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Price: $29.95 |
When the Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music first asked me to write a work for Stephanie Houtzeel and the Cassatt Quartet, I chose to commission poet-collaborator Andrew Sofer to write the text for the piece. I had just lost my father to cancer before receiving the commission, and had wanted to write a work about family and times of innocence and youth as I was trying to hold on to and capture memories that I had of childhood and my father. I asked Andrew to explore the themes of youth and childhood in a poem. Andrew describes the result, "Wandlebury Ring," in this way: "Just outside Cambridge, England, Wandlebury is a mix of wild woods and open grassland on the edge of the Gog Magog hills. The Ring itself was an iron-age hill-fort that later abutted the Roman road to Haverhill. As a boy, I used to love pacing the wooded ring inside the earthworks' outer ditch with my family; it was a magical place, rich with twenty-five centuries of East Anglian history. When Kevin suggested I write a poem that evoked my childhood in fen country, Wandlebury Ring was a natural subject. As the poem developed, it became as much a love poem to my late father as to Cambridgeshire. The poem is dedicated to his memory." The fact that Ms. Houtzeel and the Cassatt Quartet lived on different continents and would only be able to rehearse together the week before the concert became an important part of the inner game of the composition. I attempted to write it in such a way that it would be satisfying for the quartet to rehearse without having a singer present. Thus, the quartet writing for this piece is extremely involved and shares an equal part in presenting the feel, taste, and tone of Wandlebury Ring. I have dedicated this work to Wanda Fleck. Witnessing her passion for music has been an inspiration to me. -Kevin E. Beavers
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