Storm King Music Festival 1999 Program Notes
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The Detroit Chronicles

were written in early 1996. The work was commissioned by Duke Summer Arts Festival and was written for and is dedicated to the violinist Nicholas Kitchen. Detroit was my parents' home and a place where I spent a good deal of my childhood and adolescence.
The Detroit Chronicles are thus in part an autobiographical reflection on and an homage to this city. The titles of the movements refer to stations in my past and together form a loosely drawn narrative:
"Our protagonist, the violin line - an incorporeal and translucent voce animato - rising in the early morning hours, perhaps in Dearborn near the Ford plant, staggers through the streets of the old downtown (andantino traballando), encounters the trailing voice of Detroit poet Phillip Levine's angel as she slips out of the bedroom and gently away, returns then to the streets, now past midnight, Woodward Avenue near Eight Mile, and finally hovers, perhaps above a large family house on Grosse Ile, then recedes behind faint strains of a children's tune."
Of course musical "narrative" behaves according to entirely different principles than the kind of storyline described above. Whether the revelation of these private underpinnings of a piece of music is helpful or a hindrance remains an open question. - Sidney Corbett

The Golden Flute

I was so excited when I learned that Mr. James Galway was enthusiastic for inviting me to write him a Chinese flute concerto after listening to my viola concerto Xian Shi, introduced to him by my former colleague Maestro Zuo-Huang Chen, now the music director of Wichita Symphony in Kansas and the China National Symphony Orchestra in Beijing. I decided to compose a flute concerto entitled Golden Flute, using a western flute to speak in the language of Chinese wind instruments, such as the dizi made from bamboo and the xun made from clay. The composition is supported, in part, by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in the US, and completed at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Umbertide of Italy.
Golden Flute is written for the solo flute, and 2 flutes (doubling 2 piccolos), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 French horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, 3 percussion players (timpani, sustained cymbal, triangle, vibraphone, 5 high temple blocks, 5 set gongs, Japanese high wood block, glockenspiel, tam-mm, crotales, small ball, bass drum), harp, and strings.
Remembering when I study the Chinese folk music repertoire, I am always amazed by the variation method of the traditional Chinese bamboo flute performance. Most folk solo pieces have a single theme each, with its sectional developments in different speeds, tonguing and fingerings, and adding decorations on the important notes from the melody. It inspired me to constant my three-movement concerto, starting with the only theme in the initial three-measure phrase, which melodic material is drawn from a Chinese folk tune Old Eight Beats. The variations of the theme in the first movement are full of various grace notes and performing techniques around the melodic notes, learnt from such traditional piece as Joy of Reunion for Chinese flute dizi. In the intermezzo-like second movement, I try to imitate the sound of an ancient clay blowing instrument xun, which has a slow but tense, mysterious and dreamy voice. The third movement brings us back to the virtuosic playing style with all former pitch materials recapitulated. With an extreme contrast between the low sonority from the orchestra and the screaming passages from the solo part mixed with piccolos, the music is brought to its final climax before the coda, which is a solo flute cadenza that brings us back to the lyrical mood of the short slow movement, and the sound of the grazioso dizi and the remote xun. - Chen Yi

Dhyana

for flute, clarinet, violin, violoncello and piano was composed in 1989 and completed in March of 1990. The composition won The 5th International Composition Competition in d'Avray City, France, and The Dr. Rapaport Prize of Columbia University in New York City, in 1991. It derives its inspiration from the "cultivation of thought" in Buddhism. "Dhyana" is the perfect absorption of thought into the one object of meditation; the process of gathering scattered thoughts and focusing them to arrive at enlightenment. The composer designed the music based on the concept of "knowing with clear mind", of coming from existence into nothingness. The musical structure goes from complex to simple in pitch, from dense to relaxed in rhythm, from tight to. open in range, from colorful to monotonous in timbre, from foreground to background in space of sonority, which expresses the change from mundanity to serenity, and finally to purification. In order to reach the specific artistic conception, the composer brought the distinguishing features of various instruments into full play. For instance, the sound of bell, chimes, gong and harmonic of guqin (a Chinese long zither), strongly in the style of Chinese percussion music, was created by playing inside of the piano; the sound of temple blocks, the various sonorities made from different gestures on guqin were recreated by playing on string instruments; the reciting style originally from the vertical Chinese bamboo flute was translated on woodwind by using glissando with microtones.
The composer has composed a series of chamber music works for Chinese instruments, mixed Chinese and Western instruments or tape of electronic music, titled Heng, Ding, Wu Ji and Dhyana, which are related to the conception of Buddhism. There are some complex textures and polyphonic structures in the piece, so that the performers have to enter into the spirit of combining freedom and highly concentration. - Zhou Long

Songs of Schizophrenia
Text of an open letter to the orchestra after the cancellation of the performance (Reprint by permission of the Chicago Tribune)

"On the Tuesday just prior to the concert, the music director informed me (rather cowardly ~ after 8:00 p.m. and by email) that he 'refused' to print my program notes and song texts to my work "WHEN THE MUSIC'S OVER" ('Songs of Schizophrenia') because he thought them obscene and not suitable an audience.
Of course, you orchestra members had been hearing the words for the past seven weeks - and no one had made mention of the words at all, but the music director stubbornly decided the Tuesday before the concert that he would not print them. Even though he had a score, with the text, since we started rehearsals - seven weeks prior) The words seemed to be sufficiently unimportant to everyone who heard the seven rehearsals that no one complained about them in all that time!
I called him to discuss it but he refused to discuss it with me. (He 'would make the decisions - he was the boss.) I tried faxing and email but he would respond to neither. Finally, in desperation, on Thursday I asked my attorney to get involved, My attorney ultimately sent three letters to the music director by fax and messenger asking him to restore the program notes and song texts.
Incredibly, he ignored each one and refused to communicate with either myself or my attorney.
At that point I felt that I had no choice but to resign from the orchestras, and I faxed over my letter of resignation, effective Sunday after the concert. I also sent another letter that explicitly said that unless the program notes and song texts were restored, I would not go ahead with the concert. The 'ball', as the saying goes, was in his court.
The ACLU (The American Civil Liberties Union) thought that the music director's actions were blatant censorship and encouraged me to attempt to distribute the original program notes and song taxis at the concert hall on Sunday. However, they warned me to do so only in a law-abiding manner. (Which was always my intention.) If the concert hall refused to allow me to do so then I would have to abide by the City's decision and than later take the issue up in a lawsuit.
On Sunday, the day of the concert, the music director and a representative from the concert hall stopped me from distributing the program notes and the song texts. The music director also informed me that I would also not be able to record the concert (with an engineer that I bad hired at my own cost). His actions were childish and punitive.
After discussions with the ACLU and my attorney from my cell phone, they informed me that it was now a First Amendment issue as well as a case of censorship, and advised me to not conduct under the conditions set forth by the music director and the orchestra.
Frankly, he could have prevented this entire situation, as well as my leaving the concert hall. It was his stubbornness and narrow-minded attitude that forced this issue in the first place. He knew I would leave if he continued to censor my work, and he could have stopped the entire problem right there. Unfortunate]y, he put me in a position that left me no choice.
It broke my heart to have to leave you guys on Sunday. The only reason I stayed with the orchestra for 3 years was because of you, the members of the orchestra, it was for players like you that made the entire experience worth while, and, frankly - worth putting up with an excessive and controlling management. It seems melodramatic to say, but it is true; my family came to this country because they had the right to speak about issues without being censored. I truly felt and still do, that if the First Amendment (Right of Free Speech) really means anything to me as an artist, as a creative individual and as an American, I could only make an example of how important these rights are by refusing to put up with the music director's actions, and refusing to conduct. (What kind of an example to the orchestra would I be if I let my rights as an artist and an American be trampled on? I'd be a coward.)
Please believe me that. not conducting the orchestra was the hardest decision that I have over had to make. It broke my heart to not be able to make music with you when you had worked so hard to learn all the scores. I have never walked away from a concert before, and hope to never have to repeat this experience." - Robert Ian Winstin, Composer-in-Residence