Overture Magazine: 2017-2018 Season January-February 2018 | Page 38

RITE OF SPRING
In 2016, Marsalis traveled to Germany
for a concert with the Bayerische Staatsoper
at the National Theatre in Munich.
He then made his debut with the City
Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong,
followed by a performance with the
Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra at
the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur.
Marsalis’ original music for a revival
of August Wilson’s Fences, garnered a
Drama Desk Award for Outstanding
Music in a Play and a Tony® nomination
for Best Original Score Written for the
Theater. Marsalis also provided music for
The Mountaintop and served as musical
curator for the 2014 revival of A Raisin in
the Sun. His screen credits include writing
original music for Mo’ Better Blues and
acting in School Daze and Throw Momma
from the Train.
Marsalis formed the Marsalis Music
label in 2002, which has documented his
own music, talented new stars and older
masters. He also shares his knowledge
as an educator at Michigan State, San
Francisco State and North Carolina
Central universities and in conducting
workshops in the U.S. and abroad.
Marsalis has toured with Sting,
collaborated with the Grateful Dead
and Bruce Hornsby, served as musical
director of The Tonight Show and hosted
NPR’s Jazz Set. Together with Harry
Connick, Jr. and New Orleans Habitat
for Humanity, Marsalis conceived of
and helped to realize The Musicians’
Village, a community that provides
homes to the displaced families of
musicians and other local residents
affected by Hurricane Katrina. The
Musicians’ Village includes the Ellis
Marsalis Center for Music, a community
center dedicated to preserving New
Orleans’ musical legacy with spaces for
performance, instruction and recording.
Marsalis is the recipient of three
Grammy® Awards and (together with his
father and brothers) was designated as a
Jazz Master by the National Endowment
for the Arts.
Branford Marsalis last appeared with the BSO
in January 2003, performing works of Villa-
Lobos and Fauré, Thomas Wilkins, conductor.
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OV E R T U R E / BSOmusic.org
About the Concert
ABSTRACTIONS
Anna Clyne
Born in London, England, March 9, 1980;
now living in Brooklyn, NY
In May 2016, the Baltimore Symphony
Orchestra celebrated its 100 th -anniversary
season with an extraordinary collaboration
between the dynamic young British-
American composer Anna Clyne and the
Baltimore Museum of Art. Inspired by
five contemporary abstract works from the
BMA and the private collection of Rheda
Becker and Robert Meyerhoff, she created a
beautiful new orchestral work for the BSO.
Now Marin Alsop brings Abstractions back
so that we can experience it more deeply.
It is not surprising that Clyne should
choose to write a musical work inspired
by the visual arts, for that’s how she
launches many of her compositions:
not by experimenting on the piano, but
instead by creating a collage painting for
her studio wall, embodying visually what
she wants her new piece to say sonically.
“My passion is collaboration,” she explains.
“Inspired by visual images and physical
movement, my intention is to create music
that complements and interacts with other
art forms and that impacts performers and
audiences alike.”
Born in London, Clyne is currently
living in the U.S., where for several season
she served as the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra’s Mead Composer-in-Residence;
she has held similar posts with the
Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music
and with Orchestre National d’Ile de
France. Her music is in huge demand by
major orchestras in America and Europe
and has been presented in such diverse
concert locations as New York’s trendy Le
Poisson Rouge and the establishment icon
Carnegie Hall.
Clyne describes Abstractions in her
own words:
“Abstractions is a suite of five movements
inspired by five contrasting contemporary
artworks from the Baltimore Museum
of Art and from the private collection of
Rheda Becker and Robert Meyerhoff,
whom this music honors. ‘Marble Moon’
—inspired by Sara VanDerBeek’s Marble
Moon (2015). ‘Auguries ’—inspired
by Julie Mehretu’s Auguries (2010).
‘Seascape ’— inspired by Hiroshi
Sugimoto’s Caribbean Sea, Jamaica
(1980). ‘River ’—inspired by Ellsworth
Kelly’s River II (2005). ‘Three’—inspired
by Brice Marden’s 3 (1987– 88).
“In drawing inspiration from these
artworks, I have tried to capture the
feelings or imagery that they evoke, the
concept of the work or the process adopted
by the artists. Such examples are the filtered
blues, and the contrast between light falling
on the earthy stone and the mysterious
moon, that characterizes VanDerBeek’s
Marble Moon; the long arching lines,
compact energetic marks and dense shifting
forms of a system on the verge of collapse
in Mehretu’s Auguries; the serene horizon
with rippled water in Sugimoto’s Caribbean
Sea, Jamaica; the stark juxtaposition of the
energetic black-and-white lines that enlarge
Kelly’s brushstrokes in River II; and the
lines that, inspired by Asian calligraphy and
the structure of seashells, appear to dance
in Marden’s 3.
“Some common threads between the
artworks are their use of limited color
palettes, references to nature and the
capturing of time as a current that flows
—distilling and preserving it so that we
can contemplate it as the viewer. I was also
attracted to the structures of these works
—for example, River II and Auguries,
which at first sight could be seen as random
and even chaotic, but are in fact created
within a sense of order, which makes them
feel both dynamic and structural.
“Thank you to Marin Alsop and the
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for this
wonderful opportunity to write music
in honor of Rheda Becker and Robert
Meyerhoff, and to Kristen Hileman,
Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at
the Baltimore Museum of Arts, for her
generosity of time and knowledge.”
Instrumentation: Three flutes including
piccolo, three oboes including English horn,
three clarinets including bass clarinet, three
bassoons including a contrabassoon, four horns,
three trumpets, t