for
Barry
presents
Thanks its donors:
Rosina Abramson, David Barnert, Ellen Berkely,
POETRY into
Patricia Binzer, Henry Binzer,
Dorice Brickman & Ellen Brickman,
Song
Poetry by Robert Frost and Julia Alvarez
Robert Crawford, Maria Faiella-Cunningham,
Jack and Susan Edmonds,
Heidi Jacob, composer (J. Alvarez)
Mary D’Alessandro - Gilmore,
Allen Shawn, composer (R. Frost)
Eitan & Maika Evan, Keith Edwards,
Laurie and Stanley Feingold ,
Cristina Faiella-Simpson, Frank Gilmore,
Ida Faiella, Soprano & Executive Producer
Jeffrey Glen, Helen S. Greaney,
Barry Finclair, Violin
Robert & Cora Mae Howe, Heidi Jacob,
Charles Abramovic, Piano
Cheryl Johnson, Constance Kheel,
Stanley & Josephine Kivort,
Dale Stuckenbruck, Music Producer
Patricia Lamb , Frank Laskey, Jonathan Mills,
Joe Sears, Recording Engineer
Benjamin and Ruth Mendel
Muriel Palmer, Allen Shawn, Timothy D. Smith,
Hal Winer, Assistant Engineer
Barbara Thompson,
Stephanie Engeln, Art Director
Susan Thompson, Natalie Tinkelman,
Beverly Wittner Traa, Margaret & John Underwood,
as well as
The Glen Family Foundation, The Haverford College,
The Jacob Family Trust, The Mary N. Geanellis Trust
and Bennington College.
Recorded at Bi-Coastal Studios, Ossining, NY
score detail by Allen Shawn
I.
FROZEN LAKE
Allen Shawn (Composed in 1995)
Poems of Robert Frost
1. Desert Places (voice and piano)
2. Bereft (voice, violin and piano)
3. Interlude (violin and piano)
4. Acceptance (voice, violin and piano)
5. The Investment (voice and piano)
6. Interlude (violin and piano)
7. Canis Major (voice and violin)
8. Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening (voice, violin and piano)
Ida Faiella, Soprano, Barry Finclair, Violin,
Allen Shawn, Piano
II. ROMANCES
Allen Shawn (composed in 1996)
Barry Finclair, Violin, Allen Shawn, Piano
III. BEGINNING AGAIN
Heidi Jacob (composed in 2009)
Poems of Julia Alvarez
1. Gladys Singing
2. Folding My Clothes
3. Are We All Ill
4. Beginning Again
Robert Frost, poet
(March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963)
was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was
published in America. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life
and his command of American colloquial
speech.
Portrait of Robert Frost
FROZEN LAKE
The Frozen Lake was composed in the Fall of
1995 on a commssion from L’Ensemble that requested a setting of poems by Robert Frost for
soprano, violin and piano. I chose six poems
that seemed to me to be linked by themes of
loneliness, alienation, and the desire to break
out, to “get some color and music out of life”
- in the words of the fourth poem, The Investment. The title, which was meant to suggest
these themes, comes from the most familiar
poem in the group, Stopping by Woods On A
Snowy Evening. Looking through Frost’s work
one is hard pressed to find support for his reputation as a cozily avuncular figure. The poems
set in this piece suggest that the author was a
kind of American Samuel Beckett, or a poetic
counterpart to the painter Edward Hopper. At
no point in these texts does human interaction
occur; the protagonists are isolated in their private worlds, often “in the dark” in every sense.
The narrator of “Stopping by Woods” thinks he
knows who the owner of the woods is but says
that, in any case, the owner’s house is in the village; the digger of potatoes in “The Investment”
can only speculate who is playing the distant
piano, and the text only says that the piano is
playing, not that a person is playing it.
The violin, which enters midway in the second
song, Bereft, provides an independent commentary in three of the songs. Absent in movements
1 and 5, it plays solo with the voice in movement
7, Canis Major, suggesting a phantom partner
in the sky. Writing this movement I pictured
that the speaker in the poem was out on his
porch at night, happily drunk. Movements 3
and 6 are rhapsodic interludes in which the
violin and piano seem to go off on their own
freely improvising on themes from the songs.I
wouldn’t quite call these “settings’ of Frost. I revere Frost’s words, and did not attempt to mirror
in my work the music the poems already make
on their own. Instead I tried to create music for
them and around them that has its own structure and emotional tone, hoping to shed light on
them from another perspective.
This work is dedicated to Ida Faiella and Barry
Finclair. We honed our performance in many
venues, including New York City, Albany, Adams Massachussets, Middlebury Vermont and in
towns throughout the Adirondack mountains. In
our first performances we were joined by Robert
J. Lurtsema, who recited the poems, and poet
Steven Cramer, who spoke about Frost.
Allen Shawn
ROMANCES
Romances for violin and piano was written
in the Winter of 1996 at the Yaddo artist
colony. It is a single movement piece lasting
fourteen minutes, in three distinct sections
(slow-fast-slow) which could be viewed as
three aspects of a love relationship, three
romances, one romance interrupted by
another—or, if one prefers, simply as a
piece of music. The three part form is not
an traditional “ABA” structure, but is a
progression. The music of the first section is
like a long rhapsodic Aria, full of youthful
longing and ardor. In the middle section
one might hear adventure, dialogue, and
quarrels. The music of the final pages is
not a return to the beginning, but has a
more intimate, searching, resigned and
mature character. Barry Finclair gave
the premiere performance in New York
in November 1997, and learning the
work with him was its own journey. The
commitment, passion and attention to
detail he invested in his work on this piece
was a lesson in musicianship I won’t forget.
The beauty of his recorded performance,
made when he was in such poor health,
represents a kind of devotion for which I
don’t have words, but which fortunately
has been preserved for future listeners.
Allen Shawn
“Both players gave stellar performances, making this difficult music seem less
daunting than it really is. And both indulged the emotionally taut sensuality of
the music. The audience gave the piece an enthusiastic reception.
The Albany Times Union
“Poetry into Song”
artists
Charles Abramovic,
Ida Faiella,
Barry Finclair,
Heidi Jacob,
Allen Shawn
BEGINNING AGAIN
Julia Alvarez’ direct, reflective and often
sensuous poems - found in the collections
The Woman, I Kept to Myself, Homecoming, and The Other Side/El Otro
Lado - often take readers on a journey
through the landscape of immigrant life.
L’Ensemble commissioned a setting of
four of her poems into music by Haverford College Professor Heidi Jacob.
Celebrated author and poet Julia Alvarez is best known for her fictional works
“How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” and “In the Time of Butterflies”.
Her book “Once Upon a Quinceanera:
Coming of Age in the USA” was described
by The Washington Post as a “fascinating, exhaustively researched book about
the celebration of a girl’s coming of age.”
Permission has been granted to L’Ensemble to
print copies of four poems by Julia Alvarez for
this specific recording. By permission of the
author and Susan Bergholz Literary Services.
Julia Alvarez, poet
“Your voice and the music
of your Ensemble gave my
poems another pair of wings
for reaching the heart!”
Julia Alvarez about Ida Faiella
Julia Alvarez (born March 27, 1950) is a
Dominican-American poet, novelist, and
essayist. Born in New York of Dominican
descent, she spent the first ten years of her
childhood in the Dominican Republic, until
her father’s involvement in a political rebellion forced her family to flee the country.
Portrait of Julia Alvarez
Gladys Singing
by Julia Alvarez
Gladys sang as she worked
in her high, clear voice,
mangulinas, merengues,
salves, boleros, himnos.
Why do you sing? I asked her
as she polished off a song
with a twirl of her feather duster.
Singing, she told me, makes
everything else possible.
She taught me La cucaracha,
Yo soy el aventurero,
Compadre Pedro Juan, Guantanamera.
She swept and mopped, whistling
the lament of the sad hidalgo;
her hand as she washed windows
conducted a hidden combo;
she polished the mute mahogany
of the sideboard, humming quietly,
then belting out a song
when we heard the front door close,
Mami calling goodbye,
the car turning on the road.
Canta y no llores,
porque cantando se alegran,
cielito Lindo, los corazones.
Together we polished the slats
of the sliding salomònicas
until they glowed the rich
rhythm of a guaracha;
we sang passionate canciones,
anthems or carols in season;
putting aside our brooms,
we danced energetic merengues.
I trained my tentative alto
to her silver bell soprano,
until we heard the car
roaring up the driveway,
the click of my mother’s heels
metronomic at the entrance,
and we fell silent, knowing the rules,
as the door opened upon
rooms sparkling like jewels
in a mummy’s lonely tomb.
Folding My Clothes
by Julia Alvarez
Tenderly she would take them down and fold
the arms in and fold again where my back
should go until she made a small
tight square of my chest, a knot of socks
where my feet blossomed into toes,
a stack of denim from the waist down,
my panties strictly packed into the size
of handkerchiefs on which no trace
of tears showed. All of me under control.
But there was tenderness, the careful matching
of arm to arm, the smoothing of wrinkles,
every button buttoned on the checkered blouse
I disobeyed in. There was sweet order
in those scented drawers, party dresses
perfect as pictures in the back of the closet-until I put them on, breathing life back
into those abstract shapes of who I was
which she found so much easier to love.
Beginning Again
“Are We All ill With
Acute Loneliness”
by Julia Alvarez
Are we all ill with acute loneliness,
chronic patients trying to recover
the will to love? Yet all we’ve suffered
from others and ourselves, all the losses
of faith in the human face--when we glimpsed
the animal in the mother’s grimace
or in the lover’s grin as he promised
the promise no one can keep--made us lapse
back into our separateness. We all feel
absence like a wound. Sometimes the love
of another wounded one acts like a salve
which soothes the dying self but cannot heal
our lives. And perhaps this is what it feels
like to be human, and we are all well?
by Julia Alvarez
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night counting
over our losses again.
But if on a warm afternoon in late March,
stopping the car to trespass in a stubble field,
wearing my sister’s hand-me-down sweater,
looking back to the road where I left the car parked,
If I can let it all go: the house since sold
to strangers, the four girls in matching dresses
descending into the windy runway,
their homeland a cloudshape on a map,
if the losses, the wrong answers
(some painfully lived out),
if these are not so deeply grieved in the heartbroken mind so that we cannot possibly recover,
so that we are always descending
into a city of strangers, always forcing
our tongues to shape the foreign word
for what we really mean, then all of us,
and I mean the whole world, can be saved.
I know that sounds like a schoolgirl talking,
a bit self-indulgent, I know that there are men
with large salaries, men with kempt hair
and tidy, monosyllabic mouths, men
I have yearned for in the impersonal way
of young girls towards a god or a rockstar,
who would smile, fondling the change in their pockets
at this vision. But, if the deepest loss,
short of death--of a language, of the valuable
codes of the mind, of a land dusty with ancestors-can be, not just survived, but made into the matter
of hope, made into song, not just a hatchet
to cut off the offending parts, made into poems,
then blessed be the end of things, the loss of whatever
secures us blindly and mutely to our lives.
If in late March as I walk in a field, I let it all go,
the mourning, the holding on-then briefly, as if for the first time,
the world untold, loved as never before,
the self beginning itself again, the field
heading for spring, the seeds sown,
the grasses bending, the car pointing
towards the horizon I’ll call home.
--for Tita
Barry Finclair, violin
Ida Faiella, soprano MD
At the age of 13, Barry Finclair was chosen by Leonard Bernstein to perform
as soloist on The Young
People’s Concerts with the
New York Philharmonic
and nationally broadcast on CBS TV. He
attended New York City’s School of Performing Arts, the Juilliard School of Music,
Mannes College of Music and the University of Southern California. He also studied
with Jascha Heifetz, David Nadien, Dorothy
DeLay, Ivan Galamian and Itzhak Perlman.
His awards and prizes include First Place
in The Merriweather Post Competition after which he was invited to appear as soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra
in Washington D.C. A former member of
the New York Philharmonic, he also played
with The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
and toured with both. Extremely active in
the New York City recording studios, he
played on literally thousands of film scores,
musical theater recordings, jazz and pop.
Barry has performed with such artists as Itzhak Perlman, David Nadien, Emanuel Ax and Robert Levin.
Performer, teacher, arts
administrator and radio host,
Ida Faiella has been described
as the personification of
versatility. She has performed
and
taught
throughout
the US including the Lincoln Center and
Tanglewood and from Moscow to London
while being applauded by critics for her
exacting standards. Serving as music director
for the Friendship Ambassadors Foundation,
the largest private cultural exchange
organization in the US. In that capacity, she
auditioned ensembles from throughout the
US and directed performances in Romania,
Poland and Russia.
Ida was appointed
Arts Commissioner for Albany, NY.
She studied at the Hartt School of
Music, Yale, SUNY Stony Brook and
Aspen; her mentors included Jennie
Tourel, Adele Addison and Dan
Merriman. A distinguised career in
education has included Hartt, SUNY, HVCC,
Bennington College, Southern
Vermont
College, Harlem School of the Arts and the
Convent of the Sacred Heart.
“It was the wicked virtuosity with
which Barry Finclair handled the violin
solos that seemed responsible for the
intensity of the performance”
New York Times
“Faiella sings with considerable
intelligence and an apt intimacy
and warmth”
New York Times
“Mr. Abramovic revealed a
powerful mixture of Romantic
gesture, elegiac dreaminess and
jazzy patter in the Elliott Carter
Sonata. And the Paganini-Liszt ‘’La
Campanella’’ was refined, delicate
and consummately musical.”
New York Times
“L’Ensemble’s
ambitiousness
is to be commended almost as
heartily as its members virtuosity
on programs such as this. They
offer a range of artistic and literary
diversion that belies the seemimg
limits of the chamber music
idiom.”
New York City Arts Weekly
Charles Abramovic, piano
Allen Shawn, composer
Has won critical acclaim
for
his
international
performances. As a solo
recitalist, he has performed
throughout the United States,
Canada, and Europe, and has
played at major festivals in Salzburg, Berlin,
Bermuda, Dubrovnik, Vancouver, Aspen, and
Newport. He made his orchestral debut at
fourteen with the Pittsburgh Symphony. He
has collaborated with such artists as Midori,
Viktoria Mullova, and Kim Kashkashian. His
recording of the solo piano works of Delius on
the DTR label won praise in the United States
and Europe. Highly dedicated to performing
and recording contemporary music, he has
recorded works by Milton Babbitt, Gunther
Schuller, Joseph Schwanter and others.
Abramovic recently received the Faculty
Award for Creative Achievement from Temple
University, where he is currently Professor
and Interim Department Chair at the Boyer
College of Music and Dance. His teachers
have included Natalie Phillips, Leon Fleisher,
Eleanor Sokoloff, and Harvey Wedeen.
Started composing at the
age of ten. He studied with
Leon Kirchner at Harvard University and Nadia
Boulanger in Paris. Since
1985, he has been on the
faculty of Bennington College in Vermont. Shawn’s musical output comprises
a dozen orchestral works and concertos;
three chamber operas; a large catalogue of
chamber music; songs, choral music, piano music, and music for ballet and theater.
Recent premieres include his Violin Concerto (2009) a Rhapsody for violin and piano
(2010), and his Piano Sonata No. 4 (2010).
His recordings include three volumes of
piano music; a dozen chamber works;
the chamber opera “The Music Teacher “;
and his piano concerto, performed by Ursula Oppens and the Albany Symphony.
Shawn is also the author of four books,
“Arnold Schoenberg’s Journey” (2002),
“Wish I Could Be There” (2007), and
“Twin” (2011), and a book about Leonard Bernstein for Yale University Press
scheduled for publication in 2014.
Heidi Jacob,
Dale Stuckenbruck , music producer
composer
Composer, cellist, and conductor, Heidi Jacob is Associate
Professor of Music at Haverford
College. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and The
Juilliard School, she has performed throughout
the United States and Europe and has recorded
for Capstone Records, Albany Records and Navona records. Ms. Jacob’s solo and chamber music works have been performed at the Kimmel
Center in Philadelphia, Summer Stars Classics
in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, at The Philadelphia Chamber Music Series, Rutgers University’s Complex Weave: Women and Identity in
Contemporary Art installation and by the Momenta String Quartet, the Argento Ensemble,
Network for New Music, the Hildegard Chamber Players, Temple University’s Contemporary
Music Ensemble, flutists Mimi Stillman and
Adeline Tomasone, pianist Charles Abramovic, cellist Jeffrey Solow and bassoonist Pascal
Gallois. Her works have won prizes in International Alliance for Women in Music Competition (Judith Lang Zaimont Prize division),
and were selected as part of Network for New
Music’s Poetry Project, and the 2006 Festival of
Contemporary Music in Oakland, California.
A Violinist, Concertmaster, Mandolinist and Sawist having performed in Asia,
South America, Europe and the US. Grammy nominated for Crumb’s “Ancient Voices
of Children” on Bridge, he has played with
Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society,
Brooklyn Philharmonic, Taipei City Symphony among others. He composed the
soundtrack for “Shadows” which played at
the Whitney Museum for five months. A
member of the LIU Post faculty and music director of the Waldorf School of Garden City, Dale received his DMA from the
Manhattan School of Music.
Joe Sears , recording engineer
score detail by Heidi Jacob
Has worked with Harry Belafonte, Ron
Carter, Joe Beck and Carlos Franzetti
among others. He has recorded and
mixed numerous TV and radio commercials, many of them award winners.
He received his degree from Syracuse
University studying Music Theory and
Composition with renowned theorist
Howard Boatwright. He has been recording and mixing many award winning
short films, documentaries, feature films,
and commercially released albums in
all different acoustic and electric styles.
L’Ensemble’s musical mission
has always been to s-t-r-e-tc-h the definition of chamber
music! L’Ensemble performs all
facets of chamber music from
Bach’s unaccompanied sonatas
to fully staged productions.
Under the direction of founder
and artistic director Ida Faiella,
L’Ensemble’s
repertoire
includes the classics and much
more, from jazz-influenced
works to cabaret arrangements
of the standards by such
composers as Irving Berlin,
Jerome Kern, George Gershwin
and Leonard Bernstein. Since
its inception, L’Ensemble has
demonstrated its commitment
to living American composers.
Commissioned
composers
have
included
Seymour
Barab, Victoria Bond, George
Calusdian, Gloria Colicchio,
Jon
Deak,
Heidi
Jacob,
Lincoln Mayorga, and Allen
Shawn. Commissions have
also included the work of
American poets, such as Julia
Alvarez, Robert Frost, Maya
Angelou and William Bronk.
L’Ensemble
initiated
a
competition called Play It
Again to give continuing life to
works of chamber music that
had received a premiere,but
had been performed no
more than five times. The
composers of the winning
works, chosen from a national
response of nearly 200 entries,
were invited to speak to the
audience about their work
when L’Ensemble performed
them as part of a regular series.
L’Ensemble has performed
throughout the United States
including such performance
venues and music festival sites
as the University of Minnesota,
Lincoln Center, the Wave Hill
Concerts (Riverdale, NY), Snug
Harbor Cultural Center (Staten
Island), Philbrook Museum
(Tulsa,
OK),
Binghamton
(NY) Sumer Music Festival,
University of Maine Arts
Festival, the Albany Institute
of History and Art, Capitol
Repertory Theatre, Page Hall,
the Bennington Center for the
Arts and Tanglewood’s Ozawa
Hall. “These talented musicians
have a knack of picking out
works that are unusual, or
even slightly eccentric, but
which nevertheless provide
enormous audience pleasure.”
(Staten
Island
Advance),
“If
you want joy in your
music, L’Ensemble is for
you!”
(Boston
Globe)
HEAR OUR MUSIC. Its waiting for you.
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generous contributions or volunteerism since its beginning in New York
City in 1974. If you would like to join those who have contributed, please
write a check payable to L’Ensemble and mail it to:
L’Ensemble
P. O. Box 393
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