Author Archives: composerinthegarden

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About composerinthegarden

A composer by vocation, a gardener by avocation. My garden and my life as a composer are deeply intertwined - the yin and yang of my creative life. . .

Kennywood’s Open!

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Ah, words that have a magic ring!  Kennywood Park is our local historical (but very up to date) amusement park. School children in Western Pennsylvania love the phrase “Kennywood’s open!” – it signifies that it is spring, school is almost over, and a great day at the amusement park is in order! But there is a second less obvious meaning that every kid and former kid knows, a local colloquialism that means “your zipper’s open!”

I may be rushing the season a bit, as the park does’t open until May, but I wanted to feature a piece written by my husband and musical partner, BIll Purse. When he was commissioned to compose a symphonic band piece for the local North Hills High School, he chose Kennywood as his inspiration and the famous phrase as the title of the piece. Bill has a history of writing pieces inspired by favorite places; Kennywood’s Open featured six vignettes based on his favorite park rides. In the name of research, we made several trips to the park to record the sound of the rides as well as photograph and videotape footage for what eventually became a combination of music and actual sounds from the park and plenty of resources for multimedia presentations.

Since its premiere, Bill has rearranged it for orchestra for a performance by the Washington Symphony Orchestra on the very day that the park opened for the season. The concert hall featured an enormous screen and high resolution projector, so I was able to create moving graphics of the park rides while the orchestra performed the piece.

When creating his solo CD Sonic Art, Bill  adapted the “Merry Go Round” section as a jazz piece featuring Duquesne University’s Catch 22 and jazz trumpeter Sean Jones. This video features the CD recording of The Merry Go Round combined with the Kennywood footage and some stills of Sean taken by friend and photographer Doug Harper. The video features the Dentzel Carousel installed in the park in 1927 and the 1915 Wurlitzer Band Organ whose actual sound begins and ends the piece.

Enjoy the ride!

The Lenten Rose

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Helleborus. Latin for hellebore, a perennial flowering plant from Europe and Asia. Most of the hybrid hellebores found in gardens in North America and Europe are often called the Lenten Rose, since they bloom in February and March, during the Lenten season.  Many years ago, a friend gave me two Lenten Roses from her parents’ garden in the mountains of Virginia. I brought them with me from my former garden and have let them seed about, resulting in flowers ranging from cream to pink to dark rose.  This year, they began blooming two weeks earlier than usual, a welcome sight in a dreary winter.  Today, more blooms have opened, including a few rarer ones purchased for their dark mysterious colors.

Deer resistant, first to bloom in spring, happy in shade or sun, dry or wet, and dressed in handsome leathery foliage, this is a plant for all gardens.  Enjoy the gallery of photos!

Hellebore
Hellebore
Hellebore

For more beautiful hellebore photos, including double forms and unusual colors, visit:
Pine Knot Farms
Northwest Garden Nursery
Sunshine Farm and Gardens
The Lenten Rose

To learn more about the beautiful hellebore, including its history and its variations, visit: hellebores.org
The Lovely Lenten Rose 

Think spring!  More music next week.

Breathe Out, Breathe In

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“Breath” 1. the air inhaled and exhaled in respiration; 2. life; vitality 3. time to breathe; pause or respite Adapted from dictionary.reference.com

Spring break from school began today, and true to form, winter came roaring back just in time to celebrate the moment. No matter. The coming week will be filled with recording my compositions, especially the vocal tracks, as I finally prepare to release my solo album of compositions “House of Sound.” I hope to unveil the first completed song next week; for now, I am celebrating the completion of a four part song cycle – “The Four Elements.”

I have mentioned this work before when I blogged about my struggle with Fire and Light. This week marked the completion of the last piece “Breath.” This was another difficult piece to embrace, to find my way through. In The Four Elements, each of the elements – earth, air, water, fire – has been translated to a particular instance of that element. Earth became “Clay”, water became “Rain”, and fire became “Light”. Although I knew that I wanted air to become “Breath” I could not find the in, the twist, the kernel of meaning that would allow the song to realize itself.

After eight pages of researched notes, I was drowning in information but had found no inspiration. Finally, I stood back and asked myself Continue reading →

Planting a Seed

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Aside from the garden of Eden, man’s great temptation took place when he first perceived his seed catalog. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

image of seed catalogsIt is the time of year when seed catalogs take on a life of their own, slithering off the coffee table, piling near a favorite chair, and populating the bedside. Earmarked and rife with notes, circled photos, and exclamatory punctuation, the catalogs bear witness to the pent up longing for color and new life that is part of every gardener’s spring fever. Some of the seeds are already here, along with a supply of pots, flats, and bagged soil; others are still to be ordered. Every year, as I begin the late winter planting, I consider the profound act of planting a seed.

image of larkspur seeds in handAlthough we may live in a high tech world estranged from our agricultural beginnings, our language continues to allude to the power of a tiny seed to start life, to change the world. Seeds of change, seeds of destruction, ideas that germinate, going to seed – the language of seeds is endless. While Continue reading →

Sleep

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To sleep, perchance to dream . . .  William Shakespeare

February is like the 4 A.M. of the calendar year. I wake up, eager to start the day, but realize the world is still dark and the garden is still sleeping. So, I roll over, snuggle deeper under the covers, and go back to sleep, perchance to dream, of the gardening year to come.

There are a lot of wildly differing viewpoints on sleep, perhaps depending on whether you seek it, fear it, or cannot find it. As a gardener and nature lover, I find Continue reading →