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Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, The Guarneri String Quartet, The Juilliard String Quartet, The Kronos Quartet, The English Chamber Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Orchestra of St. Luke’s, The St. Petersburg Philharmonic (Russia), The San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, The Boston Symphony Chamber Players, and many others. He has worked with composers Milton Babbitt, George Crumb, André Previn, Andrew Imbie, Peter Schickele, Charles Wuorinen, Gunther Schuller, Aaron Jay Kernis, and others. In 2002, Abeshouse founded the Classical Recording Foundation to meet the growing need of artists not supported by major labels to record music about which they are passionate. Recently he has been integrally involved in design and project planning for National Sawdust, an artist-led, non-profit venue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. There, emerging and established artists can share their music with serious music fans and casual listeners alike. KIM RICH NORTON | librettist/lyricist is a graduate of the Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey, and a member of ASCAP. Her long-time collaboration with Gregg Smith began with creating Pretty Good Company, a cabaret based on the epigrams of Gomer Rees. They subsequently collaborated on three commissioned children’s operas: Rip Van Winkle (premiered in Manhattan in 1990 and featured at the 1990 Adirondack Festival of American Music), The Story-Teller (premiered under Linda Ferreira’s direction in 1996), and The Dream-Eater (premiered in Manhattan in 2001). In Fallen Angels, Gregg set a number of Norton’s poems as a suite for voice, piano, and clarinet. Norton also collaborates with Finnish jazz composer Heikki Sarmanto. Works include: Manon in Manhattan, a jazz opera (staged readings in Finland and Estonia in 2007) and The Winter War Requiem (premiered in Tampere, Finland, in 2009). Song cycles include North Country Suite, Carnival of Shadows, Bridge of Dreams, and Saci Pererê. A drama with music, John the Baptist, will be premiered in Helsinki in 2017. Another composer she has worked with is David Bennett Thomas: Noon Ghost (recorded on Capstone records by Eileen Clark in May 2006) and A Calendar of Haiku (A Song of Seasons) (premiered by the Gregg Smith Singers in Manhattan in 2007).

AlbanyRecordsBooklet_20160710.indd 1 8/10/2016 8:18:54 AM delicious numbers works of Gregg Smith for voice and instruments Eileen Clark, soprano, Thomas Schmidt, piano Ari Streisfeld, violin, Evan Ziporyn, clarinet

AlbanyRecordsBooklet_20160710.indd 2 8/10/2016 8:18:54 AM Notes on the Music

PETER QUINCE AT THE CLAVIER Rosalind Rees notes “Peter Quince at the Clavier was the first major piece Gregg wrote for me.” The singer of American art song and wife of the composer remembers “a performance, probably the premiere, in the auditorium of the New York Historical Society in 1972.” “Peter Quince at the Clavier” is by the American poet Wallace Stevens (1879–1955). Stevens led a divided existence, much as did composer Charles Ives, his almost-exact contemporary: in Stevens’s case insurance man by day and avant-garde poet by night. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Stevens came from Pennsylvania German stock and spent some years in Lutheran-sponsored schools. He took an accelerated three-year course at Harvard, graduating in 1900, and made his way to New York (just as Ives had in 1898). As president of the Harvard Advocate, a literary magazine, Stevens aspired to becoming a writer. After a few desultory years, he screwed up his courage and wrote home saying he was going to “devote himself to the ‘literary life’ full-time.” His father mailed the letter back, torn into pieces. Stevens got the message, and off to law school he went, graduating in 1903 and passing the bar in 1904. During a decade of lackluster legal work he married and in 1916 was hired by the Hartford Accident & Indemnity Company. The new job (also Stevens’s last; he was still in harness at the time of his death 39 years later) had one major drawback: He had to leave New York and move to Hartford. While his wife was happy with the move, Stevens, on the other hand, found this change “irksome [and] most tedious . . .” No one knows why the reserved insurance man suddenly emerged in 1914–16 as a poet to be conjured with. Among the first evidences of this new “maturity” was “Peter Quince at the Clavier,” which appeared in the August 1915 edition of Others, a magazine devoted to avant-garde poetry. Who is this Peter Quince? He is a character in a play, one of William Shakespeare’s “mechanicals,” the carpenter selected to direct the play-within-a-play that is such an integral part of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Suggested by Stevens’s title, the idea of Quince playing a clavier—not a piano—immediately sets the poem’s tone. It is strange that there is no reference at all to Quince, or a clavier, in the text of the poem, but music is its central theme: “Music is feeling, then, not sound,” Quince/Stevens declares, linking it directly to his desire: “Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk / Is music . . .” But then a second major idea emerges: this “thinking” is compared to the “strain” [there’s music again] / “Waked in the elders by Susanna.”

AlbanyRecordsBooklet_20160710.indd 3 8/10/2016 8:18:54 AM and Worldless Music Orchestra. Streisfeld is a member of Shir Ami, an ensemble dedicated to the performance and preservation of Jewish art music. A passionate and committed music educator, he serves on the faculty of New York’s Special Music School, Face the Music, New Music on the Point, and the Cortona Sessions for New Music (Italy). Streisfeld attended the Eastman School of Music (BM), Northwestern University (MM), and Boston University (DMA). He has recorded for Mode, Albany, Carrier, Innova, Canteloupe, and New World Records. He lives in New York City with his wife, mezzo- soprano Rachel Calloway, their daughter Eleanor, and mini-dachshund Wesley. EVAN ZIPORYN | clarinetist (b. 1959, Chicago) has performed his own works as a soloist at major venues on six continents. As a composer he has written for Yo-Yo Ma, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, American Composers Orchestra, Brooklyn Rider, Silk Road Ensemble, So Percussion, Wu Man, and Bang on a Can. He studied at Eastman, Yale, and UC Berkeley with Joseph Schwantner, Martin Bresnick, and Gerard Grisey. He has taught at MIT since 1990, where he is currently Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music and Faculty Director of the Center for Art, Science and Technology. His work is informed by his 30-plus-year involvement with traditional gamelan. He received a Fulbright in 1987, founded Gamelan Galak Tika in 1993, and has composed a series of groundbreaking compositions for gamelan and western instruments. These include three evening-length works, 2001’s ShadowBang, 2004’s Oedipus Rex (Robert Woodruff, director), and 2009’sA House in Bali, which was featured at BAM Next Wave in October 2010. Awards include a USA Artist Fellowship, the Goddard Lieberson Prize from the American Academy, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship, the MIT Gyorgy Kepes Prize, and commissions from Carnegie Hall, Kronos Quartet, Rockefeller Multi-Arts Program, and Meet the Composer. He co-founded the Bang on a Can All-Stars in 1992, performing with the group and producing their albums for 20 years. Recent recording projects have included collaborations with Maya Beiser, Iva Bittova & Gyan Riley, Anna Sofie anV Otter, Beata Hlavenková, and Waclaw Zimpel. He has also recorded with Paul Simon, Steve Reich Ensemble (sharing in their 1998 Grammy), and Matthew Shipp. ADAM ABESHOUSE | producer/engineer has produced and engineered recordings for labels including Bridge, Telarc, Angel-EMI, SONY, BMG, Naxos, Hyperion, ASV, Arabesque, Cala, Koch International/E1 Music, New World Records, Delos, Albany Records, CRI, Pickwick, Pro Arte, Well Tempered, Centaur, and more, as well as for National Public Radio and the Library of Congress. He has won two Grammy Awards: Classical Producer of the Year and in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo Performance category for producing and engineering Garrick Ohlsson’s Beethoven Sonatas, Vol. 3. The discography of artists that Abeshouse has worked with includes Itzhak Perlman, Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Garrick Ohlsson, Leon Fleischer, Jamie Laredo, Glen Dicterow, Heidi Grant Murphy,

AlbanyRecordsBooklet_20160710.indd 4 8/10/2016 8:18:54 AM Orchestra Society of NY, Adina (The Elixir of Love) with Common Wealth Opera, Naiad (Ariadne auf Naxos) with Syracuse Opera, Galatea (Rameau’s Pygmalion), the staged Jonathan Miller St. Matthew Passion at BAM, Bard Summerscape operas, and guested as soloist with Ascension Music, Musica Sacra, Syracuse Symphony, Adirondack Festival of American Music, Newark Cathedral Symphony, and other orchestras and choruses in oratorio, concert, and pops. Clark’s recordings include indie- award winner (best classical vocal) Lemons Descending with Matt Haimovitz on cello (Oxingale Records), Krenek’s Kantate for Soprano and Chorus (Gregg Smith, conductor), Toby Twining’s Chrysalid Requiem (Cantaloupe Records), all the Voices of Ascension CDs (Delos), Kiitos a Vocal Quartet’s All Out of Darkness We Have Light, the soundtrack of the Oscar-winning Dead Man Walking, and solo performances on Raj Bongo, Vox, and Helicon. For a decade, Eileen toured as soloist with Mark Morris Dance Group. She is a member of Toby Twining Music, Voices of Ascension, and a long-time member of Gregg Smith Singers. Her less musical interests include comparative religion, English history, Neolithic sites, freemasonry, astronomy, yoga, hiking, NHL games, environment and peace concerns, her mom Lil, and dogs. THOMAS SCHMIDT | pianist has a multifaceted career as pianist, organist, conductor, and composer. After 20 years as professor of music at Concordia College/Bronxville he was cantor (director of music) at Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Manhattan for 25 years. In addition to performing many major choral works each year with Saint Peter’s choir, the annual highlight of his years at Saint Peter’s was the Good Friday performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. As a pianist he was a member of the Arden Trio, touring and recording with them for 25 years. He has been a member of the Omni Quartet for the past 8 years. He is director of the Long Island Symphonic Choral Association, a 75-voice community chorus based in Suffolk County, New York. His BM in church music is from Valparaiso University, his MM in piano from the University of Wisconsin, and his DMA in piano is from Yale. Long- time residents of Manhattan, he and his wife Kathy live in Harlem and enjoy city life, cultural events, cooking, biking, gardening, and frequent visits from family and friends. ARI STREISFELD | violinist is praised for his “dazzling performance” by The New York Times and “scintillating playing” by New York Classical Review and has quickly established himself as a leader in contemporary classical music. A founding member of the internationally acclaimed JACK Quartet, Streisfeld has performed in the world’s leading concert halls and festivals including Wigmore Hall, Teatro Colon, Suntory Hall, Bali Arts Festival, Venice Biennale, Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, The Morgan Library, and the Lucerne Festival. He has collaborated with many of today’s most prominent composers including John Luther Adams, Caroline Shaw, Julia Wolfe, Helmut Lachenmann, Matthias Pintscher, Georg Friedrich Haas, Steve Reich, and Salvatore Sciarrino. He frequently performs with some of today’s leading contemporary music ensembles, including Ensemble Signal 14

AlbanyRecordsBooklet_20160710.indd 5 8/10/2016 8:18:54 AM And then Stevens’s focus abruptly shifts to an extraordinary description of the Apocrypha story of Susanna and the elders. Stevens concentrates on the earlier episodes of the story: how Susanna often walked in her husband’s garden; how the “red-eyed elders” concealed themselves there to watch her bathe. When surprised by them, she refused their advances. They told her they would accuse her of adultery with a youth who had run off, but she declared she would rather die (the punishment for adultery) than give in to them. True to their word, they raised the alarm: “A cymbal crashed / And roaring horns.” Susanna’s household was signaled and “Soon, with a noise like tambourines / Came her attendant Byzantines” to hear—and initially believe—the elders’ false accusation. Here Stevens leaves Babylon behind and announces his anti-Keats moral: Beauty is only immortal “in the flesh”: “The body dies; the body’s beauty lives.” Susanna becomes, in fact, her music: her escape leaves the elders as “only Death’s ironic scraping.” Her music, on the other hand, “. . . plays / On the clear viol of her memory / And makes a constant sacrament of praise.” Stevens was a firm believer in the essential connection between the life of the imagination and what we might be so bold as to call the “real” world. Those who wrote, composed, and perform this music can, no doubt, fully understand what Stevens once said: “After writing a poem, it is a good thing to walk around the block; after too much midnight, it is pleasant to hear the milkman . . .” His work, and theirs, is, as James Longenbach, critic of American poetry, puts it, “a dialogue between extraordinary and ordinary worlds . . . between reality and imagination.” Gregg Smith’s setting of “Peter Quince at the Clavier” takes full advantage of the myriad references to music in the poem—and of the splendid set of images Stevens has thoughtfully curated. He never lets us forget the “at the Clavier” part of the work’s title. From the opening thirty-second-note arpeggios and throughout, the virtuoso nature of what whoever at the “clavier” is playing is constant. Part II is full of liquid imagery, both in the text and the Mendelssohnian piano accompaniment. The following Allegro Moderato is introduced by the same chord clusters that closed out Part II, which alternate with a sixteenth-note and eighth-note motif throughout. The calm “recapitulation and coda” of Part IV inhabits, as the text requires, a completely different sound world. The “recapitulation” is musical as well as poetical: Gregg goes back to Part I for his setting of “So gardens die . . .” and in the work’s last measures recalls the opening clavier arpeggios and subsequent chords. DOUBLE SONATA FOR VIOLIN, VOICE, AND PIANO Double Sonata was commissioned by the Romanenko Chambers Players based in Greenville, Pennsylvania, hometown of Rosalind Rees. She premiered it there in 1984 with David Davidson, violin, and Dwana Holroyd, piano. The work is a “big one,” to paraphrase Gregg’s own description: “I drew its name from the famous Double Concerto of Johannes Brahms.” As Wikipedia puts it, the Double Concerto requires “two brilliant and equally matched soloists.” In this case, Gregg demands three such soloists, given the fact that Brahms’ orchestra has 3

AlbanyRecordsBooklet_20160710.indd 6 8/10/2016 8:18:54 AM been replaced by a virtuoso piano part. In Gregg’s words: “It is a double sonata not only in the sense of two instruments with piano, but primarily because the work can be performed either as a sonata for violin and piano (omitting Movements II and IV) or as a sonata for violin, voice, and piano. The texts, taken from poetry of Robert Herrick and John Milton, all touch upon the theme of music and the emotions that music can ignite. Herrick’s famous poem ‘To Musique, to becalme his Fever’ creates a sense of reverie combined with profound awe for music’s power. . . . Milton’s texts are excerpted from two long poems, L’Allegro and Il Penseroso. In these texts, too, there is a mood of reverie, but here a reverie that abounds with a host of images of life itself— some of them riotously joyful, some deeply pensive—but with continual references to music.” Robert Herrick’s (1591–1674) poem “To Musique, to becalme his Fever” has attracted several composers. Robert Herrick, a London boy and the son of a goldsmith, enrolled at Cambridge, finished his MA in 1620 at age 29, and was ordained in 1623. He accompanied a disastrous English invasion of western France as chaplain in 1627 and three years later was installed as vicar of Dean Priory in Devon. He stayed there until 1647, when his Royalist sympathies during the Civil War led to his expulsion. He seems to have subsisted on the kindness of family and friends back in London until the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, when he returned to Dean Priory. He died there in 1674 and was buried in the church, where “there is nothing to show where he lies,” in the words of a modern commentator. The single volume we have of Herrick’s poetry (although there were random publications of separate poems during his life) appeared in 1648. The massive volume is two works in one: Hesperides, the larger part, containing some 1,130 poems, focuses on the secular, while the 272 poems in the second group, His Noble Numbers, dwell on the sacred. “To Musique, to becalme his Fever,” the text of Movement II, clearly is one of the Hesperides, #227 to be exact, and emphasizes the power of music to calm “fevers”—whether of the physical or emotional kind. For Movements IV and V, Gregg chose excerpts from John Milton’s (1608–1674) twin poems L’Allegro and Il Penseroso, from Poems of Mr. John Milton both English and Latin, compos’d at several times published in 1645. L’Allegro and Il Penseroso make, in the words of Milton expert Gordon Teskey, “the representation of opposite possibilities” into “two distinct personae speaking two distinct poems.” As Gregg Smith says: “The movements are structured as follows: Andante begins with a graceful waltz theme also found at the end of Movement V. It is an important theme as it sets the mood in the fifth movement for the melancholy text of the final voice coda. I actually wrote the fifth movement first and then decided the theme was important enough to use at the beginning as well. In Adagio, the pensive mood of Herrick’s text is reflected in the twelve-tone writing of the voice and violin. The almost jazzy Allegretto con agitato darts around from theme to theme—there are many in the piece. Allegro is the biggest movement and most complex with several identifiable sections: the opening with its

AlbanyRecordsBooklet_20160710.indd 7 8/10/2016 8:18:54 AM In 1955 I got my professional chorus, The Gregg Smith Singers, started when Mr. Moreman recommended me to select a group of singers, arrange, and record music of Stephen Foster for a television bio of that composer. We had good success with the project and decided to stay together creating concerts often featuring contemporary music. One evening in 1959, the audience included Igor Stravinsky and his associate Robert Craft. This led to an extraordinary musical friendship that lasted until Stravinsky’s death in 1970. I am deeply devoted to other 20th-century composers— Copland, Schuman, Rorem, Gershwin, Ravel, and Ives along with a host of lesser-known composers and colleagues whose music I have championed over many years. Two other favorite composers are Monteverdi and Schütz. With GSS, I have earned three Grammy awards. In the mid-1960s I moved east to Ithaca College to head its fine choral program. The college gave me numerous opportunities to create new works. Soon after, I moved to New York City where I founded the choral program at SUNY Stony Brook. This permanent move to New York gave me new opportunities, a pool of wonderful singers including my wife, soprano Rosalind Rees whom I married in 1970, and enabled a fruitful performance and composition career. Throughout my composing life, in addition to GSS I have been fortunate to write for many specific groups or concert events, including Monday Evening Concerts, Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, Texas Boys Choir, Saint Peter’s Church (NYC), and the Syracuse Children’s Choir. I have been the recipient of several National Endowment for the Arts fellowships resulting in many compositions including my ballet, The Continental Harmonist, and several children’s operas. The New York State Council for the Arts commissioned me to write my first children’s opera,Rip Van Winkle. But certainly the most important work was a 1998 commission from the Cathedral Choral Society of Washington, DC, for which I wrote a one-hour Earth Requiem for large chorus, symphony orchestra, solo quartet, and children’s choir. It was the first of the William Strickland commissions, which are given every five years. Over the years I have been a recipient of many awards, most notably the Alice M. Ditson Award honoring conductors for their service to American music and Chorus America’s Louis Botto award for Entrepreneurial Spirit “for a lifetime of devotion to choral music and unflagging creativity in finding ways to bring it to a broader public, through outstanding performances, recordings, and the preservation and dissemination of choral manuscripts.” I estimate that I have written over 400 works large and small, including about 50 instrumental works of varying types. About 100 of the 400 works have found their way onto recordings. EILEEN CLARK | soprano has been described by The New York Times as “a knockout” for her interpretation of Gershwin and Porter, and “shining, confident” for her rendering of Krenek’sKantate. She has sung Queen of the Night with Syracuse Opera, American Classical Orchestra, and Little 13

AlbanyRecordsBooklet_20160710.indd 8 8/10/2016 8:18:54 AM I love the rain—it washes I am sick of apples the Squee-Gee Men and sick of love. off the crosswalks of life. Keep your 10. Some Build (New Parables for Old) round, ripe, red healthy metaphor Some build for passion. upon the sand I’ll take a pass on and all such wholesome harvests. some upon the rock; but land- I want an allusion I can pour in a glass, fill and toast my particular is good enough Paradise lost. for the current flock. Comfort me with Calvados. w Song of Songs (At a Piano Bar) The hell with apples Comfort me and the hell with love. With Calvados . . . for I am sick of love. The Artists

GREGG SMITH | composer I am told by various relatives that I was actually composing at the age of five. The story they tell is that when called to dinner I would always ask for just a few minutes more to write out some additional notes. My real memories of myself as a composer start around the age of seventeen. Having heard Milhaud’s Saudades do Brasil, I wanted to write a couple of South American piano pieces of my own. The result was a suite called From the Rio. It was a very good effort for a seventeen-year-old. While I was at UCLA I began private composition study with Leonard Stein, who was a disciple of Arnold Schoenberg. My studies with Stein were fruitful and really opened the door to my own composing. The next four years were my great education in all aspects of music. I graduated with my BA in music in 1954 and subsequently received a teaching fellowship, which enabled me to pursue advanced studies. I went for a master’s degree in composition and had Lukas Foss as my major teacher. At the same time I became involved in choral conducting (Leonard Stein felt strongly that I should have a performance outlet in addition to composing). My choral director at UCLA, Raymond Moreman, felt I had good potential as a conductor and got me my first choral position, a Japanese Methodist Church in West Los Angeles. 12

AlbanyRecordsBooklet_20160710.indd 9 8/10/2016 8:18:54 AM repeated chords in the violin and piano; the second section with its intricate rhythms and unusual time signatures, 17/16, 19/16, etc.; the third section, which is a gigue in the form of a country dance; a fourth section, combining materials from the second and third sections; and finishing with a chorale. The last movement, Lento/Amoroso opens with a series of colorings interweaving violin double stops with the piano. Over this is superimposed rhythmic speaking. The piece culminates with the restatement of the first movement theme, a musical ‘interpretation’ of the final words, which are sung a cappella.” FALLEN ANGELS The dating of Fallen Angels is a bit iffy. The general consensus is that the cycle was written in 1998. What is certain is that it was written for soprano Linda Ferreira and premiered by her and Alan Woy on clarinet at the annual summer home of the Gregg Smith Singers, the Adirondack Festival of American Music in Saranac Lake, New York. The lyrics are by Gregg’s longtime collaborator, Kim Rich Norton. Gregg says of her work: “Kim’s poems lend themselves to vivid musical ideas. They are filled with images and sounds of NYC, and using clarinet dueting with the voice for these jazzy, seductive moods was very natural.” Kim reflects on her poetry: “The poems used inFallen Angels were ones I wrote over a period of years and read at the Adirondack Festival’s traditional Friday night poetry events. At one point, Gregg asked me for a number of poems to look over, and he chose the ones that spoke to him. Most of the poems he selected deal with matters of perspective, how a thing may look very different when viewed at a slightly different angle. “The idea for the title of the cycle comes from the first poem,‘ Perspective,’ which speaks of feathers of fallen angels drifting on the wind. The poem came out of seeing a beautiful (yet maybe dangerous) cloud of flaky white feathery stuff puffing out from an incinerator chimney near where I lived in Manhattan. It became a dialogue of differing perceptions—imaginative and practical. “The oddest things can jump-start a poem. ‘I Don’t Have Time’ began after seeing a full-page ad in the personals column of the New York Free Press, which read: ‘Why wait until dessert to find out he hates Chihuahuas . . . ?’ It made me think of Andrew Marvell’s poem: ‘Had we but world enough and time . . .’ and the sad realization that, like Marvell, we still try to fast-forward through the process of getting to know someone. “I like to write poems in which poets have considerably more control over the Universe than the Universe will usually allow them—hence cracking the moon in two. ‘Artistic Tempera’ is also an exercise in playing with words. The title can refer to artistic temperament, but it also references ‘tempera’—a Renaissance painting technique that used powdered pigments mixed with water and egg albumin that made the paintings seem to glow with ‘clear, albuminous, luminous light.’ “Like Proust and the madeleines (delicious French cookies) that brought back his past to him, in ‘Revenant’ one finds there is food for thought, the remembrance of food (for comfort)—and then there are the odd crumbs that persist in the corner of mouths, minds, and hearts. 5

AlbanyRecordsBooklet_20160710.indd 10 8/10/2016 8:18:54 AM “Oysters are poet-friendly. In ‘Natural History’ they are a perfect metaphor for all sorts of things; they yield pearls and sometimes Truth, and you can always eat them after you’ve written about them. “‘A Taste of City Summer’ comes from living through many New York City summers in apartments with areaways. An areaway is a deep, square well in the center of an apartment building. Windows often border it, enabling residents to look in on other apartments adjacent to the well. [The two halves of Fallen Angels are divided by an interlude for the clarinet and piano.] “‘Verdancy’ came out of my many summers attending the Adirondack Festival of American Music. Coming from New York City, stifling in the gray, concrete heat of July, to Saranac Lake’s cool green tree-shadowed summer was always a wonderful gift. “The inspiration for ‘New York Cabbie’s Meditation’ came from years ago, before mayors and do- gooders and businesses got interested in cleaning up New York City and making it presentable, when the Bowery was a place where the Squee-Gee Men plied their trade. When the traffic light turned red, they would run out into the street, up to your car (or cab), and squirt water on your windshield and scrub the glass with dirty rags. They would then demand money for this service. The only time they weren’t out there, day or night, was when it was raining. No point to it. One rainy evening, on my way downtown in a cab, we stopped at a light on the Bowery. The cabbie said he didn’t mind driving on the Bowery when it rained, because it kept the Squee-Gee Men away. “‘Some Build (New Parables for Old)’ is built on the Biblical parable about the man who built his house on sand, and rains came and washed it away, compared to the man who built his house on rock, which endured. “‘Song of Songs (At a Piano Bar)’ is partly a paraphrase of Song of Solomon: ‘Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love.’” Texts Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk, Peter Quince at the Clavier Is music. It is like the strain I Waked in the elders by Susanna. Just as my fingers on these keys Of a green evening, clear and warm, Make music, so the selfsame sounds She bathed in her still garden, while On my spirit make a music, too. The red-eyed elders watching, felt Music is feeling, then, not sound; The basses of their beings throb And thus it is that what I feel, In witching chords, and their thin blood Here in this room, desiring you, Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna. 6

AlbanyRecordsBooklet_20160710.indd 11 8/10/2016 8:18:54 AM w Interlude Green as the dancing firefly flames that fill my winter dreams . . . w Verdancy Green . . . Summer Summer (in my mind’s beholding) (my summer) is green, always green. Summer is green. Green w New York Cabbie’s Meditation as unripe apples, growing; Green I love the rain—it washes as leaves in their first showing; the Squee-Gee Men Green off the crosswalks of life. as the smooth, new skin of trees, knowing I don’t mind goin’ on the Bowery they must push past when it rains. They don’t dry bark to be born . . . stop your cab at the corners Green and try to wash your windows for money you ain’t as an August dawn. got Summer and they only use (in my mind unfolding) to buy crack or booze. is green, only green. Summer’s the worst—they stand five deep in the crosswalks Green squirting that dirty water as a garden, green as a lawn; on your windshield, rubbing it Green as heat on the far horizon; into the glass with them dirty rags . . . Green And then as the shadows that shelter and cool; comes the hand Green as the depths in the window. of a clear, salt pool. I hate to give in to them. Summer I hate not to give in to them. (here in my heart’s holding) One of ’em said is green, ever green. he used to be a cabbie Green as clouds that herald rain; like me. Green I hate it when he’s out there. as a storm-wind’s chill refrain; I always have to give him something. Green as hope; But it’s raining tonight, Green as pain. so I don’t mind goin’ on the Bowery. 11

AlbanyRecordsBooklet_20160710.indd 12 8/10/2016 8:18:54 AM you know— it had been so. anything for the right effect w Natural History and look . . . whoever it is Only accommodating oysters has painted everything in sight can swallow in clear, albuminous, luminous the odd, irritating transient light. grain of truth We’ll have to scrape that off, too, I expect . . . and not choke on it. damn poets! And not every oyster (however accommodating) w Revenant produces a pearl from it. Ghost w A Taste of City Summer of an old sweetness . . . here For a real taste in the corner of my mouth. of New York summer—shove open some grimy square window My tongue and breathe in deep touches it by chance . . . a little sootbrick areaway air . . . Ah, All cabbage and quarrels old seductions are still best. and other fish to fry than your own. I do not remember Areaway air—all rising (will not try to guess) or drifting down, or easing across, where this revenant came from . . . but always moving, But oh, even where the day itself the taste is dead still; of this giddy delicious crumb And the sharp green stink of ailanthus on my tongue. blooming just below your sill It is enough . . . where the super swore he cut it down for good last (Is it enough?) year . . . that some honeyed memory Same old air remains of long ago. you smelled last summer. It is enough Same old echo of a fan’s clatter and whir. (Is it?) to know . . . Breathe it in deep— that though that sweetness is not now, Makes you feel I can remember you maybe could live 10 forever.

AlbanyRecordsBooklet_20160710.indd 13 8/10/2016 8:18:54 AM II And then, the simpering Byzantines In the green water, clear and warm, Fled, with a noise like tambourines. Susanna lay. IV She searched Beauty is momentary in the mind— The touch of springs, The fitful tracing of a portal; And found But in the flesh it is immortal. Concealed imaginings. The body dies; the body’s beauty lives. She sighed, So evenings die, in their green going, For so much melody. A wave, interminably flowing. Upon the bank, she stood So gardens die, their meek breath scenting In the cool The cowl of winter, done repenting. Of spent emotions. So maidens die, to the auroral She felt, among the leaves, Celebration of a maiden’s choral. The dew Susanna’s music touched the bawdy strings Of old devotions. Of those white elders; but, escaping, She walked upon the grass, Left only Death’s ironic scraping. Still quavering. Now, in its immortality, it plays The winds were like her maids, On the clear viol of her memory, On timid feet, And makes a constant sacrament of praise. Fetching her woven scarves, Yet wavering. Double Sonata for Violin, Voice, and Piano A breath upon her hand Movement II : “To Musique, to becalme his Fever” Muted the night. Charme me asleep, and melt me so She turned— With thy delicious numbers; A cymbal crashed, That being ravisht, hence I goe And roaring horns. Away in easie slumbers. III Ease my sick head, Soon, with a noise like tambourines, And make my bed, Came her attendant Byzantines. Thou power that canst sever They wondered why Susanna cried From me this ill, Against the elders by her side; And quickly still, And as they whispered, the refrain Though thou not kill Was like a willow swept by rain. My fever.

Anon, their lamps’ uplifted flame 7 Revealed Susanna and her shame.

AlbanyRecordsBooklet_20160710.indd 14 8/10/2016 8:18:54 AM Thou sweetly canst convert the same And at my window bid good morrow, From a consuming fire, Through the Sweet-Briar, or the Vine, Into a gentle-licking flame, Or the twisted Eglantine. And make it thus expire. While the Cock with lively din, Then make me weep Scatters the rear of darknes thin, My paines asleep, And to the stack, or the Barn dore, And give me such reposes, Stoutly struts his Dames before. That I, poore I, Som times with secure delight May think, thereby, The up-land Hamlets will invite, I live and die ’Mongst roses. When the merry Bells ring round, And the jocond rebecks sound Fall on me like a silent dew, To many a youth, and many a maid, Or like those maiden showrs, Dancing in the Chequer’d shade; Which, by the peepe of day, doe strew And young and old com forth to play A baptime o’er the flowers. On a Sunshine Holyday, Melt, melt my paines, Till the live-long day-light fail. With thy soft straines; That having ease me given, Lap me in soft Lydian Aires, With full delight, Married to immortal verse, I leave this light; Such as the meeting soul may pierce And take my flight In notes, with many a winding bout For Heaven. Of lincked sweetnes long drawn out, With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, Movement IV: L’Allegro and Il Penseroso The melting voice through mazes running; There let the pealing Organ blow, Untwisting all the chains that ty To the full voic’d Quire below, The hidden soul of harmony. In Service high, and Anthems cleer, And as I wake, sweet musick breath As may with sweetnes, through mine ear, Above, about, or underneath, Dissolve me into extasies, Sent by som spirit to mortals good, And bring all Heav’n before mine eyes. Or th’ unseen Genius of the Wood. To hear the Lark begin his flight, But let my due feet never fail, And singing startle the dull night, To walk the studious Cloysters pale, From his watch-towre in the skies, And love the high embowèd Roof, Till the dappled dawn doth rise; With antick Pillars massy proof, Then to com in spight of sorrow, And storied Windows richly dight, 8 Casting a dimm religious light.

AlbanyRecordsBooklet_20160710.indd 15 8/10/2016 8:18:54 AM Movement V: Il Penseroso I don’t have time And may at last my weary age to find out all about you Find out the peacefull hermitage, one The Hairy Gown and Mossy Cell, slow Where I may sit and rightly spell, fact Of every Star that Heav’n doth shew, at a time. And every Herb that sips the dew; I don’t have time to learn you Till old experience do attain slowly, To somthing like Prophetic strain. leisurely . . . These pleasures Melancholy give, I have more important things to do And I with thee will choose to live. with my time (and don’t you?) Fallen Angels So w Perspective please put all your particulars All the feathers (notice I did say ‘please’) of fallen angels your past, your present are drifting lightly on the wind your passions today. peeves Or so I say. parameters . . . perversions You say in a neat, alphabetical list it’s just the ash (You show me yours, I’ll show you mine) from the trash and as soon as I have time incinerator just a few doors away. I’ll speed-read through to see if we’re a pair Yes . . . a questionnaire would be more efficient, and . . . what’s your point? but . . . I say. I don’t have time. w I Don’t Have Time w Artistic Tempera . . . to be read as Andrew Marvell slowly turns in How careless! his grave . . . Someone has cracked the moon [Inspired by a full-page ad in the personal in two column in the New York Free Press, which read: and tossed half of it away. “Why wait until dessert to find out he hates We’ll probably have to wait for day- chihuahuas . . . ?”] light to go look for it. It was probably some poet— 9

AlbanyRecordsBooklet_20160710.indd 16 8/10/2016 8:18:55 AM Inside left

booklet slot

Endowment for the Arts the for Endowment

| Spielberg Rinkewich Rina | Sherwin Lucia of memory in Sherwin Michael |

Daley Margery and White Lewis | Soloway Barry | Roth Sarah | Norton Rich Kim

Friar Megan and Drotos Ron | Association Choral Symphonic Island Long

Goldfeder Karen | Edwards C. Keith | Eckard Linda | Burns Mark and Eaton Michele

| Altabet Susan and Dydo Stephan | Degnan Jann | Davidson Virginia |

Theil Kathy and Blackhall Jack | Bronson Marty | Brenner Eric | Adee Connie and Kent

Inside right friends dear our from help as well as . . .

Back panel Wolman H. Judith | Stitt K. Nancy of Estate The

CD slot | Stamm Jared | Rees Rosalind and Smith Gregg | Mathews E. Warren |

Engelhardt Ann Jo | Crowley Brian | Brown Natalie and Leland | Bosler Watson

. . . along with generous gifts from our Production Partners Production our from gifts generous with along . . .

About the Delicious Numbers project: Peter Quince at the Clavier (poetry of Wallace Stevens) [11:41] [1] I. Lento—Freely [3:25] w [2] II. Andante [2:18] The first time I met Gregg Smith, I sang an F major scale. It was one of Gregg’s classic [3] III. Allegro Moderato—Marchlike [1:50] w [4] IV. Lento—Recitative [4:06] phone auditions for the world famous professional chorus, The Gregg Smith Singers. Eileen Clark, soprano, Thomas Schmidt, piano During that F major scale my life changed, but I didn’t know it then. Double Sonata for Violin, Voice, and Piano (poetry of Robert Herrick and John Milton) [37:12] The second time I met Gregg Smith, I sang one measure of the Mozart (Gasparini) [5] I. Andante [9:55] w [6] II. Adagio (“To Musique, to becalme his Fever”) [6:19] delicious numbers “Adoramus te” in C minor within The Gregg Smith Singers. That was the moment I [7] III. Allegretto con agitato [4:51] w [8] IV. Allegro (L’Allegro and Il Penseroso) [7:19] knew my life had changed. I could not sing past the first measure! I could only listen [9] V. Amoroso (Il Penseroso) [8:48] . . . and begin dreamily preparing for a long career as a professional listener. My path, Eileen Clark, soprano, Thomas Schmidt, piano, Ari Streisfeld, violin my career, singing for Gregg and other great conductors via his kind recommendation, Fallen Angels (poetry of Kim Rich Norton) [20:49] has meant listening as first priority, paying attention to perfect tuning and blend, [10] Perspective [0:41] w [11] I Don’t Have Time [1:52] giving up my own sound to lock onto the sound of another standing beside me. [12] Artistic Tempera [0:56] w [13] Revenant [2:42] But there are times I’m asked to step forward, bringing my sound to a solo. When [14] Natural History [0:36] w [15] A Taste of City Summer [2:20] [16] Interlude [4:32] w [17] Verdancy [2:35] |

Gregg turned 80 and I had known him for 25 years, it seemed the right time to works of Gregg Smith for voice and instruments explore his file cabinet of solo compositions. All had been performed by soprano [18] New York Cabbie’s Meditation [1:45] w [19] Some Build (New Parables for Old) [0:33] Rosalind Rees, and most had been written for her, but almost none of them had been [20] Song of Songs (At a Piano Bar) [2:17] recorded. Recording . . . just a few of them, but which few . . . was on my mind. On Eileen Clark, soprano, Thomas Schmidt, piano, Evan Ziporyn, clarinet a subway ride from Yonkers to Brooklyn one night, I finally held the borrowed stack Total time [69:51] of oversize yellowed manuscripts on my lap. Passing through the Upper West Side on the 3 train, I wondered if other musicians riding the train would want to know Recorded at the American Academy of Arts who wrote the library I so closely guarded there. Five years later, certain pieces have and Letters by Abeshouse Productions. floated to the top of the stack. I have been lucky to record them with om,T Ari, Evan, Art and booklet design by Jared Stamm. and Adam. Piano by To any singer who listens here and enjoys: I hope you will perform these pieces! And while you are at it, perform and record additional pieces by Gregg, until we can say delicious numbers they all made it safely into the canon of American art song. My thanks to you then, works of Gregg Smith for voice and instruments for your future work. And my thanks to the fine musicians on this recording, and to TROY1645 Eileen Clark, soprano, Thomas Schmidt, piano Rosalind Rees and Gregg Smith. © 2016 Albany Records | Made in the USA Warning: Copyright subsists in all recordings issued Ari Streisfeld, cello, Evan Ziporyn, clarinet Warmly, Eileen Clark under this label. TROY1645 www.albanyrecords.com Albany Records US | 915 Broadway, Albany, NY 12207 | tel 518 436 8814; fax 518 436 0643 Albany Records UK | Box 137, Kendal, Cumbria LA8 0XD | tel 01539 824008

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