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Fire Fragile Flight (1973)
| composer |
Lucia Dlugoszewski (1925-2000) |
| performers |
Orchestra of Our Time
Joel Thome, conductor |
| publisher |
G. Schirmer (BMI)http://www.schirmer.com
|
| label |
Vox Box 5144
|
| duration |
08:44 |
Lucia Dlugoszewski:
"'Flight' is essentially the sudden leap -- open-ended, huge, arrowing distances ... 'Fragile' embodies quick falls into tenderness, transparency. 'Fire' metaphorically brackets all the 25 climbing intensity-arrivals, expressed through rapid dynamic, density and wide-narrow register shifts, pitch-interval bracketing, rates of speed, and a wide spectrum of timbre.
"In the Great Lakes country where I was born, the delicacy of deciduous trees in early March had a kind of elusive swiftness of form; even winter had the quickness in sky that pinpointed the swift spirit of the spring season. Inside, we also know the swift quality of erotic tenderness. (Fire Fragile Flight was written for Dennis Russell Davies.) [...]
"What strange risk of hearing can bring sound to music -- a hearing whose obligation awakens a sensibility so new that it is forever a unique, new-born, anti-death surprise, created now and now and now ... a hearing whose moment in time is always daybreak. [...]" Joel Thome:
"Lucia Dlugoszewski and I were both raised in Pontiac, Michigan. In our conversations she often referred to the beauty of the Michigan sky and the sounds and sights of the natural environment that we grew up with. These sound images became an integral part of our music.
"When Lucia speaks of the 'risk of hearing,' she speaks not only in the poetic terms of haiku (one of her strongest images), but she is also describing the fragile sounds of nature, the infinite flowing path of bodies in space. Stars and planets, the aurora borealis traversing the night sky in its most dramatic journey. The sounds of waterborne night creatures: cicadas, crickets, and waterfowl. We both grew up on the water, as in Pontiac there are over 500 lakes.
"In her music, Dlugoszewski created new instruments to embody those extraordinary sounds: the timbre piano, glass ladder harps, all manner of percussion instruments, her incredible sculptural forms such as square drums, plexiglass 'waters,' and more. Throughout the work, 'startle-juxtapositions' are performed by all of the instruments; these are sudden bursts of contrasting timbres, dynamics, speed, velocity, and musical phrasing that occur within the overall texture. Moments of calm or stasis are juxtaposed with outbursts of extremely rapid gestures, with powerful dynamic change. [...]"
Composer, poet, and choreographer Lucia Dlugoszewski's (1925-2000) efforts to create an "intense, sudden immediacy" in her music were wide-ranging: she worked with everyday objects, created the 'timbre piano' (a prepared piano whose strings are played directly with a variety of materials), designed over 100 percussion instruments, and extended the possibilities of conventional instruments. She wrote for a variety of concert and dramatic mediums, but is perhaps best known for her dance music.
Dlugoszewski was born in Detroit, Michigan, studied music at the Detroit Conservatory of Music and physics and mathematics at Wayne State University in Detroit. She moved to New York City to study piano with Grete Sultan, music analysis with Felix Salzer, and composition with Edgard Varèse. By the late 1950's, she began to create new percussion instruments as she developed what would be a lifelong collaboration with choreographer Erick Hawkins (whom she married). These instruments were used not only in her dance pieces, but also in concert and film music, sometimes in combination with the timbre piano or more conventional instruments.
During Dlugoszewski's initial years in New York City, she received support from poets Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery, painters Robert Motherwell and Ad Reinhardt, and the sculptor David Smith. From 1960 on, she occasionally taught at New York University and the New School for Social Research. In the 1970's she began to achieve greater recognition, especially for her orchestral works: the New York Philharmonic commissioned Abyss and Caress (1975), and her Fire Fragile Flight (1973) received the Koussevitzky International Recording Award in 1977. Other works were written for the American Composers Orchestra, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Louisville Orchestra. She received grants from the Guggenheim and Phoebe Ketchum Thorne Foundations, and the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund.
Throughout her career, Dlugoszewski created music for the Erick Hawkins Dance Company, and was its composer-in-residence from 1957 to 1968. After her husband's death in 1994, she continued with the company as both composer and choregrapher until her own death in 2000. Her music has been recorded on the Candide, CRI, New World Records, Nonesuch, Smithsonian Folkways, and Vox Box labels.
Conductor and composer Joel Thome founded the Philadelphia Composers Forum in 1954 and renamed it Orchestra of Our Time in 1963. The orchestra settled in the South Bronx neighborhood of New York City in 1978, forming a consortium with the South Bronx Community Action Theatre and Bronx Museum of the Arts. It has since performed at major venues in New York City and Washington, DC and in schools, colleges, community centers, and prisons throughout the United States. From the outset, Orchestra of Our Time has collaborated with visual and performing artists, most notably Anna Sokolow Lyric Theatre, Erick Hawkins Dance Company, and as part of A National Tribute to Alexander Calder in 1977. Future collaborations include performance artist Hanne Tierney and composer-in-residence Dary John Mizelle. The orchestra has commissioned over 250 new works from composers including Henry Brant, George Crumb, Lucia Dlugoszewski, Manuel Enríquez, and Virgil Thomson. In 1993 it collaborated with Frank Zappa on a tour and recording of Zappa's Universe, for which it received a Grammy Award; other honors include the Koussevitzky International Recording Award and Musical America's Recording of The Month. From 1974 to 1988 Orchestra of Our Time was involved in community residency projects for the National Endowment for the Arts; since June 2006, it has been ensemble-in-residence at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center in New York City. The orchestra has recorded for the CRI, Nonesuch, Phoenix, Polygram/Verve, and Vox Box labels.
related websites
http://www.orchestraofourtime.org
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