Program #135, February 27 2003: Works for woodwind instruments.

This program took an odd turn somewhere between its genesis and its fruition. Preparing for the program, I had no particular goal other than a strong desire to play a particular piece by Ana-Maria Avram for bass clarinet and electronics. Since almost all of my performance experience came via woodwind instruments, I have a special affinity for music that involves woodwinds, and I settled on the idea that it would be nice to do another program featuring such pieces. So I brought a ton of discs to the station, sorted them all by which instruments were playing the tracks I'd decided were good candidates for airplay this evening, roughed out a starting point, and decided to let inspiration guide me to the end.

After beginning with small duos by author/composer Paul Bowles (itself a kind of segue from the previous week's program, since the piece was written while Bowles was studying with Copland) and Giacinto Scelsi sounding most un-Scelsi-like, I moved to abstract works for oboe and saxophone with electronics à la the Xenakis center. Because Avram's piece also features the UPIC, this would have been an ideal place to insert her piece, right? Then I could declare my mission for the evening completed, and simply see where the rest of it would take me.

But, no. I had the notion that I would work my way back to Avram later in the program, establishing two poles of electronic/abstract music near the beginning and end of the program, with some more traditionally euphonious material in between. Besides, I had also gotten into the notion that I wanted to play Reich's Vermont Counterpoint (why had I never played this before? I really love all the Reich counterpoint works), and something about Risset's Saxatile made me think those two would segue together rather well. So after a small break I got going with Reich... and that started a niiiice flute set (incorporating a Japan-related/-authored cluster of works [Cage, Takemitsu, Sugiyama], as well as a lengthy work by local composer Janice Giteck) that seized control of the program for the next hour-and-more. It was simply the way the water decided to flow down the hill that evening. It was great to be in the flow.

That set ended with Ustvolskaya's piece for piano with four flutes and four bassoons, an unusual instrumentation for a striking piece whose subtitle (presented by Ustvolskaya without further commentary) suggests connection with the Mass. Both those facets of the piece suggested it was finally time to take up Panufnik's bassoon concerto next, as its connection with the murder of Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko made a natural segue from Ustvolskaya's invocation of faith in Communist eastern Europe. But that left only a certain amount of the final hour free, and I couldn't see a good musical way to quickly work my way back to Avram (despite the theological connotations of her own piece, Apokatastasis) without grinding too many gears. Besides, I was looking at this great klezmer-flavored piece for clarinet with string quartet by Golijov, thinking that carrying forward the Eastern European vibe (never mind that Golijov was born in Argentina!) already on the table was really where things needed to end up this evening. So I ended with Golijov, very differently than I'd originally planned. I apologized profusely to those who'd seen/heard me talking up the Avram piece, resolving to make sure it was included in the playlist. But I didn't feel bad about the outcome. For an ostensibly unthemed program, it covered a lot of ground and coalesced several interesting connections while incorporating a good variety of musical styles and compositional approaches. It doesn't get any more fun than that!