I had a fantastic trip to Georgia last month, over the first part of Presidents Day weekend. I flew to Atlanta on Wednesday, February 15, and drove straight to Blairsville, Georgia where I stayed with Leigh Miller and her wonderful family for two nights. Leigh is the professor of clarinet at Young Harris College, a school nestled in the mountains of North Georgia. On Thursday, I met with students and gave a masterclass, which was a discussion of my work through a series of excerpts of Twenty Views of the Trombone.
Then on Friday morning, it was off to the big show. Olivia Kieffer, a fellow CCM alum and transplant to Atlanta, booked me for the Composers Concert series at Eyedrum, a wonderful little venue right in the heart of downtown. I decided that this would be the premiere performance of the complete Twenty Views of the Trombone. After a relaxing sunny afternoon, I headed over to the gig. The crowd was small, but enthusiastic, and the music was well-received. If you want to read more about it, check out Mark Gresham’s review for the ArtsATL blog, which tells the whole story.
I then found myself with a full day on Saturday and no commitments beyond an early-evening flight home. Not needing to be at the airport until about 5pm, I decided to visit Atlanta’s High Museum of Art. I found parking within a couple of blocks on the street, and began to walk. It was a rainy day, so I was beginning to be glad to have chosen an indoor activity. Before I got to the High Museum, though, I discovered MODA, the Museum of Design Atlanta, directly across the street and decided to check it out. While not particularly extensive or comprehensive, their exhibit on designing for sustainable food was fascinating and thought-provoking.
The rest of the day I spent at the High Museum. As is to be expected in a younger city like Atlanta, the strengths of their collections are in newer works, but in somewhat niche areas. I was particularly affected by their current exhibition, Cross Country, which groups works by the part of the United States they depict. Having visited most regions of the United States, I felt a deep connection with many of the works, but I kept coming back to Dorothea Lange’s well-known photograph Migrant Mother. Despite having seen it reprinted countless times, seeing it up close, in large format, and in its original medium was revelatory.
It was a part of the High Museum’s permanent collection, though, that has spurred my creative imagination. The High displays a number of life-size or near-life-size marble sculptures, many of full-length female figures. I was drawn first to Giovanni Benzoni’s The Veiled Rebekah, displayed at the top of the ramp to the second level, and as I walked through that gallery, an idea for a piece began to take shape. Benzoni’s Rebekah, depicting the Biblical daughter-in-law of the patriarch Abraham, captured a woman at the moment of meeting her destiny–brought from her homeland by a servant, she pulls her veil over her face just as she is about to meet her husband for the first time.
Benzoni’s The Veiled Rebekah
Other statues in the area seemed to be captured in similar moments. I had been in search of a new composition project, and I found the inspiration in these four subjects. Two on the cusp of tragedy: William Wetmore Story’s Medea holding the knife while she contemplates her revenge;
Story’s Medea
Chauncey Ives’ Pandora with her infamous box;
Ives’ Pandora
and one, more peaceful, yet pensive, Hiram Powers’ La Penserosa, the thoughtful one.
Powers’ La Penserosa
Each is a depiction of a woman on the cusp of something momentous–named or unnamed–as she considers her destiny. Each also is a product of the interaction with and imagination of a male-dominated world, and each is sculpted by a man who interprets these moments and emotion. And now this man composes a piece about the four of them:
Earlier this month, I began a new work for solo piano with the tentative title Sisters in Stone. Unusually for me, I have not made plans with a specific pianist for a premiere, and I’m not writing on commission. Borrowing a concept from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, I’m creating a musical walk through the gallery, considering each statue in turn. The walk begins with music I call “lattice” representing the stone from which the sculptors created these images–I’m unclear about whether I will actually keep this music that currently precedes the section depicting La Penserosa, followed by Medea, The Veiled Rebekah, and Pandora. I may return to the lattice music at the end–my intent at this point is a single-movement piece of about 12 minutes’ duration. I hope to have it completed by the end of April, and ready for a performance (and a performer) sometime after that.