Wind Ensemble

"Lost It To Trying" from the album Lanterns, now available on ITunes: http://bit.ly/1hqLie6

Watch the official music video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkLT5krv_6c

Written, Performed & Recorded by Son Lux
Vocals - Lily & Madeleine (http://lilandmad.com)
Baritone Saxophones - Jack Bashkow, Steven Temme
Tenor, Alto Saxophones - Steven Temme
Flutes - Alex Sopp

Ryan Lott Music (ASCAP) administered by Domino Publishing Company USA (ASCAP)
© 2013 Joyful Noise Recordings + Son Lux / sonluxmusic.com

Lanterns

Lost It To Trying

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Son Lux - Lost It To Trying

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)

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

World premiere at JWECC 2009 in Okazaki City, Japan. Shintaro Fukumoto, conductor.

Program note and PDF score: http://stevenbryant.com/axismundi.php

Axis Mundi

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