Kazumi Umeda - Five Emily Dickinson Songs for flute and electronics

Michael Smetanin - Backbone for amplified flute and fixed media

Giorgio Colombo Taccani - Soleil levant for amplified bass flute

Giorgio Colombo Taccani - Luz for flute and violin

Mark Zadro - Vox Box for amplified bass flute and vocalisations

Kaija Saariaho - Laconisme de l’aile for flute and electronics

Laura is currently an Adjunct Academic for the School of Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales. Her flute playing career has taken her around the world, with some of the highlights being performances as a soloist at the Pittsburgh International New Music Festival; with the Kammermusiker Zürich; at Fylkingen in Stockholm, Insel Musik in Berlin, the Galway Arts Festival, at the Huddersfield Festival, for Roger Woodward’s Sydney Spring Festival and most recently, at the Unbound Flute Festival in Brisbane. Her five CDs have also brought her national and international acclaim. 2015 saw two new releases: ‘Flute Vox’ with Stephanie McCallum for digital release through ABC Commercial; and ‘Kingfisher’ with the vocal chamber music group Halcyon, on the Tall Poppies label.

Kazumi Umeda - Five Emily Dickinson Songs for flute and electronics

These pieces are literally songs without words; that is, the flute parts are actual settings of Emily Dickinson texts, minus the texts (special thanks to my friend Frank Mauceri for introducing me to this idea in 1985). The texts for the second and fifth pieces are poems; the other three texts are excerpts from her letters, many of which I find even more eye opening and evocative than her poetry. Most of the sounds used in the electronic part, including birds, insects, temple gongs, and a motorcycle, were recorded in Japan. While it might seem strange to set Dickinson texts using Japanese elements, there always seemed to me a kinship between her writings and Japanese poetry, particularly in the matter-of- factness with which both describe nature and death. A Dickinson line like “A toad can die of light” wouldn’t seem out of place in haiku, and a Basho poem such as “Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die” might seem very Dickinsonian if some strategically placed dashes were added. Other sound sources include backward piano, electric guitar, and a young sparrow (probably agitated from my being so up close) recorded in Brooklyn, New York. Processing was done via Ableton Live, the Korg D1600, and Logic.

Kazumi Umeda’s diverse musical background includes a classical piano degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, jazz studies at the Eastman School of Music, early collaborations with avant-gardist David Shea, and being a founding member of the punk rock band Teenage Depression. He has composed part-songs for the Boston-based Libella Quartet, collaborated with the noise-improv group Jagged Ice, scored numerous films, and directed a short film that was shown at the Coney Island Film Festival in 2005. His rock band, New Providence, has been described as “XTC-like…experimental pop genius.” (Elysium Fanzine) Kazumi is also part of the team behind Steinway & Sons’ new Spirio high-resolution player piano, and has edited recordings by noted pianists John O’Conor and Jenny Lin released by the Steinway label. His music can be heard at soundcloud.com/kazumiumeda and cdbaby.com/all/kazumi. He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife, Stephanie.

Five Emily Dickinson Songs – Kazumi Umeda

i. I Had a Terror

I had a terror, I could tell to none, and so I sing, as the boy does by burying the ground,

because I am afraid. When a little girl, I had a friend, who taught me immortality, but

venturing too near himself, he never returned. Is this what you asked me to tell (you?)

ii. A Toad Can Die of Light

A Toad can die of light. Death is the common right, of toads and men, of Earl and midge. The

privilege. Why swagger then? The gnat’s supremacy is large as thine.

Life is a different thing, so measure wine, naked of flask, naked of cask, bare Rhine. Which

ruby’s mine?

iii. You Must Let Me Go First

You must let me go first, because I live in the sea always, and know the road.

I would have drowned twice to save you sinking dear. If only I could have covered your eyes,

so you wouldn’t have seen the water.

iv. You Remember My Ideal Cat

You remember my ideal cat, has always a huge rat in its mouth just going out of sight. It’s

true that the unknown is the largest need of the intellect, but for that no-one thinks to thank

God.

v. The Going From a World We Know

The going from a world we know

To one a wonder still

Is like the child’s adversity

Whose vista is a hill

Behind the hill is sorcery

And everything unknown

But will the secret compensate

For climbing it alone?

[the whistling past the burying ground]

Not all of the above punctuation is Emily Dickinson’s. I have opted instead for using punctuation which reflects Umeda’s sensitive setting of the text in the flute’s melody line. L. Chislett

Michael Smetanin - Backbone for amplified flute and fixed media

The name of this work is a shortening of the title of the long poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky, he Backbone Flute, and some of the most essential materials heard in the fixed media parts appear in the fifth scene of Michael Smetanin’s opera Mayakovsky. The work is not “programmatic” of the poem in any way but is an exploration of the relationship of live performance with fixed media and or live manipulation of sound and the seeking to find solutions to the inherent problems in such work. The fixed media part consists of essential flute materials recorded by Laura Chislett in the studios of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and then manipulated electronically by the composer through the composition process.

Michael Smetanin is one of the most distinctive figures in Australian music. During the early 1980s, Michael travelled to Holland to study for three years with Louis Andriessen. There he composed The Ladder of Escape (1984) for Harry Sparnaay’s Het Basklarienetten Kollektief who premiered it at the 1984 Salzburg Aspekete Festival in Austria. Michael Smetanin has been involved not only in the composition of chamber and orchestral music but also in theatre and opera. His largest works are the chamber operas The Burrow , Gauguin , and Mayakovsky (2014). His piano concerto entitled Mysterium Cosmographicum commissioned by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra with Lisa Moore as piano soloist and conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw, was premiered by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 2005 and was awarded Best New Australian work at the 2006 APRA/AMC Music Awards. In recent years his large chamber orchestra work Micrographia was premiered in Amsterdam by the Schoenberg ensemble conducted by Reinbert De Leeuw, and he undertook a large music-theatre project with the Dutch ensemble Orkest de Volharding.

Giorgio Colombo Taccani - Soleil levant for amplified bass flute

Written in 1994 and dedicated to Laura Chislett-Jones, Soleil levant finds its starting point in the first notes of the sixth Lied of Shumann’s Frauenliebe und –leben. In a constant flowing of digressions and literal quotations, the piece, even if very short, is articulated in three different situations: a first episode, very nervous and fragmented is followed by a calmer one, characterized by the showing of a quiet melodic line; the arrive of a quick dancing-like figure in ternary time takes us, after a last expressive burst, to a short epilogue, that leaves the piece in a serene and soft light.

Giorgio Colombo Taccani - Luz for flute and violin

Starting from a soft, distant cloud of trills the two instruments gradually find their own personalities, through developments that become more and more unstable and tense; a slow episode, that still retains this dynamic intensity, leads the first part of Luz to an end. The second part opens with the same trills of the beginning; they immediately show its character: it is a shortened variation of the first one, in which everything is exaggerated and distorted. Luz ends with another short, simple episode: a low song of the flute, shadowed by ornamental figures of the violin, leads us to the final, long low D flat that brings the work to an end.

Giorgio Colombo Taccani (1961) pursued a classical education, graduating from the University of Milan with a thesis in Music History devoted to Bruno Maderna's "Hyperion". After a degree in Piano and in Composition at the "G. Verdi" Conservatory in Milan, studying with Pippo Molino and Azio Corghi, he subsequently earned a diploma from the two-year advanced program in Composition taught by Franco Donatoni at the Santa Cecilia Academy of Rome and took advanced courses with Azio Corghi and György Ligeti and he was selected for the Summer workshop 1995 organized by IRCAM. Colombo Taccani's music has won awards and honorable mentions in competitions of both national and international scope, has been regularly presented in concert seasons and music Festivals, has been broadcast by many Radios, and is published by Edizioni Suvini Zerboni, Milan. Since 1991 he has been working with electronic music in Milan at AGON acustica informatica musica - Centro Studi Armando Gentilucci. He teaches Composition at the G. Verdi Conservatory in Turin.

Mark Zadro - Vox Box for amplified bass flute and vocalisations

This piece was written at the request of Kathleen Gallagher for her final Master’s degree recital performed 15th November 2001. Gallagher requested a piece which was specifically a vocal study - one that attempted to place both bass flute and voice on equal terms. The main influences for the piece included the flute music of Reza Vali , north Indian (Hindustani) tabla playing and the improvised works of German flautist Michael Heupal. I believe a quote from Kathleen Gallagher’s program aptly describes this piece: “The exotic fusion of these elements unites the flute and its master’s vocal tract to produce a work radiating piquant intensity that propels the player forth into a dizzying articulative fury. The intensity subsides through slower movement that takes the earlier, lighter dance formations into something more base: a statement of the physical presence of mouth, throat, lungs, and stomach working concurrently to effectuate the performance”.

Mark Zadro’s involvement in theatre has been over many years and in the capacity of composer, arranger, pianist, and musical director. Amongst the many productions he has been involved with he has played for the Sydney production of Phantom of the Opera. He was arranger, pianist and musical director for PIAF NO REGRETS. In 1997 he was composer, arranger and musical director for Hot Pies and Potato Chips - a show which was awarded the Frator Award by the N.S.W. Department of Education. His television appearances include Channel Nine’s “The Midday Show” and “Good Morning Australia” and Channel Seven’s “Nine to Five” - as well as numerous live Radio performances.

Kaija Saariaho - Laconisme de l’aile for flute and electronics

The solo flute version of ‘Laconisme de l’aile’, which roughly translates as “brevity of the wing”, was composed in early 1982 in Paris. The version with live electronics, where the flute sound is altered by a harmonizer and a reverb unit, was created ten years later. The flute score is identical in both versions. ‘Laconisme de laile’ has already become part of the contemporary flute player’s canon. It opens with spoken text drawn from ‘Oiseau’ (Birds) by Saint-Jean Perse (1887-1975), which conjures up imagery of flight, distance, transience, escape, and immortality, and thus provides the conceptual basis for the whole work.

Ignorants de leur ombre, et ne sachent de mort que se qui s’en consume d’immortel au bruit lointain des grandes eaux, ils passent, nous laissant, et nous ne sommes plus les mêmes. Ils sont l’espace traversée d’une seul pensée.

Unaware of their shadow, and knowing nothing of death but that which is consumed by immortality in the distant sounds of vast waters, they pass by and leave us, but we are left changed. They are the space traversed by a single thought -(translation, L. Chislett).

Saariaho demonstrates an innate understanding of the flute’s potential for creating a rich palette of sounds on the one hand, and its facility in transitioning between those sounds on the other (much as Brian Ferneyhough evidences in his seminal work of only five years earlier, ‘Unity Capsule’). Transformations from one type of sound to another are a hallmark of ‘Laconisme de l’aile’, the first one being the evolution from spoken verse to flute timbre at the opening. Saariaho’s strategic deployment of flute tone colours has been described as a “harmony of timbres” 1 . This technique can be clearly heard in the final stages of the piece where the flute lines continually evolve from a dense low register timbre to the brilliant glassy sounds of the high register.