Nadia Shpachenko
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THE POETRY OF PLACES NADIA SHPACHENKO WORLD PREMIERES THE POETRY OF PLACES It is often said that in classical music, the hall is the most important instrument. In performance, we generally don’t have microphones and speakers and effects and sound crews that minimize the influence of the hall on our sound; rather, we adapt ourselves to the hall’s particular acoustics. Our tempos, tone, dynamics, textures… what sounds beautiful in one hall is a muddy mess in another; subtleties that seem inaudible in the front of one hall may be crystal clear in the back of another. We spend a great deal of time learning to embrace the space, learning what our pieces mean in the space, how our interpretation must change because of where we are. Is that sad piece…maybe more wistful here? Am I somehow really having a lot more fun in this section than I did in the last place? Oh, that warm resonance makes me want to hold this note forever! PHOTO © ANTHONY MURPHY / WWW.MYTHICALIRELAND.COM INTRODUCTION And then… there’s you. A good hall also carries your sound to me. We’re in it together. Your breaths and shuffles and coughs are a part of the performance. They affect me, and the rest of the audience. We’re in it together! I know how you’re feeling! I know when you are rapt, when you are antsy, when you are surprised or amused… we learn to love the halls that provide a vivid intimacy, and avoid those that make us feel isolated. So we are very attuned to the spaces, the places, where we perform. And we develop more detailed and deep impressions with every moment in a given hall. The design, the ornamentation, the history, the light! The many ways they bring us together and shape our shared experience. Is the hall serious? lively? contemplative? mischievous? Do we tease it back, or gently massage it? Are we able to bond? To succeed, we must have a knack for the essence of a space, an empathy for the place. To truly grok the places where we find ourselves. I discovered a few years ago that this affinity for architectural space is shared by many of the composers that I admire. I began inquiring about their interest in contributing to a program of works inspired by buildings or places that have impacted them… and found myself pleasantly inundated by compositions that monumentalize places so wildly diverse as INTRODUCTION PHOTO © VICTORIA INNOCENZI the Copland House in Cortlandt, NY, The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Louis Kahn’s National Assembly Buildings in Bangladesh, Newgrange Ancient Temple in Ireland, and Frank Gehry’s House in Santa Monica and IAC Building in New York. Six solo works, by Amy Beth Kirsten, Hannah Lash, James Matheson, Harold Meltzer, Lewis Spratlan, and Jack Van Zandt, were written specifically for this Poetry of Places project, using very different approaches and sonic means in their responses to their chosen spaces. Los Angeles Philharmonic pianist Joanne Pearce Martin and Los Angeles Percussion Quartet artists Nick Terry and Cory Hills joined me for premiere recordings of two additional pieces: Frank’s House for two pianists and two percussionists by Andrew Norman, and Kolokol for two pianos and electronics by Nina C. Young. Both of these ensemble works bring the architectural space directly into the music: In Frank’s House, the percussion instruments are handmade from materials Frank Gehry used to construct his iconic residence; in Kolokol the electronics feature raw and manipulated field recordings of the Danilov Bells. PHOTO © VICTORIA INNOCENZI INTRODUCTION I was taken on a thrilling ride by these compositions and buildings, working closely with the composers to convey their ideas in an authentic way, while studying the history of each place, discovering its stories. I saw The Big Hope Show at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, which featured heartwrenching stories of trauma, survival, and triumph, reflected in their raw simplicity in Amy Beth Kirsten’s h.o.p.e. I researched Louis Kahn’s edifices, including through collaboration with filmmakers Dana Berman Duff, who put together a stunning visual presentation, and Nathaniel Kahn, who graciously provided a clip from his Academy Award nominated documentary “My Architect: A Son’s Journey,” to share at the premiere of Lewis Spratlan’s poignant Bangladesh. As I had done 22 years earlier upon first moving to Los Angeles, I visited the house of Frank Gehry, the inspiration for Andrew Norman’s bold and inventive Frank’s House. I spent a day at Gehry’s shiplike IAC building in Manhattan before performing the New York premiere of Harold Meltzer’s In Full Sail. I vicariously explored the unbelievable astronomical and sonic qualities of one of the oldest extant buildings in Ireland, which inspired Jack Van Zandt’s piece Sí an Bhrú, and had illuminating conversations with Hannah Lash about her time spent composing at the Aaron Copland House, with James Matheson about his reflections on a mysterious lake house in upstate New York, and with Nina C. Young about her time conducting field recordings of the Danilov Bells at INTRODUCTION PHOTO © VICTORIA INNOCENZI Harvard. And talk about places! All this culminated in a magical experience recording these works at Skywalker Sound while swimming in Lake Ewok, and visiting goats, horses, cows, quails, and dragonflies during breaks with my twin boys Ace and Mondy and my husband Barry, who was chief recording engineer for this project. I hope you’ll try to really feel these places. Close your eyes and be there with me. Reach out for the essence of every space you visit in life… open up to the poetry of places. –Nadia Shpachenko PHOTO © VICTORIA INNOCENZI INTRODUCTION THE COMPOSITIONS Andrew Norman: Frank’s House for two pianists and two percussionists (2015) Frank’s House is an exploration in musical fragmentation and layering inspired by Frank Gehry’s Santa Monica home. Like Gehry, who took a turnofthecentury Dutch Colonial bungalow and wrapped it in an explosion of asymmetric angles and raw surfaces, I took an old fourhands piano waltz and wrapped it in layers of percussive activity and chance happenings. Many of the industrial materials Gehry utilized to make his home —including plywood, corrugated metal, and chain link fence— are used here as musical instruments. Frank’s House was commissioned by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and is dedicated to Berta and Frank Gehry. –Andrew Norman PHOTOS © VICTORIA INNOCENZI THE COMPOSITIONS Harold Meltzer: In Full Sail for solo piano (2016) For years I have been taking walks in Manhattan through Chelsea, along the High Line park, or to take my son to summer camp by the Hudson River. Regularly they bring me past the curved white glass facade of Frank Gehry’s IAC Building, which, according to a critic, “gives the appearance of a tall ship in full sail.” I began to imagine the building launching from the New York harbor into the open sea, a little like the office building did in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. An architect’s primary challenge may lie less in creating a beautiful or electrifying space, and more in figuring out how to move people around and through the space. So this piece of music is an attempt to translate into sound not only the quality of the facade, the feeling that everything is bravely in motion, but also what it’s like to be on the streets near it. In Full Sail was commissioned by Piano Spheres and is dedicated to Nadia Shpachenko. –Harold Meltzer IMAGE PROVIDED BY GEHRY PARTNERS, LLP THE COMPOSITIONS Jack Van Zandt: Sí an Bhrú for piano and fixed electronics (2016) Time and the River • Stonecutting • Spirals and Zigzags (Homage à Boulez) Dance of Renewal • Eternal River • Starlit Night Located along Ireland’s Boyne Valley, Sí an Bhrú, or Newgrange as it is known in English, built around 3200 BCE, is one of the oldest extant buildings in the world. The astronomically aligned Neolithic construction consists of a large earthen mound encircled by a stone wall lined with large, elaborately decorated stones. There is a stone lined passageway that leads from the outside into a central stone enclosed chamber with alcoves. Each year on the winter solstice, the rising sun shines through a small slit above the entry and light travels directly down the passageway, illuminating the interior chamber for 17 minutes. Commonly known as a “passage grave,” Sí an Bhrú is much more than a burial site—it is an encyclopedia of Late Stone Age artistic practices, and engineering, scientific, and agricultural knowledge. The musical structure of Sí an Bhrú takes the form of continuous variations on cyclic thematic materials that fall into several titled sections based on architectural, environmental, scientific, and geometrical aspects of the building that suggested musical expression. Time and the River portrays the infinite, slowmotion flow of time in the progression of celestial objects, nature, the seasons, and the nearby River Boyne. Stonecutting represents technologies that enabled the builders the ability to move and shape the giant heavy stones. Spirals and Zigzags (Homage à Boulez) is based on the shapes that decorate the stones, evidence of sophisticated abstract thinking, as well as an acute awareness of nature. Dance of Renewal is an imaginary ritual dance for the winter solstice, propelled by a gradually emerging ostinato. A brief return to the piece’s beginning, Eternal River, leads back to the outside world and the timeless wonder of a moonless, crystalclear Starlit Night. Sí an Bhrú was commissioned by and is dedicated to Nadia Shpachenko.