Patterns and Lines (2016)
for baritone soloist, SATB chorus, string quartet and harp
Duration: 30 minutes
Instrumentation
Baritone soloist, SATB chorus, 2 violins, Viola, Cello, Harp
Commissioned by the Cantate Chamber Singers. Poetry by Roberto Ifill.
Photography and animation by Wayne and Judy Guenther. Video edited by Nick Ferrario.
Video projection available for performance
Movements
Prologue (instrumental)
1. A Farmhouse Room
2. The Hands that Feed
3. As Above, So Below
4. Traveling and Stopping (soloist and chorus)
5. Interlude (instrumental)
6. A Parent’s Pledge
7. Patterns and Lines: A Canon
8. The Imperative of Flight
Cantate Chamber Singers, Gisèle Becker, Music Director, commissioned and premiered this piece in May 2016. It is a truly collaborative effort, setting the poetry of Roberto Ifill, with photos by Wayne and Judy Guenther, edited and animated by Nick Ferrario. This is the prologue and first movement, showing striking images of the Olson House in Cushing, Maine, "glorified," as the poem says, by artist Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009). The opening staircase is from the Winterthur Museum in Winterthur, Delaware.
Listen
As Above, So Below
Traveling and Stopping (James Rogers, soloist)
Patterns and Lines: A Canon
Program Notes
Patterns and Lines — for baritone soloist, SATB, chorus, string quartet and harp — is a multimedia event that creates a chain reaction among photography, poetry, and music. The “chain of inspiration” ends with this new music, setting poems by Roberto Ifill specially written in response to photographs by Wayne and Judy Guenther — reflecting themes of adventure, memory, home, family, and flying. So, images inspire words, which in turn inspire music.
The entire piece is a chemical and kinetic interaction: images, texts, and sound influence one another and are filtered through the lens of one another. Patterns and Lines places three arts together in an intimate, ever-shifting dance.
Patterns and Lines was premiered by the Cantate Chamber Singers in May 2016, with James Rogers as baritone soloist and Gisèle Becker conducting.
—Andrew Earle Simpson