Within the Music:
Sounds from Home!
a livestreamed concert
Sunday January 29th at 4:30 pm central time
This one-hour long concert (no intermission) is going to be live streamed from Roxy Grove Recital Hall at Baylor University and will celebrate the voices of immigrants reminiscing about their homeland via spoken word and classical music.
I will be join by my School of Music colleagues Shijun Wang (piano) and Michael Clark (piano) to present works by Mieczysław Weinberg, Paul Ben-Haim, Eva Wasserman- Margolis and a world premiere of a piece by Baylor School of Music D.M.A student Maroun Azar. The poems by Ricardo Miró, Moniza Alvi, José Olivarez will be presented by students from the University's Department of Theatre Arts.
You can join us live via the YouTube Livestream @ https://youtu.be/xkdX-WCEwn8
This one-hour long concert (no intermission) is going to be live streamed from Roxy Grove Recital Hall at Baylor University and will celebrate the voices of immigrants reminiscing about their homeland via spoken word and classical music.
I will be join by my School of Music colleagues Shijun Wang (piano) and Michael Clark (piano) to present works by Mieczysław Weinberg, Paul Ben-Haim, Eva Wasserman- Margolis and a world premiere of a piece by Baylor School of Music D.M.A student Maroun Azar. The poems by Ricardo Miró, Moniza Alvi, José Olivarez will be presented by students from the University's Department of Theatre Arts.
You can join us live via the YouTube Livestream @ https://youtu.be/xkdX-WCEwn8
Sounds from Home
An artist’s reminiscence of home
My Country Ricardo Miró (1883-1940)
Translated by Tom Pow
James Jackson, actor
Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, op. 28 (1946) Mieczysław Weinberg (1919- 1996)
I. Allegro
II. Allegretto
III. Adagio
Ran Kampel, clarinet
Shijun Wang, piano
Mexican American Disambiguation José Olivarez (b. 1988)
Miquela Lopez, actor
The Guilty Escape (world premiere) Maroun A. Azar (b. 1996)
I.
II.
Ran Kampel, clarinet
Shijun Wang, piano
The Generation of Hope Eva Wasserman- Margolis (b. 1956)
Ran Kampel, clarinet
Hindi Urdu Bol Chaal Moniza Alvi (b. 1954)
Zain Fazalbhai, actor
Three Songs Without Words Paul Ben-Haim (1897-1984)
I. Arioso
II. Ballad
III. Sephardic Melody
Ran Kampel, clarinet
Michael Clark, piano
Many thanks to Steven Pounders, Professor of Acting at the Baylor University Department of Theatre Arts, who helped prepare the students for the performance.
An artist’s reminiscence of home
My Country Ricardo Miró (1883-1940)
Translated by Tom Pow
James Jackson, actor
Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, op. 28 (1946) Mieczysław Weinberg (1919- 1996)
I. Allegro
II. Allegretto
III. Adagio
Ran Kampel, clarinet
Shijun Wang, piano
Mexican American Disambiguation José Olivarez (b. 1988)
Miquela Lopez, actor
The Guilty Escape (world premiere) Maroun A. Azar (b. 1996)
I.
II.
Ran Kampel, clarinet
Shijun Wang, piano
The Generation of Hope Eva Wasserman- Margolis (b. 1956)
Ran Kampel, clarinet
Hindi Urdu Bol Chaal Moniza Alvi (b. 1954)
Zain Fazalbhai, actor
Three Songs Without Words Paul Ben-Haim (1897-1984)
I. Arioso
II. Ballad
III. Sephardic Melody
Ran Kampel, clarinet
Michael Clark, piano
Many thanks to Steven Pounders, Professor of Acting at the Baylor University Department of Theatre Arts, who helped prepare the students for the performance.
Program notes
My Country By Ricardo Miró (translated by Tom Pow)
Such a small country, spread on an isthmus
where the sky is clearer, the sun brighter;
all your music echoes within me, like the sea
in the small cell of the conch.
Yet again, there are times I feel dread
when I don’t see the way back to you…
Perhaps I’d never have known such love,
if destiny hadn’t carried me over the sea.
La Patria is memory…Scraps of life
wrapped in ribbons of love or of pain;
the murmur of palms, the commonplace songs,
the garden, stripped of its flowers.
La Patria is a map of old winding trails,
that, from childhood, I tramped without pause,
on which stand the ancient familiar trees
that talk to us of the soul in times long past.
Instead of these towers, arrowed with gold,
where the sun comes to lose its heart,
leave me the old trunk where I carved a date,
where I stole a kiss, where I learned to dream.
Oh, my ancient towers, beloved and remote:
I feel such nostalgia for your pealing bells!
I have seen many towers, heard many bells,
but have known none, my distant towers,
to sing like you, to sing and to weep.
La Patria is memory…Scraps of life
wrapped in ribbons of love or of pain;
the murmur of palms, the commonplace songs,
the garden, stripped of its flowers.
Such a small country, all of you will fit
beneath the shadow of our flag: perhaps
you were so pretty, to ensure I’d carry you
everywhere in my heart!
Reproduced by kind permission of the translator
Weinberg Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, op. 28
Mieczysław Weinberg (1919, Warsaw–1996, Moscow) also spelled Mojsze Wajnberg, Moishe/Moisey Vainberg, was born in Poland into a family of Jewish musicians and started playing the piano at an early age. In 1939 Weinberg fled from anti-Semitic Nazi persecution from Poland to the Soviet Union, but his parents were murdered in a concentration camp in Poland. Weinberg lived first in Minsk from 1939 to 1941, where he completed his conservatory studies. After a shorter stay in Tashkent, Weinberg settled in Moscow in 1943 with the help of Dmitri Shostakovich, who recognized the exceptional musical talent of the young Weinberg. In 1953, shortly before Stalin’s death, Weinberg was arrested for ‘Anti-Soviet propaganda’ (in fact for promoting Jewish culture, though not directly for his compositions). Dmitri Shostakovich, who had become a close friend of Weinberg, wrote a personal letter to Stalin’s secret police chief Beria. In this letter, Shostakovich emphasized the artistic value of Weinberg’s compositions and reassured Beria that Weinberg posed no danger to Soviet society. Weinberg was released from the prison camp in the same year and officially declared rehabilitated.
Weinberg composed the Sonata op.28 for clarinet (in A) and piano in the autumn of 1945, after the end of the war. The first performance took place in Moscow in 1946 by Weinberg on the piano and Vasiliy Getman, clarinet professor at the Gnesin music academy, on clarinet (Cox 2005). The Sonata op.28 was first published in 1971 in the Soviet Union and became a recognized and regularly-performed composition there. Outside the Soviet Union, however, this Sonata and most of Weinberg’s other works, remained fairly unknown. Only in recent decades has a rediscovery of Weinberg´s music outside Russia taken place. The Sonata op.28 has been republished and some crucial errata from the first edition have been corrected (Weinberg 2005). Since the publication of the new edition, several artists have recorded the Sonata op.28. Weinberg also composed a Concerto op.104 (1970) and the Chamber Symphony No.4 op.153 for the clarinet (1992).
(University of the Arts Helsinki)
Mexican American Disambiguation by José Olivarez
my parents are Mexican who are not
to be confused with Mexican-Americans
or Chicanos. i am a Chicano from Chicago
which means i am a Mexican-American
with a fancy college degree & a few tattoos.
my parents are Mexican who are not
to be confused with Mexicans still living
in México. those Mexicans call themselves
Mexicanos. white folks at parties call them
pobrecitos. American colleges call them
international students & diverse. my mom
was white in México & my dad was mestizo
& after they crossed the border they became
diverse. & minorities. & ethnic. & exotic.
but my parents call themselves Mexicanos,
who, again, should not be confused for Mexicanos
living in México. those Mexicanos might call
my family gringos, which is the word my family calls
white folks & white folks call my parents interracial.
colleges say put them on a brochure.
my parents say que significa esa palabra.
i point out that all the men in my family
marry lighter skinned women. that’s the Chicano
in me. which means it’s the fancy college degrees
in me, which is also diverse of me. everything in me
is diverse even when i eat American foods
like hamburgers, which to clarify, are American
when a white person eats them & diverse
when my family eats them. so much of America
can be understood like this. my parents were
undocumented when they came to this country
& by undocumented, i mean sin papeles, &
by sin papeles, i mean royally fucked which
should not be confused with the American Dream
though the two are cousins. colleges are not
looking for undocumented diversity. my dad
became a citizen which should not be confused
with keys to the house. we were safe from
deportation, which should not be confused
with walking the plank. though they’re cousins.
i call that sociology, but that’s just the Chicano
in me who should not be confused with the diversity
in me or the Mexicano in me who is constantly fighting
with the upwardly mobile in me who is good friends
with the Mexican-American in me who the colleges
love, but only on brochures, who the government calls
NON-WHITE, HISPANIC or WHITE, HISPANIC, who
my parents call mijo even when i don’t come home so much.
Azar The Guilty Escape
The Guilty Escape, composed in 2022, is a work for clarinet and piano. It is in two movements. The first movement --centralized around the note D— is composed in the modern and unkeyed style meaning that there is no key signature. The clarinet characterizes one’s reality and its challenges and the piano portrays one’s dream that fights all the difficulties one faces.
The second movement experiments the fusion of the Eastern and the Western music. This movement features quarter tones played by the clarinet that define the Lebanese authentic music style. The clarinet introduces a simple melody on the maqam (scale or mode) "Bayet D”. The maqam “Bayet D” is a mode made up of 7 notes that starts on D and has the second degree a quarter tone (D E F G A Bb C). The tone is inspired from the Maronite Syriac (an Eastern Catholic Syriac rite) hymns. The Syro-Maronite hymns —originated in the first century of Christianity— are characterized by their simplicity and restrained range of melodies. The melodies played by the clarinet later in this movement are influenced by the folkloric Lebanese music with the “zaffe" iqaa’ (wedding folkloric rhythm) played by the piano as an ostinato. The piece then modulates to another maqam (mode) called Rast D (D E F G A B C) while the piano is playing the iqaa’ maqsoum.
(Maroun A. Azar)
Wasserman-Margolis The Generation of Hope
Eva Wasserman-Margolis was born in the USA in 1956. Since 1980 she has lived in Israel. She is a clarinetist, composer, conductor, and writer. Her recordings of rare classical music for clarinet can be found on Spotify, SoundCloud, Youtube, and Apple. Clarinetists across the globe have performed the Generation of Hope and many of her pieces.
The Generation of Hope has touched the hearts of many audiences and players because of its message. It is dedicated to 22 victims of the suicide bombing of bus line No. 5 in Tel Aviv on October 19, 1994. The piece is based on an old Chassidic tune,"Am Yisroel Chai" ( The people of Israel lives).
(Eva Wasserman-Margolis)
Hindi Urdu Bol Chaal by Moniza Alvi
[1] 1 These are languages I try to touch
2 as if my tongue is a fingertip gently
3 matching its whorls to echoings of sound.
4 Separating Urdu from Hindi—it's like
5 sifting grains of wild rice
6 or separating India from Pakistan.
7 The sign of nasal intonation
8 floats like a heat haze
9 above new words.
10 Words like hands banging on the table.
∗ 11 I introduce myself to two languages,
12 but there are so many—of costume,
13 of conduct and courtesy.
14 I listen hard as if to sense minute
15 changes of dialect from village to village
16 from West Punjab to West Bengal.
17 These languages could have been mine--
18 the whisper of silks on silks
19 and the slapping and patting of chapattis on the tava.
20 I imagine the meetings and greetings
21 in Urdu borrowed from Sanskrit,
22 Arabic and Persian.
23 I shall be borrowed from England.
24 Pakistan, assalaam alaikum--
25 Peace be with you--Helloji.
26 It is not you I am meeting.
27 It is a sound system travelling through
28 countries, ascending and descending
29 in ragas, drumbeats, clapping.
30 In Lahore there grows a language tree
31 its roots branching to an earlier time
32 its fruit ripe, ready to fall.
33 I hear the rustling of mango groves
34 my living and dead relatives
35 quarrelling together and I search
36 for a nugget of sound, the kernel
37 of language. I am enlarged
38 by what I cannot hear--
39 the village conferences, the crackling
40 of bonfires and the rap of gunfire.
∗ 41 My senses stir with words
42 that must be reinvented.
43 At the market I'll ask How much?
44 and wait for just one new word
45 to settle like a stone
46 at the bottom of a well
Ben-Haim Three Songs Without Words
Ben-Haim conceived his Three Songs Without Words as Vocalises for high voice and piano but later occurred to him that the songs lent themselves as well to instrumental performances; the various for solo instrument and piano are the composer's own arrangements of the Vocalises. The composer explains the three parts of this little Suite as "tone-picture of a oriental mood" and he adds that "whoever's imagination needs additional prompting may think that the long-breathed melodies of the Arioso were inspired by the mood of a summer day's pitiless heat in the bare Judean Hills, while the Ballad pictures the monotonous babbling of an oriental story-teller; the last song is based on a traditional folk tune of Sephardic-Jewish origin – a veritable pearl which I have only given a setting". Regarding the instrumental performances, the composer has said that "an instrumentalist playing the Three Songs should renounce all tendencies of virtuoso brilliance in favour of a purely melodic expression".
(Israel Music Institute)
Such a small country, spread on an isthmus
where the sky is clearer, the sun brighter;
all your music echoes within me, like the sea
in the small cell of the conch.
Yet again, there are times I feel dread
when I don’t see the way back to you…
Perhaps I’d never have known such love,
if destiny hadn’t carried me over the sea.
La Patria is memory…Scraps of life
wrapped in ribbons of love or of pain;
the murmur of palms, the commonplace songs,
the garden, stripped of its flowers.
La Patria is a map of old winding trails,
that, from childhood, I tramped without pause,
on which stand the ancient familiar trees
that talk to us of the soul in times long past.
Instead of these towers, arrowed with gold,
where the sun comes to lose its heart,
leave me the old trunk where I carved a date,
where I stole a kiss, where I learned to dream.
Oh, my ancient towers, beloved and remote:
I feel such nostalgia for your pealing bells!
I have seen many towers, heard many bells,
but have known none, my distant towers,
to sing like you, to sing and to weep.
La Patria is memory…Scraps of life
wrapped in ribbons of love or of pain;
the murmur of palms, the commonplace songs,
the garden, stripped of its flowers.
Such a small country, all of you will fit
beneath the shadow of our flag: perhaps
you were so pretty, to ensure I’d carry you
everywhere in my heart!
Reproduced by kind permission of the translator
Weinberg Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, op. 28
Mieczysław Weinberg (1919, Warsaw–1996, Moscow) also spelled Mojsze Wajnberg, Moishe/Moisey Vainberg, was born in Poland into a family of Jewish musicians and started playing the piano at an early age. In 1939 Weinberg fled from anti-Semitic Nazi persecution from Poland to the Soviet Union, but his parents were murdered in a concentration camp in Poland. Weinberg lived first in Minsk from 1939 to 1941, where he completed his conservatory studies. After a shorter stay in Tashkent, Weinberg settled in Moscow in 1943 with the help of Dmitri Shostakovich, who recognized the exceptional musical talent of the young Weinberg. In 1953, shortly before Stalin’s death, Weinberg was arrested for ‘Anti-Soviet propaganda’ (in fact for promoting Jewish culture, though not directly for his compositions). Dmitri Shostakovich, who had become a close friend of Weinberg, wrote a personal letter to Stalin’s secret police chief Beria. In this letter, Shostakovich emphasized the artistic value of Weinberg’s compositions and reassured Beria that Weinberg posed no danger to Soviet society. Weinberg was released from the prison camp in the same year and officially declared rehabilitated.
Weinberg composed the Sonata op.28 for clarinet (in A) and piano in the autumn of 1945, after the end of the war. The first performance took place in Moscow in 1946 by Weinberg on the piano and Vasiliy Getman, clarinet professor at the Gnesin music academy, on clarinet (Cox 2005). The Sonata op.28 was first published in 1971 in the Soviet Union and became a recognized and regularly-performed composition there. Outside the Soviet Union, however, this Sonata and most of Weinberg’s other works, remained fairly unknown. Only in recent decades has a rediscovery of Weinberg´s music outside Russia taken place. The Sonata op.28 has been republished and some crucial errata from the first edition have been corrected (Weinberg 2005). Since the publication of the new edition, several artists have recorded the Sonata op.28. Weinberg also composed a Concerto op.104 (1970) and the Chamber Symphony No.4 op.153 for the clarinet (1992).
(University of the Arts Helsinki)
Mexican American Disambiguation by José Olivarez
my parents are Mexican who are not
to be confused with Mexican-Americans
or Chicanos. i am a Chicano from Chicago
which means i am a Mexican-American
with a fancy college degree & a few tattoos.
my parents are Mexican who are not
to be confused with Mexicans still living
in México. those Mexicans call themselves
Mexicanos. white folks at parties call them
pobrecitos. American colleges call them
international students & diverse. my mom
was white in México & my dad was mestizo
& after they crossed the border they became
diverse. & minorities. & ethnic. & exotic.
but my parents call themselves Mexicanos,
who, again, should not be confused for Mexicanos
living in México. those Mexicanos might call
my family gringos, which is the word my family calls
white folks & white folks call my parents interracial.
colleges say put them on a brochure.
my parents say que significa esa palabra.
i point out that all the men in my family
marry lighter skinned women. that’s the Chicano
in me. which means it’s the fancy college degrees
in me, which is also diverse of me. everything in me
is diverse even when i eat American foods
like hamburgers, which to clarify, are American
when a white person eats them & diverse
when my family eats them. so much of America
can be understood like this. my parents were
undocumented when they came to this country
& by undocumented, i mean sin papeles, &
by sin papeles, i mean royally fucked which
should not be confused with the American Dream
though the two are cousins. colleges are not
looking for undocumented diversity. my dad
became a citizen which should not be confused
with keys to the house. we were safe from
deportation, which should not be confused
with walking the plank. though they’re cousins.
i call that sociology, but that’s just the Chicano
in me who should not be confused with the diversity
in me or the Mexicano in me who is constantly fighting
with the upwardly mobile in me who is good friends
with the Mexican-American in me who the colleges
love, but only on brochures, who the government calls
NON-WHITE, HISPANIC or WHITE, HISPANIC, who
my parents call mijo even when i don’t come home so much.
Azar The Guilty Escape
The Guilty Escape, composed in 2022, is a work for clarinet and piano. It is in two movements. The first movement --centralized around the note D— is composed in the modern and unkeyed style meaning that there is no key signature. The clarinet characterizes one’s reality and its challenges and the piano portrays one’s dream that fights all the difficulties one faces.
The second movement experiments the fusion of the Eastern and the Western music. This movement features quarter tones played by the clarinet that define the Lebanese authentic music style. The clarinet introduces a simple melody on the maqam (scale or mode) "Bayet D”. The maqam “Bayet D” is a mode made up of 7 notes that starts on D and has the second degree a quarter tone (D E F G A Bb C). The tone is inspired from the Maronite Syriac (an Eastern Catholic Syriac rite) hymns. The Syro-Maronite hymns —originated in the first century of Christianity— are characterized by their simplicity and restrained range of melodies. The melodies played by the clarinet later in this movement are influenced by the folkloric Lebanese music with the “zaffe" iqaa’ (wedding folkloric rhythm) played by the piano as an ostinato. The piece then modulates to another maqam (mode) called Rast D (D E F G A B C) while the piano is playing the iqaa’ maqsoum.
(Maroun A. Azar)
Wasserman-Margolis The Generation of Hope
Eva Wasserman-Margolis was born in the USA in 1956. Since 1980 she has lived in Israel. She is a clarinetist, composer, conductor, and writer. Her recordings of rare classical music for clarinet can be found on Spotify, SoundCloud, Youtube, and Apple. Clarinetists across the globe have performed the Generation of Hope and many of her pieces.
The Generation of Hope has touched the hearts of many audiences and players because of its message. It is dedicated to 22 victims of the suicide bombing of bus line No. 5 in Tel Aviv on October 19, 1994. The piece is based on an old Chassidic tune,"Am Yisroel Chai" ( The people of Israel lives).
(Eva Wasserman-Margolis)
Hindi Urdu Bol Chaal by Moniza Alvi
[1] 1 These are languages I try to touch
2 as if my tongue is a fingertip gently
3 matching its whorls to echoings of sound.
4 Separating Urdu from Hindi—it's like
5 sifting grains of wild rice
6 or separating India from Pakistan.
7 The sign of nasal intonation
8 floats like a heat haze
9 above new words.
10 Words like hands banging on the table.
∗ 11 I introduce myself to two languages,
12 but there are so many—of costume,
13 of conduct and courtesy.
14 I listen hard as if to sense minute
15 changes of dialect from village to village
16 from West Punjab to West Bengal.
17 These languages could have been mine--
18 the whisper of silks on silks
19 and the slapping and patting of chapattis on the tava.
20 I imagine the meetings and greetings
21 in Urdu borrowed from Sanskrit,
22 Arabic and Persian.
23 I shall be borrowed from England.
24 Pakistan, assalaam alaikum--
25 Peace be with you--Helloji.
26 It is not you I am meeting.
27 It is a sound system travelling through
28 countries, ascending and descending
29 in ragas, drumbeats, clapping.
30 In Lahore there grows a language tree
31 its roots branching to an earlier time
32 its fruit ripe, ready to fall.
33 I hear the rustling of mango groves
34 my living and dead relatives
35 quarrelling together and I search
36 for a nugget of sound, the kernel
37 of language. I am enlarged
38 by what I cannot hear--
39 the village conferences, the crackling
40 of bonfires and the rap of gunfire.
∗ 41 My senses stir with words
42 that must be reinvented.
43 At the market I'll ask How much?
44 and wait for just one new word
45 to settle like a stone
46 at the bottom of a well
Ben-Haim Three Songs Without Words
Ben-Haim conceived his Three Songs Without Words as Vocalises for high voice and piano but later occurred to him that the songs lent themselves as well to instrumental performances; the various for solo instrument and piano are the composer's own arrangements of the Vocalises. The composer explains the three parts of this little Suite as "tone-picture of a oriental mood" and he adds that "whoever's imagination needs additional prompting may think that the long-breathed melodies of the Arioso were inspired by the mood of a summer day's pitiless heat in the bare Judean Hills, while the Ballad pictures the monotonous babbling of an oriental story-teller; the last song is based on a traditional folk tune of Sephardic-Jewish origin – a veritable pearl which I have only given a setting". Regarding the instrumental performances, the composer has said that "an instrumentalist playing the Three Songs should renounce all tendencies of virtuoso brilliance in favour of a purely melodic expression".
(Israel Music Institute)