Myra Melford & Snowy Egret Language of Dreams
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Saturday, November 19, 2016, 8pm Zellerbach Hall Myra Melford & Snowy Egret Language of Dreams Conceived and composed by Myra Melford Myra Melford’s Snowy Egret Myra Melford, piano, melodica, and sampler Ron Miles, cornet Liberty Ellman, guitar Stomu Takeishi, acoustic bass guitar Tyshawn Sorey, drums David Szlasa, video artist and lighting design Oguri, dancer and choreography Sofia Rei, narrator/spoken text Hans Wendl, artistic direction and production Texts excerpted from Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire (Memoria del Fuego ) trilogy: Genesis (1982) Faces and Masks (1984) Century of the Wind (1986) Copyright 1982, 1984, 1986 respectively by Eduardo Galeano. Translation copyright 1985, 1987, 1988 by Cedric Belfrage. Published in Spanish by Siglo XXI Editores, México, and in English by Nation Books. By permission of Susan Bergholz Literary Services, New York, NY and Lamy, NM. All rights reserved. e creation and presentation of Language of Dreams was made possible by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, and a University of California Faculty Research Grant. Jazz residency and education activities generously underwritten by the Thatcher-Meyerson Family. n e s i o B s e l y M Myra Melford (far right) with Snowy Egret Language of Dreams I Prelude e Promised Land Snow e Kitchen II e Virgin of Guadalupe A Musical Evening For Love of Fruit/Ching Ching III Language IV Times of Sleep and Fate Little Pockets/Everybody Pays Taxes Market e First Protest V Night of Sorrow Day of the Dead e Strawberry VI Reprise – e Virgin of Guadalupe This performance will last approximately 75 minutes and will be performed without intermission. PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES About Language of Dreams rhythms, suggesting the music of the Americas Language of Dreams, a new interdisciplinary while avoiding pastiche. Extending her love of work conceived by UC Berkeley music professor improvisation into other disciplines, Melford’s and award-winning musical adventurer Myra composed musical material serves as a point of Melford, grew out of her fascination with departure for directed improvisation by not just Genesis, the first book in the Memory of Fire tril - the musicians, but also for the dancer, narrator, ogy by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano and videographer, with predetermined verbal (b. 1940). Genesis shares a beautifully written directions serving as a kind of roadmap. By aug - history of the western hemisphere, stringing menting the musical narrative with spoken text, together short, seemingly disjointed bits of physical movement, and silent moving imagery, text that together form a powerful picture of Melford seeks to convey a rich exposition of the life in the Americas pre- and post-European many stories and relationships between peoples colonization. rough his prose, Galeano’s phi - and communities, the land, indigenous tradi - losophy of history emerges—that we can only tions, and contemporary values that make up get a true picture of the past through multiple our world as Americans. points of view and stories. With a magic realism, Gale - ano’s retellings of indige - nous myths and European colonizer accounts each have their own quirky, colorful, and poetic rhythm or sensibility. As a composer and im - provising pianist, Melford continually searches for ex - perimental ways to struc - ture and create new work. Having first read Galeano’s Genesis in 2005, she was im - . s mediately intrigued, won - n o m dering how she might m o C translate his method of a i d e constructing narrative into m i k i W music and performance. n o Following Galeano’s exam - t n i P ple, Language of Dreams o c s i c builds a suite from a collec - n a r F tion of short composi - e s o tions—approximately 15 J pieces, each between three Writer Eduardo Galeano during a conference and eight minutes in at the Librarsi bookshop in Vicenza, Italy. length—which are inspired by texts from Genesis and augmented with se - e ensemble for this project is multigenera - lections from the other two books in the tional and multiethnic, representing a diverse Memory of Fire trilogy, including stories from cross-section of the American experience. e the contemporary Americas. Melford’s new sole lead artist, Myra Melford, will perform on music is informed by vernacular American mu - piano, melodica, and sampler, as part of her sical idioms such as blues, jazz, and Latin dance Snowy Egret quintet, which includes Ron Miles ABOUT THE ARTISTS on trumpet, Liberty Ellman on acoustic guitar, Myra Melford (composer, piano, melodica, and Stomu Takeishi on acoustic bass guitar, and sampler) is a composer, performer, and Gug - Tyshawn Sorey on drums and percussion. In genheim fellow for whom the personal and the addition, Melford has engaged three experts poetic have always been intimately connected. in other disciplines: a multilingual Spanish- Raised in a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed English vocalist, Sofia Rei, to read excerpts from house, she grew up literally surrounded by art. Galeano’s writings; Japan-born, Los Angeles- Where most of us find the beauty in our child - based contemporary dancer/choreographer hood homes through the memories and associ - Oguri, to embody the emotional content of the ations we make within their four walls, Melford work, responding to the music, the narrative, saw early on that aesthetic expression could and the video with surrealistic movement; and both be built from and provide a structure for videographer/filmmaker David Szlasa, to cre - profound emotions. ate a mix of abstracted moving imagery based For more than two decades, Melford has on events and landscapes in Galeano’s writings, craed a singular sound world, harmonizing making a kind of wall of light that suggests the intricate and the expressive, the meditative rather than prescribes narrative. and the assertive, the cerebral and the playful. While the music will be central throughout, Drawing inspiration from a vast spectrum of other media will be employed, with combina - cultural and spiritual traditions and artistic dis - tions of two or more disciplines occasionally ciplines, she has found a “spark of recognition” playing simultaneously, creating a collage of ex - in sources as diverse as the writings of the 13th- pressions and perspectives and exploring what century Persian poet Rumi and the Uruguayan it means both to be alone and in community. journalist Eduardo Galeano; the wisdom of Zen To create Language of Dreams , Melford Buddhism and the Huichol Indians of Mexico; draws on her years of experience as a composer, and the music of mentors like Jaki Byard, Don pianist, improviser, and educator in the emerg - Pullen, and Henry readgill. ing landscape where jazz, free music, world Her latest working group, Snowy Egret, is music, experimentalism, and improvisation in - comprised of some of creative music’s most tersect, as well as her past experience as a col - inventive and individual voices: cornetist Ron laborator in mixed media performance work. Miles, guitarist Liberty Ellman, bassist Stomu She also draws on deeply moving experiences Takeishi, and drummer Tyshawn Sorey. Mel - witnessing and participating in the wisdom tra - ford’s spacious, contemplative, exploratory dition of the Huichol Indians of Mexico, using com positions have long attracted, and almost these personally transformative teachings and demanded, such forward-thinking artists; her stories, rituals, and ceremonial music as inspi - other ensembles have included Cuong Vu, Dave ration for Language of Dreams . Douglas, Chris Speed, Erik Friedlander, and Melford’s vision is to create a beautiful, mov - Kenny Wolleson. Snowy Egret’s critically ac - ing, and powerful multi-sensual experience for claimed debut recording was released in 2015 the audience that invokes reflection and pro - by Enja/Yellowbird. vokes dialogue about our collective histories Melford is also one-third of the collective and path forward as “Americans” (in the broad - Trio M with bassist Mark Dresser and drum - est sense). Everything evoked through music, mer Matt Wilson, and performs in the duo movement, text, and video imagery will be re - Dialogue with clarinetist Ben Goldberg. She flection of who and what we are, recognizing released her first solo album in 2013, a collec - our diverse cultures, landscapes, events, and tion of work inspired by the paintings of the late ways of life in the Americas. By being inclusive visual artist Don Reich. in our stories, we also create a whole in which Melford’s spiritual journey has led her to each of these cultures exist, even as we allow for study Aikido, Siddha Yoga, and the Huichol tension or conflict as well as harmony and res - people of Mexico, a quest expressed sonically olution in the telling. via her wide-ranging musical palette, w hich ex - PLAYBILL ABOUT THE ARTISTS y a r r u M n a i r B Myra Melford pands from the piano to the harmonium and Aesthetics Artist Award, and Lighting Artists in electronic keyboards or to amplifying barely Dance Award for innovative use of video in audible sounds in the piano’s interior. Her play - performance. In his solo work and collabora - ing can build from the blissful and lyrical to the tive projects, Szlasa creates investigative art to intense and angular, with accents from Indian, deconstruct and reconstruct popular narrative. African, Cuban, and Middle Eastern musics Collaborators include Marc Bamuthi Joseph, or the cerebral abstraction of European and Joanna Haigood, Rennie Harris, Hope Mohr, American jazz and classical experimentalism. Deb Margolin, Bill Shannon, Michael John In 2013, Melford was named a Guggenheim Garcés, Sara Shelton Mann, and others. His Fellow and received both the Doris Duke Char - work has been exhibited in theaters and gal - itable Foundation’s Performing Artist Award leries worldwide, including at Yerba Buena and a Doris Duke Residency to Build Demand Center for the Arts, the Walker Arts Center, for the Arts for her efforts to re-imagine the jazz Chicago MCA, the de Young Museum, e program at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center Humana Festival, Sydney Opera House, Oak - for the Arts.