Impetus: Program Notes

I'm excited to share my senior recital on Saturday, October 29th at 4:00 pm! Following is the livestream link and the program notes.

https://fb.me/e/2oNLM7aPa

Prelude

Growth is a really gradual thing. And though we can’t always see it (in fact, we don’t really ever see it unless we look for it) it defines who we are. Each sequential step is marked by the former. Hard enough as it may be to see the growth of the past, seeing the growth of the future is impossible. And yet the future is colliding with our beings with each passing hour.

But just as soon as the future comes, it becomes present and past instantaneously. Each second passed is a second never to be returned again. Lost in the passing of time, but retained in our beings--growth.

Impetus

Growth is often set into motion by impetus. The word impetus synthesizes the meanings of motivation and inspiration—it’s a driving force, an active agent in creativity. Impetus is what leads us to action—perhaps to express ourselves through art in some medium.

This program was put together in light of myself realizing my musical impetus. It has allowed me to take my identities of “teacher” and “musician,” which were once separate, and fuse them together. As an artist, I feel inclined to make art by way of sharing stories through music. As a teacher, I feel called to teach others how to share their own stories through music.

Through the musical narrative I am presenting to you, I hope you feel inspired to seek out your own impetus, musical or other, and inspire others to do likewise.

Nikolai Kapustin: 8 Concert Studies, Op. 40 (1984)

Kapustin, a Ukrainian pianist and composer, fused the traditions of both classical repertoire and improvisational jazz, combining jazz idioms and classical music structures. His vocabulary consisted of both musical languages, of which I can relate to. Both languages contributed to his impetus and compositional output, as do mine.

Claude Debussy: Suite Bergamasque (1890-1905)

The third movement in this suite, Clair de Lune, was the first major piano work I performed. I heard it for the first time when our piano tuner back home visited to tune up our upright, and I instantly loved the warm, rich sounds it beckoned into existence.

Today I will be playing the entire suite, and it feels fitting to include it in this program. It’s a bookend of sorts, but also a beginning—a beginning of myself discovering what inspires and captivates me musically.

Florence Price: Clouds (ca. 1940)

I consider Clouds to be my favorite piece of piano repertoire. It’s a beautiful and powerful piece, in both melody and meaning. Following is a quote by John Michael Cooper:

“By integrating disparate musical styles, none of which bows to the prejudicial restrictions that Price’s world would have placed on her because of her race and sex, under a title so powerfully evocative of freedom, Price in Clouds asserts her ability to resist—to refuse to let her mind be segregated, her imagination stilled, her genius bowed by others’ expectations.”

Price composed programmatically and with great depth of meaning, both aspects I love to have present in my music. I was very fortunate to explore her compositional voice as I found my own.

Steven Naylor: bare, budding, blooming (2022)

This commission was born out of a time of me discovering my compositional voice. At the time, I was feeling very limited by the rigid performative qualities of classical music, yet I was also exploring an entirely different musical world—jazz—built upon a tradition of developing your own improvisational voice.

So, Steven created a piece that allowed me to explore my own musical voice. The result was a simple motif that is transposed through the circle of fifths, with instructions for the performer to gradually grow dynamically, in range, and in note density.

Maggie Brown, Stasis (2022)

And finally, for the culmination of this narrative, is my composition Stasis. While I was keeping myself very busy teaching middle schoolers with Breakthrough Cincinnati at the University of Cincinnati this summer, I had this harmonic idea I randomly stumbled across in a practice room on campus one day after work.

Between generating that idea and sitting down to write out a melody three months later, I felt like I was in a period of musical stasis. I was trying to will progress into existence, but it turns out I just needed time for things to simmer.

Eventually, everything finally synthesized, and the tune was written within a twelve hour period in August. Later, I decided to arrange it for piano trio with the addition of string quartet. It allowed me to have heavily improvised and heavily composed elements existing concurrently, as well as being able to explore the textures I love about the string quartet. It all goes to show that progress isn’t linear—it all takes time. Stasis is part of that process.

Thank you for listening to my narrative of impetus! I hope you feel inspired to discover and develop your own, wherever you reside in this vast, colorful world of music.