Angel Lam, Her Thousand Years Dance (World premiere)
Eric Jacobsen (cello) and Kojiro Umezaki (shakuhachi), soloists
-soloists members of the Silk Road Ensemble and the Silk Road Project-
Rimsky Korsakov, Russian Easter Overture
Bruch, Kol Nidrei,
Eric Jacobsen, soloist
Strauss, Death and Transfiguration
_________
Greenvich Village Orchestra
In a concert titled "Spiritual", Sunday, November 18, 2007, 3:00 p.m.
Washington Irving Auditorium, 40 Irving Place, New York
(at the southeast corner of Irving Place and 17th Streets in Manhattan)
see gvo poster
tickets sold at the door or online
for shakuhachi, cello, percussion and string orchestra, commissioned by the Greenwich Village Orchestra
As a composer, my life is just a beautiful, chaotic mess; everything is always in a hurry--meeting deadlines, traveling here and there, crossing oceans for a single performance, meeting new people, meeting old acquaintances... My mind is full of musical notes and ideas, it spares no space for a normal life. Every time I fly, I always forget something, something important like a passport, an air ticket, identity card, money...etc.
Once in a while, I go back to my birthplace, Hong Kong. My mother will take me on a visit to the Guan-Yin Buddha, the Goddess of Compassion. This is when I feel truly released; I like to be caressed by her gentle smile. When I was small, I used to call her the Green Buddha because my grandparents owned a Guan-Yin figurine made out of precious green jade.
For thousands of years, Green Buddha is the most worshiped figure in China among women. She has the most elegant, graceful facial features among all female faces; no matter which angle you view her, she is always wearing a welcoming smile that seems to be intently listening to all that speak to her. Women pray to her for help and ask for a solution to their grievances. Usually they ask her for a good husband and blessings for their family.
Is it too stupid to rely our fortune on a green figure?
Not really.
As the well-known author Eileen Chang once said, “Life is a luxurious and majestic overcoat, but when we examine it closely, it is full of ugly worms and maggots."
From time to time, I want to pray in front of her, to massage the soul and keep hopes for the future.
This is my song; in dreams the Green Buddha invites me to join her in her dance, beyond the boundaries of time and space, the thousand years dance.
Angel Lam, October 13, 2007
Program Order:Bruckner, Mass No 2. Motets - arranged by Warren Wernick
Rimsky-Korsakov, Russian Easter Overture
Bruch, Kol Nidrei; Eric Jacobsen , soloist
Lam, "Her Thousand Year Dance" World Premiere; Eric Jacobsen & Kojiro Umezaki, soloists
Strauss, Death and Transfiguration
GVO eNewsletter:
From the Podium
Diversity is one of the hallmarks of spiritual or religious observance. Music, from ancient times to the present day, is one of it's common elements. I am a musician, not a clergyman, and undertake a discussion of such matters with caution due to my lack of qualification; and with the awareness which we all share of how difficult it is to describe spiritual experience in meaningful terms.
For me, the concept of "spirit" is a reference to a part of ourselves that struggles with the difficult questions: what is our place in the universe, how did we come to be here, how do we live our daily lives with meaning, how do we deal with the abundance of good and evil in the world, and fundamental questions of the unknown and mortality? Religion and philosophy have grappled with these questions and of course, different faiths and traditions have come up with different solutions. With this program we may not have all the solutions, but we bring you some of the great music which has grown out of several of those traditions.
We begin with transcriptions of choral music of Anton Bruckner, a devout Christian who was a church organist in addition to being a great composer of symphonic music. We play Nicolai Rimsky Korsakov's Russian Easter Overture which uses themes from the Russian Orthodox Church and imbues the music with the smell of incense and the atmosphere of Russian paganism in its celebration of the Easter traditions. Max Bruch's Kol Nidrei takes the sacred prayer from the night before Yom Kippor, the Jewish day of Atonement and transforms it into a work for solo cello and orchestra that expresses the mournful, forgiving quality of the holiday.
Our world premier of Angel Lam's "Her thousand years dance…" is a special occasion. Angel has scored her piece for solo cello, shakuhachi, strings and percussion and creates an extraordinary atmosphere to express her special relationship to the Green Buddha. We are very fortunate to have cello soloist Eric Jacobsen return to play with us together with his colleague from the Silk Road Ensemble, shakuhachi soloist, Kojiro Umezaki.
We finish the program with Richard Strauss's Death and Transfiguration. Strauss wrote this tone poem at the age of 25 having already gained prominence with his tone poems based on such literary figures as Til Eulenspiegel and Don Juan. With this piece, he used a story about a spiritual journey to provide programmatic content for the music.. It is a remarkable work for many reasons but perhaps most extraordinary is that a young promising composer of 25 would devote himself to the subject of death! Most of us feel immortal at that age with a limitless sense of life and its potential stretching out before us.
But Strauss examines musically the situation of an old man, alone and sick in his room, facing his final hour. After completing the work, on November 18th 1889, Strauss asked his friend Alexander Ritter to write a poem which would explain the story behind the piece. It is summed up as follows: "As the man lays dying, thoughts of his life pass through his head; his childhood innocence, the struggles of his manhood, the attainment of his worldly goals and at the end, he receives the longed for transfiguration form the infinite reaches of heaven."
Although the piece is played without stop, there are four sections:
I. Largo (The sick man, near death)
II. Allegro molto agitato (The battle between life and death offers no respite to the man)
III. Meno mosso (The dying man's life passes before him)
IV. Moderato (The sought-after transfiguration)
The repertoire on this program is connected by a theme which connects all people, of all cultures and religious tradition :mortality. Each piece examines this issue whether it is with the wonderment of the resurrection, the divine quality of forgiveness, prayers for one's family's or in Strauss's old man's acceptance of death. In their own ways, each piece of music invites the listener to ponder these spiritual questions of meaning and existence.
In Strauss's tone poem, the dying man looks back over his life, reminiscing about his childhood and young manhood, and he continues to fight the forces of mortality. The music is full of conflict until the extraordinary moment when he begins to accept his mortality; to accept that he had a full life but it has come to an end. He accepts death and with that acceptance, he is redeemed and is also able to accept the beauty and the miracle of life. The luminous music that follows sweeps us all into the transfiguration and redemption which overcomes our protagonist.
Is music here used as incense once was to sweep us into an altered state which will make a leap of faith more plausible? A skeptic may ask whether music hasn't played such a role in religious practice, in order to manipulate and control the listener.
The answer is never simple. For me, music itself has always functioned as a religion. It is an art that, despite its logical and mathematical nature, is a medium that captures the deepest emotions, the inner most thought, and most profound meaning. Music moves us in a way that is unique in human experience, and beyond spoken language. For me, music is itself an expression of the human miracle.
Maestro Barbara Yahr
For more information:
Greenwich Village Orchestra P.O. Box 910 New York, NY 10113