Rain Worthington

Passages Through Time: The Music of Rain Worthington

In PASSAGES THROUGH TIME, composer Rain Worthington explores the mystery of instrumental music’s ability to communicate the universality of human experiences. She invites the listener into the realm of the nonverbal to reveal our primal commonality, directly touching the heart and soul with music that is delicate and subtle, yet powerful and transporting. Worthington’s music has been hailed as “a fusion of styles—ancient, medieval modality and sonorities, modernist minimalist ostinato, and classical” (IAWM Journal). Embark on a journey through the currents of Worthington’s musical streams and the emotional forces that drive her unique voice.

Track Listing

  1. Full Circle
    Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra | Petr Vronský, conductor; Petr Nouzovský, cello
  2. Night Stream
    Antonín Hradil, violin; Jakab Látal, violin
  3. Within Deep Currents
    Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra | Stanislav Vavřínek, conductor
  4. Balancing on the Edge of Shadows
    Audrey Wright, violin; Yundu Wang, piano
  5. Shadows of the Wind
    Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra | Stanislav Vavřínek, conductor; Ivo Fišer, cello
  6. Resolves
    Carmine Miranda, cello
  7. Dreaming through Fog
    Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra | Stanislav Vavřínek, conductor
  8. In Passages
    Croatian Chamber Orchestra | Miran Vaupotić, conductor; Mojca Ramušćak, violin

View the full liner notes for the album and more at Navona Records.

Worthington places herself above all developments and draws her inspiration from the totality of music, in a fusion of styles and eras. This is the only way to create music that carries the listener as far as yearning can reach.
– Remy Franck, Pizzicato Magazine

[Rain] has the ability to state her compositional case to us directly, as it were, in absolutely concrete if mystical terms. She somehow makes clear to us how we experience the transitional, impermanent and ever shifting quality of a later modernist world.
– Grego Edwards, Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review

Dreaming Through Fog

Score available through Subito Music Distribution
Premiere recording by the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra Ostrava, Conductor, Stanislav Vavřínek.
Amazon Music * YouTube Music * Apple Music * Spotify

Composed during the time of the global 2020 coronavirus pandemic as a reflection on the seeming warping of time – with a continuous undercurrent of tragedy and uncertainty, mixed with cycles of waiting and moments of hope, the world seemed to blur through a dream fog of emotional responses, creative impulses and indistinguishable days. The music exerts a subtle pull of being drawn further, as through a tunnel, while sounds of the external world filter in as delicately disjointed echoes and reverberating rhythms. – RW

Shadows of the Wind

Recorded by Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra | Stanislav Vavřínek, conductor; Ivo Fišer, cello.
Purchase Score through Subito Music Distribution. Purchase original CD release.
AmazonMusic * YouTube Music * Apple Music * Spotify

Program note: The inspiration for this work came to me one night while listening to the sounds of a windstorm, as the wind increased and diminished in cycles, the room was filled with the changing patterns cast by the movements of branches and leaves. It seemed to transform the room with a wash of mystery – as if from some higher perspective, with shadows of time moving in waves over a vast landscape below. – RW

Full Circle

Recorded by the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra, Petr Vronský conductor and Petr Nouzovský cello for PARMA Recordings.
Purchase Score through Subito Music Distribution. Purchase original CD release.

Amazon Music * YouTube Music * Apple Music * Spotify

Program note: Full Circle is a contemplation of cycles of emotion that continually emerge and recede throughout life. The music is written for a subtle interplay between the soloist and the orchestra, rather than the traditional role of the soloist being in the forefront. My intention is a shifting of perceptions in which the soloist emerges from the orchestra, in much the way that intense feelings rise from the unconscious, giving voice to emotional currents, and then recede back into the subliminal. A metaphorical image is of a figure becoming discernible as it emerges from a dense mist, then recedes, blending again into the atmosphere, only to reemerge as a presence again. – RW

In Passages – violin soloist & string orchestra

Score available through Subito Music Distribution. Purchase original CD release.
Album features the recording by the Croatian Chamber Orchestra with Miran Vaupotić, Conductor, and Mojca Ramušćak, violin soloist.

Concert performance video features the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra with Miran Vaupotić, Conductor, and Orest Shourgot, violin soloist.

* Amazon Music * YouTube Music * Apple Music * Spotify

Program Note: As with most of my works, the music arises from the emotional experience of life. I think of this as a reflection on the passages of emotion — that ebb and flow of the feelings that continually emerge and recede repeatedly throughout life. The music is written to blend the soloist and the orchestra, rather than the traditional role of the soloist being in the forefront. The soloist should seem to emerge from the orchestra in much the way that intense feelings seem to surface from the unconscious, giving voice to our inner emotional currents, and then recede back into the chorus of the subliminal. – RW

Tracing a Dream

Score purchase is available through Subito Music Distribution. Purchase original CD release.
Release 2/2016: Dream Vapors – selected works for orchestra, Navona Records, Russian Philharmonic Orchestra, Ovidiu Marinescu, Conductor
Original Release 4/2011: Light and Shadow, Navona Records, NV5847

Program note: Tracing a Dream taps into the impressionistic logic of emotions and dreams. Within this realm there is a fluidity of connections and sequences that is governed by emotional contexts, rather than rational order. Music has the capacity to heighten and distill emotions through juxtapositions that might otherwise be thought to be unlikely – comparable to dream imagery. – RW

Shredding Glass

Score available through Subito Music Distribution.
Re-Release 2016: Dream Vapors – selected works for orchestra, Navona Records
Original Release 2008: Masterworks of the New Era, Volume 12 – ERMMedia, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Robert Ian Winstin, Conductor

Program note: Shredding Glass began as an immediate cathartic response to the events and images of September 11, 2001. It is a reverential work of compassion and spiritual healing that was composed in the shadow of 9/11. To me this piece represents the essence of an emotional remembrance – how time and timelessness unfolded while coping with the realization, heartbreak and impact of this catastrophic event. I believe the music is ultimately about transcendence. –RW

Fast Through Dark Winds

Released 2/12/2016: Dream Vapors – selected works for orchestra, Navona Records, Moravian Philharmonic, Petr Vronsky, Conductor
Score available through Subito Music Distribution
Program note: Inspired by the emotional intensity of a dream – careening through dense dark night fog on a bike with no brakes, no control and no visibility, accompanied by alternating interludes of fear and transcendent calm.
Some time after composing this, I realized that the dream was a subliminal metaphor for the profound helplessness I was feeling as a caregiver and the need for acceptance in witnessing my mother’s descent into vascular dementia. – RW

Paradigms

Paradigms explores orchestral works that dive into the dramatic and expressive, ponder the impressionistic, and compare the peaceful with the chaotic, this album posits that music of all studies, influences, and methods of creation are pieces of a larger puzzle that shape the American contemporary soundscape.

Featured on PARADIGMS are the orchestral compositions of Allen Brings, Paula Diehl, Warren Gooch, Joseph Koykkar, Howard Quilling, and Rain Worthington, with performances by the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra (Robert Black, conductor) and Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra (Petr Vronsky, conductor).

Includes Of Time Remembered by Rain Worthington.

Shredding Glass – single

From the title alone, one would expect Rain Worthington’s Shredding Glass, performed by the Czech Philharmonic, to be a work of brutal nature, especially when put in the context of its original inspiration: the events of 9/11. But Worthington’s piece provides the listener instead with exquisite disintegration, mere glass filaments casting light in all directions, with an undercurrent of unresolved apprehension. …The texture is transparent but luminous, reminiscent perhaps of the late works of Mahler.”

— Scott Locke ((Journal of International Alliance of Women in Music)

(original release: Masterworks of the New Era, Volume Twelve ERM-6827)

Yet Still Night – single

“Yet Still Night for orchestra plays out the dichotomy of outward naiveté/underlying sophistication on a larger scale. You first think this is a lullaby, rocking back and forth between D-flat and B-flat in quarter notes that wander around the orchestra. But this is an urban lullaby, and the nocturnal world intrudes in growing chromatic lines and thickening textures.”

— Kyle Gann (Chamber Music, August, 2003)

“Yet Still Night by Rain Worthington is a haunting symphonic composition that mesmerizes in its opening bars with glowing tonalities and deceptively simple themes. A nocturne which might be imagined in the wee hours of a sleepless night, it develops into a rich web of suspenseful moments as the string section walks the listener through a series of ever opening doors one would rather not look behind. The brass might cry out in alarm at what one might find but the pace continues nonetheless. A series of insistent chromatics propel one forward until the last door is opened and the final cry of release is heard in the brass. Alfred Hitchcock would approve.”

— Therese McNally, Writer and AGMA member

(original release: Masterworks of the New Era, Volume Eleven, ERM-6811)

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Rain Worthington is a Sponsored Artist with Performance Zone, Inc (dba The Field), a not-for-profit, tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) organization serving the performing arts community. Contributions to The Field earmarked for Rain Worthington, in support of her music are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

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