Springs Songs (for Tenor and Chamber Ensemble)
Duration: ca. 20'

MOVEMENTS:
I. English Sparrows (Washington Square) (Edna St. Vincent Millay)
II. April 5, 1974 (Richard Wilbur)
III. Done With (Ann Stanford)
IV. The Widow’s Lament in Springtime (William Carlos Williams)
V. Spring Rain (Sara Teasdale)

Performers: American Modern Ensemble; Alok Kumar, Tenor
For More Information: https://robertpaterson.com/spring-songs
Publisher: Bill Holab Music: http://www.billholabmusic.com/composers/robert-paterson/
Purchase Sheet Music: http://billholabmusic.com/store/index.php?keyword=spring%20songs%20-&main_page=advanced_search_result&search_in_description=1
Also available as a version for tenor and piano: https://robertpaterson.com/spring-songs


PROGRAM NOTE
Spring Songs for tenor and chamber ensemble or piano is my third song cycle celebrating the seasons. As with the first two, Winter Songs for bass-baritone and Summer Songs for soprano, this cycle contains settings of poems by various American poets.

Whereas both Winter Songs and Summer Songs end with scenes in New York City, Spring Songs begins with New York: a setting of English Sparrows (Washington Square) by Edna St. Vincent Millay, a poem about a scene that takes place in the morning in Greenwich Village, a neighborhood in New York City where Millay lived in the early 1900s. The second movement is a setting of April 5, 1974 by Richard Wilbur, a poem Wilbur wrote in honor of Robert Frost’s one-hundredth birthday, and I interpret as being about overcoming self-doubt through wisdom, and about understanding the change of seasons, but also a change of mind. The third movement, Done With by Ann Stanford, I interpret to be about death and rebirth. Stanford symbolizes this by a house being torn down and the ground paved over, the now suffocated plant life yearning to break through. The Widow’s Lament in Springtime, the fourth movement, is a setting of a poem by William Carlos Williams. I interpret this poem as a modernist, pastoral elegy that uses images of nature to lament the death of a loved one. The final movement, a setting of the poem Spring Rain by Sara Teasdale, is about a happy memory of a lover brought about by an evening thunderstorm.

Spring Songs was commissioned by Rick Teller for the American Modern Ensemble.

AME ARTISTS
Robert Paterson, Conductor
Alok Kumar, tenor
Grace Law, flute
Nuno Antunes, clarinet
Samuel Z. Solomon, percussion
Geoffrey Burleson, piano
Victoria Paterson, violin
Peter Sachon, cello

The Four Seasons

Spring Songs - III. Done With (Text by Ann Stanford)

Istvan J. Balazs is a Hungarian film composer and a voting member of the World Soundtrack Awards Academy. Istvan is known for his scores for movies such as the Award Winning "American Family Revival" (US, 2019), When To You Turn To God(HU, 2016), One Day of The Karoli Family(HU, 2017), "JUNGLE" (AT, 2019) movie. Istvan is currently working on his first Oratorio called "THE RETURN OF THE KING OF KINGS", which will be premiered worldwide in 2024.

𝖉𝖆𝖓𝖈𝖊 𝖙𝖎𝖑𝖑 𝖉𝖎𝖊

He is currently a composer and filmmaker working in Hokkaido, Japan, and his main genre is post-classical music.

He studied architectural design at university and later worked in a design office, designing museums and music halls. Influenced by the VJ culture that started to emerge around 2000 due to the CG and multimedia art that he had been working on since his university days, he started his own video production company after working on video works for club music.
In 2003, he started releasing ambient and downtempo music under the name of "and/or" on labels in France, Portugal, and other European countries.As his video production company started to take off, he decided to take a break from his artistic activities for a while to concentrate on his career as a manager.In the business world, he produced a photo app that was one of the top 3 free apps on the app store in the Japanese market.
While continuing to study music theory and composition on his own while working on his business, he will resume his creative activities around 2019 and start releasing music under his own name in 2021.
At the same time, he is currently planning to create video works and applications for his musical works.

Musically, he is heavily influenced not only by Romantic and modern composers, but also by minimalist music and contemporary film music, while his background is in architectural design, which he studied.
 The aesthetics of structure and pattern, and the patterns of light and shadow, their minute changes, and unexpected changes, etc., have been experimentally incorporated into a new style that incorporates not only nature and the environment, but also generative elements made possible by new computer AI and simulation technology.
 In this way, he seeks to expand the dynamism and possibilities of time-based arts such as music and video.

He seeks to create music that combines the structural beauty of Western music with the interstitial aesthetics of the Eastern and Zen worldviews, and the harmony and fusion of nature and the environment. 
While pursuing a simple, piano-based style of music, he is creating the next generation of classical music that is not bound by the format of the context of instruments such as strings and synths.　

He specializes in beautiful and sentimental music, and aspires to provide the world with an environment where tranquility, healing, and relaxation can be obtained through musical content.

A piece of music is a mentally constructed entity, of which scores and performances are partial representations by which the piece is transmitted.
(Fred Lerdahl & Ray Jackendoff)

Any tone can succeed any other tone, any tone can sound simultaneously with any other tone or tones, and any group of tones can be followed by any other group of tones, just as any degree of tension  or nuance can occur in any medium under any kind of stress or duration. Successful projection will depend upon the contextual and formal conditions that prevail, and upon the skill and soul of the composer.
(Vincent Persichetti)

Music is a system of signs composed of complex forms which may be represented by physical sounds, and which in this way mediate between mental and psychic contents. To deal with such a system, semiotics are naturally evoked. To describe these forms, mathematics is the adequate language. To represent these forms on the physical level, physics are indispensable. And to understand the psychic contents, psychology is the predestined science.
(Guerino Mazzola)

American composer Robert Paterson is a true New Yorker—born and bred in Buffalo, he lived in Rochester and Ithaca for over ten years, in New York City for over twenty years, and now lives in Saratoga Springs, near the Adirondacks. Paterson’s colorful music embraces a wide variety of themes, everything from goddesses and online dating to mathematics and the environment. His music is filled with emotion and fierce rhythmic energy, marked by elegance, wit, and meticulous craftsmanship. Named Composer of The Year by the Classical Recording Foundation at Carnegie Hall, Paterson is the winner of the Alfred I. DuPont Award, and his opera Three Way won the Grammy® under Best Classical Producer of the Year. His music is often a Best of the Year pick on National Public Radio. His orchestral tone poem, Dark Mountains, regularly airs on NPR’s Performance Today. Three Way premiered with Nashville Opera, then BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), and across the United States. Minnesota Orchestra, Louisville Orchestra, The Oratorio Society of New York, Buffalo Philharmonic, Albany Pro Musica, Albany Symphony, Musica Sacra, Austin Symphony, Vermont Symphony, and ensembles worldwide perform his works. Paterson gives masterclasses at the Curtis Institute of Music, New York University, the Aspen Music Festival, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and more. He is the Artistic Director and house composer for Mostly Modern Projects. Robert is a lifelong vegan and advocates for animals and the environment, celebrating the natural world with ground-breaking works such as his Triple Concerto, A New Eaarth, Listen, and I Go Among Trees.

Magdalena Meisel is a singer from Katowice, Poland. 

Magdalena took part in the Polish entertainment show, „Bitwa na Głosy”, where she performed along with the winning group led by the lead vocalist of the band FEEL. During the series, she brilliantly sang “Time To Say Goodby”, and she gained the judge’s recognition for giving a memorable performance of Bajm’s “Biała armia” in the final show. 

Magdalena exhibited her talent in the Polish talent show, “Szansa na sukces”, as well as the second edition of the music competition show, X-Factor. She also appeared in the 3rd edition of “The Voice of Poland”, where she sang with the group of other contestants coached by Marek Piekarczyk, the lead vocalist of the rock band TSA. Magda performed three songs winning the battle and the knockout stages of the competition and advanced to the live playoff along with the other three finalists, selected by Marek Piekarczyk.

She continues to perform as a solo singer partaking in a variety of music events. She hosts live concerts as well as business parties and events. 

Magdalena graduated from the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice with Master’s Degree in Violin Performance, and she is a member of the Częstochowa Philharmonic Orchestra. She also teaches violin and she conducts educational activities.

https://hannabienert.com

Violinist, Composer, Artist living in Berlin
Exploring new sounds on the violin

Hanna Bienert started playing the violin as a child but made her first steps in Jazz and improvised Music as a teenager on the guitar. She instantly changed to Jazz-Violin when she heard Stephane Grappelli for the first time. Hanna then moved to Paris for 7 years to study Jazz-Violin with Didier Lockwood. 
She was part of several theater and danceproductions, arranging and composing for popmusic and shortfilms and played with different bands all over Europe and Overseas. 

Here you can hear some of Hanna Bienert’s very personal songs she made over the years.


Collabs welcome! Contact by mail

https://linktr.ee/hannabienert

As a Jazz Player: 

https://youtu.be/1z_0gKl0jWE?si=-wt2Q0nANb9cvkVY

Collabs on soundcloud and Youtube with Nick Matteo 

https://youtu.be/TWzL8xgHnz8

https://youtu.be/3aqmMA70eW0

Where there is music, there is life.  There is no other way!

We are the music makers. We are the dreamers of dreams.





Spring Songs - III. Done With (Text by Ann Stanford)

Robert Paterson Composer