Program Notes

Forward Into Light (2020)
Sarah Kirkland Snider (b.1973)
[West Coast Premiere]

Forward Into Light is a meditation on perseverance, bravery, and alliance.

The piece was inspired by the American women suffragists–Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Frances E.W. Harper, Ida B. Wells, Zitkála-Šá, and Mabel Lee Ping-Hua, to name but a few–who devoted their lives to the belief that women were human beings and therefore entitled to equal rights and protections under the law of the United States of America.

I wrote the music thinking about what it means to believe in something so deeply that one is willing to endure harassment, isolation, assault, incarceration, force-feedings, and life endangerment to fight for it. Forward Into Light does not attempt to tell the story of the American women’s suffrage movement, but rather to distill the emotional and psychological contours of faith, doubt, and what it means to persevere.

Forward Into Light features a musical quote from March of the Women, composed in 1910 by British composer and suffragette Dame Ethel Smyth. The anthem of the women’s suffrage movement, March of the Women was sung in homes and halls, on streets and farms, and on the steps of the United States Capitol. 

The title of the piece derives from a suffrage slogan made famous by the banner that suffragist Inez Milholland carried while riding a white horse to lead the National American Woman Suffrage Association parade on March 3, 1913, in Washington, D.C.:

“Forward, out of error
Leave behind the night
Forward through the darkness
Forward into light!”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 –Sarah Kirkland Snider

Duo Duel (2020)
Jennifer Higdon (b. 1962)
[West Coast Premiere / Festival Co-commission]

Duo Duel is a double percussion concerto, where two soloists duel it out at the front of the stage, and at various points, they work together to duel it out with the orchestra. The soloists use only pitched percussion: a marimba and a vibraphone (which they share), and each has three timpani. The work is in one continuous movement, but moves through this pattern of tempi: Slow, Fast, Slow, Fast-Cadenza (the fastest cadenza ever written for percussionists), and then the final stretch of Fast, with dueling timpani. Duo Duel was commissioned by the Houston Symphony, the University of Miami Frost School, and the Cabrillo Festival. Its 41,973 notes are dedicated to Svet Stoyanov and Matthew Strauss.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              –Jennifer Higdon

Track 8 (2019)
Sebastian Currier (b. 1959)
[West Coast Premiere]

When the Cincinnati Symphony asked me to write a piece for them that somehow connected with Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony, I decided to take their request more literally than they might have expected. Each of the four movements in Track 8 in some way parallels or “tracks” the four movements of the Beethoven. Sometimes I use the Beethoven literally. Other times I recast the material, but always maintaining some audible connection to the original. One could almost call it a Beethoven remix.

The fact that I directly use material from Beethoven’s symphony, might well seem to some as offensive, as if there is some desecration in the practice. I grew up on Beethoven and, unsurprisingly, am in awe of the power and breadth of his music. My intention in Track 8 is not at all to do violence, but to pay homage to this wonderful enduring piece. But the wider point I wish to make is that, for me, Beethoven doesn’t seem “old” or “a relic of the past”, but something totally vital, alive, and relevant today. 

In the first movement, Signposts, exact quotes of the first movement of Beethoven’s 8th appear as short fragments arranged in chronological order. In between these strongly chiseled chunks of Beethoven, I have interpolated more atmospheric music, which has almost no motivic connection to the Beethoven. Two different world coexisting. One, strong and assured. The other, somewhat adrift. Only at the end of the movement does the Beethoven become assimilated. We hear the opening motive that begins the symphony presented in a slowed down, euphonious, nostalgic transformation.

The second movement, Metronome, once again “tracks” with the second movement of the 8th Symphony. In addition to using literal quotes, it takes off from what is often remarked as the clock-like, metronomic quality of the repeated chords that are heard throughout the movement. Here, that material is recast as a somewhat off-kilter clock formed from pizzicato violins, piano, and percussion. This occasionally gives way to the actual Beethoven, which tends to dissolve quickly back into the prevailing texture. But, in this movement, Beethoven’s 8th is no the only piece quoted. The clicking of the clock made me think about time. The Beethoven was written toward the beginning of the 19th century and here I was writing my piece toward the beginning of the 21st century. The early 20th century formed a midpoint and I thought to include some quotations from then, as a bridge between the two worlds. I thought of two pieces which were not only totally incongruous with each other, but also with the Beethoven and, I felt, with me too. The two other pieces quoted in this moment are Anton Webern’s Op. 6 orchestral pieces and a song of Irving Berlin, “When I Lost You”. Weird, arbitrary choices? Yes! But that’s what interested me. It’s satisfying to bring things together that don’t seem to fit. It says that things are more interconnected than we might think! The movement ends with the Webern and Irving Berlin pieces sounding together simultaneously.

The third movement, Stretched Time, engages with the minuet from the Beethoven. It is often remarked that Beethoven’s 8th lacks a bonafide slow movement, as the second movement, with its clock-ticking figuration and marking “scherzando,” doesn’t seem particularly slow or characteristic. Richard Wagner, weighing in on the matter, suggested that the minuet was actually the slow movement, and that the second movement should be performed as a sherzo. This struck me as totally absurd. But it did influence my recasting of the minuet. Here, the opening material of the Beethoven is presented very slowed down, creating a floating, dreamy atmosphere. I imagine Beethoven’s theme suffering a parallel fate to the clock in Dali’s painting. In the last movement, Source Code, Beethoven’s whimsical, high energy last movement, takes on a more snarky, sarcastic tone. The phrase “source code” could be applied to my whole piece, as easily as to just the last movement. Although, of course most of the piece sounds nothing like Beethoven, nonetheless it is his amazing symphony that lurks behind every note. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          –Sebastian Currier

The Wind of Two Koreas (2019)
Bora Yoon (b. 1980)
[West Coast Premiere]

The Wind of Two Koreas is a meditation and exploration on cultural identity, bifurcation, and the movements and music surrounding the resulting global musical diaspora of Korea’s history and present day–inspired by Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite and Finale, exploring his cultural identity with the cultural mythology, folklore, political landscape, and common knowledge folk songs within Russian culture. 

The first movement, “Sweeping Changes” was created, using the rhythmic architecture of ancient Korean shamanic percussion samdo-garak drum patterns and cells, transformed into harmonic gestures and pitches, for 4-hand piano, and then unto the orchestral palatte. Illustratively, gestures were chosen to depict horrors found in the Ten Courts of Hell, before Buddhist reincarnation, and the punishments which befit one’s crimes from a past life. Almost a bird’s eye view flying through the ten courts of hell, the aural journey begins from looking into the Mirror of Retribution, facing a myriad of torrid and awful deaths, eventually reaching the 10th ring, the Wheel of Reincarnation.

Spinning wheel, spinning wheel,
Turn, turn, turn…

An old Korean folk song “Spinning Wheel”, is juxtaposed with the patriotic anthems of the DPRK/North Korea juxtaposed with South Korea’s K-pop retaliation sound bites, as the conflict of past and progress, future, and history come into conflict with one another, of a culture and blood that is ultimately, one. The brief transition between the two movements represents the Pavilion of Forgetfulness, where one drinks the potion before entering the next life.

The second movement, “Deliverance / Return / Grace” is based primarily on Korean lyric song “Half Moon,” juxtaposed with wafts of altered melodies of “Arirang” and “Doraji”– two ancient Korean folk melodies–in order to pull back the lens to a place before division and conflict, but to a more elemental unity and unifying perspective, older than both Koreas.

Blue heaven, Milky Way–on a white ship gay
A laurel tree–one laurel tree and a rabbit on tiptoe.
No mast is there aloft, it has no oars at play–
Fine sailor! Fine sailing! Westward you go.

The Milky Way you sail across, on to Cloudland so–
Cloudland you travel through–O whither do you go?
Twinkling, twinkling tiny sparks beckon you from far–
Sail on and you will reach the lighthouse, Morning Star.

––––––––––––––

Doraji! Doraji! Doraji!
Deep, deep mountains, white doraji!
Though one or two roots only I pull,
Slowly and surely my bamboo basket grows full.

––––––––––––––

Arirang, Arirang, Arariyo,
Arirang Pass is the long road you go.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        –Bora Yoon