Programme Notes
Morfydd Owen
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Morfydd Owen (1891-1918) was a Welsh composer, pianist and singer, born in Treforest to two amateur musicians who ran a drapery business. After attending Pontypridd County School, Owen won a scholarship to study at University College, Cardiff
After moving to London to study at the Royal Academy of Music, she formed two new circles of friends. The first was at the Welsh Presbyterian Chapel where she transcribed many Welsh folksongs. The second was the literary set centred near her flat whose members ranged from D. H. Lawrence to Russian émigrés, (including one who had been involved in the assassination of Rasputin.) The blend of idyllic folk-esque sounds with darker Russian intensity became her compositional signature in her short 26 years.
Frédéric Chopin
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Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) was a Polish composer and pianist born in Żelazowa Wola, son to a French immigrant and a Polish mother. Chopin completed his musical education and wrote his early works in Warsaw before leaving Poland at the age of 20 and settling in Paris.
He encountered rural Polish folk music for the first time in 1824 as a guest of the father of a schoolmate in Szafarnia; the sound of Polish folk music went on to become a core feature of Chopin’s musical identity.
Fred Onovwerosuoke
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Birth, espousal and death often are pivotal
triads in Urhobo metaphysics about life on
earth. Ayevwiomo, literally meaning a mother
has put to bed, or a mother has given
birth, celebrates the birth ofa child. An elder,
usually of the women folk, inquires about
the arrival, to which the parents respond. If
the response is affirmative, the village breaks
into a seven-day-long dance, accompanied
by the isologu or bass thumb piano, wooden
xylophone, and flute. The seventh day often
calls for reflection, for, on the eighth day the
child must be named, blessed with prayers
and libations, so it can traverse a treacherous
world with care and success.
Fred Onovwerosuoke (1960-) was born in Secondi-Takoradi in Ghana to Nigerian parents and spent his childhood between these countries before moving to the United States. His research into the diverse musical traditions held within Africa has taken him to over 30 countries across the continent. He is founder and artistic director of the St. Louis African Chorus.
Astor Piazzolla
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A milonga is a parent dance of the tango, blending elements from Argentina and Uruguay. It requires the dancers to move slowly and sensually but also executing staccato movements like a quick foot flick or a head snap.
Lyrics to the original song:
Heavy, suddenly they seem heavy the linen and velvets of your bed when our love passes to oblivion. Heavy, suddenly they seem heavy your arms embracing me formerly in the night
My boat parts, it’s going somewhere people get separated, I’m forgetting, I’m forgetting
Later, at some other place in a mahogany bar the violins playing again for us our song, but I’m forgetting
Later, it splits off to a cheek to cheek everything becomes blurred and I’m forgetting, I’m forgetting. Brief, the times seem brief the countdown of a night when our love passes to oblivion
Brief, the times seem brief your fingers running all over my lifeline.
Without a glance people are straying off on a train platform, I’m forgetting, I’m forgetting
Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) was an Argentinian composer, bandoneon player and arranger born in Mar del Plata to parents of Italian decent. He spent much of his life between Buenos Aires, New York and Paris, forming ensembles and orchestras wherever he went.
Piazzolla is best known for spearheading the musical movement Nuevo Tango which fused elements traditional tango with elements from jazz and classical music. He proudly took inspiration from all forms of music - for example, he had lessons with the Hungarian classical pianist Béla Wilda (a student of Rachmaninoff) who taught him to play Bach on the bandoneon. Classical baroque music went on to be a pillar in nuevo tango.
arranged for piano by Saúl Cosentino
Saúl Cosentino (1935-) is an Argentinian pianist, band leader and composer born in Buenos Aires who grew up listening to his mother play tango at the piano. He studied with the tango pioneers Carlos García and Astor Piazzolla; many ensembles centred around the world continue to explore the future of tango through Cosentino’s music. https://saulcosentino.com/en/
Edvard Grieg
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Hjemve is one of Grieg’s many Lyric Pieces (book 6, op. 57). He wrote this one while he was in France, perhaps while in active homesickness; Grieg writes a bright, lively springaar - a Norwegian folk dance - which he places in the middle of two more melancholy sections of longing.
Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist born in Bergen. In 1863, he went to Copenhagen where he met fellow Norwegian composer Rikard Nordraak; this initiated Grieg’s first immersion in Norwegian folk music.
Grieg was one of the founders of the Copenhagen concert society, promoting works by young Scandinavian composers.
In 1899, Grieg cancelled his concerts in France in protest to an antisemitic political scandal . He became the target of hate mail but held his ground.
Margaret Bonds
Margaret Bonds (1913-1972) was an American composer, pianist, arranger, and teacher, born in Chicago and moving to New York to study at Julliard. Bonds eventually pursued lessons with classical music legend Nadia Boulanger, who upon looking at her work, said that Bonds needed no further study and refused to teach her.
Bonds was the first African American woman to perform with the then all-White, all-male Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and one of the first African American women to have her music broadcast on European radio.
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Troubled Water is based on the spiritual Wade in the Water. The spiritual is part of the Songs of the Underground Railroad, work songs used by slaves in the nineteenth century to covertly share information for escape.
Wade in the water
Wade in the water, children
Wade in the water
God is gonna trouble these waters