This is track two on a disc of unreleased recordings gave to me by Frank Heyer, which he happened to burn onto a purple CD.

Poetry Scores has Frank's permission to use his music his music on our scores, and we are considering this for "Songs Confucius Sang."

The picture is a Yuan Dynasty seal lifted from babelstone.blogspot.com. We are scoring Ezra Pound's translations of what he called Confucian Odes, and he worked from texts of seals.

Frank Heyer Purple.2

This is track 15 on a disc of unreleased recordings gave to me by Frank Heyer, which he happened to burn onto a yellow CD.

Poetry Scores has Frank's permission to use his music on our scores, and we are considering this for "Songs Confucius Sang."

The picture is of a Chinese seal script in the Ezra Pound papers at beinecke.library.yale.edu. We are scoring Pound's translations of what he called Confucian Odes, and he worked from texts of seals.

Frank Heyer Yellow.15

The St. Louis composer and musician Carl Pandolfi, upon request, sent me a CD of his material to consider for Poetry Scores. This track was saved as "Sumerisicumenin10.07.09," which I take to mean his title is "Summer is Coming In". I consider it a contender for an instrumental we need for the "Songs Confucius Sang" score. 

In Ezra Pound's translations of the Classic Chinese Odes, he interpolated the language "Epithalamium: Sydney's Sister" as the title for one of the Odes of Wei that we are scoring. I'd like to find or compose instrumentals to score Pound's interpolations. An epithlamium is a song or poem to honor a wedding, so we're looking for an instrumental with that feeling.

I think this one by Carl foots the bill.



Carl Pandolfi instrumental for "Epithalamium"

For years I have pestered William Tonks of Athens, Georgia for music. This Tonks instrumental  is something I am considering for our "Songs Confucius Sang" poetry score, which calls for a few instrumental interludes.

Tonks and his band Barbara Cue should be out here on the internet, and Tonks appears somewhere in the mix on more projects than he can count at this point. For one, I appreciate his terrific playing on many songs by his brother in law Jack Logan.

William took me in years ago, when I was moving to Georgia; he organized a long day of basement studio sessions with Athens musicians he thought might start a band with me. That never happened, but I developed a lifelong interest in Tonk's own songs instead.

William Tonks.moody instrumental

With the permission of the Ezra Pound estate, Poetry Scores is scoring 10 of the ancient Chinese Odes that Pound translated into English. According to tradition, which Pound accepted as fact, Confucius compiled these odes.

I am uploading some song skeletons written by Matt Fuller and me in Los Angeles and recorded by Meghan Gohil of Hollywood Recording Studios. The tunes I am uploading are not getting bass and drums overdubbed and are ready for color instruments and vocals.

We are scoring a 10-song section of the Odes that Pound translated as "Wei Wind". Our song "Soup of Mud" scores only one stanza of a longer ode (Ode IV) that Pound translated as "Pedlar". This is a longer ode with many moods in Pound's translation, and we are breaking it into six separate songs.

Pound played bassoon and clavichord, Confucius played zither and stone chimes, so we will be looking for every excuse to add those instruments to any of these songs. But this one seems to cry out for double bass, fiddle, piano and more vocals.



Confucius / Ezra Pound * Soup of Mud

With the permission of the Ezra Pound estate, Poetry Scores is scoring 10 of the ancient Chinese Odes that Pound translated into English. According to tradition, which Pound accepted as fact, Confucius compiled these odes.

I am uploading some song skeletons written by Matt Fuller and me in Los Angeles and recorded by Meghan Gohil of Hollywood Recording Studios. The tunes I am uploading are not getting bass and drums overdubbed and are ready for color instruments and vocals.

We are scoring a 10-song section of the Odes that Pound translated as "Wei Wind". This song scores Ode VII, which Pound did not title.

Pound played bassoon and clavichord, Confucius played zither and stone chimes, so we will be looking for every excuse to add those instruments to any of these songs. 

*

Image from http://popartmachine.com/

Confucius / Ezra Pound * Sung Far?

With the permission of the Ezra Pound estate, Poetry Scores is scoring 10 of the ancient Chinese Odes that Pound translated into English. According to tradition, which Pound accepted as fact, Confucius compiled these odes.

I am uploading some song skeletons written by Matt Fuller and me in Los Angeles and recorded by Meghan Gohil of Hollywood Recording Studios. The tunes I am uploading are not getting bass and drums overdubbed and are ready for color instruments and vocals.

We are scoring a 10-song section of the Odes that Pound translated as "Wei Wind". Our song "Tangle-Fox" scores Ode IX, which Pound translated with the title "(Strip Tease?)". I'm pretty sure that title is Pound's invention and I plan to score the title separately with an instrumental by that name.

Pound played bassoon and clavichord, Confucius played zither and stone chimes, so we will be looking for every excuse to add those instruments to any of these songs. But this one seems to cry out for double bass, piano and more vocals.

Confucius/Ezra Pound * Tangle-Fox

This song, written by Three Fried Men to the poetry of Leo Connellan, appears on "Crossing America" (Skuntry Music, 2003), a poetry score of Connellan's hitchhiking epic (which was first published in America's bicentennial year, 1776).

Brian Henneman of the Bottle Rockets sings the guest vocal, backed by Three Fried Men. The sublime Cheryl Stryker sings harmony.

This part of Leo's poem gives the feeling of hitchhiking through Donner's Pass, near modern Lake Tahoe, with flashbacks to the notorious westward expedition led by George Donner that ran out of food in these mountains in the winter of 1846-7 and resorted to cannibalism.

"Crossing America" was the first poetry score produced by Chris King and Elijah "Lij" Shaw that formed the basis of the current St. Louis-based arts organization Poetry Scores, which translates poetry into other media.

**

Photo of Donner Pass from www.abekleinfeld.com.


Just one more mountain by Brian Henneman with Three Fried Men

This is the penultimate track in our poetry score of Stefene Russell's poem "Go South for Animal Index".

Chris King wrote the melody to this fragment of Stefene's poem over a harp composition by Amie Camie (previously recorded by Adam Long). We added Christopher Y. Voelker on violins and Numbers Stations recordings provided by Stefene. Adam became very alert to tonalities in the harp, violins and radio recordings and did various things to emphasize them. Tim McAvin provided the vocal.

We have shot a silent movie to this score which we are preparing to edit. This piece of music will score a crucial set of scenes very late in the movie.

The bee photo was shot by V. Elly Smith while she was shooting our movie on location in Cuba, Missouri.

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