Remote Livestream #6:
Where Water Meets Sky
​​PROGRAM

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A note: Since standard choral conducting does not work for live remote performance (in fact, it could be detrimental, due to the latency!), we have dubbed the artistic leaders of each piece "semiconductors." While not conducting in the traditional sense, our semiconductors give important cues to help the ensemble stay together, a task made more complicated in this medium. The term "semiconductor" is also a referential nod to the electronic nature of this performance. Thanks to our semiconductors for learning how best to lead an ensemble in this new world!
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"Blue from Cromosaturación"
by Germán Barboza

Blue is the fourth section of Cromosaturación, a large-scale work dedicated to my younger brother, based on the journey through Carlos Cruz-Diez's chambers of the same name.

Always related to water, blue represents the immersion in the protagonist’s own mind. It starts as a drizzle that turns into a deluge. The music reflects the feelings of depression, sadness and isolation, while working as a healing phase. Blue is the permission I gave myself to cry.

You lay down with your face to the sky and your back to the sea.
Endless, sublime, serene. Inside the blue, your body moves above the waves. You feel free to express the pain you carry. And then you cry, and cry, and cry nonstop, till your own tears drown you.
You let go and sink to your lowest. Once you hit rock bottom, there’s only one way: up to the surface.
While you float with your eyes closed, the haze clears slowly. It’s time to move on.

-- Germán Barboza


"La ciudad sumergida (The Submerged City)"
by Adrienne Inglis (ASCAP)
A setting of an excerpt of Río de La Plata en lluvia from Mascarilla y Trébol (1938) by Alfonsina Storni (1938)

 
Commissioned for Dr. Ramona M. Wis and the North Central College Women’s Chorale of Naperville, Illinois, La ciudad sumergida (The Submerged City) by Adrienne Inglis for four-part treble chorus with nature soundtrack captures the mood of a river, a city, the cloudy sky, and the poet’s own profound melancholy. The composer also created this mixed chorus version. The sound of rain creates both the ambiance of a misty day on the river and the sensation of cathartic crying from great sadness and pain. The city’s reflection on the river’s surface gives the illusion that the city is submerged in the water. The reflection of the clouds hovering low over Río de La Plata looks like gray heliotrope flowers. The apocalyptic images of a submerged city and of tears overflowing from the chalice-sky eerily foreshadow rising sea levels due to anthropogenic global warming. The nature soundtrack of rain was recorded by the composer in the hill country of central Texas, July 2020.
 
TEXT
 
Ya casi el cielo te apretaba, ciego,
y sumergida una ciudad tenías
en tu cuerpo de grises heliotropos
neblivelado en su copón de llanto.

[The sky was about to embrace you, blind, and you had in your body of gray heliotropes a submerged city, with the misty sky like a chalice about to overflow with tears.]


"The Campers at Kitty Hawk, from U.S.A. Stories"
by Michael Dellaira
text from U.S.A., by John Dos Passos

U.S.A. Stories was completed in 1998 and premiered by Cantori New York, a chorus of 36 members directed by Mark Shapiro. An early version of the second movement “Art & Isadora” was written specifically for and recorded by The New York Virtuoso Singers—in 16 separate parts, a cappella— on CRI several years earlier. Since then it has been performed by both amateur and professional choral groups, including: Conspirare, the Syracuse Vocal Ensemble, The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective (C4), and college choirs such as C. W. Post, Mesa Community College, and University of North Florida. 

The three sections of U.S.A. Stories—Adagio Dancer, Art and Isadora, and The Campers at Kitty Hawk—are based on texts borrowed from The Big Money, the third novel in John Dos Passos’s trilogy U.S.A. Dos Passos’s prose style in these portraits of Rudolph Valentino, Isadora Duncan, and the Wright Brothers, like other portraits which appear throughout the novels, is characterized by long sentences and irregular rhythms, witty alliterations and colloquialisms. As a former rock musician, I found them appealingly close to the spirit of pop lyrics, but of course without being lyrics at all. (The edited passages are listed below. Words between brackets [ ] are sung at the same time as other passages.) Dos Passos’s portraits of … [the Wright Brothers] represent, for me at least, … the promise of American progress, a blend of science, utility, and risk. 
—Michael Dellaira
 
TEXT

On December seventeenth nineteen hundred and three Bishop Wright of the United Brethren received a telegram from his boys Wilbur and Orville, who’d gotten it into their heads to spend their vacation in a little camp out on the dunes of the North Carolina coast with a homemade glider they’d knocked together themselves. The telegram read: SUCCESS FOUR FLIGHTS THURSDAY MORNING AGAINST TWENTY ONE MILE WIND STARTED FROM ENGINE POWER ALONE.   

The figures were a little wrong but the fact remains a couple of young bicycle mechanics from Dayton Ohio had designed and flown for the first time ever a practical airplane.    

In those days flying machines were the big laugh of all the cracker barrel philosophers. They were practical mechanics; when they needed anything they built it themselves. They hit on Kitty Hawk on the great dunes and sandy banks that stretch south to Hatteras seaward. Overhead the gulls and swooping terns, fishhawks and cranes flapping across the salt marshes.     

They were alone there and figured out the loose sand was as soft as anything they could find to fall in, taking off again and again from Kill Devil Hill they learned to fly.

Aeronautics became the sport of the day, congratulated by the czar, crown prince, the King of Italy, King Edward for universal peace.     

[Taking off again and again they learned to fly. In the rush of new names the Brothers Wright passed from the headlines: Bleriot, Farman, Curtiss, Ferber, Esnault, Petrie, Delagrange can blur the memory of the chilly December day two shivering bicycle mechanics first felt their homemade contraption soar into the air, above the dunes of Kitty Hawk.]

[I released the wire that held the machine to the track. The machine started forward into the wind. Wilbur ran at the side holding the wing. The machine started slowly facing twenty seven mile wind, it lifted from the track. Wilbur was able to stay with it until it lifted from the track after a forty foot run. The course of the flight up and down was erratic, the first flight in the history of the world. The machine carried a man by his own power into the air in full flight forward without reduction of speed landed at a point as high as that from which it started.]     

[When these points had been firmly established we packed our goods and returned home, knowing that the age of the flying machine had come at last.]


"Snow"
by Misa Ogasawara
poem by Misuzu Kaneko

Snow is part of a larger song cycle, Misuzu, a collaborative project with Bettina Sheppard. Written as a children’s poetry collection, Misuzu’s works offer a rare combination of depth and simplicity. Ogasawara’s choice of three soloists reflects the stark, unadorned mood of the text. Snow was first performed by Bridges Vocal Ensemble in 2008 at Christ & St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in New York City.

TEXT

Blanket of Snow

Snow on top,
It must feel cold,
The chill moon shining down.
Snow on the bottom,
It must feel heavy,
Hundreds of people on you.
Snow in the middle,
It must feel lonely,
No earth or sky to look at.



"Sunset, from Watercolors"
by Christopher Fludd
text by Christopher Fludd

Watercolors is a piece that reflects the gift of growing in patience. I use water as an element, known for its calming presence and clear perception to tell a story of wonder as it experiences a day filled with color and vivid imagination. This piece stems from an original work entitled “A Child’s Gift”, which reflects my life and all the wonderful blessings that have come my way. “Sunset” portrays the unwinding moment of the day. The beautiful colors provided by the sun begin to infuse a palette of lush and darker texture. The harmony begins to move with anticipation as we look forward to our final moment of inspiration from the moon and stars.

-- Christopher Fludd


TEXT

As I let go of the day I knew
And welcome the eventide
I know this night won’t last forever
And soon you will rise
The day is almost done
And the sky is decorated
As I let go of the day I knew

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C4: The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective Members & Guests Performing:

Daniel Andor-Ardó
Bonnie Bogovich
Timothy Brown
Joshua Chai
Olivia Cheesman
Mario Gullo
Jennifer Inglis Hudson
Adrienne Inglis
Angela Irving
Jamie Klenetsky Fay
Brian Mountford
Leonore Nelson
Maureen Broy Papovich
David See
Rebecca Stidolph
Perry Townsend
Debra Watkins

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​Thank you for your support!

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