MERIDIAN ARTS ENSEMBLE seven kings Daniel Grabois Edward Jacobs meridian arts ensemble 01 Migration 7:20 08 Passed Time 14:29 David Sanford Robert Maggio Seven Kings: Revolver: 02 Prologue 4:39 09 Extreme Western Frontiers 03 Contrapunctus I 4:28 2:40 04 Chimes 3:51 10 Unfamiliar Terrain 2:57 05 Contrapunctus II 6:32 11 Thrown Into a World 2:45 06 Act V 3:19 12 With Nobody’s Help (Lost and Badly Wounded) Dave Ballou 5:24 seven kings 07 for brass quintet 13 Opened to the Fragility and percussion 12:51 (Slipping Away) 4:22 —75:39— innova 943 innova is the label of the American Composers Forum. © Meridian Arts Ensemble, 2016. All Rights Reserved. meridianartsensemble.com www.innova.mu Meridian Arts Ensemble Jon Nelson and Tim Leopold – trumpets Daniel Grabois – horn Benjamin Herrington – trombone Raymond Stewart – tuba John Ferrari – percussion With guest Dave Ballou – trumpet (Sanford) Executive Producer – Meridian Arts Ensemble Special thanks to Andrew Rindfleisch, Adam Producer – Jon Nelson Unsworth, and C. Jared Sacks. Engineering and Mastering – Chris Jacobs Session Producers – Dave Ballou (Ballou), This album is dedicated to the memory of Adam Unsworth (all others) our dear friend Gustavo Rosales Morales. Recorded at Slee Recital Hall, Department of Innova is supported by an endowment from Music, The University at Buffalo (SUNY), the McKnight Foundation. in 2011. Philip Blackburn, director, design Chris Campbell, operations director University at Buffalo personnel: Steve McPherson, publicist Slee Concert Office – Phillip Rehard Concert Committee – David Felder Music Department Chair – Jeffrey Stadelman All of the music on this disc is written by old friends, dreds of times. Many thanks to my Meridian col- and all of it is long overdue for release. Both Re- leagues for making possible, at last, the recording volver, by Robert Maggio, and Migration, by Me- of this piece! ridian hornist Daniel Grabois, were written in the – Daniel Grabois last millennium, and the MAE has performed them countless times. David Sanford, Edward Jacobs, David Sanford and Dave Ballou are all old friends of the group’s Seven Kings (2010) as well. Playing great music with great colleagues – that makes a musician’s life a happy one. The title of Seven Kings is a reference to Five – Meridian Arts Ensemble Kings, a play by Orson Welles which is a conglom- eration of five Shakespeare plays as well as the ba- Daniel Grabois sis for Welles’s film Chimes at Midnight (1965). Migration (1996) The gist of Seven Kings is a re-imagining of the highly complex counterpoint of the King Oliver In 1996, the Meridian Arts Ensemble was engaged Creole Jazz Band, which featured the very young to play at the Chautauqua Festival, in western New Louis Armstrong alongside New Orleans’s leading York. The festival was honoring the composer jazz figure of the time, Joe “King” Oliver. This in- Franz Schubert that year, and the festival organizers fluence suggested the additional third improvis- asked us if we could play some music by Schubert ing trumpet in Seven Kings. The composition was as part of our concert. We dutifully found some ar- written for the Meridian Arts Ensemble, with whom rangements of music by this great composer, and the composer has shared a long musical kinship, found that his delicate compositional style fit quite and for Dave Ballou, whose work as a leader, com- poorly with the sound of the brass quintet (much poser, and soloist is an inspiration. less brass quintet with drum set). I offered to com- pose a piece for the group based on Schubert’s Seven Kings was commissioned by the Festival of music, and the festival generously accepted this New Trumpet Music for the Meridian Arts Ensemble alternative plan. Migration, the result of that proj- and made possible by the Chamber Music America ect, is loosely based on the melodic and harmonic Commissioning Program, with funding generously material from Schubert’s song Der König in Thule, provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The a song I had always liked playing on the horn. The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and the Chamber only direct quote from the song is largely masked Music America Endowment Fund. by a thunderous drum solo. Since that concert in – David Sanford Chautauqua, we have performed the work hun- Dave Ballou son, contrapuntally, or in hocket. The music’s mood for brass quintet and percussion (2007) is often quick-changing and, with an ensemble like MAE – musicians who’re able to ‘turn’ on a dime – As an improviser, I have to ponder the question these moods may seem to be the components of “Why compose at all?” I believe there is very little a mercurial personality experiencing similar ideas difference between improvisation and composi- (the chorale) through the perspective of time’s tion. In fact, I will go as far as to say they are the passing. same process, differing only in time scale. Saxo- phonist Steve Lacy was quoted as saying “the dif- This recording was supported in part by a grant ference between composition and improvisation is from the East Carolina University College of Fine that in composition you have all the time you want Arts & Communications. to think about what to say in 15 seconds, while in – Edward Jacobs improvisation you have 15 seconds.” For me, com- position is notated improvisation and improvisation Robert Maggio is instantaneous composition. for brass quintet Revolver (1996) and percussion comes from this perspective. Revolver began as a musical response to Jim Jar- Support for the creation of for brass quintet and musch’s haunting western Dead Man. The move- percussion was provided by a Towson University ment titles were drawn from an interview with Jar- Faculty Development and Research Committee musch, in which he describes the film as “the story Award. of a young man’s journey, both physically and spiri- – Dave Ballou tually, into very unfamiliar terrain. Thrown into a world that is cruel and chaotic, his eyes are opened Edward Jacobs to the fragility that defines the realm of the living. Passed Time (2006) It is as though he passes through the surface of a mirror and emerges into a previously unknown The chorale of Passed Time’s final minute was the world that exists on the other side.” first music written for this piece, and the whole became a working out of that chorale’s harmonic Revolver was composed for the Meridian Arts En- phrasing, its pauses and rhythms, and its melodic semble and supported by a grant from the West shapes. Reimagining and reinterpreting this materi- Chester University of Pennsylvania Faculty Devel- al led to a wide variety of musical characters – pas- opment Fund. sages quick, lyrical, or perhaps humorous; in uni- – Robert Maggio .