LEGENDS IN BLEUE
From the timeless grace of Mozart to soulful American Blues, this music is the stuff of legend. The artistry of violinist Gregory Walker is all the more poignant when performing music composed for him by his father, Pulitzer Prize-winning George Walker, and audience favorite Noah Kay’s soaring tone will delight in a rare performance of Vaughan Williams’ oboe concerto. From Vienna to New Orleans and across centuries, music breaks all barriers.
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Saturday, November 6, 2021, 7:00pm
BROADMOOR COMMUNITY CHURCH 315 Lake Avenue, Colorado Springs, CO 80906 Sunday, November 7, 2021, 2:30pm FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH 16 East Platte Avenue, Colorado Springs, CO 80903 PROGRAM Trevor Weston Bleue: A Blues for Strings, Brass & Percussion Ralph Vaughan Williams Concerto in A Minor for Oboe and Strings
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Broadmoor Community Church and First Christian Church are following the El Paso County Health Department recommendation regarding masking in public settings. El Paso County Health Department is strongly recommending wearing a mask in public indoor settings regardless of your vaccination status.
Legends in Bleue Program Notes
by Jennifer Carpenter
Trevor Weston (b. 1967 in Brooklyn, NY)
Bleue (1997)
Trevor Weston is a contemporary composer whose music has been called a “greatly syncopated marriage of intellect and feeling” (Detroit Free Press). Weston won the first Emerging Black Composers Project sponsored by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the San Francisco Symphony. His musical education began in NYC with the prestigious St. Thomas Choir school before going on to study composition at Tufts University and University of California Berkeley where he received his Ph.D. in composition. Currently, Dr. Weston is a Professor and Chair of the Music at Drew University in Madison, NJ and also teaches at the Juilliard School.
Weston offers the following description of his composition Bleue:
The Blues is one of the most important gifts that America has given to the world. Its poetry and music are at the basis of African American expression. Bleue is a 15-minute celebration of this important musical form and stylistic practice. The architecture of the piece is based on the Blues poetic structure, (AAB) a stanza consisting of three phrases. The first two movements, Bleue I, and Bim., reflect on a problem or situation needing resolution similar to the first two phrases of a blues. The last phrase of a Blues stanza provides an unexpected resolution often utilizing wit in order to solve the problem. Similar to the 3rd Blues stanza, I.A.E.B.C., an acronym for “I ain’t even be carin’ “, provides a personal resolution to life’s stresses. This phrase, commonly used in African American vernacular, does not exactly mean, “I don’t care”. Normally after someone lists all of their seemingly insurmountable personal problems, “I ain’t even be carin’” is voiced as a way to enact immediate relief to one’s stress. The problems may be unsolved, but one’s personal sanity is maintained.
Work began on Bleue near the end of a two-year stay in Paris. While living there, I fell in love with three paintings by Joan Miro, Bleu I, II, and III. The vibrant blue backgrounds used for these works and their interesting textural interplay with minimal foreground material impressed me deeply. The textures in Bleue are sonic explorations of Miro’s interplay because the background material is actually more active and vibrant than the melodic foreground material it supports. The complex harmonic structure of metallic percussion instruments, Steel Drum, Vibraphone, Tam Tam, and Cymbals coupled with brass instruments offer a palette of timbres necessary to realize Bleue’s important textures. Aware that my composition would not be completed until I returned to the United States, I decided on a title that starts with the French word for blue and ends in English (ble(u)e). The first movement takes its name from this series of paintings, Bleue I. The second movement, Bim, is an abbreviation of the word Bimshire, an old name for the island of Barbados. In the summer of 1996, I visited my family in Barbados and witnessed an awe-inspiring scene one night at the beach. Through a partly cloudy sky, a beam of moonlight illuminated a small spot in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. The sounds of night insects and birds flying around the beam of light completed this powerful scene depicted in Bim. I.A.E.B.C., uses a “Blues progression” of my own creation. The three basic chords in a Blues are the tonic, home chord, and two related chords, subdominant and dominant, and are used to support the AAB poetic form of the Blues. The chords in this movement are organized into three similar categories and cycle through the piece culminating in a strong rhythmic statement near the end. The grounded, resolved nature of the last movement completes the abstract representation of the Blues presented in Bleue.
Ralph Vaughan Williams (b. Oct 12, 1872 in Down Ampney, UK - d. Aug 26, 1958 in London)
Concerto in A Minor for Oboe and Strings (1944)
After a decline in virtuosic oboe playing/compositions in the late 19th century, the British oboist Leon Goossens (1897-1988) nearly single-handedly put the oboe back on the map as a solo instrument. Through his performances in the Queen’s Hall Orchestra and later the London Philharmonic Orchestra, he captured the attention of contemporary composers, including Ralph Vaughan Williams. Vaughan Williams himself was instrumental in the 20th-century revival of British music. Written for Goossens, this capricious yet lyrical Concerto for Oboe and Strings is the composer’s most successful example of the genre.
Vaughan Williams began work on the concerto shortly after completing his Fifth Symphony in 1943, which shares musical material with the concerto. It's an unusual concerto in that there is no separate slow movement, although there are slower sections within the outer movements that offer balance. The first movement is quite pastoral, evoking the idyllic British countryside in a time where artists and composers purposefully tried to eke out loyalty to England and its rural culture. In fact, Goossens referred to this concerto as an “English Pastoral.” Vaughan Williams uses the lush sound of the instrument to conjure the spirit of the countryside.
The shortest of the three movements, the Minuet and Musette begins with the light and playful minuet. The middle section evokes the musette’s characteristic drone, which is played by the oboe while the strings take the melody. This middle movement forms a simple dancing interlude between the two outer movements.
The final movement is the weightiest, which is a bit unusual for a concerto where the opening movement is often the most powerful. Symphonies, however, tend to save the power for the final movement. The connection between the two genres goes back to the shared material from Vaughan Williams Fifth Symphony and this concerto. He drew upon music discarded from the Scherzo of the Fifth Symphony and used it in the last movement (Scherzo) of the oboe concerto, which is why this third movement has the strength of a symphonic final movement. It is also the most virtuosic of the three movements, even if that virtuosity is somewhat brief. The orchestra manages to disrupt the oboist’s flights of fancy and the music once again turns to the wistful and melancholic music of the opening.
Vaughan Williams wrote his Oboe Concerto during the final years of World War II and the premiere of the work had to be postponed due to the threat of rocket raids on London. Vaughan Williams finally premiered the work with Goossens as the soloist in a concert by the Liverpool Philharmonic on September 30, 1944.
George Walker (b. June 27, 1922 in Washington D.C. – d. August 23, 2018 in Montclair, NJ ) Poeme for Violin and Orchestra (1991)
George Walker’s incredible long life consisted of a string of distinguished firsts including becoming the first black composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1996. Composition wasn’t his first love, however. Walker’s desire to be a concert pianist led him to be accepted at Oberlin Conservatory at the age of 14 and he later was the first black graduate from the Curtis Institute of Music in 1945. After graduation, Walker balanced a career as a concert pianist, teacher, and composer. As a pianist, he was the first black instrumentalist to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; and in 1950 he became the first black musician to be signed by a major artist management company, which led a tour of seven European countries in 1954. In 1956 Walker became the first black American to graduate with a doctoral degree from the Eastman School of Music. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Walker earned dozens of awards and prizes during his exceptional career, including Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Fulbright fellowships. Through these fellowships, Walker studied composition in Paris with the renowned composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger.
Walker’s compositions show the influence of a wide variety of staples including jazz, folk songs, church hymns, and classical music. It is from these many influences that successfully created his own unique style. These various influences can be found throughout his 90+ compositions.
Poeme for Violin and Orchestra premiered in 1991 with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Walker states that it is “by no means a tranquil piece.” In his words, the work alternates between “intense lyricism” and the “dramatic qualities, which you hear particularly in the final movement.”
Walker continues:
The ascending intervals that characterize the brief introduction to the first movement appear in similar statements in the other two movements. The violin cadenza in the first movement uses these intervals also in its pizzicato beginning. Following the return of the initial thematic material, the introduction is restated in a more rhythmic guise. In the second movement, solo violin excursions are framed by the dramatic opening measure that recurs at the end of the movement. The third movement follows the pattern of the first two in achieving its climactic moment near the middle of the movement.
Poeme is dedicated to his mother in tribute to her extraordinary devotion to her family and friends. "I think," he said, "she would have liked the piece." Further solidifying the family ties, George Walker’s son Gregory Walker, a violinist and composer himself, will be performing his father’s work on today’s program.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (b. Jan 27, 1756 in Salzburg and d. Dec 5, 1791 in Vienna):
Symphony No. 33 in B-flat Major, K. 319 (1779)
Eager to find a permanent position outside of Salzburg, Mozart and his mother traveled to Mannheim, Munich, and Paris from August of 1777 to July of 1778 seeking new musical opportunities. Tragically, his mother died unexpectedly in Paris and young Mozart returned to Salzburg in January of 1779 not having found employment elsewhere. 1779 was a difficult year for him. Calling this period his “Salzburg captivity,” Mozart’s position as court organist left him frustrated and he struggled to remain enthusiastic about composition. During this time, he filled his diary with as many stories of playing Tarot cards, throwing darts, and taking walks as he did about his musical ambitions. By any other standards, this was still a productive year for him; but based on Mozart’s immense fecundity of compositions, it pales to his usual output.
Mozart composed his Symphony No. 33 in B-flat Major during his last few months of “captivity” in Salzburg, having completed the three-movement version of this symphony in July of 1779. Likely intended for the parsimonious Archbishop Colloredo and his court, this modest, chamber-orchestra-sized scoring is the smallest of his late symphonies. Its original three-movement form reflects the preferences of the Salzburg audiences of this time; however, Mozart added a minuet when he revived the piece for a Viennese performance in 1782 (Viennese audiences were accustomed to four-movement symphonies).
Despite the disheartening few years Mozart experienced during which he composed this symphony, the symphony itself is quite lighthearted and playful. The opening movement is a cheerful, triple-meter Allegro assai. This movement may remind us of a waltz, a dance that was just beginning to emerge from Austria’s Ländler, the predominant folk dance of the region. In a typical sonata form, the middle “development” section takes the themes presented in the opening section (“exposition”) and elaborates upon them. However, Mozart introduces new themes during this movement’s development section and among these new themes is a motive that may be familiar to fans of his “Jupiter” Symphony: the same motive returns as the principal theme and fugal subject in his final symphony.
According to Alfred Einstein, the second movement (Andante moderato) brings “a new intimacy of feeling” to Mozart’s music. Its broad and leisurely primary theme contrasts with the minor-mode secondary theme. The strings take center stage with the winds only making a brief appearance in a short canonic episode at the end of the movement. The energetic Minuetto (the movement added in 1782) also calls upon the Austrian Ländler with its cantabile melody that appears during the trio section. The bright and witty final movement later served as a model for the final movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 8.
by Jennifer Carpenter
Trevor Weston (b. 1967 in Brooklyn, NY)
Bleue (1997)
Trevor Weston is a contemporary composer whose music has been called a “greatly syncopated marriage of intellect and feeling” (Detroit Free Press). Weston won the first Emerging Black Composers Project sponsored by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the San Francisco Symphony. His musical education began in NYC with the prestigious St. Thomas Choir school before going on to study composition at Tufts University and University of California Berkeley where he received his Ph.D. in composition. Currently, Dr. Weston is a Professor and Chair of the Music at Drew University in Madison, NJ and also teaches at the Juilliard School.
Weston offers the following description of his composition Bleue:
The Blues is one of the most important gifts that America has given to the world. Its poetry and music are at the basis of African American expression. Bleue is a 15-minute celebration of this important musical form and stylistic practice. The architecture of the piece is based on the Blues poetic structure, (AAB) a stanza consisting of three phrases. The first two movements, Bleue I, and Bim., reflect on a problem or situation needing resolution similar to the first two phrases of a blues. The last phrase of a Blues stanza provides an unexpected resolution often utilizing wit in order to solve the problem. Similar to the 3rd Blues stanza, I.A.E.B.C., an acronym for “I ain’t even be carin’ “, provides a personal resolution to life’s stresses. This phrase, commonly used in African American vernacular, does not exactly mean, “I don’t care”. Normally after someone lists all of their seemingly insurmountable personal problems, “I ain’t even be carin’” is voiced as a way to enact immediate relief to one’s stress. The problems may be unsolved, but one’s personal sanity is maintained.
Work began on Bleue near the end of a two-year stay in Paris. While living there, I fell in love with three paintings by Joan Miro, Bleu I, II, and III. The vibrant blue backgrounds used for these works and their interesting textural interplay with minimal foreground material impressed me deeply. The textures in Bleue are sonic explorations of Miro’s interplay because the background material is actually more active and vibrant than the melodic foreground material it supports. The complex harmonic structure of metallic percussion instruments, Steel Drum, Vibraphone, Tam Tam, and Cymbals coupled with brass instruments offer a palette of timbres necessary to realize Bleue’s important textures. Aware that my composition would not be completed until I returned to the United States, I decided on a title that starts with the French word for blue and ends in English (ble(u)e). The first movement takes its name from this series of paintings, Bleue I. The second movement, Bim, is an abbreviation of the word Bimshire, an old name for the island of Barbados. In the summer of 1996, I visited my family in Barbados and witnessed an awe-inspiring scene one night at the beach. Through a partly cloudy sky, a beam of moonlight illuminated a small spot in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. The sounds of night insects and birds flying around the beam of light completed this powerful scene depicted in Bim. I.A.E.B.C., uses a “Blues progression” of my own creation. The three basic chords in a Blues are the tonic, home chord, and two related chords, subdominant and dominant, and are used to support the AAB poetic form of the Blues. The chords in this movement are organized into three similar categories and cycle through the piece culminating in a strong rhythmic statement near the end. The grounded, resolved nature of the last movement completes the abstract representation of the Blues presented in Bleue.
Ralph Vaughan Williams (b. Oct 12, 1872 in Down Ampney, UK - d. Aug 26, 1958 in London)
Concerto in A Minor for Oboe and Strings (1944)
After a decline in virtuosic oboe playing/compositions in the late 19th century, the British oboist Leon Goossens (1897-1988) nearly single-handedly put the oboe back on the map as a solo instrument. Through his performances in the Queen’s Hall Orchestra and later the London Philharmonic Orchestra, he captured the attention of contemporary composers, including Ralph Vaughan Williams. Vaughan Williams himself was instrumental in the 20th-century revival of British music. Written for Goossens, this capricious yet lyrical Concerto for Oboe and Strings is the composer’s most successful example of the genre.
Vaughan Williams began work on the concerto shortly after completing his Fifth Symphony in 1943, which shares musical material with the concerto. It's an unusual concerto in that there is no separate slow movement, although there are slower sections within the outer movements that offer balance. The first movement is quite pastoral, evoking the idyllic British countryside in a time where artists and composers purposefully tried to eke out loyalty to England and its rural culture. In fact, Goossens referred to this concerto as an “English Pastoral.” Vaughan Williams uses the lush sound of the instrument to conjure the spirit of the countryside.
The shortest of the three movements, the Minuet and Musette begins with the light and playful minuet. The middle section evokes the musette’s characteristic drone, which is played by the oboe while the strings take the melody. This middle movement forms a simple dancing interlude between the two outer movements.
The final movement is the weightiest, which is a bit unusual for a concerto where the opening movement is often the most powerful. Symphonies, however, tend to save the power for the final movement. The connection between the two genres goes back to the shared material from Vaughan Williams Fifth Symphony and this concerto. He drew upon music discarded from the Scherzo of the Fifth Symphony and used it in the last movement (Scherzo) of the oboe concerto, which is why this third movement has the strength of a symphonic final movement. It is also the most virtuosic of the three movements, even if that virtuosity is somewhat brief. The orchestra manages to disrupt the oboist’s flights of fancy and the music once again turns to the wistful and melancholic music of the opening.
Vaughan Williams wrote his Oboe Concerto during the final years of World War II and the premiere of the work had to be postponed due to the threat of rocket raids on London. Vaughan Williams finally premiered the work with Goossens as the soloist in a concert by the Liverpool Philharmonic on September 30, 1944.
George Walker (b. June 27, 1922 in Washington D.C. – d. August 23, 2018 in Montclair, NJ ) Poeme for Violin and Orchestra (1991)
George Walker’s incredible long life consisted of a string of distinguished firsts including becoming the first black composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1996. Composition wasn’t his first love, however. Walker’s desire to be a concert pianist led him to be accepted at Oberlin Conservatory at the age of 14 and he later was the first black graduate from the Curtis Institute of Music in 1945. After graduation, Walker balanced a career as a concert pianist, teacher, and composer. As a pianist, he was the first black instrumentalist to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; and in 1950 he became the first black musician to be signed by a major artist management company, which led a tour of seven European countries in 1954. In 1956 Walker became the first black American to graduate with a doctoral degree from the Eastman School of Music. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Walker earned dozens of awards and prizes during his exceptional career, including Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Fulbright fellowships. Through these fellowships, Walker studied composition in Paris with the renowned composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger.
Walker’s compositions show the influence of a wide variety of staples including jazz, folk songs, church hymns, and classical music. It is from these many influences that successfully created his own unique style. These various influences can be found throughout his 90+ compositions.
Poeme for Violin and Orchestra premiered in 1991 with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Walker states that it is “by no means a tranquil piece.” In his words, the work alternates between “intense lyricism” and the “dramatic qualities, which you hear particularly in the final movement.”
Walker continues:
The ascending intervals that characterize the brief introduction to the first movement appear in similar statements in the other two movements. The violin cadenza in the first movement uses these intervals also in its pizzicato beginning. Following the return of the initial thematic material, the introduction is restated in a more rhythmic guise. In the second movement, solo violin excursions are framed by the dramatic opening measure that recurs at the end of the movement. The third movement follows the pattern of the first two in achieving its climactic moment near the middle of the movement.
Poeme is dedicated to his mother in tribute to her extraordinary devotion to her family and friends. "I think," he said, "she would have liked the piece." Further solidifying the family ties, George Walker’s son Gregory Walker, a violinist and composer himself, will be performing his father’s work on today’s program.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (b. Jan 27, 1756 in Salzburg and d. Dec 5, 1791 in Vienna):
Symphony No. 33 in B-flat Major, K. 319 (1779)
Eager to find a permanent position outside of Salzburg, Mozart and his mother traveled to Mannheim, Munich, and Paris from August of 1777 to July of 1778 seeking new musical opportunities. Tragically, his mother died unexpectedly in Paris and young Mozart returned to Salzburg in January of 1779 not having found employment elsewhere. 1779 was a difficult year for him. Calling this period his “Salzburg captivity,” Mozart’s position as court organist left him frustrated and he struggled to remain enthusiastic about composition. During this time, he filled his diary with as many stories of playing Tarot cards, throwing darts, and taking walks as he did about his musical ambitions. By any other standards, this was still a productive year for him; but based on Mozart’s immense fecundity of compositions, it pales to his usual output.
Mozart composed his Symphony No. 33 in B-flat Major during his last few months of “captivity” in Salzburg, having completed the three-movement version of this symphony in July of 1779. Likely intended for the parsimonious Archbishop Colloredo and his court, this modest, chamber-orchestra-sized scoring is the smallest of his late symphonies. Its original three-movement form reflects the preferences of the Salzburg audiences of this time; however, Mozart added a minuet when he revived the piece for a Viennese performance in 1782 (Viennese audiences were accustomed to four-movement symphonies).
Despite the disheartening few years Mozart experienced during which he composed this symphony, the symphony itself is quite lighthearted and playful. The opening movement is a cheerful, triple-meter Allegro assai. This movement may remind us of a waltz, a dance that was just beginning to emerge from Austria’s Ländler, the predominant folk dance of the region. In a typical sonata form, the middle “development” section takes the themes presented in the opening section (“exposition”) and elaborates upon them. However, Mozart introduces new themes during this movement’s development section and among these new themes is a motive that may be familiar to fans of his “Jupiter” Symphony: the same motive returns as the principal theme and fugal subject in his final symphony.
According to Alfred Einstein, the second movement (Andante moderato) brings “a new intimacy of feeling” to Mozart’s music. Its broad and leisurely primary theme contrasts with the minor-mode secondary theme. The strings take center stage with the winds only making a brief appearance in a short canonic episode at the end of the movement. The energetic Minuetto (the movement added in 1782) also calls upon the Austrian Ländler with its cantabile melody that appears during the trio section. The bright and witty final movement later served as a model for the final movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 8.
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This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov.
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