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Grand Alap: A Window in the Sky (1996)
| composer |
Chinary Ung (b. 1942) |
| performers |
Maya Beiser, cello, voice
Steven Schick, percussion, voice |
| publisher |
C. F. Peters (BMI)http://www.edition-peters.com
|
| label |
oodiscs 67
|
| duration |
18:12 |
Susan Ung:
"The word alap refers to the opening passage of Raga music. In the music of India, the alap tends to display improvisational materials which relate to the music which will follow, yet it contains a deep expressivity. In the work Grand Alap, the opening passage serves as a kind of ritual offering to all surrounding spirits and is a request for permission to begin the performance. This practice has occurred in the music-making practices of cultures throughout parts of Asia for many centuries, including Cambodia. The subtitle 'A Window in the Sky' is a reference to the recent scientific discovery of hundreds of newly found galaxies (with the assistance of the Hubble telescope) and perhaps relates to the expository quality of the work, and its expansiveness.
"Grand Alap requires the percussionist to be male and the cellist to be female, as each of them has a vocal part which is both separate and related to their instrumental parts. Each of them is required to articulate certain phonemes as well as to sing. Some of the phonemes used are derivative of the sounds used to communicate percussion techniques in regions of South and Southeast Asia while others resemble words in a few ancient languages. A few words have meaning in the Khmer (Cambodian) language, which derives from Pali and Sanskrit: 'Soriya' is the sun, 'Mekhala' is the goddess of water, and the words 'Mehta/Karona' refer to the concept of greater compassion.
"Grand Alap consists of countless fragments strung together like beads on a necklace in a complete circle. Some of these fragments bear distinct references to particular personae. The sections entitled 'Entering into Trance' and 'In Trance' require that the percussionist execute those fragments while in a kind of altered state, or as if thrown into an unearthly dimension. In the section entitled 'An Angel Voice' the cellist is to sing a musical phrase with a pure and balanced expression, as if coming from a heavenly place. 'Rising On the Seventh Day' symbolizes a 'rebirth' of the soul, which is a reference to traditional Khmer theatre, and 'Departure of the Angel' is the very last fragment of the work.
"The vocal lines in Grand Alap have numerous functions. While at times they are an integral part of the texture and sonority, they also represent the locus of each musical personae or fragment, which are then strung together, as stated before, in a kind of necklace. Sometimes the vocalizations extend instrumental sounds or vice versa while at other times they are interlocked with instrumental sounds. The role of the voices is also often 'broken' and detached from the instrumental activity, allowing for instrumental sound to develop alone at certain moments. Instrumental display is continuous throughout the piece, while the voices can be said to contribute dots and dashes, or curves of expressive colors in a painting which emerge out of the canvas. Here, the surface of the canvas is represented by the ever-present instrumental sonority.
"Grand Alap was commissioned by Maya Beiser and Steven Schick and made possible by the commissioning program of Meet the Composer/Reader's Digest. This work grew out of a series of collaborative sessions between the composer and the commissioning performers."
Chinary Ung (b. 1942) describes his music as a melding of Eastern and Western musical elements:
"I believe that imagination, expressivity, and emotion evoke a sense of Eastern romanticism in my music that parallels some of the music-making in numerous lands of Asia. Above all, in metaphor, if the Asian aesthetic is represented by the color yellow, and the Western aesthetic is represented by the color blue, then my music is a mixture -- or the color green."
Ung was born in Takeo, Cambodia in 1942 and studied clarinet at the Ecole de Music in Phnom Penh. He emigrated to the United States in 1964 to continue his studies of clarinet and conducting at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City. He later turned towards composition and became a student of Chou Wen-chung at Columbia University in New York. After completing work at Columbia in 1974, Ung spent the next decade studying the Khmer musical traditions of his native Cambodia while helping his family to escape the country. He went on to teach composition at Northern Illinois University, Connecticut College, University of Pennsylvania, and Arizona State University. He is presently on faculty at the University of California, San Diego, where he has taught since 1995.
Among the many honors Ung has received for his compositions include those from the Academy of Arts and Letters, Meet the Composer/Reader's Digest Commissioning Program, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim, Koussevitzky, Ford, Rockefeller and Barlow Foundations. He was also the first United States composer to win the international Grawemeyer Award. Ung's music has been performed by the Philadelphia, Louisville, Pittsburg, and National Symphonies, as well as the American Composer's Orchestra and the symphonies of Tokyo, Sydney, and Basil, Switzerland. His works have been recorded on the Argo, CRI, New World, and oodiscs labels, and he has annotated a collection of traditional Cambodian music on the Folkways label. His most recent compositions include Rising Light (1996), a large work for double choruses, piano soloist, vocal soloists and orchestra, and Radiant Samadhi (1999), a choral work for the Tokyo Philharmonic Chorus. His work Spiral (1987) is featured in the Norton Recordings and the Norton Scores, a teaching guide for music teachers and students across the country.
related websites
http://music.ucsd.edu/bio.php?fn=Chinary+Ung
Long known as the cellist of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Maya Beiser has formally left the ensemble to focus on her solo career. Beiser has been a featured performer at festivals and concert halls in the United States, Europe, Israel, Russia, Japan, China, Australia, and New Zealand. Most recently, she has collaborated with composer/conductor Tan Dun, performing several of his solo cello compositions in Los Angeles and New York, premiering his Water Passion after St. Matthew in Stuttgart, Germany and St. Petersburg, Russia, and performing as soloist with a number of orchestras in his Crouching Tiger Concerto. Beiser has received numerous grants and awards for her commissions from the Rockefeller and Koussevitzky Foundations, Meet the Composer, and National Endowment for the Arts; composers whose works she has commissioned or premiered include Anthony Davis, Osvaldo Golijov, Michael Gordon, Meredith Monk, Chinary Ung, Julia Wolfe, and John Zorn. In fall 2003 she will premiere a new piece by Steve Reich as part an evening of works integrating video projections with multi-track cello compositions. Beiser initially studied at the Rubin Academy in Tel Aviv, Israel, and with Aldo Parisot at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. She has recorded for the Koch International Classics, oodicscs, Point, and Sony Classical labels.
Stephen Schick is the percussionist of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and also performs with pianist James Avery, the percussion group red fish blue fish, and the Maya Beiser/Steven Schick Project. He has commissioned and premiered more than 100 new works for percussion which he has performed internationally at festivals including Warsaw Autumn, BBC Proms, Jerusalem Festival, Holland Festival, Stockholm International Percussion Event, and Budapest Spring Festival. Many of these works he has recorded for the CRI, Point, Sony Classical, Wergo labels and an upcoming solo CD with Neuma Records. Schick studied percussion at the University of Iowa and Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, Germany, and has taught at the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Germany, Rotterdam Conservatory in the Netherlands, and Royal College of Music in London. He is currently on faculty at the University of California, San Diego and Manhattan School of Music in New York.
related websites
http://members.aol.com/bernsarts/homepage/beiser.htm
http://members.aol.com/bernsarts/homepage/mbssbiog.htm
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