David Biedenbender

Composer

piano

Red Vesper

Instrumentation: 

Version 1 – Fl, Cl, A Sax, Electronics/Laptop, Pno, Vibr, Vln, Vc

Version 2 – Cl, Vln, Vc, Pno

Version 3 – Vln, Vla, Vc, Pno

Program Note:

 

Red Vesper was written for Bill Ryan and the Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble for their tour of the Western United States, including several National Parks. The National Parks are many things to many people, but for me, they have most often been a very special place to find silence inside of myself. A vesper is an evening prayer, a meditation and reflection at the end of the day, and I found the idea of holding vespers in the wilderness to be profound and beautiful. I chose to call it red vesper because of the deep, red glow of the setting sun on the horizon and also because of the beautiful and iconic red rock formations that occupy so many of our great National Parks, particularly Capitol Reef National Park.

The version for clarinet, violin, violoncello, and piano was written for Music from Copland House.

The version for violin, viola, violoncello, and piano was written for the Garth Newel Piano Quartet.

Liquid Architecture

Randall Hawes, bass trombone & Kathryn Goodson, piano

Program Notes:

Liquid Architecture was inspired by the work of Frank Gehry, whose work includes the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, the Dancing House in Prague, Czech Republic, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, among many others. I have heard his structures described as “liquid architecture,” and having experienced several of these buildings in person, I find this description to be both apt and stunningly beautiful. I love the image that this phrase evokes—that of a fixed structure taking on the physical properties of a liquid, like massive, molten droplets of metal melting into time—and I wanted to capture this same idea in music. In each movement, I have tried to create a vivid musical space that is slowly transformed into something very different from its original form, although, in some ways, it ends up returning to its original form, much in the same way that I think it is possible to imagine Gehry’s structures evolving in time. The first movement is entitled hard, and the second movement is entitled smooth.

Images

Jonathan Yanik, saxophone & Joy Mentzel, piano

 Program Note:

I wrote Images following a dream I had one night. After waking from this dream, I was left with a rather indistinct image of what had actually taken place, yet the impression that it left on me was so unmistakably vivid, I felt compelled to write this piece based on the elusive memory. The first image communicates the uncontrollable and dizzying sense of motion that occurs in the moments between sleep and lucidity; the second reflects upon a beautiful stillness that is distorted and then transformed back to tranquility; and the third is reminiscent of a wild, late night jam session.

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