LUNA PEARL WOOLF: Fire and Flood W O NOVUS NY NY NOVUS Street Wall Trinity The Choir of Elise Quagliata Anderson, Guthrie, Devon Matt Haimovitz Julian Wachner Julian O Nancy Nancy F L O XIN G ALE SERI E S 1 LUNA PEARL WOOLF: Fire and Flood 1 To the Fire 12. 18 For AATBBBs Choir a cappella (1994, rev. 2018) The Choir of Trinity Wall Street Julian Wachner, conductor Après moi, le déluge For Solo Cello and SATB Choir a cappella (2006) 2 NO-AH. The Lord has raised a mighty wind. 7. 10 3 Deep in the water, too deep for tears... 4. 54 4 Gone away and left us, Lord. 6. 09 5 Lord, I’m goin’ down in Louisiana... 6. 17 Matt Haimovitz, cello The Choir of Trinity Wall Street Julian Wachner, conductor 6 Everybody Knows (Leonard Cohen and Sharon Robinson) 5. 05 For Three Female Voices and Cello (arr. 2016) Devon Guthrie, soprano Nancy Anderson, soprano Elise Quagliata, mezzo-soprano Matt Haimovitz, cello Luna Pearl Woolf © Danylo Bobyk Missa in Fines Orbis Terrae 16 Who By Fire (Leonard Cohen) For Choir and Organ (2017) For Three Female Voices and Cello (arr. 2016) 3. 53 7 I. Kyrie 3. 07 Devon Guthrie, soprano 8 II. Sanctus and Benedictus 5. 03 Nancy Anderson, soprano 9 III. Agnus Dei 3. 53 Elise Quagliata, mezzo-soprano The Choir of Trinity Wall Street Matt Haimovitz, cello Avi Stein, organ Julian Wachner, conductor Total playing time: 75. 29 One to One to One For Three Female Voices, Three Cellos and Three Basses (2016) 10 I. 2. 06 11 II. 3. 40 12 III. 2. 43 13 IV. 3. 15 14 V. 2. 52 15 VI. 2. 55 Devon Guthrie, soprano Nancy Anderson, soprano Elise Quagliata, mezzo-soprano NOVUS NY Julian Wachner, conductor 5 6 68 FULL SCORE 5-13-16 WOOLF - ONE TO ONE TO ONE 386 stage whisper ° 4 S. I ¿ ¿ ‰ Œ™ Œ™ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ‰ ‰ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ Œ™ & J Voices in Uproar only to pull back, in one swoop, to a clear- Lis-ten! Lis-ten to me, let me touch you eyed plane of compassion. CORINNA DA FONSECA-WOLLHEIM stage whisper 4 S. II ∑ ¿ ¿ Œ™ ‰ ¿ ¿ Œ™ Œ™ ‰ ¿ In To the Fire she takes us into the heart & J Lis - ten! Listen! There, Rendered into English, the Latin word turba of a riot with shocking immediacy. You stage whisper means crowd, or uproar. In music, the can almost see the gap-toothed cackle, 4 4 4 M-S. ™ ™ ™ term has come to be defined by the rabble the destructive glee spreading like a rash. ¢& Œ ‰ ¿ ¿ ‰ ¿ ¿ Œ ∑ ‰ ¿ ¿ Œ Lis-ten! Lis-ten! Lis - ten! choruses in Bach’s Passions. With their Yet she also offers us passages that seem raucous, angular music — full of spit and to propel the revelers into the future, col legno LH damp s.p. venom and recognizably human follies — looking back on the moment in deep strings #œ ° #œ #œ#œ 4 4 #œ#œ œ #œ Vc. I B ‰ #œ ‰ ? ‰ Œ™ ‰ Œ™ ‰ B#œ Œ™ ? they sit directly opposite the contemplative regret. Composed in 1994, it now reads as ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ 4 ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ chorales that Bach holds up as models of a Cassandrian prophecy of environmental O™ a human collective aligned with a higher depredation – or perhaps, just as vividly, as æ #˙™ œ™ #œ #˙™ Vc. II ? æ æ æ ‰ #œ æ æ æ 4 æ order. the foreshadowing of the violent glee of a col legno Twitter mob. LH damp strings s.p. c.l. ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ 4 Since then, virtually all choral music has Vc. III ? ™ œ#œ œ. ‰ ™ ‰ ¢ ¿ ¿ ‰ Œ n¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ‰ Œ ‰ ¿ ¿ ¿ 4 ¿ ¿ made its home in the space between Multiple perspectives and focal planes uproar and harmony, between the weave together into a powerful indictment ™ ™ ° ˙™ ˙™ æ˙ æ˙ stubbornly individual, jostling for attention of political hubris in Après moi, le déluge. Cb. I ? æ æ æ æ in a sea of Others, and the peace arising Named after a notoriously callous remark col legno c.l. from communal contemplation. In the attributed to Louis XV of France, the piece LH damp strings s.p. 4 s.p. (2016) #œ œ œ j Cb. II ? ™ ¿ ¿ ‰ ¿ ¿ ‰ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ #œ œ œ works on this album, Luna Pearl Woolf revisits the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina Œ ¿ ¿ #œ ‰ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ #œ#œ #œ J trains a zoom lens on the collective in traumatic, painterly detail. Woolf draws experience, sometimes plunging us right on a multitude of musical influences to æ æ Cb. III ? ˙æ™ ˙æ™ Œ™ #œ™ ˙™ into the midst of destruction and anarchy both root the work in its New Orleans ¢ æ æ 7 OM0156 OXINGALE MUSIC manuscript Woolf Pearl Luna One to One to One 8 context and evoke the loss of a world into the world from the very beginning, chainsaw and stained with vivid colors. teeming with diverse life. when the open, perfect interval of the Larger-than-life and louder-than-life organ’s octaves is muddied by voices women are of course a specialty of Western Here, too, the ghost of Bach can be felt, entering in queasy, close harmonies. classical music, even if their intended not only in the snippet of a Lutheran purpose was more often to warn and chorale that joins the other fragments Woolf’s arresting versions of two songs by titillate than to inspire. Woolf takes a of musical quotes that seem to float by Leonard Cohen, “Everybody Knows” and poem by Robert Creeley that seems poised like debris, ripped from all context. There “Who by Fire” help to further complicate at the very point where desire spills over is also the juxtaposition of the choral the notion of the universal. Yes, we all have into possessiveness – and then sets it with collective with the wordless voice of Matt to die, but what a variety of deaths and an orchestration that tips the balance Haimovitz’s solo cello. Just as Bach does legacies we can fear and — dare we admit of power in favor of the female object in some of his cantatas and Passion arias, — hope for! And the more the narrator of desire. Three cellos and three double the instrumental solo sublimates the invokes the consensus of an “everybody,” basses get to stand in for the male viewer human experience to a universal level that the more his individual moral perspective dumbstruck by lust while three female is beyond language. We feel more than is crystallized. Once again, the solo cello singers reflect and refract the male gaze in we hear the visceral anguish of the cello’s muscles in on the conversation as the an uproar of vocal virtuosity. opening wail, rising to desperate heights. insistent inner voice we so rarely pay heed Later, we are drawn into the profound to. melancholy of a ruminating, elegiac passage. One to One to One also uses music to bring to the surface complexities and Missa in Fines Orbis Terrae takes a more contradictions. This time Woolf draws conciliatory bent than the other pieces on inspiration from visual art, from the this album. And yet the music sheds light elemental power of Jim Dine’s 14-foot on the imperfections humans introduce sculptures carved from redwood with 9 10 1 Its filth melt away, its rust be consumed. To the Fire In vain you have wearied yourself. The corrosion goes too deep to melt. Fire, Fire... Only the fire will rid you of it. To the fire with its rust! Woe to the bloody city. When I cleansed you in your lewdness you did not become clean from your filth. Set on the pot, set it on and pour in water. You shall not again be cleansed until my fury is satisfied upon you. Put in the pieces, the good pieces: the thigh, the shoulder. Fill it with choice bones, the choicest of the flock. Ezekiel 24:3-13 Pile the logs, boil the pieces, seethe the bones. Let the bones be burned. Woe to the city running with blood! The copper pot is green with corrosion, the rust has not gone out of it. Empty the cauldron piece by piece, making no choice at all. For the blood she shed is inside it, and she poured her blood on the bare white rock. She did not pour it out upon the ground, where the dust would cover it. To take vengeance I too have spilt her blood on the bare white rock. To rouse wrath and feed the flame of anger I have poured it on the gleaming white rock, where it cannot be covered. Woe to the bloody city. I too will make a fire pit, pile the logs, kindle the flame, (1994) boil the meat well, mix in the spices and let the bones be burned. I will set the pot empty upon the coals so that it begins to glow with heat. Luna Pearl Woolf manuscript Woolf Pearl Luna the FireTo 11 How many times has it happened over the last twenty years: she puts a new score in front of me, and I respond with, “this is impossible!” Yet time and time again, as I dive in, my efforts are richly rewarded as her music soon reveals its own, new idiomatic qualities. I am grateful to Luna Pearl Woolf for embracing the cello as a wordless protagonist in her musical journey — one that straddles the worlds of absolute music and dramatic story-telling. In this album, spanning years of Luna’s vocal music, we can appreciate a rare compositional voice, a voice of profound empathy and soaring lyricism, that has the ability to nourish the mind and heart.