Scott Pool Since 2009, Scott Pool has served as Assistant Professor of Bassoon at the University of Texas Arlington. He has also been a faculty member/performer with the Orfeo International Music Festival (Italy), the Schlern International Music Festival (Italy), and from 2002-09 was Associate Professor of Bassoon at Valdosta State University (GA). Recognized as a Moosmann Artist, Scott has performed concerts and recitals throughout North and South America and Europe, and his bassoon performances have been featured on National Public Radio and from local to national television broadcasts. An avid proponent of new music, Scott has played an active role in either direct commissions or consortiums from both established and emerging contemporary composers, including Katherine Hoover, Chris Arrell and Jenni Brandon. In addition to Vocalise, Scott can also be heard on Landscapes: The Double Reed Music of Daniel Baldwin (2010), also released on Mark Records. Scott has served as principal bassoon with the Valdosta Symphony Orchestra and the Albany (GA) Symphony Orchestra, the Savannah Symphony Orchestra and has performed with the Plano Symphony Orchestra (TX), the Tucson Pops, the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra Symphonica UANL of Monterry, Mexico and the Oklahoma City Philharmonic. Technical Details: Recording Engineer: Micah Hayes Assistant Engineer: Eric Morrison, Micah Breedlove, Mark Gutiérrez, and Kory Morris Sound Technicians: Wanda Brister, Michael Evans, Amber Wyman and Lorraine Dow Editing and mastering: Fred Betschen Art design and layout: Jason Boldt, MarkArt Mark Records • 10815 Bodine Road • Clarence, NY 14031-0406 Ph: 716 759-2600 • www.markcustom.com • P 2013 50236-MCD Liner notes by Wanda Brister and Scott Pool Trio Vocalise Vocalise – Vocalise by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) is one of his best-known melodies. It is from Opus 34, Wanda Brister No. 14, the last song of the opus. It was written in 1912 for Soprano and Piano and the vocalist uses any one vowel throughout the song. It was originally dedicated to Antonina Nezhdanova. Vocalise has been transcribed many Wanda Brister has performed throughout the US, Europe and Brazil. She has been times for a number of different instruments, and it has become a staple in the bassoon repertoire. In this version featured in forty operatic roles and has been soloist under conductors including conductors arranged by American bassoonist, Leonard Sharrow, he cleverly chooses to extend the bassoon part past the last vocal Penderecki, Tilson Thomas, Rutter, Entremont, and Queler. Brister has sung at Avery statement into the piano postlude, assigning one of the many crossing voices to the bassoon. Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, and has performed a solo recital, three oratorios and three operas at Carnegie Hall. Her recitals are innovative and she has introduced “cital titles” on Do Not Sing, My Beauty – This early song by Rachmaninoff was arranged by American pianist Richard Cionco, several occasions. specifically for Scott Pool and Natsuki Fukasawa. It’s original form comes from the Opus 4 cycle of songs written around 1892, and was dedicated to Rachmaninoff’s future wife, Natalya Satina. From a text of Alexander Pushkin, the She is on CDs Strauss Waltzes for Singing, Le premier matin du monde, Clarikenetics and song translates: Landscapes: The Double Reed Music of Daniel Baldwin. The songs of Madeleine Dring will soon be released on Cambria Records. Do not sing, my beauty, to me your sad songs of Georgia; Brister has studied with Nell Rankin, Beverly Wolff, and Enrico Di Giuseppe, and was granted they remind me a Doctor of Musical Arts from University of Nevada, Las Vegas where she worked with Carol of that other life and distant shore. Kimball. Her writings on Madeleine Dring have been cited in books, papers, and articles. She has contributed articles to the Journal of Singing on Dring and Jozef Szulc. Alas, They remind me, your cruel melodies, Brister teaches at Florida State University and has taught at University of Arizona, and of the steppe, the night and moonlit Baylor University. She has been Artist/Faculty at the Schlern International Music Festival features of a poor, distant maiden! and now works at Orfeo Music Festival in Italy. That sweet and fateful apparition I forget when you appear; Natsuki Fukasawa but you sing, and before me I picture that image anew. Honored as a Steinway Artist, Natsuki Fukasawa’s music career has taken her throughout the U.S. as well as Europe, Scandinavia, Israel, Australia, Japan and China in the role L’invitation au voyage – Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894) was a composition student of César Franck. His closest of soloist and chamber musician. As a founding member of the award-winning Jalina friends were composers who also wrote well for the voice (Chausson, Duparc, and Ibert). This group was called la Trio, Natsuki has won many accolades and international prizes, including a rave review bande à Franck. A collector of fine art, Chabrier patronized so many impressionist painters that he was often featured in Fanfare magazine and the 2006 Best Chamber Music Recording of the Year from the in the works of Cézanne, Renoir, Monet, Manet, Letour, Sisley, and others. The writer of dozens of songs and several Danish Music Awards. operettas, Chabrier used Charles Baudelaire’s (1821-1867) poem, “L’invitation au voyage,” which was also set to music by his friend Henri Duparc in the same year (1870). Chabrier’s addition of the bassoon for color provides this particular Natsuki’s recent highlights include a tour of Italy performing Gershwin’s Concerto in work a special place the category of chamber music for mixed ensembles. The Duparc setting of the poem is more F as well as performances of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Sacramento famous, but Chabrier’s certainly holds its own in the extended repertoire. Philharmonic and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Camellia Symphony (U.S.). My child, my sister, Natsuki serves on the artist faculty for the Orfeo International Music Festival in the Italian dream of the sweetness Alps, and California Capitol Chamber Music Workshop in Sacramento. She has taught at of going there to live together! To love at leisure, California State University Sacramento, St. Mary’s College of California in Moraga, and to love and to die has been a guest faculty at University of South Florida. She also enjoys nurturing young in a country that is like you! The misty suns talents in her own private studio. Her main teachers include Takako Fukasawa (her of those brooding skies have for me the same charm so mysterious mother), Fumiko Ishikawa, Mark Richman, Martin Canin, Jan Panenka, Anne Koscielny, as your fickle eyes Ferenc Rados, and violist Tim Frederiksen. She is a Fulbright Scholar and has earned her degrees from New York’s shining through their tears. Juilliard, the Prague Academy in Czech Republic, and the University of Maryland. There, all is harmony and beauty, luxury, calm and voluptuous. Natsuki records for the Classico and Da Capo record labels and her career is noted in the World of Women in Classical Music and Who’s Who in America. 2 7 “Birdsong” See on the canals, sleep the vessels, which are vagabonds. It is to satisfy He doesn’t know the world at all “Man Proposes, God Disposes” your smallest desire Who stays in his nest and doesn’t go out. Who was helpless back in Prague, they have come from the ends of the earth. The sinking suns He doesn’t know what birds know best And who was rich before, clothe the fields, Nor what I want to sing about, He’s a poor soul here in Terezin, the canals, the entire town That the world is full of loveliness. His body’s bruised and sore. with reddish-orange and gold. The world falls asleep When dewdrops sparkle in the grass Who was toughened up before, in a warmth and light. And earth’s aflood with morning light, He’ll survive these days. There, all is harmony and beauty, luxury, calm and voluptuousness. A blackbird sings upon a bush But who was used to servants To greet the dawning after night. Will sink into his grave. Edgar Alan Poe Songs - Beverly McLarry (b. 1935) chose three Edgar Alan Poe poems that give a different side of the Then I know how fine it is to live. writer who is known for his macabre storytelling. She inserts “la la la” into the first poem, “Thou wouldst be loved,” Koleba something that we would not necessarily associate with Poe. McLarry’s sense of humor and comic timing is evident in Hey, try to open up your heart this setting, with the voice and bassoon constantly “pitching” and “catching,” beginning and ending thoughts sent their To beauty; go to the woods someday “The Old House” way by the other. McLarry has directed choirs in secondary schools, colleges, churches, and communities in Texas, And weave a wreath of memory there. Deserted here, the old house Kansas, and Oklahoma. She has degrees from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, and Southern Methodist University in Then if the tears obscure your way Stands in silence, asleep. Dallas. A soprano, McLarry’s vocal writing is intuitive and experiential. This cycle was composed in 1985 for bassoonist, You’ll know how wonderful it is The old house used to be so nice, Betty Johnson, longtime principal bassoonist of the Oklahoma City Symphony Orchestra. As a past winner of the To be alive. Before, standing there, Miriam Gideon Prize for composition, McLarry writes of her process: It was so nice. Anonymous Now it is deserted, rotting in silence – The project of setting poetry to music might be viewed as similar to that of a jeweler creating a setting for What a waste of houses, a precious gem, a semi-precious gem, or a whimsical pebble.