I stood on a hill in Dunoon, Scotland, in the middle of March many years ago. Powerful winds brought a succession of rain, sleet, snow, hail, and sunshine over and over again in the course of an hour – a microcosm of the turbulent transition from one season to another. The change of seasons this week in Western Pennsylvania was less compressed – spread over days rather than minutes – but otherwise not so different. The week began with a warm evening on the deck, listening to what surely would be the final cicada and frog chorus of the season. Gusty winds brought cold temperatures and days of rain, followed by an enchantingly beautiful misty morning immediately followed by a snowy morning, all in less than a week.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Though I’m reluctant to acknowledge the end of the gardening season and the coming of winter, I must admit that I love the turbulent changes that the seasons’ transitions bring. There is a certain security in knowing that one season will follow another, an overarching stability of structure. But the passage from one state to another is filled with chaos, unpredictability and extreme fluctuations. It is this push pull of change and stability that fascinates me, and it seems to be at the heart of my artistic endeavors as well. Achieving a balance between the familiar and the novel, the security of what has been done and the adventure of exploring new ideas, is an ongoing dynamic in my work, and perhaps in my life as well.
A video celebration of nature’s transitions in my garden, set to the music of “Falling” from “Three States of Being.”
“. . . the report of my death was an exaggeration.” Mark Twain
It is late October and copious rainfall, mild temperatures, and a few sunny days have conspired to keep the garden green, glowing, and full of flowers. I expected the garden to be withered with frost by now, an eerily beautiful place of spent flowers, blackened leaves, and winter weeds. I had planned for it, in fact, complete with a melancholy video to document the season’s end. But when I went to record the demise of the garden with my cameras, I couldn’t find enough source material to make my point. Still attached to this idea, my expectations got in the way of my observations and I felt frustrated and stuck. Expecting an end, I found a reprise instead.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
A musical reprise is a repetition of an earlier theme or song with some changes that reflect the development of the narrative line. The October garden certainly is in the middle of its reprise. The end of the season is near; perhaps in days, a hard frost will claim its due. But for the moment, the garden is repeating its performance of roses, zinnias, salvias, and ageratum amongst the autumn theme of goldenrod, asters, and grasses. Plants are tall, blooms are colorful and fresh, and everything is swaying in the gusts of wind that leap up from nowhere, showering the beds with a flurry of colorful leaves. A final flourish that has challenged my expectations and reminded me to pay attention to, and appreciate, the unanticipated beauty that is before me.
My blog seemed to be driving traffic to my music website, but hey! that thing hadn’t been updated in years! Now that others were looking and listening, a web renewal seemed in order and I decided to experiment creating a website rather than a blog in WordPress. Could it be done? I was becoming comfortable with the WordPress interface and felt that more could be explored with the TwentyEleven theme without going to a custom design or self-hosted site. Just as I decided that I still wasn’t happy with the theme fonts and some of the other limitations, WordPress offered a bargain deal that included customizable fonts, domain mapping, audio player, etc. I took a deep breath, finished updating the audio and image files, and plunged into new waters with lynnpurse.com.
The hardest part wasn’t the technical aspect of creating new header images, tweaking audio, etc. The hardest part was redefining my online identity. It took me longer to write my “about” page than anything else – I am a different person than I was ten years ago – what to keep, what to leave out, what to emphasize? A lot of choices to make in a few paragraphs of text. I’m still not completely satisfied, but the process has been enlightening! What do you choose to identify yourself? How many of us have ourselves scattered about in the digital landscape, with conversations on Facebook, photos on Flickr, videos on YouTube, and resumes on LinkedIn? While my blog is about my creative process, I wanted the website to be about what I have accomplished, what I have ready for public view. Making the design and organizational decisions of displaying that work has given me a framework to focus and hone my ongoing creative efforts, an unexpected bonus.
So, if you have read this far, perhaps you will explore my website and take a moment to send me some feedback. Many thanks in advance!
Last night, the Washington Symphony Orchestra performed “Sketches of America” as part of their “Picture This” concert. Under the creative and enthusiastic guidance of Music Director Yugo Ikach, the WSO is a community orchestra, which means that the majority of the musicians are volunteers and participate for the love of performing music. “Sketches” was originally written for and performed by the Duquesne University Symphony Orchestra featuring professional soloists, including reknowned jazz trumpeter Sean Jones. I wanted to hear how the WSO would perform the piece, with very little input from me other than the written score. Would it work?
The title “Sketches of America” was a play on Miles Davis’ “Sketches of Spain” which itself was a jazz interpretation of Rodriguez’s Adagio movement of the “Concierto de Aranjuez.” I was commissioned to create an orchestral piece that would include a section for jazz improvisation by the soloists, a somewhat daunting task in orchestral writing. My own goals were more complex – I wanted to draw on American musical traditions as well as musically reflect on my love of the American landscape. The strains of “America the Beautiful” kept running through my head as I was composing, and a few fragments of the melody crept into the piece as well.
The first section of the piece, “the painted desert” draws on minimalism, a uniquely American approach to “concert music” typified by composers like Terry Riley, Philip Glass, and John Adams. Inspired by a long November drive through the deserts of Arizona, a panorama of grey skies, yellow flowering shrubs, and tumbleweed, I remember a vast quiet world marked by the rhythmic turn of the car wheels. (The full version of “The Painted Desert” was used in my “Autumn Minimalism” post, in the video soundtrack)
That repeating rhythm segues into the syncopation of “a joyful blues” – another American musical tradition in the form of jazz and blues. Not content to write the traditional twelve bar blues in 4/4, I constructed a thirteen bar blues in 5/8 meter over which the solo trumpet and trombone improvise to the fast rhythms of the pizzicato strings. Those seemingly odd numbers are part of the Fibonacci number sequence, something that occurs throughout the natural world in the form of flowers, seashells, and trees.
“Sketches” closes with a chorale style section based on “Clay”, a song that I wrote in response to my efforts to dig and amend the clay in my garden. One of the lyrics, “. . . the solid ground beneath our feet” became a metaphor for the natural beauty of our vast country and the challenge of keeping it “America the beautiful.”
The WSO performance? Wonderful. The piece worked, the orchestra sounded great, the soloists rose to the challenge, and the effect was just as I had intended. That moment of hushed silence in the hall at the close of the piece, the sign that the audience was listening and involved, seemed more important than the applause that followed. Those of you who are composers know that this does not always happen! As my husband and colleague remarked later, “the piece played itself.” It was an unexpectedly moving experience and I was touched to the heart, and at that moment, I was very glad indeed to be a composer.
(The recordings above were taken from the premier of “Sketches of America” performed by Sean Jones, trumpet, and Ed Kocher, trombone, with the Duquesne University Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Sidney Harth.)
composerinthegarden 