"In a Strange Land" by Michael Gordon
(2019) (c.75’) (Commission) (World Premiere, Sept 14, 2019)
Commissioned by San Francisco Contemporary Music Players
Performed by
San Francisco Contemporary Music Players
Brendan Lai Tong, trombone
Peter Wahrhaftig, tuba
Kate Campbell, keyboard
Christopher Froh, percussion
Hrabba Atladottir, violin
Meena Bhasin, viola
Hannah Addario-Berry, cello
Richard Worn, double bass
Roomful of Teeth
Estelí Gomez, soprano
Martha Cluver, soprano
Eliza Bagg, mezzo soprano
Virginia Warnken, alto
Stephen Soph, tenor
Jason Awbry, baritone
Thann Scoggin, baritone
Cameron Beauchamp, bass
Dylan Goodhue, Sound Engineer
Sunny Cyr, Ensemble Manager
Splinter Reeds
Kyle Bruckmann, oboe
Bill Kalinkos, clarinet
Jeff Anderle, bass clarinet
David Wegehaupt, saxophone
Dana Jessen, bassoon
Eric Dudley, Conductor
Lisa Oman, Executive Director, SF Contemporary Music Players
Eric Dudley, Artistic Director, SF Contemporary Music Players
Amadeus Regucera, Artistic Production Director, SF Contemporary Music Players
This project was made possible in part through the generosity of the Clarence E. Heller Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts.
Text
2. Last summer
Last summer I happened to be crossing the plains of Iowa in a season of intense heat, and it was my good fortune to have as a traveling companion James Qualye Burden. Jim Burden, as we still call him in the West. Jim and I are old friends - we grew up together in the same Nebraska town - and we had much to say to each other.
While the train flashed through never ending miles of ripe wheat, by country towns and bright-flowered pastures and oak groves wilting in the sun, we were talking about what it is like to spend one’s childhood in little towns like these, buried in wheat and corn, burning summers when the world lies green and billowy beneath a brilliant sky; blustery winters with little snow, when the whole country is stripped bare and gray as sheet iron. We agreed that no one who had not grown up in a little prairie town could know anything about it.
During that burning day when we were crossing Iowa, our talk kept returning to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we had known long ago and whom both of us admired. To speak her name was to call up pictures of people and places, to set a quiet drama going in one’s brain. I had lost sight of her altogether, but Jim had found her again after long years, had renewed a friendship that meant a great deal to him, and out of his busy life had set apart time enough to enjoy that friendship.
“I can’t see,” he said impetuously, “why you have never written anything about Ántonia.”
I was ready to make an agreement with him; I would set down on paper all that I remembered about Ántonia if he would do the same. “Maybe I will, maybe I will!” he declared. He stared out the window for a few moments, and when he turned to me again his eyes had the sudden clearness that comes from something the mind itself sees.
Months afterwards Jim Burden arrived at my apartment with a bulging portfolio sheltered under his fur overcoat. “I finished it last night - the thing about Ántonia. I simply wrote down what of herself and myself and other people Ántonia’s name recalls to me. I suppose it hasn’t any form. It doesn’t have a title either.”
He went into the next room, sat down at my desk and wrote on the pinkish face of the portfolio the word “Ántonia.” He frowned at this a moment. Then prefixed another word, making it “My Ántonia.”
"In a Strange Land" by Michael Gordon Mvmt 2 "Last Summer" contemporary musicians | |
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| Music | Upload TimePublished on 18 Sep 2019 |
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