This movement is based on the traditional song "Who is the Man?".

I first played this when I was starting clarinet. It was in a "Treasury  of American Song" complied and edited by Elie Siegmeister in 1940. The book was my father's. Its dogeared pages still grace my bookshelf with warm memories. 

In a recent dream, my parents, cousins and friends were helping me clean out a classroom from my last teaching position. The room turned into my cousin's bedroom then into the bedroom of my childhood. In the next scene, I was dancing in the street as my music was played from huge speakers. 

Dreams have always been important to me. I have journaled dozens over the years.

The choice of instruments for this piece is the same as one of the pieces I wrote as Juilliard student many decades ago. That piece was more poetic. This one deals with the bittersweet experience of an interrupted career starting with abandoning bassoon to study piano and later conducting and singing.

Quintet For Bassoon & Strings No. 2 (2023) Mov. I

I am delighted to share with you my newly completed Sonoran Counterpoint for bassoon and string trio. The work is a kind of love letter to the Sonoran Desert, a land mass situated in Southern Arizona and Northern Mexico. The work begins with the lyrical voice of the bassoon accompanied by long flowing lines interweaving in the strings. Interspersed throughout the piece are a series of energetic interludes. These interludes become more and more intense as the work proceeds.

Sonoran Counterpoint - Flow 1

Kenneth Lieberson is a composer of symphonies, concertos, ballets, cantatas, tone poems, opera, chamber music, songs. His music has been heard on National Public Radio, at The Library of Congress, Lincoln Center, Queens College, NYU, Stony Brook, CAMI Hall, Merkin Hall and at high and middle schools. His B. M. and M. M. are from Juilliard. He also earned an M.B.A. at NYU's Stern School of Business.

Mr. Lieberson has also written two novellas, dozens of short stories and hundreds of poems.  He illustrated some of these.

New tracks tagged #bassoon and strings