David Avshalomov

September 15 Showcase Concert
NEW WORKS FOR LARGE CHAMBER ENSEMBLES

LOCATION: The large, beautifully resonant sanctuary of St. Augustine's-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Santa Monica, on the North side of 4th Street between Wilshire and Arizona. PARKING is available in the public structure across the street. Normally on a Saturday the first 2 hours are free. TICKETS are available at the door only. It is a large sanctuary, there will be seats. Admission is $20 general, $15 for Seniors and students. If you are bringing a large group, let us know in advance; we give discounts for guaranteed groups of 10 or more.

Contact/Questions: davshalomov@earthlink.net

PERFORMERS
The astonishing Los Angeles Flute Orchestra, Jonna Newcomb-Carter, Leader.

Yes, they have piccolos, flutes, and alto flutes, and bass flute, of course. But have you ever seen or heard a bass flute in F? A contrabass flute? A sub-contrabass flute? You can find out all about them on their website. They will be joined by guest percussionists adding a menagerie of exotic percussion instruments. Come hear them all together.

The wonderful LA-based Denali String Quartet, ranked by chamber music connoisseurs as "LA's best". Members: Sarah Thornblade and Joel Pargman, violins, Robert Brophy, viola, Timothy Loo, cello, with special guest Nico Abondolo, bass. They are renowned for their appearances at the edgy Jacaranda chamber music series, most recently for their revelatory mastery of all four of the astringent string quartets of Silvestre Revueltas. (For this event they will be playing something much more . . . Romantic . . . and tragic.)

Juilliard-trained pianist Pamela Pyle, who has collaborated with the composer in the past, premiering and recording his Torn Curtain suite for viola and piano with the composer's brother Daniel Avshalomov, and accompanying the composer in a set of songs. In Santa Monica she will join the Denali strings, and again accompany the composer as he sings.

And then we have a true diva, renowned LA soprano Maurita Phillips-Thornburgh,

who is also music director of Cantori Domino and Minister of Music at St. Augustine's.

We will have a grand hall full of amazing talent, musicality, and professionalism; this is not to be missed.

PROGRAM
The Ceremony of Innocence (Yeats), sung by the composer,

accompanied by Ms. Pyle and joined by flutist Jonna Carter-Newcomb, and violist Robert Brophy. This is a new arrangement based on the new orchestral version, which has not yet been performed (stay tuned for future guest appearances by the composer singing both of the Apocalyptic Songs with regional orchestras.)

The world premiere of Sacred Winds by the Flute Orchestra with exotic percussion, conducted by the composer. If you cheer long enough, they will probably play an encore . . .

Songs of Life (Dickinson) sung by Ms. Thornburgh, with Ms. Pyle and the quintet, plus Emily Senchak, Flute.
And for the grand finale, the world premiere of Trotsky's Train featuring Ms. Pyle with the Denali strings.

Sacred Winds: This work was written at the request of the Los Angeles Flute Orchestra. It is an evocative, nature-painting/echoing work in three movements. The theme is Humans Lost in Nature, out of touch with it-and overwhelmed by its power.

NEW TURF FOR ME: As a stimulating new branch on my path as a composer, in this work I have selectively explored modern extended techniques and effects available on the various flutes (including several huge low ones only recently invented; see photo above).

STYLE PHILOSOPHY: Although I am not now and am unlikely ever to be an "experimental" composer or an "effects and textures = content" type of composer, I am definitely exploring new ground here, and, frankly getting astonishing results. I like to say that most of the exploratory and experimental waves of the 20th Century passed over me like the breakers that I don't catch do at Santa Monica beach when I boogie-board, and I passed through unscathed, with a reinforced devotion to the musical strengths and life of past Western musical traditions, and an ever-stronger determination to draw my musical strength from old roots and yet always make something new. I have rejected the trendiest waves that I feel drained the life-giving elements from much 20th-century music and left much of it complex, empty, even ugly, and generally unlistenable in the view of listenters. Likewise the successive vogue for the pure water-torture of endless pattern repetition and "mood/ambience/sound space design". That said, however, I am perfectly happy to cherry-pick from the truly interesting or promising invention or notion, if I can make what I consider real music from it. Otherwise, as Schoenberg once notably said, "one composes as before." (He also said, believe it or not, "there is still a lot of great music to be written in the key of C Major." Traitor! ;-) So I guess I am not even a post-Modernist (whatever the dickens that means), but perhaps a pre-modernist, a survivor of the scourging purgatives of modernism, though folks usually just label me as neo-Romantic (neuroto-Romantic?).

Hence, in this adventurous piece, you will hear effects such as low noises like a Dijeridoo, and close, dense, sustained half-breathy midrange note clusters making a fog feeling, shrieking high trilling, fluttering chords wailing like a Banshee wind. I have also introduced some modest elements of stage business, position and gesture, for the group. And I have added two percussion parts, originally intended to be optional, that evolved into necessary elements of the sound. The percussionists will handle a fine menagerie of various gongs and cymbals, a few drums, shakers, and rattles, and some exotics like the Miwok Bull-Roarer, tinfoil, etc.

Yet I still rest my form and structure and expression on my home base (melody and harmony and rhythm). In simple, I write tunes. I use melody, motive, scale/mode, key. Pulse, meter, rhythm. I write developmental, through-composed, thematic/motivic music. But I create forms that bend the old forms. Example: Varied rondo, a sure way to destroy the old rondo form with continual, successive, organically growing variations of the rondo tune whenever it returns.
Thus I believe that in this work I have created an organic synthesis of (a) my traditional tonal-modern, melody-driven approach and (b) productive (not self-referential) use of "effects" in a work that evokes aspects of the natural world. These include drought, ground breezes, gentle rain, dense fog, billowing fog, surf, and even a full-on sandstorm. And as the core emotional thread through these episodes, the melodies and structure express the anguish or yearning of a lost human soul trying to find a way to fit back in with all these forces.

NEW COLLABORATION: This is also my first work written in partial collaboration with an ensemble. It is a stimulating process. A number of members of the ensemble are friends (longtime or newly acquired through this piece). Since the piece needs a conductor, and, as an experienced conductor, I chose to conduct the work in the premiere, I have also had a number of opportunities to test certain passages and notions with several patient and helpful members of the group before I set them in stone, and to work with them all together in test sessions to ensure that technically my writing will achieve the color effects I intend, yet remain sufficiently idiomatic to be playable by other such ensembles and to gain acceptance as an attractive, solid, and useful work. My intention has been to add a serious, non-trivial repertoire piece to the thin catalog of music written for this unique ensemble and help them raise awareness of their group and its potential. We shall see.

INDIVIDUAL MOVEMENTS

Rain Dance

Fog Song

Sand Banshee

Trotsky's Train: This is a tragic, bittersweet neo-romantic piano sextet reflecting on the 1917 Russian Revolution and the tragedy of Stalinist oppression (and all oppression). It runs the gamut from foreboding to loss, sad memory, sweet farewell and acceptance of loss, to an increasingly grim dialectic between the truth of Stalinism (not real socialism) and the sweet tragic Russian soul, with a deadly and inevitable end.

INSTRUMENTATION: This configuration-string quartet plus double bass, with piano-has little repertoire; most chamber works for strings and piano do not include double bass. I am of course hoping it will become a repertoire standard, and it also has the potential to succeed with full string orchestras (multiple players). I am talking with several pianist-conductors about repeat performances in that guise.

By contrast with the wild areas of the flute group work, this piece generally uses the established resources and techniques of the string players and piano, with a few minor modern tricks. Writing for a string quintet allows me to get an almost symphonic sound from the strings, because of the availability of the 16-foot octave with the bass. However, when the bass is not doubling the cello line at the bottom in traditional manner, in 5-voice textures I ask the bassist to be more of a soloist and play what one might call a "lower second cello" part, in the tradition of string quintets with two cellos. (The other option in pure string quintets is two violas, but . . .) So in those textures the cello and bass need to cross-share qualities with one another, the cello darkening his sound, the bass trying to brighten his and focus it so they are balanced if not perfectly matched (same problem the viola fights working with the naturally brighter resonance of the violins and cello). The bass serves more like a contra-bass viola in that sense.

STYLE/FLAVOR: The work is yet another in a series about the slow morbidity of Russia since the Revolution (previous ones include my Torn Curtain suite for viola and piano, which I wrote for my brother Dan, about the fall of the Iron Curtain, and The Last Poet's Farewell, for unrealistically overburdened solo violin.) What they share additionally is that they grew out of melodies that just started coming to me, and which at first felt very channeled from someone or sometime else, and very derivative somehow, old fashioned, having a deeply ethnic folk and bourgeois feeling from Russia itself and also from the areas of Russia's subject nations. To permit myself to write each of these pieces (fighting the compulsion to try to be "original" all the time), I had to get past the fear of being thought altogether too derivative; but I always remember the comment of my acquaintance Mr. Smirnoff of Juilliard Quartet, who said of my viola piece, "yes, they tunes sound European, but you organize them in a very American way". So I try to make something fresh and write from my own viewpoint as a caring visitor in the styles I am echoing. I agree with Howard Rosen that great Western Classical music has always been "rich in allusion"-which is a very different thing from slavish imitation or rote echoing.

So yes, you will hear all my Romantic influences in this piece: Smetana, Dvorak, Janacek, hints of Bartok, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky and the others in the Five, Rachmaninoff, occasional touches of Prokofiev, touch of Khatchaturian, definitely Mahler, very Shostakovitch, etc. But only hints, allusions as I said. But I don't impersonate or imitate them on purpose, they are just among the greats who have shaped the musical language that I have evolved to speak when I want to express the kind of soul message you will hear in this piece. I occasionally borrow a jacket for the cold or a scarf. And sometimes I make fun gently and with affection.

INDIVIDUAL MOVEMENTS

Romanovs' Last Ball

Memento Mori (Adagio)

Trotsky's Train

TROTSKY'S TRAIN ITSELF

For an eyewitness account of Trotsky's effectiveness in rallying the troops: http://www.wsws.org/exhibits/1937/lecture2.htm

Video of Trotsky on the train, and orating: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKcyJzgleTM

Trotsky's own account (grain of salt, please):
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/ch34.htm

NOTES ON THE SONGS

The Ceremony of Innocence:
Here is a vision of the inevitable end of all great and powerful civilizations, the poet's fevered prophecy of the disintegration and end of our world. True, scholars and critics still puzzle over just what Yeats was saying in his apocalyptic poem of 1921, "The Second Coming." I resonate with the view that he was expressing his despair at the apparent disintegration of society and of the social compact, and expecting, even predicting the eventual triumph of evil on the world scene. A message for our times still, perhaps . . .

Yeats wrote this famous poem as Europe and the rest of the world was trying to recover from the unprecedented carnage and destruction of World War I. He saw great social turmoil all around him, and remarks on a world falling apart. His "falcon" may be humanity no longer responding to the lead of religion or morality; or it may be human-born technology spiraling beyond human control.

Despite the mention of Bethlehem in the last line, however, his "second coming" is not that prophesied for Christ but, it seems, that of a rough Beast in His place. Yeats envisions the awakening of a figure like the Sphinx at Giza (which slept in nightmares for 2000 years). Around 1904 he had written, 'I began to imagine, as always at my left side just out of the range of sight, a brazen winged beast which I associated with laughing, ecstatic destruction. . . afterwards described in my poem "The Second Coming."' He depicts the Sphinx rising up to bring about the end of the world (in what he considered a repeating cycle of 2000 years, which he termed a "gyre."). In the end, he offers no hope for mankind.

In setting the poem, I took my overall tone from his vision and, using varying accompaniment textures and moods, and the vocal inflections of solo oratorio, built successive episodes by reflecting the specific key images in successive stanzas: the soaring falcon (simply as a bird), the unheeded falconer, the blood-dimmed tide, the drowning of innocence, the passionate intensity of the worst, the revelation, the night sands of the desert, the plodding shape with lion body, the angry desert birds, the rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem, and finally a mockery of Christmas bells after "to be born."

SONGS OF LIFE:
I wrote these songs in 2000 at the start of an intensive (and continuing) artistic period devoted largely to writing vocal music. Their style, and particularly their vocal qualities, are a direct response to an implied challenge from my elder son Jesse (a promising operatic basso) to write songs that were "singer's pieces"-meaning both grateful for the voice and a joy to sing (and to hear). I hope I have succeeded in meeting it. They were certainly a joy to write, and I always enjoy singing them myself.

The cycle comprises two four-song sets. The poems which I selected from Ms. Dickinson's huge output include many of her themes and motifs: snakes, nature, the sea, horses, trains, bells love, sex, sublimation, hope, fear, insanity, pain, God, fear of death-and its acceptance. I found both her morbid melodrama and her hopeful enthusiasm contagious. Like her poems, most of the settings are short, and they have little repetition or development, and only rare brief interludes. The focus is on the beauty and evocative allusions of the vocal melody and the text. I tend to preserve the natural rhythm and prosody of her verses as much as possible; this is strophic, metric, rhymed poetry, and to my ear that is a value to be preserved and respected rather than distorted or ignored. In short, I set the whole poem, not just the images or the mood. And I never use the poem as a mere coat hanger for my own unrelated expression and musical ideas.

In the original version, the piano accompanist has an active role in all of the settings. I am often told by my listeners that my richly-colored and widely varied piano accompaniments continually suggest orchestration. In 2003, at the insistence of my old friend (and USAF Band colleague) Phil Gaskill, I undertook to translate those suggestions into a functional orchestration of the accompaniment, for a premiere performance in New York where I sang them with his fine Musica Bella orchestra under his baton.

My original choice of low voice-bass/baritone, my own range-was made partly selfishly, partly because the poems represent, not Emily's persona as a woman, but her poetic voice and message, which though personal in origin is often universal in impact. A number of singers have asked for high-voice transpositions of the songs, and tonight marks the first performance of three of them by high voice. The orchestral version of "Hope is the Thing with Feathers" is scored more simply than the others-for strings, harp, and flute. It seemed a natural choice to add our string quintet and one of our many flutes tonight to accompany Ms. Thornburgh in that song.

Wild Nights/Wild Nights!
For me this song is about dreams of abandon to wild open-hearted lovemaking, borne by sea metaphors-frankly X-rated. High, splashing pentatonic swirls establish water and waves, over long low tones giving depth to the sea. The voice line leaps in, excited, high. The motion slows to imply a rocking, docked rowboat, then picks up again to depict the see-saw rhythm of rowing, and at last the swirling texture expands and rises to an ecstatic pitch under "tonight, in thee!", climaxing on a drenching, orgasmic high cluster chord.

Tie the Strings to My Life
A brave song asking God for just a last glance and kiss of the hills and then she is "ready to go." This setting starts with an almost incongruously cheerful galloping motif, and a brave English-sounding melody in the voice (stiff upper lip). Proud horses, a quick surge of an ocean wave, and a climactic high note on "my own choice and Thee" lead us down to a soft gentle humming under the last good-byes. Kissing the hills "just once" the singer poises over a rich, jazz flavored chord, then launches bravely into "ready to go" with an almost stock operatic ending, triumphant in brave acceptance of the fate of us all.

Hope is the Thing with Feathers
When I revisited this famous poem, I heard inwardly a sort of Irish-ballad-sounding lyrical melody. I decided that was an honest way to set it. The accompaniment is simple, warm, slow chords in the strings. At the start and end I added a few solemn, thrummed harp chords (played by Ms. Pyle tonight) under a few slow notes in the flute for a gilt edge on the musical page.

Cantori Domino is a prestigious Santa Monica musical organization that presents concerts of major choral works and chamber music based at St. Augustine's. I sing with their fine chorus, which recently gave the second performance in a single season (!) of my most recent choral composition, "I Bend the Knee of My Heart" under the fine artistic direction of Maurita Phillips-Thornburgh (yes, everyone calls her "Bunny.")

The Sept. 15 concert is co-sponsored by the Santa Monica Chamber Orchestra Assocation.

David's pre-concert talk with the artists is funded in part by a grant from Meet the Composer