Video (and audio, of course!) is now posted of the Eugene Contemporary Chamber Ensemble’s May 13th, 2010 performance of Suite of Roads, a two-movement work for orchestra. The movements, severely contrasting in style and energy from one another, have been posted on separate days, with the first movement along with the works program notes having been posted yesterday.
Suite of Roads, II. From from Sam L. Richards on Vimeo.
Video (and audio, of course!) is now posted of the Eugene Contemporary Chamber Ensemble’s May 13th, 2010 performance of Suite of Roads, a two-movement work for orchestra. The movements, severely contrasting in style and energy from one another, will be posted on separate days, with the second movement coming tomorrow. My program notes from the concert are pasted below.
With the advent of commercial flight, the value of travel itself has largely been transformed from what was once a journey-centric experience to what is now a destination-centric one. What we miss when seated in our aircraft speeding along at high altitudes is everything in between. We miss how we have shaped the land and how the land continues to shape us; what is ultimately a profound enculturation of human history and experience. Travel, to me, is the art of observation—spinning otherwise disparate experiences into threads of power and personal meaning.Some of my most vivid and formative experiences consist of events and narratives that have unfolded along these corridors of dirt, rock, and pavement. With open eyes, ears, and hearts, the unexpected people, places, and things that one encounters along the way are often more valuable than the carefully calculated and frequently unremarkable plans made by the most imaginative of us. Suite of Roads.
Suite of Roads, I. To from Sam L. Richards on Vimeo.
The nature of my creative process leaves me with sketchbooks littered with seemingly disassociated concepts. Stray idea gobs hang from folded corners, and outlines of amoebas filled with gorgeousness sit atop the pages. Sometimes I glance back, even just a few days, discovering snippets that could easily have been penned by someone else, because I sure don’t remember putting them there. This afternoon I found a few past words that struck my fancy. No clue how long ago I wrote them, or why, and although they are now poetic, I certainly didn’t write them with the intention of writing poems. Just creative residue:
limp, sickened, disfigured hands to mouth
plodding in a stench of present— The lamp inside burns,
torching, glowing and christening from with the dogged licking flames,
spewing, capturing, and defying everything below, Courage!
it has courage! to lick the sky and back again through atmospheres and life shimmering
And here’s another:
“I have my fabric”—she said, and swept me out of sight
a klezmer incognito fright-
-ened witches on the prowl, protruding legs and corpuscles clasped around the tortured toes—
we sat and watched it all explode- what a delight!
I like feeding ambiguity through my mind’s articulation engine, like routing disparate threads through a loom; what was once detached and meaningless becomes interwoven and enriched by its now sensical and codified surroundings.
Get a load of this bit of weekend trivia:
According to Amanda Ameer’s blog over at the ArtsJournal, several works by the Bang on a All-Stars are now available for download for at-home Rock Band “rocking”. Works include David Lang’s Cheating, Lying, Stealing, Michael Gordon’s Yo Shakespeare, and Evan Ziporyn’s Shadowbang (Head). Julia Wolfe’s Believing will also be available soon. To quote Amanda:
Alex Rigopulos and Harmonix co-founder Eran Egozy were actually Evan Ziporyn’s students at MIT in the early and mid 90s . . . Evan remains a faculty member at MIT today. The “Rock Band Network” just launched, which allows artists to submit music to Rock Band for XBOX via the web, so the Bang on a Can All-Stars went into the studio and recorded 4 pieces!
Bottom line is: I can’t wait to try out my Rock Band/Guitar Hero chops on Evan Ziporyn’s Shadowbang. Let’s rock and roll.
I’m proud to announce that a video and audio recording of one of my most recent collaborations with choreographer Alex Taylor has now been posted here. Titled With Bated Breath, this work was long in the making and both Alex and I are very proud of the final results.
Please read more about it on it’s own page, or you can just watch the video below.
With Bated Breath from Sam L. Richards on Vimeo.
The recording of Beauty’s Birth, a soprano duet I finished this spring based on a poem which I have referenced on this blog several times, is now posted on this page. My own program notes for the work are pasted below.
The profundity of this succinct and pithy poem written by my own father haunts me. I cannot walk through sand or hold my children without thinking of its lessons. It is here set to music, a soprano duet, for the occasion of Lucy Shelton’s spring 2010 residency at the University of Oregon. It bears a dedication to my son Beckett, born in January of the same year, and whose bones support both the shape of his beauty and his miraculous birth.
Considering that my last post was in April, I feel I have a bit of explaining to do. The composition of my graduate thesis at the University of Oregon, a large work for orchestra entitled Suite of Roads, absolutely consumed all of my time until about May 25th. Since then I have been working at a local garden nursery in Eugene and preparing for my family’s move to Ann Arbor, Michigan so that I can attend the University of Michigan in pursuit of my DMA (Doctor of Musical Arts).
In other words, my life has been ridiculously busy over the course of the past few months, but very productive. I have quite a bit of new music and projects that I have completed in the interim and I will be spreading the resulting posts out over the course of the next week and a half. For now, I thought I would share some joy from a game I used to play with my family as a child, and recently played just for kicks and giggles.
The game goes like this:
Some examples from my own family’s recent efforts can be seen below. Click on them to see larger images. Zippideedoodahhh!
Tonight @ 7pm in Beall Hall at the University of Oregon, my work, Beauty’s Birth, will be performed by Juliana Urban and Alli Bach as part of Lucy Shelton’s residency here as Trotter Visiting Professor. Although I won’t be able to make it to the concert myself, I can most certainly vouch for my own piece as well as all of the other works on the program. It should be a phenomenal and very diverse concert.
Come! See! Hear!
Everything that Rises Must Converge, by Benjamin Krause
While I’m at it, I might as well post a link to my peer’s work Everything That Rises Must Converge, which was featured on the same concert as my Suite of Roads. This performance feature’s the composer as soloists, with myself conducting.
Everything That Rises Must Converge from Sam L. Richards on Vimeo.