Five • Music of Michael Dellaira

1. The Stranger, Grief (10:24)

Aria from the opera Chéri. (2000), on a libretto by Susan Yankowitz

Rannveig Braga, mezzo

Slovak Radio Orchestra

Joel Eric Suben, conductor

View the Score

Read the Synopsis

The composer (right) in Bratislava with mezzo-soprano Rannveig Braga (Léa) and producer Frantisek Poul.

		3. Three Rivers (11:07)
		Slovak Radio Orchestra
		Joel Eric Suben, conductor

		Three Rivers was written in 1995 for the Union College orchestra, to help commemorate the college's bicentennial year. It was premiered the same year by the college orchestra conducted by Hilary Tann. The work is based entirely on my guitar music from the 60's -- or rather on fragments I can still remember (I had never written any of it down) -- composed into a single movement of three distinct sections. The first section, named for the Mohawk River, summons the sights and sounds of the upstate New York of my childhood. The second section refers to guitarist John Fahey's composition Sligo River Blues; it appeared on his first album Blind Joe Death and was, perhaps, the piece that showed me most clearly how music could be both simple and powerful at the same time. I have adapted it here as a tribute to Mr. Fahey. The third, Meander, refers not to the actual river in Turkey but to the one described by Ovid in Book IX of The Metamorphoses: "the river that coils its way against its source." If to drink from the river Lethe is to forget, then from what river, I wondered, did one drink in order to remember? No such river may exist; Ovid's Meander suggests the reluctance with which we leave our sources behind as we head to destinations unknown. The language of Three Rivers is "unadvanced": tunes appear and repeat themselves, with a rhythmic gait and tonality more characteristic of a budding (or lapsed) rock musician than a "serious" composer. Despite the luxury of hindsight and maturity, I have tried to preserve the sense of immediacy apparent when this music flowed freely from heart to fingers, unimpeded by matters of style, theory, or criticism.

4. This World is not Conclusion (11:34)

For chorus, string orchestra and clarinet on four poems by Emily Dickinson. (1999)

Crisis is a Hair (2:45)

We like March (2:29)

This World is not Conclusion (2:55)

Heart! We will forget him! (4:34)

Cantori New York

Mark Shapiro, conductor

Slovak Radio Orchestra

Joel Eric Suben, conductor

Crisis is a Hair
Toward which the forces creep
Past which forces retrograde
If it come in sleep
To suspend the breath is the most we can
Ignorant is it Life or Death nicely balancing
Let an instant push
Or an Atom press
Or a Circle hesitate
In Circumference
It -- may jolt the Hand
That adjusts the Hair
That secures Eternity
From presenting -- Here

We like March -- his shoes are Purple.
He is new and high
Makes he mud for Dog and Peddler
Makes he Forests Dry
Knows the Adder's Tongue his coming
And begets her spot
Stands the Sun so close and mighty
That our Minds are hot.
News is He of all the others
Bold it were to die
With the Blue Birds buccanneering
On his British sky.

This World is not Conclusion
A Species stands beyond
Invisib le as Music
But positive as Sound
It beckons, and it baffles
Philosophy -- don't know
And through a Riddle, at the last
Sagacity, must go
To guess it, puzzles scholars
To gain it, men have borne
Contempt of Generations
And Crucifixion, shown
Faith slips, and laughs -- and rallies
Blushes, if any see
Plucks at a twig of Evidence
And asks a Vane, the way
Much gesture from the Pulpit
Strong Hallelujahs roll -
Narcotics cannot still the tooth
That nibbles at the Soul

Heart! We will forget him!
You and I -- tonight!
You may forget the warmth he gave
I will forget the light!
When you have done pray tell me
That I may straight begin!
Haste! Lest while you're lagging
I remember him!

		About the Composer

		Michael Dellaira performed as a solo guitarist and with numerous rock groups during the 1960's. After graduating from Georgetown University with a degree in philosophy, he studied composition formally with Robert Parris, then went on to Princeton University for a Ph.D. where his principal teachers were Milton Babbitt and Paul Lansky. He spent two summers at the Composers Conference with Mario Davidovsky, and was a Fulbright fellow to Italy where he studied with Goffredo Petrassi and Franco Donatoni. He has received a number of awards, including those from the American Music Center, ASCAP Foundation, New Jersey Arts Council, Cary Trust, and the Ford and Mellon Foundations. His monodrama MAUD was awarded First Prize in composition from the American Society of University Composers, and his recording for rock group (Annette) was a Billboard Magazine Top Album Pick. Sections from his opera, Chéri, on a libretto by Susan Yankowitz (based on the novel by Colette), have been presented by The Golden Fleece Ltd., American Opera Projects, The Center for Contemporary Opera, and most recently by The Actors Studio. His CD, FIVE, was released last year on Albany Records. His music is also recorded on Opus One and CRI.

		2. USA Stories (11:34)
		For a cappella (with optional vibraphone) based on three biographical sketches from John Dos Passos' THE BIG MONEY. (1998)
		Adagio Dancer (3:42)
		Art & Isadora (5:07)
		The Campers at Kitty Hawk (2:45)
		Cantori New York
		Mark Shapiro, conductor

		5. Colored Stones (14:10)
		Song cycle for baritone and piano after the poem by Richard Howard. (2001)
		Athens (1:22)
		Housten (1:43)
		Albufeira (1:29)
		Woodstock (1:23)
		Siracusa (1:06)
		Wiscasset (1:10)
		Tours (1:39)
		Bryce Canyon (1:06)
		Cozumel (1:19)
		Camden (1:42)
		Chris Pedro Trakas, baritone
		Jennifer Peterson, piano