But Not Forgotten – Music by African-American composers for Clarinet & Piano
Marcus
Eley (clarinet), Lucerne DeSa (piano)
rec.
at Endler Concert Hall, University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch,
South Africa, July 13, 2009
Recording,
Editing & Mixing Engineer: Gerhard Roux, Mastering Engineer: Jay
Frigoletto.
Sono
Luminus DSL-92156 [50:02]
“...together
they have created a disc of pure unalloyed joy.”
When
I select which discs I wish to review I choose either music by
composers I know and admire, trying to choose music I don’t know or
don’t know well or I choose music by composers I don’t know at
all to try and extend my musical knowledge. Therefore, when I spotted
a disc in the list entitled Music by
African-American Composers for Clarinet & Piano
I was intrigued because I knew that it must contain music by
composers I didn’t know. In the event of the 10 composers here I
knew of only two, William Grant Still and Scott Joplin. Just as I was
stupefied to learn just how many women composers there were I have
also been similarly surprised to learn how many African-American
composers there are as conventional “wisdom” has led us to
believe that “serious” music is the province mainly of the white
western male. How refreshing it is, therefore, to have our
preconceptions challenged and often wrought asunder!
This disc should
certainly help in this process and, incidentally, apart perhaps from
Joplin’s contribution, no one would guess the background of any of
these composers solely by the music itself. So, ten composers and ten
works; I feel like a contestant on the long-running British radio
panel game “Just a minute” which requires talking for a minute on
a subject without hesitation, deviation or repetition because I’m
going to be hard pressed to avoid repetition. Why?, because the music
is all uniformly excellent and I don’t know enough superlatives to
choose different words each time. The disc opens with a short chamber
work Night Fantasy
by Dorothy Rudd Moore and it is one of the more “modern” works on
the disc. It is a wonderfully evocative work conjuring up the spirit
world as the clarinet first of all weaves a beautifully simple tune
in the first movement, Largo,
and then, with spiky rhythms, dances Puck-like in the second effusive
and sparkling Allegro.
The composer was yet another student of that doyen of music teachers
Nadia Boulanger.
The second short piece is taken from a larger
chamber work and was arranged by the composer for clarinet and piano.
It is very much in the spirit of the first work and could almost be a
third movement of that and is a wonderfully playful piece in which
both the clarinet and piano duet, almost mirroring each other in
every note. New Orleans native Batiste was principally known and
respected as an avant-garde jazz clarinettist who famously played
with the likes of Ornette Coleman and ‘Cannonball’ Adderley and
that will also be a surprise to any who may believe that jazz and
classical music composers cannot exist side by side. Clarence Cameron
White’s Basque Folk Song
is a wonderfully descriptive piece with a simple beauty that is
enchanting. A professor at Virginia State University for 40 years
Undine Smith Moore’s Introduction
and Allegro is another delightful
work that, like the others, though short in length, makes up for it
in the wealth of ideas within its brief span with a real dialogue
between the two instruments that end their conversation in the middle
of a “sentence”.
The beautiful piece Pastorale
from Scenes
for Nigeria is by Samuel Akpabot,
who, strictly speaking was not an ‘African-American’ composer but
rather an African composer who spent a great deal of time pursuing a
career in the USA. Be that as it may this extract from a longer work
shows him to have been an extremely sensitive composer and this short
piece is very emotive and quite melancholy in its treatment of the
hymn like melody; a hymn to his native country. A complete change of
tempo comes next with Quincy Hilliard’s Coty
which is in three short movements, the first of which Daybreak,
is a frenetic race for both clarinet and piano to reach its end
before the other whilst the calm second entitled Sunset
is relaxed and lyrical. The piece
ends with Dance
which is a jerky sounding duo. William Grant Still is a name I'm sure
most listeners will be familiar with as he is probably the best known
of all African-American composers and his Romance
justifies that position as it is a
gorgeous song without words that allows the clarinet to fully exploit
its most attractive notes with a lovely piano accompaniment. Scott
Joplin, whose rag The Entertainer
made its composer famous through its use in the 1973 hit film The
Sting with Robert Redford, Paul
Newman and Robert Shaw and lead to its achieving hit status for its
arranger and huge interest in Joplin’s music (at last!), composed
Weeping Willow.
It is a charming two-step that convincingly describes a swaying
willow in that winning way that Joplin naturally possessed.
Soul
Bird by Todd Cochran is a
beautifully soulful tune that perfectly captures the nature of a bird
as the clarinet awakes and flies around against the background of the
piano before finally resuming its sleep. Todd Cochran is yet another
composer whose career has included a period in which he embraced jazz
and he played piano with the great jazz multi instrumentalist Rashaan
Roland Kirk, not that you’d guess from this lovely uncomplicated
tune. The final piece on the disc is a really attractive arrangement
of Amazing Grace
attributed to H. Stevenson about whom nothing is written in the notes
and about whom I could find nothing anywhere. The arrangement brings
out the best elements of the tune and allows you to hear it afresh in
a charming display of the attributes of the wonderful instrument that
the clarinet is. Marcus Eley has done a great service to
African-American composers and is a brilliantly talented advocate for
his instrument who successfully exploits everything a clarinet can do
while Lucerne DeSa is an extremely sympathetic partner and together
they have created a disc of pure unalloyed joy. I sincerely hope that
there will be more in the pipeline as he suggests this is only the
tip of a musical iceberg in terms of similar works by other unknown
composers.
Steve
Arloff
[Samuel Akpabot, Scott Joplin and William Grant Still are profiled at AfriClassical.com, which features a complete Works List for William Grant Still by Prof. Dominique-René de Lerma, www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com]
No comments:
Post a Comment