Sound and Fury

In Lost and Found, again…, Brightwork newmusic explores what it means to be lost over and over again, only to be found, albeit for a fleeting moment. In Jonathon Grasse’s Cooking School*, a tragicomedic tableaux depicting the perils and successes at an Edward Gorey-esque school for culinary arts plays out as various disjointed identities – playful, macabre, serious, recreational – pop in and out of existence. Molly Joyce makes being found the point of her playful Lost and Found**, here reworked for Brightwork’s instrumentation. The cellist begins the work lost, and it is the other instruments that help her find herself. A.J. McCaffrey’s Murmurations depicts an enormous flock of birds forming a massive, constantly shifting cloud that seems like one solid but ever-changing shape in the sky, each individual lost in the crowd. In Takuma Itoh’s driving Parallel Divergence it is the pianist that never stops playing as the other instruments struggle to keep up, occasionally diverging from the main force of the piano to create independent lines of their own. Liviu Marinescu’s A-Gain** illustrates the impact of repetition on musical form as various motives, phrases, and sometime entire sections are “found” over and over again, creating a sense of déjà vu. Scale 9 is the scale used to measure hypomania in a manual widely used to by psychologists. Sean Friar captures many of the hallmarks of a manic episode in this dynamic piece; especially distraction by irrelevant stimuli, flights of ideas, elevated mood, and accelerated and occasionally out-of-control motor activity. In the end, it all flits away into the aether, lost again…

*World Premiere

**World Premiere of new arrangement

Program

Bill Alves: Night Refuge (2018)

Brightwork ensemble, piano, percussion, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, soprano

Jonathon Grasse: Cooking School (2018)

Brightwork ensemble, piano, percussion, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, soprano

Molly Joyce: Lost and Found (2016)

Brightwork ensemble, piano, percussion, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, soprano

AJ McCaffrey: Murmurations (2018)

Brian Walsh, clarinets
Aron Kallay, piano

Takuma Itoh: Parallel Divergence (2011)

Brightwork ensemble, piano, percussion, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, soprano

Liviu Marinescu: A-Gain (2018)

Brightwork ensemble, piano, percussion, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, soprano

Sean Friar: Scale 9 (2009)

Brightwork ensemble, piano, percussion, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, soprano

Lost-and-Found-6-1-300x200
March 3, 2019
3:30 pm
Church of Truth
Church of Truth
690 E Orange Grove Blvd
Pasadena, CA
91104

Lost-and-Found-6-1-300x200
March 3, 2019
3:30 pm
Church of Truth
Church of Truth
690 E Orange Grove Blvd
Pasadena, CA
91104

In Lost and Found, again…, Brightwork newmusic explores what it means to be lost over and over again, only to be found, albeit for a fleeting moment. In Jonathon Grasse’s Cooking School*, a tragicomedic tableaux depicting the perils and successes at an Edward Gorey-esque school for culinary arts plays out as various disjointed identities – playful, macabre, serious, recreational – pop in and out of existence. Molly Joyce makes being found the point of her playful Lost and Found**, here reworked for Brightwork’s instrumentation. The cellist begins the work lost, and it is the other instruments that help her find herself. A.J. McCaffrey’s Murmurations depicts an enormous flock of birds forming a massive, constantly shifting cloud that seems like one solid but ever-changing shape in the sky, each individual lost in the crowd. In Takuma Itoh’s driving Parallel Divergence it is the pianist that never stops playing as the other instruments struggle to keep up, occasionally diverging from the main force of the piano to create independent lines of their own. Liviu Marinescu’s A-Gain** illustrates the impact of repetition on musical form as various motives, phrases, and sometime entire sections are “found” over and over again, creating a sense of déjà vu. Scale 9 is the scale used to measure hypomania in a manual widely used to by psychologists. Sean Friar captures many of the hallmarks of a manic episode in this dynamic piece; especially distraction by irrelevant stimuli, flights of ideas, elevated mood, and accelerated and occasionally out-of-control motor activity. In the end, it all flits away into the aether, lost again…

*World Premiere

**World Premiere of new arrangement

Program

Bill Alves: Night Refuge (2018)

Brightwork ensemble, piano, percussion, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, soprano

Jonathon Grasse: Cooking School (2018)

Brightwork ensemble, piano, percussion, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, soprano

Molly Joyce: Lost and Found (2016)

Brightwork ensemble, piano, percussion, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, soprano

AJ McCaffrey: Murmurations (2018)

Brian Walsh, clarinets
Aron Kallay, piano

Takuma Itoh: Parallel Divergence (2011)

Brightwork ensemble, piano, percussion, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, soprano

Liviu Marinescu: A-Gain (2018)

Brightwork ensemble, piano, percussion, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, soprano

Sean Friar: Scale 9 (2009)

Brightwork ensemble, piano, percussion, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, soprano