Ran Kampel, Clarinet
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 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​

​


                      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. 




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)
 
​