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Dream Songs (2001)
Eric Chasalow:
"In spite of my long history with electronic music, the technology is not my focus. I use whatever technology is motivated by the musical challenges of the piece I am working on ... The quality of the sounds is important, but it is still the way that the sounds shape our sense of time passing, through phrasing and the like, that carries the musical idea.
"Still, I am preoccupied with the musical opportunity that computer technology does provide. I like to start with a traditional ensemble or a recognizable sound source as a point of reference, and extend the acoustical properties beyond what is possible in the physical world. [...]
"In The Dream Songs (1964), John Berryman opens up Henry's internal world in all of its painful and fabulous detail, full of self-love and self-loathing. This is all passed through the filter of Henry's dreams, which admit pieces of everything in Berryman's rich experience, the common and deeply intellectual alike. The poem (Berryman considered it one long poem) draws on a wide range of rhetoric, from sources as diverse as the Bible, Shakespeare, modern dialects, minstrelsy, even baby-talk. [...]
"My piece for orchestra ... takes its title and text from [Berryman's] epic work ... I have put the text on a recording, which is played back in performance in synchronization with the live orchestra. This creates a disembodied voice that puts a distance between the words and the audience and maintains an illusion of the kind of internal world that the poem inhabits.
"A critical and striking feature of the poem is the shifting perspective of its central intelligence. Henry is just as likely to refer to himself in first, second, or third person. The use of computer-manipulated voice allows me to heighten this aspect. I can, and do, mix solo with chorus, spoken with sung, male with female. I can blur the distinctions and the balance of these sources. This allows me to maintain the central voice of the poem while projecting something of its fractured, layered complexity. For example, in the fourth movement ('Dream Song 22') the voices in Henry's head explode into virtually a full-blown case of multiple personality disorder. This explosion is mirrored in the music, which circles repeatedly in a building canonic texture of voices, each in a different virtual space -- but all inside of Henry's head. Having fractured so dramatically, Henry 'reintegrates' in the fifth, and final, movement with its heterophonous chorale opening. [...]
"There is a kind of idée fixe associated with Henry ... which transforms along with Henry through the five movements. In the fifth movement, the voice of the poet appears as one layer. John Berryman himself has the last word. [...]"
Eric Chasalow (b. 1955) is best known for works that combine traditional instruments with computer-generated sound. Born in Newark and raised in Whippany, New Jersey, Chasalow studied with Mario Davidovsky and Harvey Sollberger at Columbia University in New York City. His music has been performed throughout the United States and in Europe, Australia, China, Korea, and Singapore. He has been commissioned by ensembles including the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Boston Musica Viva, Parnassus, and Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, and has received awards from the Fromm and Guggenheim Foundations, International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), National Endowment for the Arts, National Flute Association, and New York Foundation for the Arts.
Chasalow is currently on faculty at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, where he directs the Brandeis Electro-Acoustic Music Studio (BEAMS) and produces the biennial BEAMS Electronic Music Marathon. He has also lectured widely at colleges and universities across the US. Since 1996 he has been co-archivist with his wife Barbara Cassidy of the university's Video Archive of Electro-acoustic Music, which collects oral histories of pioneers and major figures of electro-acoustic music.
Chasalow's music is recorded on the ICMC, Intersound Net, New World, RRRecords, and SEAMUS labels. Current projects include new works for the Auros Group for New Music and Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and The Puzzle Master, an oratorio on a text by F. D. Reeve.
related websites
http://www.ericchasalow.com
Tenor William Hite has performed repertoire from Baroque to contemporary music with ensembles and opera companies throughout the United States and Canada including the American Repertory Theatre, American Symphony Orchestra, Boston Camerata, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cantata Singers, Kentucky Opera, National Arts Centre Orchestra (Ottawa), New York City Ballet, Sequentia, Tafelmusik, and Toronto Consort. He has premiered roles in operas by Charles Fussell, Philip Glass, Lewis Spratlan, and Theodore Antoniou's Bacchae (1991-1992), performed at the 1995 Athens Festival in Greece. Other festival appearances include Academie Musicale at Aix-en-Provence (Saines, France), Banff, Oude Muzieke (the Netherlands), Santa Fe, Tanglewood, and Vancouver. Recordings of Hite's work can be found on the Albany, Centaur, Denon, Erato, Koch International Classics, New World, and Titanic labels. He studied at the University of Kansas and Boston Conservatory of Music, and teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) has established itself as one of Boston's most active musical groups through creative programming, audience outreach, and auxiliary recording projects. It is one of the few orchestras in the United States devoted exclusively to contemporary music. Founded in 1996 by artistic director Gil Rose, the orchestra has commissioned, premiered, and recorded works by a wide range of composers including Arthur Berger, John Harbison, Lee Hyla, Steven Mackey, Bernard Rands, George Rochberg, Gunther Schuller, and Reza Vali. These performances can be found on the orchestra's own BMOP/sound label as well as on Albany, Arsis, Chandos, Naxos, New World, and Oxingale. BMOP is a ten-time winner of the ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming and has appeared at venues and festivals on both the East and West Coasts.
related websites
http://www.liegnermanagement.com/hite.htm
http://www.bmop.org
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