Program notes by Mark O’Connor

Selections from Caprices for Solo Violin
MARK O‘CONNOR
Born 1961

“Poets and Prophets” was commissioned for the Eroica Trio by Kathryn Gould of Palo Alto, California, and composed in the fall of 2003. It received its first performance in the Montalvo Chamber Music Series on March 5, 2004.

After initial conversations with the members of the Trio – violinist Adela Pena, pianist Erika Nickrenz and cellist Sara Sant‘Ambrogio – Mark O‘Connor wrote to the trio to explain his inspiration for the piece: the life and music of Johnny Cash. In a letter dated September 20, 1993 – a week after Johnny Cash had died – O‘Connor said:

Johnny was a boyhood hero of mine. I used to sing his songs when I was eight, nine and ten years old, and played the guitar like him (sometimes down the fretboard, strumming away). My mom used to help me transcribe all the lyrics off the albums, and [she] also thought he hung the moon…As you can imagine, the passing of Cash for me this last week has been emotional. I am at my very best when I compose with my emotions on my sleeve.

In O‘Connor‘s view, Cash was an American icon, and indeed more than an entertainer, for his appeal was broader than country or rockabilly music. He seemed to embody a strong personality that stood tall against unfavorable odds, and his music appealed to people of all ages and stripes. He sang about prisons, trains, about killing and living, about love lost and love found. He sang about the Gospel, about the downtrodden, about the Native American, about being high and being stoned. He had an unforgettable charisma, a unique voice with an unmistakable, transcendent sound.

Mark O‘Connor had known Cash, had worked with him, and had been invited into his home. In the days after Cash‘s death, O‘Connor – whose work has been about building bridges across genre, age and discipline – would honor that artist‘s memory by finding another bridge in the music of Johnny Cash.

String Quartet No. 3, “Old Time” (2008)

About this piece, the composer writes:

This string quartet was composed to mark the 400^th anniversary of the first European settlements in the Hudson River area. My specific task from the Hudson Commission was to evoke, so far as possible, the natural habitat and beauty of the Hudson as well as the time of the first European settlers. It was natural for me, of course, to think about old-time fiddling in this connection. In 1909 Washington Irving described the Catskill Mountains as a “dismembered branch of the Appalachian Mountains.” My own Dutch ancestors settled in the Hudson Valley in the early 1600s, eventually traveling down the Appalachians to settle in the South in the early 1800s. The old-time fiddling that dominated the music of the areas along that route is the musical language utilized in creating this string quartet.

My interest in the rich traditions of old-time fiddling is linked in an intriguing way to my own family history in that area – I am the descendant of both Dutch settlers and Native American Mohawks, the generations-long product of a kidnapped “white child” who fell in love with a Mohawk chief and married him! Not surprisingly, then, the seeds of inspiration for the Quartet No. 3 are rhythms and harmonies forming a mosaic that evokes impressionistic wonderment about the area and its rich habitat, as well as its early struggles and development.

Jump to the present, and I find myself living in Manhattan, just a few blocks from the Hudson river, so working on this quartet has brought me full circle, both in musical concepts and in historical references.

For the musical genesis of the Quartet, I initially created phrases that were molded out of the old-time fiddling tradition. With technical twists and turns, the phrases became simultaneously new and still connected to tradition. Techniques such as re-harmonization, development and canonic applications spill over each other like the Hudson tributaries in the Adirondacks. The result is, I hope, an overall whole in which the participating elements emphasize transitions from the traditional to the contemporary

in sound and style. The aim is to make music that is no longer “just” fiddle music but something new and inventive that embraks on a new story, a new way to play, with a new musical idea to put forward.

A final note: the Quartet No. 3 is the second in a long-term compositional project of six quartets, all to be informed by different traditions of fiddling and American music.

Appalachia Waltz

Composer‘s Note:

I composed Appalachia Waltz in 1993, while sitting in a cabin in the Santa Fe desert! I was writing a portion of my second [violin] concerto there, and still working on the “Trail of Tears” movement (named after the forced migration of the Cherokees from Tennessee), hoping to identify with some of the Native American culture in New Mexico, a culture which had been long gone from Tennessee for 150 years. Then, all of a sudden, this piece appeared in my head with all of the double-stops and drones, all at once! In 15 minutes, it was written.

It seemed much too intimate for my concerto, though, so I tucked it away. A couple of years later, I introduced it to [cellist] Yo-Yo Ma, and it turned out to be the impetus (and title) for the two projects we recorded together.

Appalachia Waltz is one of my most-liked pieces, and I think it is for this reason: If it‘s played for folk musicians, they most often think it‘s classical music, but when it‘s played for classical musicians, they most often think of it as folk music. Appalachia Waltz seems to exist in the middle of places, each listener embracing it on personal, and maybe very different, terms. (When Yo-Yo Ma performs it as an encore to his performances of the Bach Suites for unaccompanied cello, there are those who think it is old and German! When I play it in Southern California, it reminds people of their grandparents back in the North Carolina mountains.)

Appalachia Waltz has helped me create and cross yet another bridge, a bridge of trust between audience and performer.

Audience…performer…music – we are all elements in an equation. And when those elements are “right,” there‘s no feeling like it.