我们 “Us”
Update! 我们 “Us" New live album is now AVAILABLE!
"Love, kindness, humility. A celebration of our shared humanity. Featuring compositions by Reena Esmail, Delong Wang, Larysa Kuzmenko, Fazil Say, and Martin Scherzinger."
Our diverse musical cultures reveal our diverse humanity. Now more than ever, we need to wield the power of music to understand and connect with one another, to imagine a better future, and to find common hope. 我们“Us” celebrates heritages and stories from across China, India, Turkey, Ukraine, and Africa. There are moments of great sadness, tragedy, and pain, but equally, if not more, there is hope, empowerment, joy, and even … cuteness (!) Whether directly or indirectly, we each hold the power to create a brighter collective future. The more we open ourselves to each other’s backgrounds, the more sensitive we can be, the better we can respect the symbols, gestures, and how to being kind, generous, and sincere in our humble efforts to be together, to be - 我们(Wǒ-mén), “Us”.
Program
*Reena Esmail - Crystal Preludes (2020)
I. Oscillating Figures
II. Mishra Vibhas Melody
III. Vachasbati/Bhup
Delong Wang - Portrait of the Astor Chinese Garden Court (2022)
I. Gazebo 亭
II. Rocks 石
III. Bamboo 竹
IV. Stream 溪
Larysa Kuzmenko - In Memoriam to the Victims of Chernobyl (2008)
Fazil Say - Gezi Park Sonata, Op. 52 (2016)
I. Nights of Resistance on the Streets of Istanbul
II. The Silence of the Gas Cloud
III. On the Killing of the Innocent Child Berkin Elvan
IV. Hope is Always in Our Hearts
Martin Scherzinger - Etudes (2021)
I. The Horse is Not Mine, a Hobby Horse
II. Verso il capo
III. Kinderreim
IV. Chopi-Chopin
**Reena Esmail - Piano Trio (2019)
I. Ephemeral
II. Breathing
III. Capricious
IV. Powerful, broad, intense
Trio Eudaemonia
Maitreyi Muralidharan, violin
Julia Weldon, cello
Tong Wang, piano
*performed in Lunenburg concert
**performed in Montreal concert
Crystal Preludes (2020)
Reena Esmail
“The title “Crystal Preludes” has taken on many meanings. The texture of these pieces can be brilliant and luminous at times. The succinct, pithy form of the prelude has allowed me to crystallize elements of my own piano writing that I’ve been yearning to explore. But truly, this set of preludes is named for the person they are written for: my dearest friend, pianist Crystal Rivette. Crystal and I became friends as teenagers, when all our dreams were still ahead of us. Over decades of friendship, we’ve supported one another’s dreams as they’ve found their way into being. These pieces are as much for the professional musicians we are today as they are a tribute to the intense, awkward, wildly creative, passionate people we were then. Young pianists, finding your way in the world: These are for you. We see you. We were you. We’ve got you.”
Reena Esmail
Portrait of the Astor Chinese Garden Court (2022)
Delong Wang
“Ancient Chinese paintings are rarely associated with the word “cuteness”. But in my eyes, cuteness can exist in all corners of life, which certainly includes the theme of Chinese paintings - nature. A pavilion, a stone, a bamboo, a stream, they can all be symbols of loveliness. As an example, a mountain in an ancient Chinese landscape painting can be in the shape of a mountain, or the shape of a cloud, or the shape of water. These unique shape transformations are full of not only creativity, but also fun. This piece takes the Astor Chinese Garden Court (明轩)of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's as its inspiration and aims to portray the purity of shape and cuteness that fills every corners. I was invited by my beloved friend, pianist Tong Wang to compose this piece, and it is a dedication to our invaluable friendship.”
Delong Wang
In Memoriam to the Victims of Chernobyl
Larysa Kuzmenko (2008)
“The opening theme is dark and ominous; it sets the tragic mood of the piece. Following this idea, I quote a sad but lyrical Ukrainian folk tune that describes a grave in the field begging the wind to keep it from dying and asking the sun to shine over it. The tempo suddenly quickens, and the music becomes very rhythmic, creating a rather chaotic atmosphere. The music reflects the mechanical sound of the nuclear reactor. The folk tune has taken on a different character here. It no longer is lyrical and is supported by jarring harmonies. The music signals the reactor’s first explosion at its first climax. Following this explosion, the music becomes very quiet, and slows down. Here, the folk tune essentially has exploded into little fragments creating a kind of pointillistic texture. At this point, the music represents the invisible, yet fatal radioactive particles that are poisoning the atmosphere. The tempo builds up once again, and the music moves towards the second climax signaling the second explosion. Here, I quote a sacred chant from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, asking God for forgiveness. The Piece ends with the reappearance of the opening material, setting a mood that questions the future of our planet.”
Larysa Kuzmenko
“A Grave In The Field”‐ Ukrainian Folk Poem
In the field lies a grave.
It speaks to the wind: Blow wind gently over me, so I will not turn black, and die. Let the grass grow green above me.
But the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.
Only out in the steppe near the road the grass grows green.
In the steppe a winding river flows.
Over the river a bridge stands.
Don’t leave me your true father, my Kozak friend.
Leave your father, you shall wilt and die, and flow quickly pass the Danube.
On that river no spawned fish appear
For eternity it took my friend.
In the river only algae grows.
It took my friend pass the Danube.
Gezi Park 2, Op. 52 (2016)
Fazil Say
“This solo piano sonata is the second of a three-part body of work which recounts the events at Gezi Park, The first work (Concerto for two pianos and orchestra) narrated the days at the end of May 2013, and took as its main theme the sudden police raid on a group of people attempting to protect Gezi Park and the natural environment. This second piece dwells on the days of May 31st and June 1st and 2nnd, when the many clashes and strong resistance gave the impression of a civil war. Gezi Park and Taksim Square thronged with millions of people, and a great struggle between the police under the authority of prime minister Erdogan and the people began. The slogans which rang in the air and the spirit of that day are reflected in Gezi Park 2.”
Fazil Say
“Bu da-ha bas-lan-giç, mü-ca-de-le-ye de-vam”
This is just the beginning, on with the struggle.
“Her yer Ta-sim, her yer di-re-nis”
Everywhere is Taksim, everywhere is resistance.
Notes on the third movement:
“14 year old Berkin Elvan, an innocent child, was shot by the police on his way to the shop to buy bread. Berkin remained in a coma for 269 days and died on 14 March 2014. He weighed only 16 kilos when he died; his funeral in Istanbul was attended by 500,000 people.”
Etudes (2021)
Martin Scherzinger
“When I was growing up, I remember how African pianists at the local music school approached works of the great European masters, with a rich and strange inflection. This Africanized sound was generally unacknowledged by official culture at the time. Today, black opera singers from South Africa are gradually becoming prominent internationally, but they are one small element of a much greater story. With the arrival of pianos, guitars and accordions in the colonies, Africans have long indigenized classically European instruments to great effect.
It is not easy to define this approach, but perhaps one can speak here of a change in focus from figure/ground relations to all-over-pattern. Instead of bringing long range structural lines and harmonic schemata to the fore, the African approach finds inspiration in the texture of the figures, their manner of weaving, the surface as cloth. Perhaps one may even say the African approach hears music, not as developmental or goal-directed, but as continuous and cyclic. This is present tense music.
The first etude The Horse is not Mine, a Hobby Horse, for example, is like a study in what a composer like Schumann might have done if he had written for a Zimbabwean mbira dza vadzimu. How would his unique harmonic thinking be articulated in the grammar of the instrument's action? And the interlocking of parts? So, these etudes mimetically inhabit the music of early Romanticism with a paradoxically cyclic African touch. It is a kind of musique concrète instrumentale. In Verso il Capo, for example, a verso da capo of Handel's iconic theme is Africanized in a set of variations with changing tempi. Like speaking Biedermeier with a Tswana or a Zulu accent, the music speaks to the impossibility of pure mimesis as a site of revelation.
Could it be that the period of isolation (Covid, 2020) put us all back into a kind of child-mode; toward the body techniques of childhood? The child, all at once, recognizes that the world is too large and complicated to be comprehended, and yet that it is in fact far too large and present in the world. This double spatiality -- the vast and the vanishing -- is unframed by the standard symbolic orders and frames that later pull spaces into seeming perspective.”
Martin Scherzinger
Program Notes 9/19
Delong Wang (b.1994) – Portrait of the Astor Chinese Garden Court
“Ancient Chinese paintings are rarely associated with the word “cuteness”. But in my eyes, cuteness can exist in all corners of life, which certainly includes the theme of Chinese paintings - nature. A pavilion, a stone, a bamboo, a stream, they can all be symbols of loveliness. As an example, a mountain in an ancient Chinese landscape painting can be in the shape of a mountain, or the shape of a cloud, or the shape of water. These unique shape transformations are full of not only creativity, but also fun. This piece takes the Astor Chinese Garden Court (明轩) of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's as its inspiration and aims to portray the purity of shape and cuteness that fills every corner. I was invited by my beloved friend, pianist Tong Wang to compose this piece, and it is a dedication to our invaluable friendship.”
Delong Wang, 2022
Four succinct and poetic movements comprise the newly commissioned solo piano work by Delong Wang. The first piece, “Gazebo” is graceful and spacious with sparse, sustained melodic fragments as if an ink paintbrush is making strokes on paper. Brief moments of brilliant arpeggiations imitate the traditional instrument guqin. Similarly, the third piece, “Bamboo” portrays the plucking and glissandos of the quqin, contrasting moments of stillness and silence to create an atmosphere of poise, elegance, and pensive inner feeling. The second and fourth movements, “Rock” and “Stream” are energetic and intense with persistently driving figures that phase in and out behind the outer textures. In “Rock”, the repeated rhythmic motif accumulates resonance under the pedal, eliciting the powerful and majestic image of the mountains.
The “cuteness” in this work is represented by the elements in the garden. Rocks, bamboo, and stream reflect the grandeur of the natural world – mountains, forest, river – being recreated, brought home, and admired in their miniature form. There is an element of playfulness that is particularly evident towards the end of the last movement. The rhythmic drive launches into seemingly random and chaotic melodic fragments leaping across different registers, imitating both the buzzing of dragonflies as well as the ricochet of rocks that children are skipping on the water. At the end of the piece, the score instructs the piano lid to be closed – a gesture that imitates a traditional Chinese painting scroll being rolled back up after having been admired, thus signaling the story being concluded.
Larysa Kuzmenko (b.1956) - In Memoriam to the Victims of Chernobyl
The 1986 Chernobyl disaster was a chain of nuclear power plant explosions in northern Ukraine. The radiation generated was calculated to be 400 times more powerful than that of Hiroshima. 600, 000 people were severely exposed and over 4000 died of cancer in the aftermath. Clean-up is scheduled for completion by 2065, and generations of families cannot return home.
Canadian-Ukrainian composer Larysa Kuzmenko’s 2008 composition depicts the horrors of the nuclear plant explosion in Chernobyl. The music juxtaposes a lamenting traditional Ukrainian folk tune with the relentless rhythmic drive of the nuclear reactor. The muted echoes of the eerie traditional Ukrainian folk tune is superimposed on top of the mechanical motor motif, and builds up to two catastrophic explosions. Following the second climax, a sacred chant from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is quoted, and the piece ends with the opening theme, lingering on in a dark and ominous mood.
Fazil Say (b.1970) - Gezi Park 2, Op. 52
Gezi Park 2 is the middle of three works about the protests in Istanbul, Turkey in the spring of 2013. Initially to contend urban developments in Gezi Park, the protests were met by violent evictions and expanded to supporting strikes across Turkey. The original peaceful environmental movement turned into a nationwide historical event addressing a wide range of political concerns such as freedom of press and freedom of expression. Three and a half million people took part in over 5000 demonstrations, and 22 deaths and 8000 injuries were caused. Police under the authority of prime minister Erdogan suppressed the protests with tear gas and water cannons.
The slogans which rang in the air and the spirit of that day are reflected in Gezi Park 2, which depicts the violence and horrors of these protests, pays homage to the death of innocents, and ultimately conveys the hope at the heart of the people’s resistance.
“Bu da-ha bas-lan-giç, mü-ca-de-le-ye de-vam”
This is just the beginning, on with the struggle.
“Her yer Ta-sim, her yer di-re-nis”
Everywhere is Taksim, everywhere is resistance.
The score includes a note on the third movement: “14-year-old Berkin Elvan, an innocent child, was shot by the police on his way to the shop to buy bread. Berkin remained in a coma for 269 days and died on 14 March 2014. He weighed only 16 kilos when he died; his funeral in Istanbul was attended by 500,000 people.”
Martin Scherzinger (b.1975) - Etudes
Born and raised in South Africa, composer Scherzinger observed that African pianists at the local music school approached works of the great European masters with a rich and strange inflection. With the arrival of pianos, guitars, and accordions in the colonies, Africans have long indigenized classically European instruments to great effect. Instead of bringing long range structural lines and harmonic schemata to the fore, the African approach finds inspiration in the texture of the figures, their manner of weaving, the surface as cloth. This approach hears music not as developmental or goal-directed, but as continuous and cyclic. The etudes The Horse is not Mine, a Hobby Horse and Chopi Chopin are studies on what composers such as Schumann and Chopin might have done if they had written for a Zimbabwean mbira dza vadzimu. In Verso il Capo, Handel's iconic theme is Africanized in a set of variations with changing tempi.
“Like speaking Biedermeier with a Tswana or a Zulu accent, the music speaks to the impossibility of pure mimesis as a site of revelation. Could it be that the period of isolation (Covid, 2020) put us all back into a kind of child-mode; toward the body techniques of childhood? The child, all at once, recognizes that the world is too large and complicated to be comprehended, and yet that it is in fact far too large and present in the world. This double spatiality -- the vast and the vanishing -- is unframed by the standard symbolic orders and frames that later pull spaces into seeming perspective.”
-Martin Scherzinger (2022)
Reena Esmail (b.1983) – Piano Trio
“I wish I could live in India and America at the same time. I wish they shared a border, and I could build a little home right in between them. I know I can’t do that in the physical world, but this is where I live every day in my music.”
-Reena Esmail
Esmail’s piano trio, composed in 2019, is another work that combines traditional Hindustani music from North India with Western classical music. This four-movement work demonstrate strong influences from Ravel’s Piano Trio while at the same time referencing Indian music. Raags, a collection of tones, appear in each movement of the trio, including the monsoon season raag known as Megh. The name Megh Malhar derives from the Sanskrit word meaning cloud, and legends say that this raga has the power to bring out rains in the area where it is sung.
The first movement, “Ephemeral”, uses long modal phrases to create a floating, shimmering soundscape. The slow second movement is marked “Breathing”, and conjures a timeless, meditative atmosphere through sustained harmonies and improvisatory dialogue between the violin and cello. Esmail references Mendelssohn in the third movement with a light, scherzo-like dance marked “Capricious”, and again quotes Ravel’s compositional technique with sweeping glissandos in the piano. The final movement is dramatic, broad, and powerful, building a singing string melody to a soaring climax supported by “luminous” upwardly lifting piano figures. Esmail creates a spiritual realm in this trio that is ethereal, transformative, and elevating.