SILVER THREADS Recorded by Jacob Cooper in Brooklyn, NY
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SILVER THREADS Recorded by Jacob Cooper in Brooklyn, NY Mixed by Damian Taylor at Golden Ratio, Montreal 1. Silver Threads (Text by Bash¯o) 6:52 Mastered by Emily Lazar at The Lodge, New York, NY 2. Fame (Text by Kristin Kelly) 6:47 Assisted by Rich Morales 3. Antique Windfall (Text by Zach Savich) 8:18 4. Wefted Histories (Text by Tarfia Faizullah)6:56 Design by John Gall Cover Artwork: Leonid Meteor Storm, as seen over 5. Unspun (Text by Dora Malech) 12:30 North America on the night of November 12-13, 1833; 6. Jar (Text by Greg Alan Brownderville) 7:52 Edmund Weiß, Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt Photograph of Jacob Cooper by Claudia De Palma Music Composed by JACOB COOPER Nonesuch A&R: Andrew Wright MELLISSA HUGHES, voice All music published by Dig You Might Publishing (AS- CAP) Special thanks: James Moore, Laura Grey, Timothy Andres, Ted Hearne, Emily Motherwell, Corey Dargel, Ralph De Palma, Joanna Dolgin, and Claudia De Palma I. Silver Threads a home -attributed to Basho¯ (where the heart) gone. how delicately the silver threads of rain Rain doing a line sew sky to the earth on the stomach of a mountain. II. Fame Hail fucking -Kristin Kelly a truck’s perfect complexion. Does the sky or do you The voyeur storm do it better (dirtier): at the window SILVER THREADS / JACOB COOPER a history as you practice de-storied, your soliloquy: a vista destroyed. “Whether (to wither) One day with her” darkens and strays. Mother of your daughter A her and him and your gone. a hurt and then You believed Nature destroys III. Antique Windfall the tragedy was written and beauty encores. -Zach Savich for you. No such award The windfall drags the river / its hem is a broom Put it on for human in the hen food and mud / the hill is a gameshow chainsaw edged and grew it devastation. in silver threads and never drawing blood / like a beard and gut. heaviest the hand that stills the plow / To have chosen thistle blur and vesper fruit // the gravity artist hung back And yet, to hold her shrugged off his harness carefully / he traveled one month sky was to hold your in front of the circus through equestrian squares and an antique wind gets the lead, applause. til pollen closed the streets / and I hung seashells under vagrant bells where his hands often chapped / wins the Oscar in a trellised span of the split green air / the thin blued hills turned back // for biggest player the pear boughs brace and blister in gentle scrimshaw above the shed / it has nothing to do with abundance or ruin taller teller it’s always being done above clovers in the dry creekbed seam ripper that still the plow / thistle sheen and a vespertine grimmer reaper. is any evening opening // and the earth grew tuned so a certain chord is always nearly playing Your bit part cut to punctuated dust. With her was to weather the great storm. But you chose a lover afraid of thunder. IV. Wefted Histories myself across you like keys -Tarfia Faizullah of weathered pianos I once knew Soft red lamina of horizon look how she telegraphs like the plush-tongued voice time across the muslin of the woman you once loved of twilight across us look place her again how bewildered is love in the wet palm another radiant throat of my unfurling hand in snow the long scythe I will close my fingers of your spine is the sky blading around her our washed voices the umbrage gloaming blossom of your body twining unswathed stamen with mine suffusion why are we so many of an unharnessed world of each other’s wefted histories I glide V. Unspun to shake suppose one rose in love from this scene -Dora Malech the seeds head over heels to another to shake earth and sky’s trial separation the season free what’s over look to the lie hush to hear if history’s still breathing our heads of forever look hold here hard and hope to press a pulse the moon submits is a question a contract writ of weather to this scene what white lies might weather tell today in light wet to enter from an other the frost erases earth and sky a veil for the trees the eye of what lies in wait to kiss some hidden face to sign what’s over cut in shadow who will rise with the rays for the trees what we call to the mouth and who will rise with the radio to sigh let out of more who will buy lace by the bolt and sign what we call and who will buy lightning in shadow took in of moreover or try to buy lightning a stitch slants who will buy spools to stitch suppose skyward the sky the earth the end holds onto either VI. Jar the eyes of the dead were unafraid onto or -Greg Alan Brownderville a tent to weather winter were able agent a dress in which to wed could choose what’s our Time trapped me in this canyon, this dark jar— to re-ravel other answer jabbed holes in the sky to spare me light and air. wind slides notes beneath the door not tangle heads or what Only, sometimes, even without you here, wind tears the day’s last drafts to updrafts not fray never ends there’s beauty: This is night. And those are stars. wind scatters ashes like a mourning child is how we hope what tall tales what ends the field feels might wind never ends the wind run spin today what cuts its fingers through never cuts initially, and wrote my thesis in that, but I kept taking more and more music courses; the professors were really encouraging, so I wasn’t scared about becoming serious about music that late in the game. And by my senior year I realized I could double major in music. So I did that, and also started composing that last year. Simonini: And how did this piece come about? Cooper: When I was in graduate school [at Yale] I came across this haiku attributed to [17th century Japanese poet Matsuo] Basho¯ in a journal article, and it struck me in a way that haikus hadn’t before. So I tucked it away in my mind, and then a year or two later, [vocalist] Mellissa Hughes asked me to write something for a recital she was having. I wrote the song “Silver Threads” for that recital in March of 2011, and I liked where the piece had taken me compositionally, so later I decided I wanted to create a larger work from it. I ended up finishing the last piece in the cycle about two years later. Simonini: You commissioned five poets to write poems in response to that haiku. So, in a way, the text is the conceptual glue of this cycle. INTERVIEW Cooper: Right—just as it would be in a traditional song cycle. I worked with each of the Ross Simonini: Could you talk a little about your musical background and how you came to poets separately, in increments. Each responded to the Basho¯ō haiku, and also to the other po- composing? ems that had been written. Eventually there was a web of interactions between the different poems and songs, with “Silver Threads” and “Unspun” acting as poles—not polar opposites, Jacob Cooper: I started playing trumpet when I was in fourth grade. I wasn’t too serious I mean, but points on either end of an axis. And then “Jar” is the coda, looking back on about it, though—I was just a diligent kid, and I played trumpet the same way that I played what’s happened before. on the soccer team and did my homework. When I was in my teens I started to recognize I had an intense passion for music, but I was just listening to it—not creating it myself—and I Simonini: What other interactions exist between the songs? still never thought that I would have a career in it. Then I went to a liberal arts college, Amherst College, and I found myself taking theory Cooper: Dora Malech, who wrote “Unspun,” was the first person I worked with, so she was classes and feeling at home in the music department. I was actually just a geology major only responding to the Basho¯ . The original haiku is essentially just about nature, and Dora’s poem certainly revolves around that theme, but she also introduces an element of love, of Cooper: Yeah—although, in a way, this is how it’s always worked. The “high art” song actu- human relationships. I worked with Kristin Kelly on “Fame” next, and she solidified what ally grew out of more popular folk songs. People would sit around the piano and sing these Dora had insinuated: Kelly’s poem is fundamentally about a romantic relationship, but uses ballads that German poets had written, and eventually Schubert came along and brought it the metaphor of nature as a means of expression. So that’s one example. to the high-art level, but the music never fully abandoned the element of folkiness. The Ger- man lied was associated with the piano because it’d just had a huge surge of popularity, and Simonini: How did you set the texts to music? there was one in every middle-class home—it was essentially a folk instrument at that time. And I feel that, in a way, the laptop is so prevalent now that it’s a sort of contemporary folk Cooper: In general, when I set text, I try to create an atmosphere in which the text as a whole instrument.