Katelyn Bouska’s Yarlung debut album “Women and War and Peace” (catalog number) YAR54460 includes Caroline Shaw’s “Gustave Le Gray”

“Gustave le Grey” takes inspiration from the darkroom exposure of a photograph, hinting at depths before they are actually visible.  The work sounds like Caroline Shaw at the beginning and end, but slowly evolves in the middle section into Chopin’s famous Mazurka in A Minor before concluding with more keyboard writing that is completely Caroline’s.   Chopin took powerful inspiration from Maria Szymanowska as Kate describes later in these notes, and Gustave le Grey therefore offers us handsome bookends for this album, and in the process demonstrates how current all of these women composers remain.    One of Kate’s students at Curtis brought Gustave le Grey to study with Kate shortly after the work was published ten years ago.  Katelyn writes “My student described it to me as musical photography, slowly evolving, taking shape and emerging from the musical shadows before dissolving again at the end.  

“This is the magic of our art form – its suspension of time and texture and place, giving the listener and performer alike each their unique experience.  For me, when I began to prepare Gustave le Grey for concert myself, I was captivated with how it distorted and played with time.  My own time on stage, Caroline’s time in the frame of the piece, and the Chopinesque tension between his exquisite rubato and the strict dance rhythms of the Mazurka.  

“Hypnotic, repeating gestures of the opening pushes time to a standstill as simple shapes arise around the acoustic space, and then begin to inch forward.  Raw and primitive gestures stand in stark relief to the gilded beauty of Chopin’s phrases.  In the opening, Caroline writes to the performer in the score: ‘like a photograph slowly developing on wax paper.’ A few lines later, a new gesture like ‘an expensive Hermés silk cravat’ gradually ‘becomes a bit maniacal, freely-spinning off into their own time and world.’  

“Chopin’s Mazurka develops and decays in the center of the work, a simple melody emerging deeply in the bass register of the piano.  Caroline’s introduction proceeds slowly and firmly anchored, with rich openly-spaced harmony, ‘solid and simple like the Appalachian foothills.’ This solemn stability marks the end’s beginning as well.  Soon follow more musical fragments including a simple chorale, ‘a linen hymn.’ The opening hypnotic theme returns, ‘like the fragmented hem of a song from a long time ago.’ Gustave le Grey ends with a handful of final repeated chords, ‘dry, as if spoken,’ and Caroline’s piece, all fourteen minutes, departs as simply as it began.  But in the process of playing it, I realize that I have changed.  Seated at the piano, my center of gravity has somehow shifted slightly and I face a new direction, grounded and ready for more.”

Album booklet: https://storage.googleapis.com/yarlung_public/pdf_booklets/Women-and-War-and-Peace-YAR54460.pdf   For more information please visit www.yarlungrecords.com

Women and War and Peace 44 16

Caroline Shaw, Gustave Le Gray

Bryce Dessner - Circles
Bandoneón virtuoso Julien Labro had met Bryce Dessner several years earlier from a collaboration with Bryce and members of Eighth Blackbird on the movie score for The Two Popes. Julien knew Bryce was a successful American rock musician and guitarist based in Paris, but also recognized Dessner’s stature in the classical new music world and wanted very much to ask Bryce to write a piece for him and Takács. Julien hoped and anticipated that Bryce’s piece would explore a radically different musical language from that which Clarice would pursue in Clash. Circles, our opening track on the album, was Dessner’s fabulous result.

Takacs  Assad  Labro 

1 Circles

Hildegard And Her Sisters celebrates the great composer, mystic, poet, philosopher, scientist, rabble-rouser and visionary abbess Hildegard von Bingen who lived from 1098-1179. She was born 32 years after the Battle of Hastings and 47 years before the start of construction of Chartres Cathedral. But Hildegard sounds cutting edge in pianist Katelyn Bouska's hands, as Kate combines seminal works by Hildegard rewritten (with no holds barred) for solo piano, and other women composers Ruth Schoenthal, Maya Miro Johnson, Sláva Vorlová, Amy Beach and Bouska herself, taking us on a journey through the "Dark Night Of The Soul."

Kate said “I was asked to teach a music history seminar at Curtis, one that was required for all incoming first-year students. In developing these lectures I remembered my own first music history course as a student, a life-changing event that transferred my latent passion for archaeology into music research, “uncovering and preserving bones,” so to speak. One of these musical “bones” is music by Hildegard. Whether I return to this music academically or for personal enjoyment, I feel Hildegard’s inspiration without fail. I spent the next semester teaching and re-discovering this ancient yet familiar world from a professor’s standpoint, enjoying the process as my students experienced it for themselves, sometimes for the first time.”

Yarlung Artists commissioned Maya Miro Johnson to write "bruises paraphrase" for Kate, and Yarlung commissioned Kate to create and reimagine three seminal works by Hildegard herself.

Hildegard And Her Sisters

Canticles of Hieronymus, Ruth Schoenthal

Serenade in C for woodwind quintet
Arranged by Bob Hughes
Recorded by Luis Escareño

Merryl Monard, Flute
Alex Hayashi, Oboe
Clarissa Osborn, Clarinet
Brandon Rumsey, Bassoon
Caroline Steiger, Horn

Serenade in C (1949) by Lou Harrison

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1 Circles

Yarlung Records

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