Calvin Wong Saxophone DMA Recital
”INFINITE MORNING”

Organ Hall | Nov 20, 2022 | 7:30 p.m.

 Siyi Chen, piano

Program

Infinite Morning // Joel Puckett (b. 1977)

Soprano Saxophone Concerto // Carter Pann (b. 1972)
I. The Old Line
II. Aria: Injurious Graffito
III. Jump!
IV. Hymn: A Love Supreme

- Intermission -

Jade Syrinx* // Will Brobston (b. 1990)

*world premiere

Sonatine // Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
I. Modere
II. Mouvement de Menuet
III. Anime

The Manitou Incline // Joel Love (b. 1982)

Program Notes

Joel Puckett

Infinite Morning

Notes from composer

I love beginnings. I don’t know why, but it has always been for me that the first line of a book is far more satisfying than the last. I dive into these first lines filled with the hope that I might be reading something life changing or at least reading something old in a new and meaningful way. Full of hope, full of the endless promise that only a new day can bring. Unadulterated optimism for the cyclic renewal of morning.

I sketched the opening of this piece while my wife and I were expecting our first child — full of hope and the promise of that new day. Unfortunately, that pregnancy ended with a late miscarriage. That ending brought devastation and severe depression. This sudden turn from unbridled hope to mourning left us both unsure how to move on. This short piece is a meditation on those days.

Postscript — My wife and I have since welcomed two beautiful children into the world and it is partly through that first ending that we are able to fully appreciate these two new beginnings.

Infinite Morning is dedicated to Scott Conklin and Alan Huckleberry.

Carter Pann

Soprano Saxophone Concerto

Notes from composer

"My Soprano Saxophone Concerto (2019) was written for Christopher Creviston and commissioned by Chris, the ASU Symphony Orchestra, and the SUNY Potsdam Symphony Orchestra. The work lasts about 15 minutes and does what it can to show the many sides of one of my favorite musicians on the planet. The work is cast in four movements and makes use of a varied orchestral palette.

I.                 The Old Line (orchestra without brass) presents the soloist almost immediately, akin to the technique in Mendelssohn’s beloved Violin Concerto. The saxophone weaves a song-like melody throughout, often reaching for the highest register of the instrument.

II.                Aria: Injurious Graffito (full orchestra) was the first movement to be written, inspired by a line in the old television series Frasier. I fell in love with the two words “Injurious Graffito” the way they are delivered on the show. The music, like the TV show, is lofty and somewhat arrogant.

III.              Jump (full orchestra) is written-out improvisation on the saxophone. Chris is particularly adept at the leaps and quick changes found throughout the movement, which culminates in a straight-ahead tune incorporating shapes that foreshadow the tune in the last movement.

IV.              Hymn: A Love Supreme (string orchestra and harp) is a torch song of unabashed sentimentality. A surprising admission: I was not thinking of John Coltrane’s famed album of the same name when naming this last movement. Perhaps it was a subconscious decision, but I was startled to put two and two together upon reacquainting myself with the Coltrane once the concerto was complete.

Maurice Ravel

Sonatine

Program notes by Richard Dowling

Ravel’s inspiration for composing his Sonatine was a 1903 competition sponsored by a fine arts and literary magazine called Weekly Critical Review. Ravel’s close friend, critic M. D. Calvocoressi, was a contributor to the publication and encouraged Ravel to enter the competition. The requirement was a first movement of a piano sonatina no longer than seventy-five measures, and the prize offered was one hundred francs. The magazine was nearing bankruptcy at the time and ultimately the publisher canceled the competition. Ironically, Ravel would have probably won the competition since he was the only entrant, but his first movement was a few measures too long.

Two years later, Ravel completed the second and third movements and the Sonatine was issued in September 1905 by the Durand music publishing company in Paris, who had recently offered Ravel a lifetime annuity of 12,000 francs for the first right of refusal for his works. (Durand already had an identical contract with Debussy.) The modest and wise Ravel explained to his friend Calvocoressi that he preferred to accept only 6,000 francs "so as not to risk feeling compelled to turn out a greater amount of music." From that point on, Durand was Ravel’s exclusive publisher and has held the copyright on his works until recently. This new Kalmus edition is based on the original 1905 Durand publication. The autograph is held in the music department of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (MS. 22675). (There are also three pages of sketches of the first movement in a private collection, two pages of which appear in facsimile in Arbie Orenstein’s definitive 1975 biography Ravel, Man and Musician.)

Will Brobston

Jade Syrinx*

*world premiere

Notes from composer

Jade Syrinx is based on a poem by Li Shangyin (李商隱) (813-858), a Chinese poet of the late Tang dynasty. Roughly translated as “Milky Way: Syrinx Playing,” the poem was written in heptasyllabic regulated verse, resulting in four couplets containing seven characters per line. Following the traditional jintishi style of composition, there is a specific pattern determining the order of tones (words spoken with either “level” or “oblique” inflections) in each line. Furthermore, the tonal patterns in the two lines of each couplet contrast each other, and the final characters of each couplet all rhyme. Below is the original poem accompanied by an English translation:

銀河吹笙 //
Milky Way: Syrinx Playing //

悵望銀河吹玉笙
Despondent gazing at the Milky Way: a jade syrinx plays;
樓寒院冷接平明
the tower is cold, the courtyard chill, all the way to daybreak.
重衾幽夢他年斷
Beneath layered quilts, in far-off dream, another year breaks off;
別樹羈雌昨夜驚
on a lonely tree, a wandering bird last night cried out in fear.
月榭故香因雨發
By the moonlit gazebo a familiar scent, after rain, wafts out;
風簾殘燭隔霜清
in the windblown curtain a dwindling candle, through the frost, burns clearly.
不須浪作緱山意
No need to think wild thoughts of ascending from Mount Gou;
湘瑟秦簫自有情
the zither of the Xiang and the panpipe of Qin have feeling all their own.

Ashmore, Robert. “Recent Style Shi Poetry: Heptasyllabic Regulated Verse (Qiyan Lüshi).” How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology, edited by Zong-Qi Cai, Columbia University Press, 2008, p. 189.

Jade Syrinx is divided into four sections, each characterized by the imagery and emotions present in the four corresponding couplets of Li Shangyin’s poem. Each section begins with an introduction containing a series of gestures organized by the poem’s own tonal pattern.

Joel Love

The Manitou Incline

Notes from composer

In August of 2019, I decided on a whim to try and climb the infamous Manitou Incline in Manitou Spring, CO. I set out on to the trail in the mild-to-late morning on a particularly hot day for Colorado and when I was about halfway up, I stopped for a moment to take a break. I realized I had no water left, was already quite hot, and my heart was not slowing down, even when I completely stopped to rest. I then had a seires of panic attacks that made my heart rate spike to 200 bpm. Long story short, I was suffering from severe dehydration and a fireman came up the Incline to deliver a liter of saline to get me back up and running. I spent the next two days at home recuperating and decided that I would adequately prepare myself and would try it again. Facing my fear, I climbed it again, but was overprepared the second time. About a third-of-the-way up I had another panic attack, but through patience and perseverance was able to surmount my fear, pushing through and finishing the climb. It was exhilarating to best a goal that had beaten me just days before.

This piece follows my experience and is an expression of the emotions I felt. The first movement has a beckoning melody in the saxophone with bell-like sounds in the piano, followed by a bit of a playful “jam” that is reflective of the optimism I had heading to the trailhead. The first movement closes with screaming, urgent sounds, reflective of my panicked stated while on the mountain. The second movement mirrors the devastation but lifts in the end to bring back a reprise of the first movement’s beckoning melody, calling back to the mountain. The third movement has a new section with a determined, break-neck feel that leads into another climb. This time, however, the climb results in conquering the mountain rather than it conquering the climber.

Huge thanks to Robert Eason for his help conceptualizing the piece and for help all throughout, organizing the commission and being the great friend that he has always been.