Robert Honeysucker, Danbury Concert Chorus & Strings, composer Maxim Vladimiroff shine in world premiere of 'Walden'

This time lapse picture shows composer Maxim Vladimiroff adjusting his music, as members of the Danbury Concert Chorus find their places for the second half of last night's concert. It was a world premiere of Vladimiroff's  new work Walden, the Poetry of Nature for baritone soloist, chorus, string orchestra and piano. The work was commissioned by the Danbury Music Center and its music director Richard Price.

A teaching conductor is a wonderful thing and Danbury has one in Price, who understands that people enjoy music more when they know something about it and know what to listen for as the music plays. With a new or unfamiliar work in concert  -- how does this happen?  His solution is simple: play it twice, with a little commentary illustrated by musical examples, wedged in-between.

That was how Walden was presented last night at St. James Episcopal in Danbury, and it's well worth hearing many many times. It may well be a true masterwork of this composer.  It's the kind of composition where the sound is so beautiful - the sonorities alone can tear up the eyes and transport.  The baritone soloist was the extraordinary Robert Honeysucker, the chorus was the Danbury Concert Chorus, the strings sections were from the Danbury Symphony Chamber Players, the pianist was the composer himself.  During the first performance, Honeysucker read the text before each of the six movements of the work - (Spring, The Motions of a Sail, Nymphea Odorata, Autumnal Colors, Leaves and What Beauty!)

While all of the performers got hearty applause after the work was first heard - when the composer was brought up, the whole audience cheered, whistled, and stood up almost as a body.  Vladimiroff, an unassuming and personable soul, who has worked for three different churches in the area over the last decade and taught herds of children besides, has a lot of appreciative fans, including his mother (Tattiana?) and father, (Sergei Vladimiroff, a concert pianist)  his wife Leisa and two sons, Damien and Luca who were all in attendance to cheer him too.

But then it was time to learn a little something about the piece - Richard Price reminded us of his philosophy and brought Vladimiroff up to talk a bit about Walden.   As he mentioned each concept Price lead the chorus in an example from the work.

After a very animated intermission, the house fell silent to hear Walden played as a piece, without any reading of the text between movements. And here the arc of the work could be taken in.  And somehow in this last performance, Honeysucker was carried away with the work and delivered something marvelous and transcendent. The chorus too, having already performed it well  - had lost their nervousness and let go with truly solid gorgeous performance, as did chorus member Patricia Scharr who had a short section of solo notes. Everything was just right.

Three other wonderful choral works graced the program - Choose Something Like a Star by Randall Thompson, Shenandoah arranged by Donald Erb and Swansea Town by Gustav Holst.  It was a great night, and played to a packed house. People were standing in the back, and close parking was hard to come by. Thanks to all who contributed. It was a wonderful show.

Want to commission a Vladimiroff original or arrange piano lessons: http://VladimiroffMusic.net

-- Mar Walker

Books: The Adderall Diaries, Stephen Elliott in Bethel, CT

Friday the 13th, 2009.
   Stephen Elliott, author of The Adderall Diaries, is reserved, a compact man with interesting tattoos and a slightly tenorish voice - a man easy to picture as a masochist. He read his clean, brisk prose last night in puffy suburban Bethel CT (at Molten Java at 102  Greenwood), with a quiet voice as  even as the surface of his narrative.
questions:

   He read three sections in all, fairly conservative sections of the book, and took questions after each. The audience seemed very interested in the memory aspect of "memoir."  Elliott said his some of it was taken from writing done as journalling at the time the events were occurring, so the details were not drawn from distant memory nor imagined after the fact,  but were written down fresh from the experience itself. He said he'd done of lot of editing and that the writing in its present form was many steps away from the first writing.
   The audience also asked how difficult it was to do the the kind of extensive self-revelation that The Adderall Diaries contain. Elliott said that getting used to revealing your secrets was a gradual thing, and that he'd previously written several novels where he used material from his life. He compared the process  to a transvestite's coming out. First, Elliott said, the man puts on a dress when he's home alone. Then, after a while, he puts it on and wears it out for a quick trip to the store.  A few months latter, he's out dancing in it, and can hardly remember when just putting it on was a big deal.

odd fly buzzes in the ointment:

     Elliott's  reading was interrupted in the middle by the owner of the neighboring bookstore (at 104 Greenwood Ave). (The bookstore folks own the building where the coffeehouse and the bookstore are located.) She'd been sitting in the back, waiting for him to mention books for sale.
   She interrupted to announce officiously that there would be no book sales, as Molten Java's lease had a non-competition clause with the bookstore.  Of course Molten wasn't selling the books, the author was.  For her part, she had no copies of his book to sell in her store.  So it seems her only object was to thwart the income of one author selling directly to his public, and to piss off people who had formerly been her customers.
    After a final section of prose was read, the company left the coffeeshop and went to the pizza parlor across the street where we ordered pizza, and drinks, talked and many of us bought a book directly from the author. Art will out, landlords notwithstanding.

-- Mar Walker

POEM: Intensive care (from Inverse Origami, 1998)

Intensive Care

It's you, there, under the sickish lights
the mint walls, the turquoise bedpans.
Strangers with syringes interrupt
your feverish sleep.
your pale familiar face and matted hair,
your tubes and tethers.
Come home. Just come home.

---

 

from Inverse Origami - the art of unfolding
--- Mar (Mistryel) Walker, © 1998
Puzzled Dragon Press

Bent Pin: The familiar discomfort - Foster Trecost & MarkMcGuire-Schwartz

The familiar unhappiness is often more comfortable for human beings than making a difficult extended change.  This week we have one humorous poem about a couple aware of their own peculiarities, and a bit of flash fiction where the narrator is seemingly unaware of his own slightly sadistic pleasure in the discomfort of those around him. The works are Thoughts At The Table by Foster Trecost and Heartless by Mark McGuire-Schwartz.

The incomplete Bent Pin Archive can now be found at http://benpinquarterly.blogspot.com   Unfortunately this page is not online as yet.

-- MM Walker

What art can reveal

Writing prompt: If you joined the circus, what act would you most want to perform?

If I joined the circus I would certainly not want  to be the fire-eater. I already have enough heart-burn for two or three people.  The trapeze is too far off the ground, the fat-lady and the bearded lady are both unjustly reviled by many. The face painters have to listen to bratty kids , the knife thrower can never get enough insurance and the bareback riders wear little tutus that ride up their behinds.  Putting your head inside the lion's mouth is fool-hardy at any age.

If I could join the circus today, I would be the snake charmer. So many things are hidden, uncoiling their motives only when poised to strike. Like a skillful snake charmer, I would use a little music, a metaphor or two, a little color maybe, to coax a smooth, indifferent reptile out into the light so  its true nature can be examined.

-- Mar Walker

Dog and Cat Kiss: Interpretations differ - what's your take?

Many folks look at this photo and see a pretty little dog and cat kissing. What we see depends a lot on what we expect. I live with these two characters and what I see are two rivals inspecting the competition.  My pets are companionable but not affectionate with each other, and are often jealous of, or at least very interested in the attention or tidbitts the other gets. In this photo, I think they are checking each others cheeks and breath to see if one has eaten anything the other has missed, checking each others physical status and mood. This sweet little kitty often bites the dogs ears, lips or toes to drive her out of a spot of sun that the cat wants for herself.  The dog, who is aware that direct aggression on the cat is not an option within this pack, for her part will secretly steal the cat's food whenever she has the opportunity.

We often find it necessary to anthropomorphize or romanticize animals, especially when describing them to children, but they have their own agenda and motivations which differ greatly from our own.  This is the cause of a lot of injury.  A child assumes this is their beautiful stuffed toy to hug and drag about by an ear or a limb.  The cat, dog, rabbit, hamster responds with teeth to this attack, ends up euthanized, not beause they were evil or dangerous -- but because their owners were irresponsibly ignorant of their needs and nature.  When any dog is left alone with a small child and injury results it is most usually the fault of the supervising human being. If you own a gun and your toddler shoots someone with it, you are negligent and you get a fine. If you own a dog, and someone is injured, you might pay damages, but in the final tally its the poor dog that pays the price for your lack of objective knowledge about nature.

-- Mar Walker

iPhone App Art with a homecooked sound track

Yes, is true that I like to fiddle around with materials and with technology. This is a video slide show of art made on an iPhone. Click on the photo to watch the video.

ARTWORK: The slides were created in SpinArt a $1.99 cent IPhone app.
MUSIC: The sound track is made in three distinct tracks each recorded driectly into iMoive HD (the old iMovie) For one track I used "mouth percussion" on another I smacked the TV remote against a lamp, on a third I improvised a tune (me singing). Then I manipulated each track using IMovie's audio editor applying pitch changes, delay and reverb i varying proportions and doing a little graphic equalization until the three tracks together had a sound I liked. It's short so give a little listen....  I kind of like the effect even though it's different from both my acoustic songs and from the classical music I used to do.

-- Mar Walker