 |
| Penn State School of Music |
This has been quite the exciting week! From March 12-16
MEREDITH MECUM and I were in residence at the
PENN STATE SCHOOL OF MUSIC where, on March 16, we premiered our program of four commissions for soprano and cello. This concert is the first in a line of performances of these pieces that we will give over the next year and we were terribly excited to make the premieres at the school where we began our musical education!
 |
| Rehearsal break |
For those dedicated readers of my little blog, you know that Meredith and I began performing together a number of years ago and had our duo debut at The Boston Conservatory in 2010. This soprano and cello iteration of my
Queering the Pitch recital project began to take shape last year and became official in August of 2011 when we commissioned four awesome composers (read about them
HERE) to write for us.
Over the past few months, Meredith and I have received the four works that we commissioned, put in some dedicated work on our individual parts (while learning the other part as best we could - I'm no singer, after all!), and came together this week for nearly thirty hours of concentrated and intense rehearsals and miniature performances.
 |
| With Dominick DiOrio |
In the midst of the week we were joined by
DOMINICK DIORIO who composed the massive song cycle
And the barriers had vanished, the centerpiece of our concert.
On Dominick's first day in State College we put him to work! After an early-morning flight from Houston, he arrived at Penn State just in time for lunch with the always wonderful
LYNN DRAFALL. From there we went in to rehearsal and spent two hours going over
And the barriers had vanished before dashing downtown for dinner with
BENJAMIN BLOOMFIELD. Dinner didn't mean the end of the day for us, though! Immediately after finishing our meals we were back at the School of Music presenting an open forum for Penn State students where we discussed the things we have learned (both successfully and through failure) about life in the music world! When the forum finally ended around 8:45 PM, Dominick had been awake for nearly seventeen hours!! Needless to say, it was an early bedtime!
Thursday was a bit quieter, but began early with a lecture to students in Penn State's 'music as a business' class at 9:00 am. The only other work for the day was our dress rehearsal in Esber Recital Hall. After running and recording our entire program and tweaking some small things, Meredith/Ben and Dominick/me parted ways for relaxing evenings.
 |
| Veggie green curry |
It's been a while since I've been in State College, PA, so it was exciting to head out to dinner. Dominick and I decided on
COZY THAI in downtown State College. We BYOB'd with a nice bottle of Zin and enjoyed a delicious (spicy!!) dinner! We stopped at
THE TAVERN for dessert and drinks before heading back to our comfy hotel room for a good night's rest!
 |
| Trying to take some photos together |
Friday was the big day for all of us with the evening's main event! But before we could get in front of a concert audience we had to drum up some interest in our recital amongst the students and faculty! We began with a Common Hour performance for School of Music students. Common Hour is a mandatory weekly concert from 2:30-3:20 PM on Friday. We used this short concert to excerpt some movements from our evening recital, including two movements from Dominick's piece, one movement from
STEVE KNELL's
Athemoessa, and one from
BRUCE TRINKLEY's
Marsden Hartley Songs. Additionally, I performed Dominick's
Tarantella for solo cello and Meredith and I played
Akhmatova Songs by John Tavener, which we've performed a number of times before. Again we put Dominick to work to talk about his works and encourage folks to join us that evening. After Common Hour, we spent 5 minutes each in the School of Music voice forum and cello seminar classes to continue our publicity push.
Dominick and I had dinner at another Asian restaurant, this time a Korean place across from our hotel before heading off to prepare for the concert.
 |
Performing And the barriers had
vanished |
The evening concert was well attended with many folks who we weren't expecting to see in the audience! All of the pieces received a warm reception from the audience and Meredith gave a stunning performance of each. The first,
Anthemoessa, is an attacca work which includes some trickiness throughout. Meredith describes it as "half-steppy", and she's correct: often I'm sustaining a note and she sings the pitches one half-step on either side of my pitch. It's a very effective style but incredibly difficult to work out (which we had lots of fun doing)!
The second piece on our program is Trinkley's
Marsden Hartley Songs which has been a thrill to work on. Bruce was a composition/conducting professor at Penn State during our first year in school before retiring. His setting of poetry by Marsden Hartley was really very beautiful and the home town audience enjoyed hearing a work by a familiar musical voice. We hope that Bruce will be able to join us for an upcoming concert in Houston if he gets some time off from his current residency and work in Taos, NM.
 |
Penultimate note of
Brian D. Kelly's Futility |
After intermission was Brian D. Kelly's
Futility. The piece begins with some awesome and affectual harmonics across the range of the cello. I love the way this piece begins, and not only because it's all by my lonesome without a voice to sing over top of me! (kidding!) In the midst of the piece is a rather cacophonous section with a raucous cello part and sustained ascending pitches in the voice. The setting is text by Wilfred Owen. Coincidentally, Benjamin Britten (himself a gay composer) set this text in his masterwork
War Requiem. The piece ends as it began, with a beautiful harmonic.
The final piece on the program is Dominick's
And the barriers had vanished. I can't say enough about this work and I'm certain that it will be heard for many years to come! The piece clocks in at twenty-five minutes in length over seven movements with two solo movements (the opening prelude is solo cello, the sixth movement,
Alexis, is solo voice). Having Dominick in residence with us at Penn State this week was a joy. His insights in to not only his own composition but our interpretations of the other three works was incredibly helpful in a time when we were packing two months of work in to one week.
 |
With Dominick and Meredith
after performing And the barriers
had vanished |
And I can't even begin to say how much fun it is to play this wonderful piece! It's also an incredible workout. Each movement is distinct and each fits beautifully in to this piece. I would be remiss if I didn't mention my favorite movement, the fifth, titled
Clifton and a lad's love. Perhaps it's selfish, but it's my favzies because Dominick has completely lifted a movement from Britten's
Second Suite for Cello and layered it with the voice, singing a beautiful triad with each verse.
All-in-all, this has been an outstanding week. As I sit and type this on Sunday, I'm feeling that bit of emptiness that usually follows such a successful performance. Often, these performances are a once-and-done event. This time, Meredith and I will be taking the show on the road and performing in many different places! We hope to book some other performances next year in addition to the five or so performances we'll do before June!
Up next, Houston! If you know anyone in Houston, let them know that we'll be in town March 30 at
LONE STAR COLLEGE-MONTGOMERY! I'm also performing my original
Queering the Pitch: music for solo cello recital in Houston at
AVANT GARDEN on March 31, 8:00 PM!
Until then...!
