DIVINE MISCHIEF

Tuesday, October 18, 2022, 7:30pm
Meyerson Symphony Center + Livestream

Fanfare

(7:15 in the Meyerson lobby)

Fanfare for the New Sun [3’00”]
Aaron Houston

Dallas Winds Brass & Percussion
Ogechi Ukazu, conductor

Program

Procession of the Nobles [4’30”]
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, arr. Erik Leidzen, ed. Van Ragsdale

Even if the Last Bullet Hits My Chest [9’00”]
Daniel M. Cavanagh

Danzon No. 2 [9’40”]
Arturo Márquez, arr. Oliver Nickel

– INTERMISSION –

Divine Mischief   (WORLD PREMIERE) [23’00”]
John Mackey
Julian Bliss, clarinet

• 1. A stranger and a game
  2. Disappointment, regret, regression: a waltz
  3. Spellbound

Dallas Winds Personnel

STRING BASS
Andrew Goins

PIANO/CELESTE
Cameron Hofmann

HARP
Naoko Nakamura

TIMPANI
Steve Kimple, Principal

PERCUSSION
Roland Muzquiz, Principal
Steve McDonald
Michael Ptacin
Bill Klymus
Layci Dagley
Andrew Smit

PERSONNEL MANAGER
Gigi Sherrell Norwood

MUSIC LIBRARIAN
Chrystal Stevens

TECHNICAL DIRECTOR
Ramon Muzquiz

FOUNDER / EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Kim Campbell
EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT
Grace Lovrien
DIRECTOR OF CONCERT OPERATIONS
Gigi Sherrell Norwood
DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION
Todd Toney
BOOKKEEPER
Lenore Ladwig Scott

Program Notes

Procession of the Nobles, from Mlada (1890)

Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov
(March 18, 1844 – June 21, 1908)

Beginning with the reign of Peter the Great (1672-1725), Russia looked to Europe for modern ideas as the tsars shaped a vast, multi-cultural continent into a united empire. In addition to ideas about governance and trade, Russia imported dancers, musicians, and other artists to shape the cultural life of their emerging nation. Catherine the Great (1729-1796) adopted the philosophy of the European Enlightenment and the fashions of the French court, wearing the same style of elaborate gowns and powdered wigs as the French queen, Marie Antoinette. She had a portrait done by Marie’s court painter, Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun, and made French the official language of her court.

Nearly 100 years after Catherine’s death, five Russian composers began to push back against the stranglehold French and Italian composers had on their music, and develop a new, distinctly Russian compositional style based on the moody harmonies of native folk and religious music. Musicologists refer to these Russian rebels as “The Five.” Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov was the youngest of the group.

Born of nobility and raised in a military tradition, Rimsky-Korsakov immersed himself in Russian folklore from early childhood, spending countless hours reading fairy tales and listening to his family servants tell the tales of magic and wonder they had grown up with. He also developed his talent as a pianist and began composing his own music.

In 1861, while still in training for a naval career, the eighteen-year-old Rimsky-Korsakov was introduced to a circle of musicians eager to discuss the nitty-gritty details of orchestration and composition. These young men, who included composers Alexander Borodin and Modest Mussorgsky, formed the core of “The Five.”

During 1889 and 1890, Rimsky-Korsakov was collaborating with Viktor Krylov on an opera-ballet called Mlada. The story is chock full of thwarted love, pagan rituals, and ghostly apparitions, reflecting Rimsky-Korsakov’s love of Russian folklore, and showcasing his fascination with exotic harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic elements inspired by his concept of the “East”—which included Turkey, the Middle East, and Africa, as well as China and Japan. You can hear all of this in Procession of the Nobles, which is just about the only part of Mlada anybody still performs.

Even if the Last Bullet Hits My Chest (2021)

Daniel M. Cavanagh

Dan Cavanagh is a composer and pianist who has garnered numerous awards in both areas. He received a 2009 gold medal prize from the International Music Prize for Excellence in Composition for his work for trumpet and piano, from the barrage comes clarity. In 2017 he was awarded a Special Judges’ Citation in the American Prize for Chamber Music Composition for his work for trumpet ensemble and drumset, Waves.

As a composer Cavanagh has been commissioned to write for Latin Grammy-winning AfroBop Alliance, the legendary Patti LaBelle, and a wide range of classical and jazz performers across North America and Europe. His work Reach, for violin and double bass can be heard on the upcoming album, The Diaries of Adam and Eve, by violinist Martha Walvoord and bassist Jack Unzicker, due out on Albany Records on November 1, 2019.

He has released four jazz CDs as a leader, including Pulse and Heart of the Geyser on Seattle’s OA2 Records, and two recordings with Minnesota-based vibraphonist Dave Hagedorn, Horizon, and 20 Years. His music can be heard on many other recordings both classical and jazz. His film scoring work can be heard in the documentary The Beat Hotel, a film exploring the hotel in Paris in the late 1950s and early 1960s where the beat poets, led by Allen Ginsberg, lived and created much of their famous work.

Cavanagh continues to be commissioned and programmed around the world. Cavanagh’s compositions for jazz big band are published by UNC Jazz Press, Sierra Music Publications, and E-Jazz Lines (formerly Walrus Music Publishing). Cavanagh has performed extensively in North America and Europe as a jazz pianist, and has also performed in Asia and Central America. He has appeared in concert with Grammy-winners Irma Thomas, Adonis Rose, and Joe McCarthy. He has been a finalist in the EuropaFest Jazz Contest in Bucharest, Romania, and in the Jacksonville Jazz Festival Piano Competition. As the Executive Producer of UT Arlington Records, he spearheads a record label that involves students and faculty in all aspects of production and management of a recording project, from conception to release. He serves as the Co-Chair of Region VI for the Society of Composers, Inc., an international organization dedicated to new and contemporary music and composers.

From 2018-2020 Cavanagh served as Chair of the Department of Music at the University of Texas at Arlington. He is now the Interim Associate Dean for the College of Liberal Arts.

Of his work Even if the Last Bullet Hits My Chest, Cavanagh says:

Some number of years ago (2014 or so) I was listening to the BBC world service on the radio, and through an interpreter, a Yemeni farmer was being interviewed about the Civil war there. He said something so profound – “Even if the last bullet hits my chest, we must end this war.” To me hearing that was like a flash of human connection across the globe, from a man I will never know, from a completely different culture. That has stuck with me ever since.

This is a work that considers the patterns of war, hope, and their impact on human beings. This is the second work I’ve written dealing with war. The first was “Waves” which was awarded a special judges citation in the American Prize a few years ago in chamber music.

In that piece, I directly worked with a Wallace Stevens poem called “Dry Loaf” which dealt with the large forces, bigger than any one of us, that seem to eat at humanity. They are patterns that repeat. The first two lines in that poem are:

It is equal to living in a tragic land
To live in a tragic time.

This piece continues on that theme, drawing together Wallace Stevens’ observations about war (they’re almost like Ives’ “Unanswered Question” druids, all-seeing but not providing answers) and that human connection I felt with the man I’d never meet from the other side of the world.

Danzon No. 2 (1994)

Arturo Marquez
(b. Dec. 20, 1950)

Mexican-born composer Arturo Marquez comes from a family deeply rooted in the folk music of his native land. Marquez’s father was a professional mariachi musician, and his grandfather was a folk musician focused on music from the northern states of Sonora and Chihuahua. Marquez incorporated the rhythms, harmonies, and forms he learned from his father and grandfather into his own music from an early age.

He entered the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in Mexico City and was composing by age 16. Perhaps his best-known work, Danzon No. 2, became something of an international hit when conductor Gustavo Dudamel included it in the program for his 2007 European and American tour with the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra. The work is part of a larger suite of dance pieces that have become increasingly popular as both orchestral pieces and as music for ballet.

Divine Mischief (2022)  **WORLD PREMIERE**

John Mackey
(b. 1973)

John Mackey is one of the most prolific and respected contemporary American composers for wind ensemble, symphony orchestra, modern dance and ballet. He was born into a musical family and began composing at an early age, but never formally studied an instrument. Rather, with the encouragement of his grandfather, he learned to compose using computer programs. A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music and Juilliard, he currently lives in San Francisco, California.

Of Divine Mischief, Mackey says:

I have been asked several times if I would write a clarinet concerto, but the question only resulted in one thing: fear. I love the instrument – my grandfather was a clarinetist! – but when I was still a teenager, I heard John Corigliano’s clarinet concerto. On one hearing, I loved it so much that I decided it was my favorite piece by any living composer, and, to me, the greatest wind concerto I’d ever heard. Based on that piece, and later hearing it live, I essentially stalked Corigliano, resulting somehow not in a restraining order, but in an invitation to study with him at Juilliard. (To any aspiring composers reading this, please don’t try that.) To this day, several decades later, I consider Corigliano’s concerto an absolute masterpiece.

So when asked if I’d write a concerto, I always just claimed to be busy, when in reality, I was terrified. But as my brilliant spouse Abby tells me, sometimes the reason to do something is because it’s scary.

Not so long ago, Julian Bliss contacted me and asked that same question. Maybe I’d had too much tequila when he asked, or maybe I was as scared as always, but smart enough to know that if somebody at Julian’s level of skill asks you to write for them, you do it. So I agreed, and the result is “Divine Mischief.”

If you see Julian play, you immediately sense his charisma. This guy is a rock star on clarinet. And if you speak to him, you may sense that maybe he could cause some trouble – all in good fun, of course.

As I always do with large pieces, I discussed all of this with Abby, with whom I’d just seen the Tchaikovsky ballet, “Swan Lake.” We had the idea for Abby to write a synopsis – a story, conceived as if it were a ballet, and I would write the concerto as if it were a ballet score for her story. Inspired by Julian’s personality, Abby decided that Julian would play the role of a trickster figure, like Loki, Tom Sawyer, or Till Eulenspiegel.

Below is her synopsis.

i. A stranger and a game
The town square is as bustling as you would expect on market day, but neither shoppers nor sellers are to be found in the stalls. All eyes are fixed on a stranger wearing peculiar clothes and carrying a spectacular instrument who has appeared as if from nowhere. The stranger surveys the waiting audience, but does not play. The throng chants a fanfare, urging the stranger to perform.

The stranger begins, disastrously. The crowd cannot believe that the bearer of such an extraordinary instrument is unable to play, and vents its frustration at the horrific noises—until they transform into a delicate, lyrical melody. The audience sighs its approval. But as soon as the listeners begin to relax into the music, the stranger changes it. Slow becomes fast, discord disrupts delicacy, chaos creeps in—but only until the audience accepts the raucous new reality, at which point the player swerves again. And again. And again. The rules of the stranger’s game become clear: Follow me, as I leave you behind.

ii. Disappointment, regret, regression: a waltz
Realizing that the only way to win this game is not to play, the crowd begins to disperse, grumbling with disappointment. The stranger replies with a slow, sad waltz of apology, pleading for the people to return. Hesitant but eventually persuaded, the townspeople join in the dance.

Of course, this enchantment can’t last. Soon the stranger transforms the penance into parade and back again, making a joke of the crowd’s displeasure.

iii. Spellbound
The townspeople revolt. The stranger again tries to tempt them with apologies, to charm them with amusements—but the angry mob has had enough, even before the stranger undermines these overtures by mocking the very idea of sincerity. Yet the stranger plays on, sure the audience will succumb eventually. When the crowd registers the depth of the stranger’s determination to toy with them, the extremity of the stranger’s appetite for amusement, they recognize the stranger at last: this is the Trickster. A plan forms.

They play a snippet of a slow chorale, knowing the Trickster will echo and taunt them. And when the Trickster does just that, something happens; magic crackles in the air. The people play another snippet; the Trickster mocks them again—and that taunting echo casts a powerful spell, one that passes in shadow over the whole assemblage.

The shadow is the spell seeking its target, the one the spell will condemn to perform ever more
stupendous feats for the amusement of the spellcaster. Who does the shadow seek? “Whosoever displeases by failing to amuse.”

But that, of course, the Trickster—the one who has spent all day taking pleasure at others’ expense, providing none in return. And so the Trickster is not only the spellcaster but also the spell’s target, self-condemned to play until the god’s own insatiable need for entertainment is satisfied. Which is to say, self-condemned to play forever.

The spell takes hold; the stranger-god plays. The townspeople celebrate the performance they have been waiting for all day. Divine virtuosity pours out, turning from trickle to torrent to flood. But the deluge can do nothing to slake the god’s endless thirst, nothing to fulfill the god’s now-eternal task.

The spectacle may pause, but only because ceaseless revels lose their charm. The show must go on. (And on, and on.) The player has become the plaything, the Trickster has been tricked.
Or so it seems. It’s so hard to tell, with Tricksters.

Program note by A. E. Jaques
Additional program notes by Gigi Sherrell Norwood, Dan Cavanagh, and John Mackey