Noises, Sounds & Strange Airs
CD of new American music by Ewazen, Heinick, Marshall and Snow
From the CD's booklet:
Pamela J. Marshall
Pamela J. Marshall received degrees in composition from Eastman
and Yale Schools of Music, where she also studied horn, conducting,
and electronic music. She currently lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.
She plays French horn in local orchestras and writes technical documentation
for computer software. Her compositions include music for synthesizers,
brass, mandolin, and orchestra. She works with composing tools on
the computer and is working on a program that produces textures
by varying the density of random events.
Ms. Marshall has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, and has
received commissions or grants from the Mass. Council for the Arts,
the New Works/New Composers series at the Composer's Forum, NEWCOMP,
DanceArt, mandolinist Neil Gladd, American Women Composers, etc.
She has worked at Kurzweil Music Systems, writing software and developing
sounds. Her music is published by Seesaw Music, Plucked String,
and her own company, Spindrift Music.
About Child's Play
"I wrote Child's Play for Benita Bike's DanceArt Company,
which performed in the Boston area until 1989 and is now in Los
Angeles. Benita's choreography for each section was inspired by
games she played as a child. I wrote the music to fit the mood and
rhythms that she planned for each dance. I used a Kurzweil 250 to
synthesize the sounds in Child's Play. In addition to using combinations
of built-in sounds, I sampled sounds of crystal glasses as well
as a trifle bowl whose rich tone is part of Boogey Man and Hopscotch.
 Complete track
(MP3 6.1Mb 6'34")
About Soliloquy
"I conceived of Soliloquy's opening theme one evening toward
the end of a stay at the MacDowell Colony. I was there in winter,
working on an austere, eerie piece about archeological ruins. The
euphonious intervals of Soliloquy's opening theme were a beautiful
contrast to the bleak sounds of the other work. Sometimes, I think
Soliloquy belongs in a suite in the tradition of Bach. However,
the piece is more like a fantasia where the cellist plays fragments
from one or maybe several suites, half remembered.
Complete track
(MP3 4.5Mb 4'52")
 Printed
score from Spindrift Music Company
About Sky's Mirror
"Sky's Mirror is a reflection and commentary on passages from
Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Much of what Thoreau writes reflects
my own feelings about the natural world. However, his expression
of the strength and inviolability of nature seem naive today as
we face severe problems of environmental degradation and contamination
of natural processes. Walden and many other places face compromise
at the least and toxic destruction at the worst.
"I did not treat the text as a narrative. Instead, I broke
the text up into words and phrases, so that the music passes gradually
through the words, reflecting different images of the lake and our
relationship to it. The full text of the passages which I used are
printed in the score to give the performers a better sense of where
the fragments come from. Repetitions and emphasis in the music add
my own perspective.
"Thoreau writes:
In such a day, in September or October, Walden is a perfect forest
mirror . . . Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so
large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth.
Sky water. . . Nations come and go without defiling it. It is
a mirror that no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never
wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs. . .
"So it seemed to Thoreau, but we cannot continue to believe
it."
Excerpt (MP3 1.6Mb)
 Lyrics
Printed
score from Spindrift Music Company
 Back to Noises, Sounds & Strange Airs
Last updated April 05, 1998
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