Latin Themes MMus Final RecitalFriday June 5th, 10am RNCM Concert Hall FREE entry Hello everyone! Next friday is the big day for our saxophone department, and what better way to kick start your day than with a home-made, freshly baked saxophone recital, bright and breezy for you on a friday morning! I know it might be a touch outrageous advertising my final college recital here on Facebook(!), but it would be so nice to have an audience so that it feels like a proper concert... This year, I am exploring some Latin themes (for a change!)... I'll be accompanied by Ben Powell and Chris Roe, with some special guests including the Tortoise Island String 4tet and the Barbierian Brass Band! Would be wonderful to see you there :-) ProgrammePart 1 Maurice Ravel Piece en Forme de Habañera Accompanied by Ben Powell (piano) Paquito D’Rivera Vals Venezolano & Contradanza Accompanied by Ben Powell (piano) Astor Piazzolla Histoire du Tango
Part 2 Accompanied by Chris Roe (piano), Will McGee (bass), Dave Simpson, Jon Ormston, Natasa Hadjiandreou (percussion) and the Barbierian Brass Band Chick Corea Concierto de Aranjuez & Spain Mark Levine / Cal Tjader Linda Chicana Carlos Santana / Tom Coster Europa Rory Duffy Mesozoica Part 1Maurice Ravel Piece en Forme de Habañera Accompanied by Ben Powell (piano) Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) originally composed his Pièce en forme de Habanera as a ‘Vocalise etude en forme de Habanera’ for bass voice and piano in 1907. A song without words, Ravel took as his model the slow, sultry Spanish dance called the habanera -- like most French composers of the period, Ravel was fascinated by the music of Spain -- and used it as the basis of a difficult virtuoso exercise for the bass voice. Ravel later transcribed the work for ‘cello and piano – a transcription that retains all the virtuosity of the original – and from this, several other arrangements have been made for virtually any and all instruments with aspirations to virtuoso glory.
Whilst Paquito D’Rivera’s discography contains over thirty solo and collaborative albums of jazz, Latin and Afro-Cuban music, he is also perhaps lesser well-known as a classical musician, with a distinguished career including performances with Cuban National Symphony Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, London Royal Symphony Orchestra, Florida Philharmonic Orchestra, St Luke’s Chamber Orchestra, Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra and Costa Rica Symphony Orchestra. Vals Venezolano & Contradanza are two Latin dance pieces taken from the suite Aires Tropicales for woodwind quintet, and arranged for saxophone and piano. Aires Tropicales is a seven-movement suite that includes a Habanera as a tribute to Ravel. Therefore, it was the natural choice to segue from the Ravel piece into the Paquito D’Rivera piece. In a similar fashion, Vals Venezolano honours Venezuelan composer Antonio Lauro in a lively syncopated waltz, while Contradanza is Paquito’s upbeat tribute to Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona. Astor Piazzolla Histoire du Tango Accompanied by Ben Powell (piano), Geoff Chalmers (contrabass) and the Tortoise Island String Quartet Astor Piazzolla was born of Italian parentage in Argentina, although he was brought up in New York, where he had a strong exposure to jazz. After studying with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, he began to experiment with jazz phrasing and syncopated rhythms in the tango, which up until then, had been ‘four-square’. Combined with his own inquisitive style, the tango swung with new life – subsequently giving birth to the term Tango Nuevo, which caused a tremendous stir in Buenos Aires, and gave Astor Piazzolla an international reputation. Originally for flute and guitar, this four-movement work takes us on a journey tracing the development of the Tango Nuevo throughout the twentieth century, from its humble beginnings to its current worldwide status. 1) Bordel 1900 Bordel 1900 illustrates the initial stage of the tango soon after its genesis in 1882, Buenos Aires. Originally a form of dance music played on guitar and flute, arrangements later included piano and concertina. This movement is full of grace and liveliness. It conveys the playful banter of the French, Italian and Spanish women who populated the bars and bordellos, and teased the policemen, thieves, sailors and everyday folk who frequented them. 2) Café 1930 Café 1930 marks another age of the tango in which people stopped dancing to it and instead preferred simply to listen to it. The tango orchestras expanded to include two violins, two concertinas, piano, bass, and sometimes a singer. Subsequently, the music became more melodic and romantic. It became slower, with sophisticated and often melancholy harmonies. 3) Nightclub 1960 Nightclub 1960 represents a time of rapidly expanding international exchange, and the tango evolved again as the music of Brazil and Argentina came together in Buenos Aires. Bossa Nova and Nuevo Tango moved to the same beat. Audiences flocked to the nightclubs to listen to the new tango, and the nightclub marks a revolution and a fundamental change in the original tango structure. 4) Concert d'Aujourd'hui Concert d’Aujourd’hui (‘Concert of Today’ or ‘The Modern-Day Concert’) recognizes the fact that the tango has taken on influences from contemporary composers such as Bartok and Stravinsky. This is the point at which the boundaries between ‘popular music’ and ‘art music’ have become blurred. This is today’s tango, and the tango of the future as well. Accompanied by Ben Powell (piano), Geoff Chalmers (contrabass) and the Tortoise Island String Quartet: Violin - Elise Harper Violin - Christina Knox Viola - Nicola Hicks Violoncello - Sophia Linehan Part 2Chick Corea
Concierto de Aranjuez & Spain Accompanied by Chris Roe (piano), Will McGee (bass), Dave Simpson, Jon Ormston, Natasa Hadjiandreou (percussion) Chick Corea is an American jazz piano player, drummer, composer and arranger, most famous for his contribution to the jazz-fusion movement during the 1970s. He was first introduced to Latin music in his youth, and is quoted as saying; ‘I liked the ‘extraversion’ of Latin music, especially the dance and salsa style music – bands like Tito Puente’s band and Machito’s band... The Cuban dance music was a great kind of antidote to some of the more serious, heady jazz that I was into. I liked the ‘outgoingness’ and exuberance of the music. I just stayed interested in all kinds of Latin music. Then I discovered Spanish Latin music, which is flamenco.’ During his early career, Chick Corea worked with many notable Latin Jazz artists – Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Mann, Willie Bobo, Mongo Santamaría and Stan Getz – and we can see how these experiences might have influenced his music later on. His jazz-fusion group Return to Forever, which began during the early 1970s, included Latin Jazz artists Flora Purim, Airto Moreira and Al Di Meola. Spain is Chick Corea’s most famous composition. It first appeared on his album Light as a Feather (1971). Chick Corea opened this version with the adagio from Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez – and since then, the song has traditionally been associated with this adagio as a prelude to the main theme. The salsa song, Sueño como una Gitarra by Adalberto Alvarez, makes reference to this fusion, and heavily inspired my arrangement. Mark Levine / Cal Tjader Linda Chicana Accompanied by Chris Roe (piano), Will McGee (bass), Dave Simpson, Jon Ormston, Natasa Hadjiandreou (percussion) The cha-cha-chá is a genre of Cuban dance music that evolved from the mambo. Cuban bass player Israel “Cachao” Lopez revolutionised the danzón by adding syncopated bass-lines to the danzón Chanchullo, later recorded by Tito Puente under the title Oye Como Va. Unlike Cubans, Americans found it difficult to dance to these syncopated rhythms so Enrique Jorrín changed the accent of the mambo so that the strong accent fell on the first beat of the bar. Ironically, the name ‘cha-cha-chá’ was used by Enrique Jorrín to describe the tapping sound made by the shoes of the dancers on the floor as they tried to follow this new rhythm. Mark Levine, piano player with Mongo Santamaria, wrote Linda Chicana. It has been recorded by many big names in Latin Jazz including Tito Puente, Cal Tjader and Pete Escovado. My arrangement of Linda Chicana is based on the recording by Cal Tjader. Carlos Santana / Tom Coster Europa Accompanied by Chris Roe (piano), Will McGee (bass), Dave Simpson, Jon Ormston, Natasa Hadjiandreou (percussion) and the Barbierian Brass Band The genesis of this song came from the late 1960s when Carlos Santana suffered a bad experience whilst high on mescaline. Santana composed a song entitled ‘The Mushroom Lady’s Coming to Town’ which contained the original idea for Europa. Years later, Santana played this song again when he was touring the UK with Earth, Wind and Fire. Tom Coster collaborated with him on the chord sequence, and it was renamed Europa (Earth’s Cry, Heaven’s Smile). The song was later recorded by the Argentine tenor saxophonist Gato Barbieri, for his album Caliente. Rory Duffy Mesozoica Accompanied by Chris Roe (piano), Will McGee (bass), Dave Simpson, Jon Ormston, Natasa Hadjiandreou (percussion) and the Barbierian Brass Band This piece was adapted from Paleaontology, a big band work I that wrote in 2006, and it is inspired by the 6/8 and 12/8 cross-rhythms from traditional West African sacred music. The composition is a journey through both spatial and temporal dimensions. I intended to transport the listener through a formal landscape where the dynamic contour of the music traces the natural topography of the landscape – forests, rivers, mountains and valleys. The listener is at first lost in a dense forest. He finds running water, and follows the current upstream to the slope of a mountain. He climbs the mountain and, upon his arrival at the summit, looks down into the valley below and sees something so wonderful, it is beyond comprehension. He descends the mountain towards the object of wonder, but just before he reaches it, he looks to the side and catches a glimpse of new, unexplored territory. The composition is effectively an exploration into the concepts of time and space in both an anthropomorphic and geological sense. The 6/8 and 12/8 cross-rhythms are always present in the music, yet they only manifest themselves in the bell that rings during the moment of transcendence – when the listener witnesses that vision so marvellous that he is momentarily lost in contemplation. I wanted to draw the parallel between the Latin rhythms that originate from the motherland Africa (a process that took over a century) as a temporal microcosm for the evolution of life from the dawn of the Mesozoic age to today. Time suddenly loses all meaning, and the progress of time within the composition feels as long as the evolution of history itself. Similarly, I wanted to create a sense of ecological rationality where man becomes fused with the natural environment. Thus, the listener is thrown into a state of simultaneous anticipation and recollection, ascent and descent, self and world, where the flux of time and space merge into one experience. The Barbierian Brass Band Trumpet 1 - Nick Walters Trumpet 2 - Jack Davies Flute - Emily Ogilvie Alto Saxophone - Anthony Brown Baritone Saxophone - Rob Cope Trombone 1 - Simon Lodge Trombone 2 - Patrick Friel Comments are closed.
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