Fine Print

Weakness was recorded April 4–6, 2013. Macha was recorded on May 30, 2012. Ocean sounds were recorded in June 2012 at The Point, Ingonish, Nova Scotia (thanks to Rhodena MacLeod and family); and at Burton’s Sunset Oasis, Bay St. Lawrence, Nova Scotia (thanks to Melvin and Debbie Burton).

A 2009 Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters provided the musicians’ fees for the recording of Weakness, and the Princeton University Council on the Humanities David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Project made possible Riley Lee’s residency in 2012. Additional support for publication was provided by the Princeton University Committee on Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Barr Ferree Foundation Publication Fund.

Engineered by Andrés Villalta. Edited by Barbara White. Weakness produced by Ned Rothenberg. Macha produced by Barbara White. Macha Speaking and stone percussion directed by ory by Tom C owa n Weakness ara White A St Mark DeChiazza and Barbara White. An Oper a by Barb Photographs by Barbara White.

All texts and music copyright the authors.

www.albanyrecords.com TROY1441 albany records u.s. 915 broadway, albany, ny 12207 tel: 518.436.8814 fax: 518.436.0643 albany records u.k. box 137, kendal, cumbria la8 0xd tel: 01539 824008 © 2013 Albany Records made in the usa warning: copyright subsists in all recordings issued under this label. DDD Track Listing

Weakness 6 Macha [12:13] Music and Libretto by Barbara White written and Performed by Tom Cowan Sound Design by Barbara White with Andrés Villalta Sound Design by Barbara White with Andrés Villalta 1 Arrival [14:11] Rose Marie McSweeney, penny whistle, bamboo flute, irish flute, clarinet, bass clarinet 2 Departure [7:31] Greg Silver, fiddle 3 Betrayals [7:53] Charles MacDonald, guitar 4 Ordeal [8:25] Konrad Kaczmarek, fixed electronic media 5 Beyond [8:39] Additional contributions by electric guitar Sarah Davis, soprano (macha) Taylor Levine, tin whistle Douglas Gillespie, speaker (crunnchu) Paul Davis, guitar Riley Lee, bamboo flute Robert “Boomer” MacDonald, voix fantôme Barbara White, clarinet and bass clarinet Aurore Bruyère D’Argent, Taylor Levine, electric guitar Dominic Donato, percussion Michael Pratt, conductor and speaker (king) Ned Rothenberg, assistant conductor Crowd (speaking and stone percussion): Millicent Kate Brigaud Lisa Carlucci | Kristin Clotfelter | Kate Knodel Franco Paoletti | Livia Paoletti | John Russell Katie Welsh Weakness: Synopsis Scene 4. Ordeal Ordeal—Or, Sacrificial Dance • Vow of the Empty Well Scene 1. Arrival In front of the King, the crowd, and Crunnchu, Macha races the king’s horses. She wins and collapses, Crunnchu • Macha • Culinary Arts • Breath and Skin spent, at the very moment of her triumph. In a third and final vow, she detaches from her body, her Lover and Loved One, Touch and Tumble • Vow of the First Sip • Tell lover, and the mortal world. Crunnchu, alone, goes about his day. Macha, a visitor from the Otherworld, appears and observes him with curiosity and hunger. He spies her and desires her too. Without a word, she sets about Scene 5. Beyond making dinner. They eat, approach one another, and become intimate—all without speaking. Revision • Beyond—Or, Five Streams and the Center Pool Afterward, Macha sings the first of three vows to her lover. Then, in her identity as a goddess from The goddess speaks from beyond time, describing the aftermath of her adventure with humankind. a time beyond time, she narrates all that has just happened. She corrects the record on her reputation: while “the people” (including most who have told her story since) maintain that she cursed them for failing her, she points out that in their cowardice, they Scene 2. Departure themselves shaped their own future of isolation and incapacity. Back in her Otherworld, again beyond Hawk and Breeze, Boat and Sea • Vow of the Overflowing Well time, she sings: Recollect • Plea for Restraint They have been living together contentedly for some time. Alone, Macha performs a solitary ritual—the I am mist in the palm of the dawn; mystifying and mesmerizing ceremony of an embodied goddess. Returning to Crunnchu, she sings I am hawk and breeze, boat and sea; another vow. Then Crunnchu is called away to the Great Assembly. Macha delivers the first of three I am ebbing tide and returning wave . . . pleas, entreating him not to go, and when he persists, she urges him to keep silent about her and about their relationship. He departs. I am shelter, and I am storm; I am your first cry and your last breath; Scene 3. Betrayals I am lover and loved one, mother and child, stallion and mare; Clear Seeing • Outburst • Plea for Mercy I am the harper, the shuddering string, the silence . . . Plea for Compassion—Or, The Indictment Aria Macha, at home, clairvoyant, sees Crunnchu arrive at the Great Assembly: amidst an excited crowd, I am water, well, and thirsty mouth, marveling at the king’s horses, he loses himself and exclaims, “My wife can run faster than the five streams and the center pool. king’s horses!” The king, incensed, orders Macha brought to him and demands that she race One year enchanted in a foam of water . . . his horses. Macha delivers two more pleas, imploring the king and then the crowd for mercy and compassion; she is met with mute refusal from the king and from all present. Hag and hero, honored foe; kind of première itself. Is it mine? Yes, in a way it is. But the full story of Macha can only live in that spark of hardness, nameless, known. Otherworld of myth and mystery that is beyond us, that Otherworld we are only allowed to glimpse, and Radiant insult, brutal peace; about which we must remain silent until that World itself tells us it is time to speak. shadow’s skin, reknitted. Empty ocean, fire sings; Blurred Lines Break: patient thunder, stone flows. On Weakness and Transgression Seven winds, nine waves, ten thousand stars, one sky, no end. by Andrea Mazzariello Now, again, always, beyond, here, once more … Silence, appropriately and paradoxically, initiates the piece. A bed of sound emerges, crescendos, and then seems to draw life out of a single instrument. Long low tones, punctuated by occasional adorn- ment, take the foreground. The sonic palette expands as the player notes the boundaries of her allotted The Story of Macha space, tethered to a resting tone but pushing ever upward, composure giving way to expressivity before by Tom Cowan resting again. Then multiplying, other voices activated and entwined. The story of Macha has intrigued me for many years. It has also repulsed me for many years. I’ve been These seem to be the terms: stretch the cable linking silence to utterance to music and then, intrigued by the enchantment of a beautiful woman from the Otherworld who chooses a mortal man just before it snaps into resplendent color, rest again. We’ll land on our feet, we think, we’ll return to to be her husband, by the love she brings to enrich his life and increase his prosperity, by the strange a static point, breath or tone, and then stretch again until, this time, the music will open up to us, to requirement she puts on him never to mention that she exists, and by her power to run with horses. being consumed, to trafficking in, perhaps, language. A word. It is, after all, an opera. Finally the spirit But I was also repulsed by her seemingly excessive curse on nine generations of Ulster warriors, by the sounds, lush and full, but sighing, still not speaking. And then we are ravaged: “I drink from your well.” cruelty displayed by an unforgiving king, by the silence of the crowd watching her debasement, and This work is imperiled from the start, as are the characters we follow through it. Rigorously by the haunting indifference of the women to the danger that threatens the unborn life Macha carries established boundaries, once internalized, dissolve. Weakness (and Weakness) breaks the rules of in her womb. For years I would not tell this story, partly because I did not understand it, and partly engagement. Don’t speak of me, asks the spirit-made-flesh, but Crunnchu, mute until this moment, because I did not understand my troubled and uncertain response to it. simply can’t keep his mouth shut. Speak on her behalf, we tacitly ask of the crowd as Macha appears Some stories may not need to be told, not at first. Perhaps they need to live quietly deep in our before the king. Thanks to the silence of the gathered throng, he proceeds to run Macha into the hearts and minds and souls. At some point when the storyteller and storylistener are ready, the stories ground. And certainly, and above all else, give us a redemptive story, one in which we cannot be will emerge. And when they do, some of the mysteries that confounded us will, instead, astound us implicated. But the bed of sound emerges again, diminishes, and we are left in an accusing, accursed with the beauty and meaning they have always embodied but that remained hidden for so long. When silence. This opera tears contracts to pieces. I wanted others to know this story, I would read one of the standard versions of it to them, for I had Yet even in these transgressions the work feels humble, laying claim to methodical, artisanal decided I would never tell it as a storyteller until it became more fully mine. practice rather than some flash of lightning. It feels as though great care was taken with this work. Or, And that did not happen until I attended the première of Weakness by Barbara White. The music, to say it another way, that it was cared for. This is not the same thing as composing “carefully.” The the voices, the dance created a world in which the story of Macha came alive and inspired me to shape sense of risk is palpable here and yet the binary—shrink or grandstand—collapses in the very act of it as a tale I could finally tell. So I am delighted that the version of the Macha story on this CD is a marking the page in this particular way and then in surrendering these marked pages to the imperfect bodies charged with making them palpable, decipherable, able to be devoured. Which is how we engage this piece: we consume it, voraciously. We hear the lines intertwine, It was this moment that provoked me to compose my Weakness: as Macha challenges the onstage merge, as sumptuous gestures for bass clarinet or bamboo flute give way to propulsions, convulsions spectators to remember their own mothers, to summon up compassion for her as she prepares to give for the whole ensemble. It would be unnerving if it weren’t so gorgeous. We are not meant to occupy this birth, her words reflect beyond the proscenium and underscore the mechanisms and agreements of intimate, lovers’ space, but our presence there feels less the product of our own voyeuristic impulses performance and spectatorship and more. Safe within our comfortable seats in the dark auditorium, and more the outcome of artistic generosity. I am not ashamed, says this work, neither of the body’s we can observe the indignities and traumas on stage with impunity; in fact, we must do just that, for fortitude nor the will’s failure. I own my strength and—more significantly—my frailty. speaking or intervening would be a form of transgression. Might this culturally sanctioned form of silent In the end this opera takes up a kind of failure as its subject: promises broken, curses visited witnessing bear a family resemblance to other less tidy, less rehearsed, less innocuous experiences, upon the perpetrators, pride and vengeance, violation and its yield. We walk away having lived, for a where social control, habit, inertia, and fear prevent us from standing tall and taking action? time, through the devastating consequence of our own weakness. And yet something has been made So, in that monastery in Chicago on a summer afternoon, and as I reflected on my two-day drive of our inadequacy. The work stands as a testament to it, and, oddly enough, feels more like strength. back East to New Jersey, I began my journey into the world of the elusive and mystifying Macha. About six months later, Riley Lee traveled from Australia to the United States, by air, and On Detour during a semester’s residency at my university, he initiated me into the study of the bamboo flute by Barbara White known as the shakuhachi. Knowing that I wanted to work more extensively with Riley—and to take In August 2008, intuition and impulse moved me to venture westward in order to spend a few nights what I’d learned from huffing and puffing ro and tsu dai meri in otsu and kan back to my composer’s in a Chicago monastery, where I was fortunate to be one of a few dozen students assembled to receive worktable—I acted on a spontaneous impulse to invite his Japanese flute into my Celtic story, trusting Tom Cowan’s teaching of what he calls the Druid Wisdom Tales. Tom read aloud Marie Heaney’s version that he would provide the otherworldly air that sounds itself into substance, escorting the goddess of an old Celtic story known as “The Curse of Macha,” also known as “The Weakness of the Ulstermen.” through time and back home to the Beyond. I was transfixed by this story’s resonance and mystery, by its weaving together of familiar archetypes As I completed the score and prepared for the première, it occurred to me to invite Tom Cowan and curious surprises. A spirit fancies a fleshly man and assumes human form so that she may—cook to share his version of the Macha story, which would enable listeners to hear a reading that, perhaps, his dinner? The man betrays their secret bond when he boasts of—her athletic prowess? The king hewed more closely to the tradition. (As Borges would say, there is no “original.”) And that too was a hears the man’s outburst and forces the woman to—race his horses? lucky impulse: Tom’s written text, and later, his performance of it, taught me yet more about this opera This is a story that invites reflection on the different valences of muteness and utterance, that warns I had just “finished.” Around the same time, I hopped on New Jersey Transit to take another class with of aggressive silence and incontinent speech. Macha is betrayed three times: first by Crunnchu in his Tom in Manhattan, this one centered around the Welsh poet Taliesin, who appeared just in time, six unbidden outburst, and then by the sadistic king who demands that Macha prove herself by racing his horses, weeks before curtain, to compose the last words of my libretto for me. Through Tom, Taliesin gave me by “performing.” Finally, there is the bystanders’ chilling, spineless acquiescence to the king’s abuse of an eleventh-hour initiation into the riddle of the radiant insult and the enigma of the brutal peace. authority, which oozes off the page and jumps out of the story to draw our attention to the fallibility of the Our trip picked up speed again when our goddess-in-voice, Sarah Davis, had made her way to us, witnesses outside the story—us. I was especially unsettled by Macha’s final, desperate plea, when the as did, by a variety of familiar and unexpected avenues, the other sensitive and unstoppable horses of the goddess-become-human, her pregnancy having come to term, implores the assembled crowd to rescue her Weakness Band, whose individual identities infused the sounds I cooked up for them. And as Macha (and her offspring) from the king’s craven aggression. Indeed, her righteous entreaty and the crowd’s passive began to sound herself into presence, she continued to beckon and to confound, to reveal and to elude. non-response bring to mind less mythic, more mundane stories: somehow I think of Joseph Nye Welch’s righteously indignant challenge to Joseph McCarthy: “Have you no decency?” (How did McCarthy respond?) After the première, I impulsively planned (if such a thing as impulsive planning is possible) about the perils of placing trust where it is not warranted. Do we really want to appeal for justice to a another road trip. Tom finished the performance of his Macha in the studio, and I set out for another ruler who is motivated by ego rather than integrity (and to find out how far he will go to satisfy his two-day drive, this time to Nova Scotia. I conceived of the journey as a means of recuperating from vanity)? Do we want to admit that agency and effort may hold less sway than power and privilege? To the reverberant strains of Weakness and of celebrating my fifth “rebirthday” after cancer surgery—a reflect on the seductive expediency of cowardice? To learn how suddenly mutual regard may give way way of appreciating my own continuing but limited time as an embodied soul, I suppose. Anticipating to violent betrayal? To ponder the dangers of self-sacrifice and self-abandonment, of offering oneself a quiet contemplative retreat atop a cliff by the sea, I learned that my inn was hosting a music camp up for suffering? To recognize that the besieged and beleaguered champion may be helpless against on the day of my arrival, and, familiar with the legends about Cape Breton music, but really wanting a her challengers, may succumb, may be placed in the role of scapegoat rather than hero—or, even more break from noisemaking, I somewhat hesitantly signed up, thinking I’d probably skip some of the ses- perplexingly, in both roles at once? And, do we really want to hear a goddess, of all people (people?) sions to go kayaking. Thus I found myself in St. Peter’s, on Cape Breton, at the very first Music Camp plead for help? To us? What sort of goddess is this anyway, who wins and loses and dies and endures on the Canal, learning, as expected, tinwhistle tunes, and playing, not at all as expected, Japanese and wails and births and curses—all in the same breath? bamboo flute in a . . . multigenerational bluegrass band! In the course of a lively and transformative In his teachings, Tom refers to the three roads in Celtic tradition: the broad, the narrow, and the weekend, as my steed recharged at the inn, I learned what “drive” means, and who gets driven, in Cape crooked. I think of the Celtic figures who are more constant in their identities: the radiant Brigit and Breton’s entrancing island dialect. After camp concluded, my ear awash in jigs and reels, I departed the moody Cailleach, who glance over at one another from their respective positions on the Celtic wheel for the highlands—and then returned a couple of weeks later for a second round of jam sessions. Back of the year. But a journey to or with Macha weaves together light and dark, up and down, abundance in St. Peter’s, Greg Silver and Charles MacDonald offered the fiddling and chording I did not know I and impoverishment: one travels a jagged, inefficient and indirect road, follows unexpected detours, had been seeking; Macha, though, recognized her local music and contentedly planted herself in and lands at unforeseen destinations, and then takes leave yet again. among the human-made and elemental sounds of her remote, craggy island home. Even later, as the We arrive, we depart, and in between we tend the hearth. We breathe, we eat, we labor, and we editing sauntered toward its conclusion, Tom reminded me that we are journeyed to even as we journey, marvel at the grace and power of the creatures in our midst. We learn and question and unlearn and as he provided a few droplets of the River Boyne for the mix. You can hear them if you listen closely. learn again. And sometimes, we elect not to know. We promise and betray, grow and decline, nurture It wasn’t until well after my Weakness and Tom’s Macha had been recorded and polished that I and withhold. We exert, submit, overpower, deplete and give in. We hit bottom, rise up and persevere— felt I had begun to understand the story I had been living with for so many years. And it’s not over yet: sometimes—moving on to soar up higher or just to limp sorely along. We lose something, find some Macha continues to ebb and flow, to appear and recede, to shift her shape. I agree with Tom that the space in its absence, invite something new into it, and find that even a new joy has loss tucked inside story is unsettling, and I share his intuition that this story about silence and speech prefers to be it. We retreat into sanctuary or venture out, realizing that home is not on the map we had been pro- voiced only at the proper time. Judiciously, too. We’re accustomed to narratives of triumph and resolu- vided. We return to our old stories to find that the plots have been rewritten. We proceed with caution, tion, to dramas that spectacularize suffering—of women, especially—but this tale seems to insist on or we act on impulse, and we do or do not achieve the desired result of our chosen course of action. laying itself bare even as it cloaks its wisdom in an obfuscating mist. That may be why Macha’s story We honor, we delight, we gain wisdom, and still we suffer-—until we find our next attraction, risks reopening the very wounds one might hope it would heal, for she invites her onlookers, onstage and we begin again. For if we dare to follow the twists and turns in the road, we cannot quite predict and off, to consider the unruly teachings to which we would rather not surrender: teachings about the what we’ll find along the way, or where we’ll touch down. A lifelong smoker may suddenly quit, a ever-present threat of incapacity, about the unexpected dangers and opportunities that come with vegetarian may open up to a feast of fried bologna, and a devoted canine lover may find herself, of an exploring unknown territory, about the temptation to misuse another in the service of one’s own cravings, evening, padding to the front door to let the cat in—and, noticing that the door is still open . . . The Authors The Performers

Composer Barbara White’s chamber music has been described as “provocative even when it speaks Hailed by the New York Times as “a voice with considerable warmth,” and by the Boston Globe as “elusive, in undertones, creating a personal space that is as unique as it is inviting” (American Academy of Arts delicate, silvery and persuasive,” soprano Sarah Davis is recognized as a gifted performer on both the recital and Letters). In her teaching and scholarship as well as in her composition portfolio, she values the and operatic stages. She premiered Elliott Carter’s what are years at the Tanglewood Music Center, and wisdom and intuition of the body and esteems nuance and silence as well as intricacy and virtuosity. her operatic roles include Fiordiligi, Donna Anna, Pamina, Cendrillon, and Anne Trulove. She has performed Long active as an interdisciplinary collaborator, White has in recent years become increasingly active at the Cleveland Art Song Festival, SongFest, and the Chautauqua Institution. Recent engagements in theatrical performance and as a videomaker, and she remains an idiosyncratic and searching include Merry Wives of Windsor with Annapolis Opera; Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the University of clarinetist. Honors and awards have come from the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Aspen Music Festival, Pennsylvania; and Poulenc’s Gloria and Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 at Kent State University. the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the Guggenheim Foundation. This is the fourth full A native Texan, Sarah Davis holds degrees from Peabody Conservatory and Trinity University. program of her music published on CD; additional works are forthcoming on discs from Dominic Donato (works for tamtam), the bass clarinet duo Sqwonk (Sqwonk +), and the duo of Jennifer Frautschi and Dominic Donato is active as a percussion soloist, chamber musician, composer and teacher. He John Blacklow (violin and piano). In 1998, White joined the faculty of the Princeton University Music is a member of the Talujon Percussion Quartet and DoublePlay Percussion Duo and has performed Department, where she now serves as Professor of Music. throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. In 2007 Dr. Donato was selected by Meet the Composer as one of eight “Soloist Champions” in honor of his continuing commitment to new music and the solo Tom Cowan is an internationally respected teacher of shamanism and Celtic spirituality. He has conducted percussion repertoire. Donato directs the Percussion Department and Contemporary Ensemble at the shamanic training programs in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, England, Canada, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Conservatory of Music, Purchase College, SUNY. Italy, Slovakia, and throughout the United States. He began his own study and practice of shamanism 30 years ago with Michael Harner and Sandra Ingerman. He is the author of Fire in the Head: Shamanism Dancer Douglas Gillespie, who reprises the speaking portion of his role as Crunnchu on this recording, and the Celtic Spirit, Shamanism as a Spiritual Practice for Daily Life, and Yearning for the Wind: received his B.F.A. in dance from Florida State University and subsequently worked with choreogra- Celtic Reflections on Nature and the Soul. He is on the Board of Directors of the Society for Shamanic phers Ben Munisteri, Heather McArdle and Tennille Lambert. Originally from California but hailing from Practitioners and is a founder and editor of A Journal of Contemporary Shamanism (formerly The the Sunshine State, Gillespie has been with Kate Weare Company for six years and currently acts as Journal of Shamanic Practice). Cowan holds a doctorate in history from St. Louis University and currently the company’s rehearsal director. As the Village Voice describes him, Douglas “hurls himself into many lives in New York’s Hudson River Valley. complicated connections the way an Olympian runs into their pole vaults.”

Michael Pratt trained at the Eastman School, Tanglewood and New England Conservatory, where he was assistant to Leonard Bernstein and Gunther Schuller. He joined the Princeton music faculty in 1977 as Conductor of the University Orchestra. Since then he has been instrumental in building an interna- tionally renowned undergraduate performance program, in addition to performing dozens of new works by Princeton composers. His guest conducting appearances include both American and European ensembles. Michael Pratt has taken the Princeton University Orchestra on eight European tours. Riley Lee began playing the shakuhachi in Japan in 1971 under the guidance of Chikuho Sakai II and Acknowledgments and Curios Katsuya Yokoyama. He was the first non-Japanese professional taiko player, as a founding member of Ondekoza in the 1970s, and in 1980 he became the first non-Japanese to attain Grand Master (dai Marie Heaney’s rendering of Macha’s story, published in Over Nine Waves, inspired my initial attempts shihan) rank in shakuhachi. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. from the University of Hawai’i (music), and at a libretto, and Claire Hamilton’s Maiden, Mother, Crone prodded me to probe Macha’s point of view. a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the Sydney University. Riley Lee travels the world as a shakuhachi Tom Cowan introduced me to both of these accounts, and Susan McClellan pointed me toward the performer and teacher. He regularly performs, teaches and records throughout Australia, North America Druid Vow of Friendship. and East Asia. He and his family have lived in Australia since 1986. Thanks go to John Blacklow, Lisa Coons, Wendy Heller, Eric Moe, Kate Neal, Carol Rigolot, Carin Taylor Levine is a guitarist in the New York City area. He is the founder/co-director of Dither, an electric Roberge, Julia Sullivan, Kyle Subramaniam, Lindsa Vallee, and Edward Yeats, as well as to Center of guitar quartet. He has worked with Signal Ensemble, Kronos Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Tyondai the Circle, Mercer County Circle, and Charles LaFourchette de la Rue en Bas. Douglas Gillespie kindly Braxton, Ethel, Eighth Blackbird, Blarvuster, Newband, Meredith Monk, Steve Reich, Theo Bleckmann, agreed to reprise his speaking role invisibly for this occasion, and Kristin Clotfelter joined the chorister New York City Opera, American Opera Projects, New World Symphony, BBC Orchestra, Wordless Music club for a day. The chorus generously donated their time to appear on this recording. Orchestra, and Ridge Theater. Taylor also pursues an active role as an educator. Taylor Levine studied at The Manhattan School of Music and The Amsterdam Conservatory and currently resides in Brooklyn. Ned Rothenberg subbed on shakuhachi and commuted between the stage to conduct and the booth to produce. Andrés Villalta served not only as engineer but as sounding board, collaborator and confessor. Special thanks go to Tom Cowan and Riley Lee. Tom’s teachings infuse this recording, bleeding beyond the boundaries of the Macha story proper, and Riley’s flute, too, resounds off the tangible pages of the score through time and space. I continue to be inspired by these two teachers inside and outside the classroom; the score of Weakness is dedicated to Tom and Riley, “in gratitude for their generous and wise teachings, and for the welcome opportunity to walk between their worlds for a while.”

This recording is dedicated to its four youngest choristers: Millicent Kate Brigaud, Livia Paoletti, Katie Welsh, and Jenna Venturi (who missed our recording session while stuck in New Jersey traffic, as we missed her!). May they swim in the five streams and the center pool, may their feet touch the earth with delight long after we depart, and may they ever be honored as goddesses in human form. Bar Weakness b Music and Libretto by Barbara White White ara Sound Design by Barbara White with Andrés Villalta 1 Arrival [14:11]

2 Departure [7:31

] Weakness 3 Betrayals troy1441 [7:53] 4 Ordeal [8:25] 5 Beyond [8:39]

Sarah Davis, soprano (macha) | Douglas Gillespie,

Riley Lee, speaker (crunnchu) T bamboo flute | Barbara White, Co om Taylor Levine, clarinet and bass clarinet electric guitar | Dominic Donato, Michael Pratt, percussion

conductor w and speaker (king) | Ned Rothenberg, Crowd (speaking assistant conductor an and stone percussion): Millicent Kate Brigaud | Lisa Carlucci Kristin Clotfelter | Kate Knodel | Franco Paoletti | Livia Paoletti | John Russell Macha Katie Welsh

6 Macha [12:13] Written and Performed by Tom Cowan Macha Sound Design by Barbara White with Andrés Villalta an

w Rose Marie McSweeney, penny whistle, bamboo flute, irish flute, clarinet Greg Silver, fiddle | Charles MacDonald, , bass clarinet Additional contributions by Taylor Levine, guitar | Konrad Kaczmarek, om Co fixed electronic media T electric guitar Robert “Boomer” MacDonald, | Paul Davis, tin whistle guitar | Aurore Bruyère D’Argent, voix fantôme Total Time = 58:54 troy1441

Weakness www.albanyrecords.com

TROY1441 albany records u.s. 915 broadway, albany, ny 12207 tel: 518.436.8814 fax: 518.436.0643 albany records u.k. box 137, kendal, cumbria la8 0xd tel: 01539 824008 © 2013 Alba ara White ny Records warning: c made in the usa b opyrigh t subsists in all recordings issued unde r this label. DDD Bar