Tag Archive for: MN Boychoir

World Premieres by Daniel Kallman

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Marlene’s Musings
April, 2014

Studying scores is a blast for me. But, studying a score that is brand new is even better. Holding a new score in your hands is a humbling thing, sort of like holding a new-born baby in your arms. You feel the wonder of a new creation and you feel the tremendous responsibility to try and nurture its path forward. The task is to figure out what is there, beyond notes, rhythms, articulations and dynamics. You try to get deeper. It takes a long time of study to begin to do that but when the desire is there, the time to do it becomes inconsequential.

Sea Creatures
DanKallmanI have known of Daniel Kallman’s music since hearing a piece he wrote years ago, performed by Plymouth Music Series (now Vocalessence) under the direction of Philip Brunelle. Since then I have heard many more of his masterful creations, performed by MN Orchestra and many other ensembles. In 1997, I commissioned Dan to write a work for Halama Wind Octet. We premiered Sea Creatures at Wayzata Community Church and it was recorded by MPR. It is a fabulous piece that has been published by Boosey and Hawkes and is now performed all over the world.

Dan and I have talked for several years about trying to procure the funding for the full orchestration. With help from the MN State Arts Board, the dream has come to fruition. Sea Creatures is a six-movement work. Prior to each movement, there is narration concerning aspects of the earth’s oceans. The four middle movements – Dolphin, Puffer Fish, Moray Eel and Shark – are musical descriptions of those remarkable creatures of the sea.

Jabberwocky
MNBoyChoirWSOAs part of the MSAB grant, Dan has also written a piece for the amazing MN Boychoir, directed by Mark Johnson. The piece, Jabberwocky, uses the text from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. The text uses lots of portmanteaus. For example, “galumphing,” “frumious,” and “huffish.” Dan’s music brilliantly ‘paints’ the made-up words. I’m certain this piece, along with the fully orchestrated Sea Creatures, will get many future performances by ensembles nationally and internationally.

What a thrill to be the facilitators of their first performances!

Carmina Burana

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Marlene’s Musings
February, 2013

The fickleness of fate,
The treacherous territories of greed, lust and gluttony
The joy of spring
Love songs

220px-CarminaBurana_wheelThese are the age-old, timeless themes of Carl Orff’s amazing secular cantata, Carmina Burana. All of the texts were written during the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. Orff selected only 24 poems and writings from a huge and beautifully bound volume of 254 poems discovered in 1803 when the monastery, Benediktbeuern, was secularized. The title, literally translated, means Songs of Beuern.

I find the backstory of every piece of music fascinating but this one has special intrigue. Who were the poets? The texts are NOT AT ALL religious. In fact, some are bawdy and lascivious.

WHO WROTE THE TEXTS?

Probably travelling minstrels, defrocked priests, students satirizing the Catholic Church and many, scholars think, were written by the Goliards.

The Goliards were known for their rioting, gambling and intemperance rather than their scholarship. They were often erroneously supposed to have been a religious order, an idea that arises from their satiric order of St. Golias, the fictitious patron saint of debauchery. The actual word goliard may derive from the Old French and means “big mouth.”

You’ve heard of the troubadours, right? Well, the Goliards were to the Troubadours what John Belushi was to Sir Lawrence Olivier. Both the Troubadours and the Goliards earned food, drink and lodging from their songs and poetry. The audience for the troubadours was the high and mighty, so they created sophisticated songs for connoisseurs of music and poetry. The audience for the Goliards was the middle and lower classes, so the Goliards, who tended to be rebellious and irreverent, created witty songs for the connoisseurs of cynicism and raunch. Although the goliards were initially tolerated and protected, their multiplying numbers eventually turned into a plague of beggars and their irreverence provoked an increasingly conservative church hierarchy, which began suppressing the movement.

The texts are in three different languages – Old Provencal French, Middle German and Medieval Latin. This fact has caused quite a bit of angst for our fabulous singers. These are unfamiliar languages to all of them and to me. Making sure that every syllable is correctly pronounced has been quite a task. Since languages continue evolving, you can imagine the changes and morphing that has taken place since the texts were written 900 years ago! Is the “v” pronounced as a “v” or an “f?” Is “que” pronounced “kvay” or “kvee” or “quay” or “quee?” You get the idea.

THE MUSIC

170px-Carl_OrffEven if you don’t think you’ve heard the piece, I’m quite certain you will recognize the opening lines of “O Fortuna.” It has been used in movies, trailers, advertisements and commercials. Even at the 2013 Superbowl, when San Francisco rallied and it looked like they just might trump the Ravens, I heard the main theme. The text at that point speaks about never being too cocky about your good fortune. The goddess, Fortuna, whose wheel continues to turn, will elevate you and then debase you on a whim. It appears there is no escaping that inevitable part of human existence.

Musically speaking, there is almost no polyphony in the work. Rather, rhythm is the central feature. The piece is easy to listen to but far from pabulum. Even without motivic development or harmonic complexity, the texts are fascinating and the music riveting in its energetic and driven pace.

Carmina Burana is one of those pieces you’ll never forget – from the opening and most famous, “O Fortuna” to the greatest drinking song of all time, “In the Tavern,” to the rapturous high D in the soprano aria, “Oh, Sweetest One.”

A favorite of the soloist arias is “O Trutina.” The music is so glorious and tender as it accompanies such an internal struggle between virtue and desire.

With more than 200 people on stage this will be quite an event!

Everyone is working so hard. When the music is great, hard work is the gift we give ourselves in order to experience the powerful transformative feelings that only music can give. A reward in extremely valuable currency!

2012-13 New Season!

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Marlene’s Musings
August, 2012

MarleneWithClarinetI am excited about another WSO season, having been fueled by a wonderful summer of conducting and playing. For 25 years I have spent summers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming performing as part of the Grand Teton Music Festival. It’s a place where superb music making and majestic mountains inspire me to feel gratitude for the life I have. Musicians come from all over the country – New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Detroit, Milwaukee, Colorado, just to name a few – to make music with life-long friends and to hike up arduous paths to crystalline mountain lakes. Donald Runnicles, in my opinion, one of the world’s great conductors, leads the orchestra. Each week is a different program, but a stand out for me this summer was a concert version of Wagner’s Die Walkure with soloists from the Met and Berlin Opera. Spellbinding!

In mid-July I flew home to conduct the showcase concert for The Young Artist World Piano Festival. A competition is held to choose winners to play with the orchestra. There are two categories: under 12-years-old and over 12-years-old. This year, the winner of the younger division was William Yang, the wunderkind who played with WSO in February 2012. He performed the 2nd and 3rd movements of Mozart’s most difficult concerto, K. 466. It was INCREDIBLE! The winner of the older division performed the 1st movement of Beethoven’s 3rd piano concerto in c minor (same brooding key as his 5th symphony, Coriolan Overture and Pathetique Sonata). The cadenza under the adroit musicianship of Evren Ozell had us all tearing up.

Then it was off to Brainerd for the Lakes Area Music Festival. This was my third year, the first two as clarinetist and this one as conductor and clarinetist. Unlike other festivals around the country this one pairs professional players from the Minnesota Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Detroit, Milwaukee and Chicago Symphonies with freshly graduated musicians from Juilliard, Eastman School and Music, Rice University and others. It is somewhat similar to the Teton Festival in that musicians are brought to a gorgeous area and housed in lovely abodes, but this festival provides mentoring for the young and some humble pie for the old! You can imagine how delightful it is to conduct an orchestra made up of both.

Now I’m ready to tackle the huge amount of study required for the WSO’s fourth season.

mannylaureanowebresCheck out this line up of guest artists:

  • Manny Laureano, principal trumpet, MN Orchestra
  • ANCIA Saxohpone Quartet, Selmer and VanDoren sponsored soloists
  • Kaleena Miller, tap dancer extraordinaire whose group, Rhythmic Circus, will be performing in New York City for a couple months this season
  • Edina Chorale, Minnesota BoyChoir, Karin Wolverton, Gabriel Pressier – for our performance of Carmina Burana in Feb and March 2013

 

There will be a lot of familiar repertoire, some rarely performed jewels and a premiere or two.

I look forward to sharing the incomparable WSO experience with you.