WATERLESS MUSIC - by BENJAMIN BOONE | PHILIP LEVINE

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• published: 16 Nov 2015
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WATERLESS MUSIC: FEATURING THE POETRY AND NARRATION OF PHILIP LEVINE - BY BENJAMIN BOONE. Thomas Loewenheim conducts the FOOSA Orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall, June 26, 2015. Program Notes: When I was commissioned to write a piece about water I first thought of its essence and its physical qualities: its various forms and peculiarities like its expansion and buoyancy when it freezes, or the way it evaporates, forms clouds, falls to earth and flows over surfaces. But in California in 2015, one cannot consider water without considering the lack of water we are experiencing. Water is everything. We are water, and we depend on water to sustain all life. Fields that used to be green and full of life are now brown. Small communities have watched their only wells dry up. Lakes are at their lowest levels in decades. Millions of trees in the Sierra are dying. Air quality is deteriorating. As I contemplated how to put all of this into music, the Fresno area community experienced the loss of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine. It was also a personal loss. I, along with several other musicians, had been collaborating with Philip on a CD project – a modern integration of music and poetry tentatively called “The Jazz of Word.” So after Philip’s death, in remembrance of him and to the work we had done together, I went back and listened to the tracks we had recorded. Somewhat unexpectedly, I noted that Philip frequently used water, rain, and dryness as metaphors. I began writing these down and categories began to emerge. I then excerpted the audio of these spoken phrases and created a montage - a narrative that goes from the beginning of earth’s existence, to water, to rain, to dark clouds, to a violent storm, to environmental collapse, to fallow land and infertility and finally to a complete lack of water. Once I finished the recorded narration track, I composed the orchestral music around it. The beginning of the world is symbolized by humming and the “playing” of goblets of water tuned to D and A. Then water, in two amplified and illuminated 44-quart bowls, is played as an instrument – first by players dripping water from their cupped hands and later by holding up clear bowls with multiple holes drilled in the bottom of them to simulate rain coming from clouds. The piano, woodwinds and strings play cascading figures, like water flowing down rocks on the sides of a waterfall at different speeds. There is a thunderstorm –- with music borrowed from ASCECENCION, a Native American cantata I composed with Helene Joseph-Weil -- where the players beat the water with cups and dip gongs into the water, followed by scenes of polluted waters and environmental degradation. Harmonies become more dissonant, the rhythms less stable, and the melodies more angular. Towards the end, I use the higher ranges of the instruments playing short, dissonant notes as Levine speaks of “abandoned farmhouses... nothing could grow from this ground” and other drought-related themes. The last lines of the narration come from By the Waters of the Llobregat, a poem about genocide: “By the waters of the world, no one sits down and weeps.” The work ends with the same visual that began the piece – the holding up of a “cloud.” But now instead of rain, drips fall only sporadically. ~ Benjamin Boone Commissioned by the Youth Orchestras of Fresno, Thomas Loewenheim, Director, with funding from a NEW MUSIC USA Project Grant. VISIT: www.BenjaminBoone.com About the FOOSA Festival/Fresno Summer Orchestra Academy: FOOSA is an intensive orchestral immersion program developed by Thomas Loewenheim that runs for two weeks each summer in Fresno, CA. Faculty for 2015 include Bruce Bransby, double bass (Indiana University Jacobs School of Music), Francisco Cabán, violin (Puerto Rico Conservatory), Edmund Cord, trumpet (Indiana University Jacobs School of Music), Matthew Darling, percussion (California State University Fresno), Luis Fred, trombone (Puerto Rico Conservatory), Thomas Landschoot, cello (Arizona State University Herberger Institute), Rong-Huey Liu, oboe (CSU Fullerton, Fresno Philharmonic), Thomas Loewenheim, cello (CSU Fresno), Catherine Marchese, bassoon (Glickman Ensemble), Kristy Morrell, horn (Colburn, USC, LA Chamber Orchestra), Siwon Park, cello (Hong Kong Sinfonietta), Limor Toren-Immerman, violin (CSU Fresno), Misha Vitenson, violin (Amernet String Quartet, Florida International University), Mihoko Watanabe, flute (Ball State University), Guy Yehuda, clarinet (Michigan State University), and Meidad Yehudayan, viola (Hong Kong International School).