Thomas / Hemke / New Haven Sym Orch / Boughton - Portrait of Augusta Read Thomas - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Volume 8 in this series documenting Augusta Read Thomas' music, three major scores dominate, with 4 shorter works filling out this 80-minute sonic portrait of an inexhaustibly inventive and individual composer. The brass quintet Avian Capriccio is typically free-wheeling in it's evocation of 3 contrasting types of birds, hummingbirds, swans and canaries. Scored for wordless soprano and string quartet, Plea for Peace acts as a single, seamless block beginning in near-immobility, with the voice animating the instruments as the music embarks on it's slow, implacable progress. Even in a catalogue as multifarious as Thomas', the carillon piece Ripple Effects stands out as a one-off. Commissioned by Rockefeller Chapel, Chicago and devised in a number of versions, sculpted for carillons of three sizes, requiring varying numbers of players. The ballet score The Auditions was written for the Martha Graham Dance Company, and with it, Thomas joins a distinguished company of composers who wrote scores for this seminal figure in modern dance. It is structured in 7 sections, with the auditions of the title being the even-numbered, action-packed sections, and the odd-numbered ones acting as slower, more otherworldly frames. That Two Thoughts About The Piano's title should be identical to a work by Elliott Carter is no accident, as Thomas' work is a response to the older composer's piece without actually quoting or even emulating Carter's music. We've already encountered Selene in a previous volume of this ongoing survey of Thomas' music, but it appears here in a wholly new dress. The original was for string and percussion quartets, but here the strings are replaced by a woodwind nonet in an arrangement by Cliff Colnot, thus preserving the original's harmonic richness. Bringing this collection to a close, Your Kiss sets a love poem by e.e. cummings for soprano and piano.

I am humbled by this opportunity to compose an octet to celebrate the opening of the Tanglewood Center for Music and Learning. The title MAGIC BOX hopefully captures the lively spirit, exquisite creativity, motion, enchantment and positive energy of the Center. I love composing. In a good way, my nerve endings for sound are always dialed up high - actually, they are on perpetual alert. If I hear one note or chord or if, for example, I play one on an instrument, I get lit up as if electric shock ribbons instantly race from my ears and fingertips to my imagination and then my creativity and craft play high-speed ping-pong! Where the ball is bouncing back and forth 100 times a second. The outcomes are unpredictable to me. I stay absolutely flexible. Everything is malleable, springy, stretchy, coil-able, color-able, twistable, bouncing, zig-zagging, and splinter-able. It feels like I am dancing with contrapuntal flickering sonic lights that accumulate into a spinning pinwheel spawning sound and form. I slide, skate, swivel, and spin with my materials - crafting nuance and finesse - and then I sculpt, shape, chisel, fashion, and form. At the end of all of that, I feel as if the piece wrote me - not as if I wrote the piece! My music has it's own inner life. If I listen carefully, the piece I am composing will tell me what it next needs. (Augusta Read Thomas, transcribed from the Miller Theatre at Columbia University MISSION COMMISSION Podcast interview)

Album Tracks 1. Augusta Read Thomas, Aureole for Orchestra - Depaul University Symphony 2. Augusta Read Thomas, Words of the Sea for Orchestra 3. Augusta Read Thomas, in My Sky at Twilight 4. Augusta Read Thomas, Carillon Sky 5. Augusta Read Thomas, Terpsichore's Dream 6. Augusta Read Thomas, Silver Chants the Litanies - Various Performers