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559635 bk Daugherty US 6/25/09 12:37 PM Page 8 AMERICAN CLASSICS MICHAEL DAUGHERTY Metropolis Symphony Deus ex Machina Terrence Wilson, Piano Nashville Symphony • Giancarlo Guerrero Michael Daugherty and Giancarlo Guerrero on stage at Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Nashville, Tennessee, after a performance of Metropolis Symphony (2008) Photo: Jude Ferrara 8.559635 8 559635 bk Daugherty US 6/25/09 12:37 PM Page 2 Michael Daugherty (b. 1954) Giancarlo Guerrero Metropolis Symphony • Deus ex Machina Costa Rican conductor Giancarlo I began composing Metropolis Symphony in 1988, III. MXYZPTLK is named after a mischievous imp from Guerrero, the new Music Director inspired by the celebration in Cleveland of the fiftieth the fifth dimension who regularly wreaks havoc in of the Nashville Symphony, began anniversary of Superman’s first appearance in the Superman’s Metropolis. This brightly orchestrated his duties in Nashville during the comics. When I completed the score in 1993, I movement is the scherzo of the symphony, emphasizing 2008/09 season as Music Director dedicated it to the conductor David Zinman, who had the upper register of the orchestra. It features two Designate while concurrently encouraged me to compose the work, and to the dueling flute soloists who are positioned finishing his seven-year tenure as Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, who gave its world stereophonically on either side of the conductor. Music Director of Oregon’s première at Carnegie Hall in January 1994. Metropolis Rapidly descending and ascending flute runs are echoed Eugene Symphony. A champion of Symphony evokes an American mythology that I throughout the orchestra, while open-stringed pizzicato new music, he initiated a guest- discovered as an avid reader of comic books in the patterns, moving strobe-like throughout the orchestra, composer series in Eugene, where 1950s and 1960s. Each movement of the symphony, are precisely choreographed to create a spatial effect. under his leadership the ensemble which may be performed separately, is a musical hosted several of America’s most response to the myth of Superman. I have used IV. Oh, Lois! invokes Lois Lane, news reporter at the respected composers, including Superman as a compositional metaphor in order to Daily Planet alongside Clark Kent (alias Superman). John Adams, John Corigliano, create an independent musical world that appeals to the Marked with the tempo “faster than a speeding bullet”, Jennifer Higdon, Michael imagination. The symphony is a rigorously structured, this five-minute concerto for orchestra uses flexatone Daugherty, and Roberto Sierra. non-programmatic work, expressing the energies, and whip to provide a lively polyrhythmic counterpoint Previously, he served as Associate ambiguities, paradoxes, and wit of American popular that suggests a cartoon history of mishaps, screams, Conductor of the Minnesota culture. dialogue, crashes, and disasters, all in rapid motion. Orchestra. As a guest conductor, he has made two important débuts I. Lex derives its title from one of Superman’s most V. Red Cape Tango was composed after Superman’s abroad: his European début with vexing foes, the super-villain Lex Luthor. Marked fight to the death with Doomsday, and is my final the Gulbenkian Orchestra, where “Diabolical” in the score, this movement features a musical work based on the Superman mythology. The he was immediately invited to virtuoso violin soloist (Lex) who plays a fiendishly principal melody, first heard in the bassoon, is derived return, and his United Kingdom difficult fast triplet motive in perpetual motion, pursued from the Medieval Latin death chant Dies irae. This début with the Royal Scottish by the orchestra and a percussion section that includes dance of death is conceived as a tango, presented at Giancarlo Guerrero conducting the Nashville Symphony National Orchestra. He has also four referee whistles placed quadraphonically on stage. times like a concertino comprising string quintet, Photo: Harry Butler recently made successful débuts bassoon, chimes, and castanets. The tango rhythm, with several major American II. Krypton refers to the exploding planet from which introduced by the castanets and heard later in the finger orchestras, including the Baltimore Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra (where he was invited back for a the infant Superman escaped. A dark, microtonal sound cymbals, undergoes a gradual timbral transformation, subscription week and tour), the Seattle Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, and the world is created by glissandi in the strings, trombone, concluding dramatically with crash cymbals, brake Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Philadelphia Orchestra. Also in demand in Central and South America, he conducts and siren. Two percussionists play antiphonal fire bells drum, and timpani. The orchestra alternates between regularly in Venezuela with the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar, with which he has had a special relationship for throughout the movement, as it evolves from a recurring legato and staccato sections to suggest a musical many years. In 2004, he was awarded the Helen M. Thompson Award by the American Symphony Orchestra solo motive in the cellos into ominous calls from the bullfight. League, which recognizes outstanding achievement among young conductors nationwide. He holds degrees from brass section. Gradually the movement builds toward an Baylor and Northwestern Universities. Prior to his tenure with the Minnesota Orchestra, he served as music director apocalyptic conclusion. of the Táchira Symphony Orchestra in Venezuela. 8.559635 2 7 8.559635 559635 bk Daugherty US 6/25/09 12:37 PM Page 6 Terrence Wilson Deus ex Machina (2007) for Piano and Orchestra was mourners who lined the railroad tracks to give their final commissioned by a consortium of the Charlotte, farewell to “Abe” Lincoln. The second movement, Pianist Terrence Wilson has appeared as soloist Nashville, New Jersey, and Syracuse Symphony Train of Tears, is music for a slow-moving funeral train. with the orchestras of Cleveland, Minnesota, and Orchestras and Rochester Philharmonic. The title Deus First we hear a “ghost” melody that I have composed, Philadelphia as well as the symphony orchestras of ex Machina refers to the Latin phrase, “god from the performed con passione by the strings and accompanied Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, machine”. Each of the three movements of the piano by a lonely bass drum. Metal wind chimes and bowed Houston, Nashville, Saint Louis, San Francisco, concerto is a musical response to the world of trains. suspended cymbal echo the piano soloist, who plays a and Washington, D.C. (National Symphony). He funeral dirge in a minor key. Over the dirge, a distant has worked with such conductors as Christoph I. Fast Forward (Di andata veloce) trumpet and English horn play “Taps”. I incorporate Eschenbach, Alan Gilbert, Hans Graf, Neeme The first movement departs from the Manifesto of “Taps” (also known as “Gone to Sleep”) because this Järvi, Jesús López-Cobos, Kenneth Schermerhorn, Futurism (1909), in which the Italian futurist F.T. simple but emotionally charged melody has been used Stanisław Skrowaczewski, Robert Spano, and Yuri Marinetti declared that machine technologies would since the Civil War in America as a military bugle call, Temirkanov, with whom he toured in Europe with propel the world toward a universal culture. The image sounded at soldiers’ funerals. During the journey of the the Baltimore Symphony in 2005. Abroad, he has of a speeding locomotive became an icon in modernist second movement, I intertwine the “ghost” melody and received critical acclaim in Bulgaria, Canada, art of European painters in the early twentieth century. “Taps” in various guises, counterpoints, transpositions, Estonia, France, Israel, Malaysia, Switzerland, and Two important paintings I had in mind were “States of and orchestrations. the United Kingdom. He has been featured in Mind” (1911), the Cubist trilogy of a noisy and television and radio broadcasts in virtually every dissonant train arriving and departing at a modern III. Night Steam European country. Also active as a recitalist, railroad station, painted by the Italian Futurist Umberto By the 1950s, trains in America were powered by Terrence Wilson has played recitals at major Boccioni, and “Time Transfixed” (1936), the strange electricity or diesel fuel. The only remaining coal- venues in Aix-en-Provence, Chicago, Los image of a steam locomotive emerging from a dining burning steam locomotives were those of the Norfolk Angeles, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Verbier, room fireplace, painted by the Belgian Surrealist René and Western railroad line, operating in the states of and Washington, D.C., among others. He has won Magritte. I synthesize these various avant-garde Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland, numerous awards and prizes, including an Avery perspectives on trains in motion and commotion, where coal was still plentiful. Aware of the impending Fisher Career Grant in 1998 and the Juilliard creating my own musical manifesto. Abstract musical loss of these gigantic and beautiful steam locomotives, Photo: Fadil Berisha Petschek Award in 2002. lines, mechanical velocities, contrary vectors, the photographer O. Winston Link documented the last polyrhythmic vibrations, and fragmented reverberations days of the Norfolk and Western trains from 1955 to all move “fast forward” to arrive at a modernist utopian 1960 and the people who lived alongside them. Using