Program note
An anxious lament for love lost, borrowing musical inspiration from the plainsong, “Dies Irae.” The emotional context is sadness and futility, which transmutes into edgy feelings of anger. The metaphoric realization that came to mind was that moving on would involve something like walking barefoot across a floor covered with sharp wires. – RW
World News – carnival spin
Program note: Commenting on the media carnival spin overlaid onto the news. –RW
2001 Concert performance audio features: Theresa Salomon & Vita Wallace, vlns; Liuh-Wen Ting, vla; Ariane Lallemand, vc; Joseph Kubera, pno.
Walking on Wires – strings, wind
Program note
An anxious lament for love lost, borrowing musical inspiration from the plainsong, “Dies Irae.” The emotional context is sadness and futility, which transmutes into edgy feelings of anger. The metaphoric realization that came to mind was that moving on would involve something like walking barefoot across a floor covered with sharp wires. – RW
Traveling Dreams
Program note: Emotional memory of travels through Greece, Egypt and Turkey, painted with a brush of modal sound. (Later expanded to “Memories of Place” scored for chamber orchestra)
Tangents
Tangents derives its name from divergent musical lines that seem to arrive and depart from a musical center, much like fragments of thoughts that tangentially pass through conversations. (A solo piano version recorded by Max Lifchitz was released on North/South Recordings, “Moods: Piano Music by American Women Composers“.)
(Perusal score is for wind quintet)
Street City
Evocative of the elemental dissonance, repetition and rhythmic pulse of the city street sounds, as well as, the cyclical moods as day transitions to quieter night hours, then picks up rhythmically once again as morning approaches. –RW
1997 Premiere by Synchronia, St. Louis, MO. (Audio is a 1998 NYC concert recording.)
Running Late
Chamber version of the first of a set of three sequential nocturnes for orchestra entitled “Disturbances.“
(Audio is the 2000 premiere at Turtle Bay Music School, NYC)
Resisting Reason
Resistance to the application of logical reasoning to emotional complexities. – RW
(Video features a 2001 NYC concert performance: Jacqueline Leclair, ob; Richard Vrotney, bsn; Theresa Salomon, vln; Liuh-Wen Ting, vla; Ariane Lallemand, vc.)
(Score purchase link is the version for wind quintet.)
Dark Dreams
Dark Dreams was inspired by a painting by Jared FitzGerald, and is dedicated to him. The germinating idea for the piece relates to its image of an angel in the moonlight, wrestling with a shadowy figure. “Dark Dreams” extends the metaphor to the struggles with “emotional demons” confronted in life. – RW
Painting by Jared FitzGerald
Video features the 2001 premiere with Jacqueline Leclair, Eng. hrn; Evan Spritzer, cl; Richard Vrotney, bsn; Joseph Kubera, pno; Vita Wallace & Theresa Salomon, vlns; Liuh-Wen Ting, vla; Ariane Lallemand, vc.
A Song Alone
Memories of Place
Memories of Place arose from emotional memories of a time traveling and living in Greece, Egypt and Turkey. It is a recollection of that time, not as a literal transcription of melodies, but rather as an emotional memory of aural textures, painted with a broad brush of modal sound. – RW
