The Art of Melody
November 20, 2024 // December 3, 2024
About
Embark on a musical journey as we celebrate the captivating power of melodies during our performances of The Art of Melody. Our program features new string quartets that enrich the bold voices of our composers Ben Shirley, Reena Esmail, Julius Eastman, Jessie Montgomery, and Griffin Candey.
Whistle Pig! (2024) for string quartet
“This 4 minute piece of music is my attempt to capture the frantic actions of this fat little groundhog that lives at the back of my property. Every morning I watched this crazy creature come from under my shed and make his way to the gate of our garden. Every so often he stopped, sat on his butt and looked around. He almost always had some kind of snack in his grip. Sitting, gnawing, looking about. Sometimes he just sat in the middle of our back property chewing on one of the vegetables my wife used to put out near the entrance of his dwelling under the shed. I would make a noise and he would run back and forth across the yard and then head for his hole. I was told later that these plump little creatures make a whistling noise when startled. Ah, the "whistlepig." Winter came and went and we saw no more of our friend, Timmy. Timmy The Whistlepig. We do look for him most mornings but he is gone. I do hope he made it. He sure did make us smile.” -Ben Shirley
Moon Dog
Written for the fabulous Chamber Brews, Moon Dog shares a name with a relatively rare atmospheric optical phenomenon: related to halos, moon dogs occur when viewing the moon through the ice crystals of a sheer layer of cirrus clouds, which cause two faint moons (also called “mock moons” or “paraselenae”) to appear on either side of the true moon. This effect can occur with both the sun and the moon—meaning that, yes, there are also sun dogs!—but moon dogs occur far more infrequently because of how much fainter the moon's light is. This piece attempts to tap into the soft, gauzy, almost-imperceptible quality of these false moons—and it plays its own sort of mirroring game, occasionally echoing primary lines in high, glassy, shimmering pairs.
(Writing this piece also introduced me to the music of Louis Thomas Hardin, a 20th-century composer who operated under the moniker "Moondog”. Hardin's music, cyclical and simple and earnest, was beloved by both early minimalists and jazz musicians—but his influence, while monumental, wasn't the root of this piece!)
— Griffin Candey
This is It
leap/soar
expand/connect
billow/recede
yearn/release
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Reena Esmail: This Is It (2023) for string quartet
“In John Kabat-Zinn’s seminal book on meditation Wherever You Go, There You Are, he speaks of how we are always encouraged to look forward, to think into the future — but what if this is it? What if we sat with each moment, savoring it as if it was that special, unique, pinnacle moment? This set of miniatures asks the musicians to explore being present with one another. Each miniature invites a different type of interaction — whether passing off a flexible and mellifluous melody seamlessly between one another, locking in with each other in a tight, shimmering holding pattern, or taking turns pushing one another off a musical cliff and then catching each other at the bottom. Each movement opens up a tiny, mutually created universe for just a few precious breaths.” -Reena Esmail
Joy Boy
Julius Eastman: Joy Boy (1974) for four unspecified instruments
Arrangement for string quartet by Sam Johnson (2024), commissioned by the Johnstone Fund for New Music“Between the hostile diminutives of Southern U.S. racism that give the term "boy" its fraught legacy, and the reclamation of Black innocence and enjoyment by Black people who demand the language back on its own terms, lives Julius Eastman's Joy Boy — a composition that objectifies the ecstatic self in order to reclaim it in a world that projects suffering onto the Black psyche before it even has a chance to assert jubilance. Echoes of vocals that mimic displaced giggling give the composition a haunted atmosphere, as if the sound's potential for conjuring joy is smeared with dread for its very own delights — or the dread of the backlash that Black delight might inspire. Is Black joy an indulgent form of self-deception, this music asks. Can its subject, a self-actualized Black man, override its stigma without succumbing to rage or self-sabotage? There can be no answer but to play and replay it, to meet doubt with the resolve to go again, and fear with an allegiance to pleasure.” -Harmony Holiday for NPR Editors’ Picks, August 4, 2022
Strum
Jessie Montgomery: Strum (2006, rev. 2012) for string quartet or string quintet
“Within Strum I utilized texture motives, layers of rhythmic or harmonic ostinati that string together to form a bed of sound for melodies to weave in and out. The strumming pizzicato serves as a texture motive and the primary driving rhythmic underpinning of the piece. Drawing on American folk idioms and the spirit of dance and movement, the piece has a kind of narrative that begins with fleeting nostalgia and transforms into ecstatic celebration.” -Jessie Montgomery
