est super nos,
misericordia ejus,
et veritas Domini manet in aeternum.

Gloria patri et filio
et spiritui sancto,
sicut erat in principio
et nunc et semper
et in saecula saeculorum.

Amen.

Translation:

Sing praise to God, all nations;
praise Him all people.
For He has shown His kindness toward us,
His love and merciful kindness,
and the truth of God lasts for eternity.

Glory to the Father and the Son
and the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning
and will be now and always,
world without end.

Amen.

Laudate Dominum

Poetry: Zsuzsanna Ardó
Ancient song: Seikilos

Premiere performance by C4: The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective
Christina Kay, Rebecca Ehrens, sopranos
Erin Halpin, Leonore Nelson, altos
Benjamin Arendsen, Nathaniel Barnett, Grant Yosenick, tenors
Hayes Biggs, Brian Mountford, basses
Daniel Andor-Ardó, conductor

Recorded live at Engleman Hall, Baruch Performing Arts Center, NYC, March 2, 2017
Noriko Okabe, recording engineer

This setting of Zsuzsanna Ardó's poem about creative passion in the context of our mortality, incorporates an ancient "carpe diem" song by Seikilos, which is the oldest complete, notated musical score surviving to our time. Ardó's words trace composers' endeavors throughout the ages, punctuated by individual lines from Seikilos' song. At the end the song is heard in 4 keys and 8 tempi at once, as if people from ancient times through today were all suddenly singing it together, but at their own speeds and unaware of each other.

The poetry may be viewed at https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1gSUrzlUZwZspFNZqkgozaGk7al9QS6Tt

Emerging - March 4, 2017

Seikilos

*** This is a "MIDI recording." *** Meaning, the Finale notation program is "playing" a Finale file of the score. So the "performance" is rather mechanical and un-human-like.  In real life, this little piece is to be performed by one vocalist and one pianist, ideally both of them humans. The vocalist only sings one word, "egad," toward the end of the piece. It will eventually be one of several short movements in a suite.

The score may be viewed at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-bm_MaSdO2LgxmGwaj6a0RA8sQ6JtOF_/view?usp=sharing

Perry Townsend composer

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