Cooperstown It Breaks Your Heart
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Cooperstown It breaks your heart MUSIC BY Sasha Matson LIBRETTO BY Mark Miller & Sasha Matson CONTACT: 607-434-3504 • [email protected] Julie Adams • Daniel Favela • Carin Gilfry Rod Gilfry • Daniel Montenegro k Gernot Bernroider - Drums Russ Johnson - Trumpets Rich Mollin - Bass Jason Rigby - Saxophones Sean Wayland - Piano, Hammond C3, Fender Rhodes k Conducted by Sasha Matson MUSIC BY LIBRETTO BY Sasha Matson Mark Miller and Sasha Matson PRODUCED BY DIRECTED BY John Atkinson Stephanie Vlahos BAND SESSIONS RECORDED AT Systems Two Recording, Brooklyn, New York June 16-17, 2011 ENGINEERED BY Mike Marciano VOCAL SESSIONS RECORDED AT Schnee Studio, Studio City, California September 1-2, 2012 ENGINEERED BY Bill Schnee and Kenton Fukuda PRO TOOLS EDITING BY Justin Volpe MIXED BY Mike Marciano at Systems Two Recording MUSIC PREPARATION BY Jonathan B. Griffiths and the Terry Woodson Music Service PHOTOGRAPHY BY Wes Bender ( Band ) and Joseph D’Allessio ( Vocal ) 2 THE STORY 3 NOTES “COOPERSTOWN OR BUST!” is chalked on many vans that pull up every summer in front of our house across the lawn from the National Baseball Hall of Fame. It is a long and winding road trip to Cooperstown, and the recording process was that way as well. But what a trip! Such great talent here to hear, on both sides of the microphones. Rod Gilfry! John Atkinson! I have been honored by their enthusiastic support and participation. I have been to the Show. “It breaks your heart.” That was the poetic language A. Bartlett Giamatti used in his beautiful essay “The Green Fields of the Mind”, and I am pleased that the Giamatti estate gave us permission to use his text. I began to work backward from there in the fall of 2000. Whose heart? And how was it broken? In Giamatti’s thinking, baseball is a game but also an art form, with the capacity to express the deepest emotional truths about individuals and society. One has only to pick up the sports pages to see this dynamic acted out against the economic and cultural realities of our time. Baseball has its own specific historical musical attributes. One of them is the sound of the stadium organ. That sound led me quickly to scoring the music for a “Miles” jazz quintet. This particular grouping of instruments is as capable as any large orchestra of realizing music in all its potential variety. The musical materials boil down to the rising three-chord “Charge” fanfare still heard in stadiums everywhere, which can be turned to the dark side by becoming an altered dominant harmony. Early on in the work process I had a sonic picture in my ear of what a finished recording of “Cooperstown” might sound like. I used as a model the great Blue Note stereo recordings of the late 50’s and early 60’s by Rudy Van Gelder: trumpet hard left, saxophone hard right, then added a vocal cast of five. I have nothing on my shelf that sounds quite like it. “Cooperstown” brings together forms and techniques from jazz, opera, musical theater and baseball itself, to tell a uniquely American story in a new and different way. — Sasha Matson 4 Particular Thanks To: John Atkinson – for calling the plays and marking the scorecard. Mrs. Edward T. Chase – for support of the premiere. Ted Chapin at Rogers & Hammerstein – for cheerleading. Art Dudley – for match-making. Jeff Idelson and the team at the Hall of Fame – for support of the premiere. Samuel Goldwyn Jr. – for the detailed notes before, and the dinner after. Ian Krouse at UCLA – for the use of his office piano one summer. Mike Marciano and Bill Schnee – for protecting the plate. Mark Miller – for friendship and work above and beyond. Luis Torres – for the translation. Van Dyke Parks – for match-making. Stephanie Vlahos – for weathering the e-mail storms. Sasha Matson spent his formative years in Berkeley, California, where his father taught philosophy at the University of California. He received a Bachelors Degree in Composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Moving to Los Angeles, he scored music for a dozen motion pictures and received a Doctorate Degree in Composition and Theory from UCLA. Recordings of his work have been released on the AudioQuest and New Albion labels. Audiophile Producer Joe Harley has called Sasha “The world’s SASHA MATSON AND PRODUCER JOHN ATKINSON, most unpredictable composer.” He currently SYSTEMS TWO RECORDING, BROOKLYN, NY. JUNE, 2011 resides in Cooperstown with his family. Mark Miller earned a history degree at Stanford and began a journalism career as a Reuters reporter in San Francisco. At 20th Century-Fox he produced and wrote for director-choreographer Bob Fosse, and co-wrote the screenplay for the Universal feature film “Mr. Baseball.” He has written 40 books and articles for the National Geographic Society, and was a Los Angeles-based columnist for the San Francisco Examiner. He is currently a writer- producer for CBS Radio, recently nominated along with CBS “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley for a Writers Guild of America Award S.M. WITH MIKE MARCIANO AT SYSTEMS TWO RECORDING. for Outstanding Achievement in Television and Radio Writing. He lives with his wife in Los Angeles. 5 Stephanie Vlahos comes to the directing profession with the experience of a former professional singer. A graduate of Yale University and the Juilliard School, Stephanie has worked in solo performance in diverging musical arenas. A recipient of the Chanel Diva Award, she is currently Artistic Director for OPERA POSSE, and is a theatre coach and stage director for the Domingo-Thornton Young Artists Program at LA Opera, as well as Director-in- Residence at The Bob Cole Conservatory of Music at California State University, Long Beach. Producer John Atkinson has been editor in chief of Stereophile magazine since 1986. Formally educated in the sciences, with an honors degree in physics and chemistry and a postgraduate qualification in the teaching of high-school science, his passion was always for music. A musician (primarily on bass guitar, but also on recorder, clarinet, violin, and viola da gamba), a sound recordist, and an audiophile, Atkinson pursued all three areas simultaneously in the 1960s and ’70s, before finally settling down in magazine publishing in 1976, when he joined the UK’s Hi-Fi News & Record Review. He has produced, engineered, mastered or played instruments on more than 40 commercially released LPs and CDs since 1972. Cooperstown was first performed at the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Grandstand Theatre on May 19, 2007. Music Direction by Charles Schneider. Directed by Patrick Calleo. Cooperstown is dedicated to the memory of Marvin Galbraith Barrett. All text excerpts public domain, except excerpt from the essay “The Green Fields of the Mind” by A. Bartlett Giamatti, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, Publisher. Used by permission. The painting “Fastball” by Josephine Coniglio (oil on canvas, 2003, 12 x 12 inches) is used by permission of the artist. © 2013. Published by Sasha Matson Music Co. BMI. 6 Daniel Montenegro (“Angel Corazon”) Daniel Favela (“Marvin Wilder”) 7 Sean Wayland — Piano, Hammond C3 and Fender Rhodes Carin Gilfry (“Jan Green”) 8 Rod Gilfry (“Dutch Schulhaus Russ Johnson - Trumpets 9 Julie Adams (“Lilly Young”) Bill Schnee, Sasha Matson, John Atkinson and Stephanie Vlahos Schnee Studio, Studio City 10 Jason Rigby - Saxophones Rod Gilfry and Carin Gilfry 11 Gernot Bernroider - Drums Rich Mollin - Bass 12 Disc One ACT I 1 Chart 1 2:18 2 First Inning (Dutch / Angel / Marvin) 7:40 3 Chart 2 1:14 4 Second Inning (Lilly / Jan / Angel / Marvin) 10:03 5 Chart 3 1:25 6 Third Inning (Jan / Dutch / Angel / Marvin) 8:38 7 Chart 4 1:25 8 Fourth Inning (Lilly / Jan / Angel) 12:08 9 Chart 5 1:19 10 Fifth Inning (Marvin / Jan) 7:41 T.T. 53:51 Disc Two ACT II 1 Chart 6 2:02 2 Sixth Inning (Dutch / Marvin / Angel) 7:54 3 Chart 7 0:37 4 Seventh Inning (Lilly / Jan / Marvin) 12:30 5 Chart 8 1:52 6 Eighth Inning (All) 11:07 7 Chart 9 1:23 8 Ninth Inning (All) 11:47 T.T. 49:12 13 SYNOPSIS ACT I Scene 1 (“First Inning”) - Metropolitan Stadium. Night game in progress. There’s trouble on the field as young star pitcher ANGEL CORAZON repeatedly waves off catcher MARVIN WILDER’S signs. Marvin loses his temper, calls time out, and marches to the pitcher’s mound to confront Angel. DOUGLAS “DUTCH” SCHULHAUS, manager of the Bluebloods, trots to the mound to intervene. Tempers flare; Dutch butts chests with the UMPIRE (the on-stage Conductor) and is thrown out of the game. Scene 2 (“Second Inning”) - “First Base” Sports Bar. Evening. Sports agent JAN GREEN enters with a chic young woman, LILLY YOUNG. Jan is playing match-maker; they have come to meet Angel and Marvin. Marvin is intended to be Lilly’s blind date. Angel and Marvin arrive late. Marvin’s posturing fails to impress Lilly, and contrary to Jan and Marvin’s intentions, Angel and Lilly fall into an immediate and easy rapport. Angel invites her to attend his next game, and she eagerly accepts. Jan, disappointed in her hope of rekindling Angel’s ardor, ends the evening early. Scene 3 (“Third Inning”) - Metropolitan Stadium. Workout. In the bullpen, pitcher Angel warms up. Near him, Jan stands confidently. Jan and Dutch sing of Angel’s talents and bright future. In contrast is the catcher, Marvin. Jan shares with the audience a secret only she knows—Angel has a flawed heart, which if revealed, would render him unemployable. The ensemble issues a rousing call for the game to begin.