Live recording from Concert in the Pines at The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education. Featuring Kyle Press on Saxophone.
Program:
Leda and the Swan
Composed by Jane Carver
This is the opening piece for an 11-minute work for accordion and voice as performed in a bathtub for an audience of ten people.
The Law
Composed by Jane Carver
Text from Robert Duncan, Roots and Branches
"What is hisses like a serpent and writhes to shed its' skin.
I tried to pull the earth o'er me like when I was a child playing
you can't see me."
The One Most Beautiful Tree
I'd heard that the flesh longs to roam
So true, I knew when my bones turned to stone
and my blood, like a river, cast my heart to sea
It's hard to see the forest for the one most beautiful tree
Vurba Ima, Vurba Niama
Bulgarian Traditional
As learned from a recording by Les Mystére Des Bulgares
"Vurba Ima, Vurba Niama, Po Lazari Lazarnitzi"
The story of this song is a woman who longs to see the girls dancing in her hometown village on St. Lazarus Day. She is married, and lives far away. She says, there is a willow, there is no willow. I consider this contradiction an expression of the grief she feels remembering her treasured home that she misses so.
My Dear
Uzbek Traditional
Found in the Alan Lomax Archive Digital Playlist
This is one of the first songs I learned after finding it and falling in love with it at The Association for Cultural Equity: The Alan Lomax Archive.
theglobaljukebox.org
Pusta Mladost
Bulgarian Traditional
As learned from a recording by Zdravka and Prinka Hristovi
I was introduced to this song by Anne Harrison and Zlati Simoneova, from the ensemble Slaveya in Washington, D.C.
Never Tear Us Apart
INXS
Saxophone solo: Kyle Press
Duet
Composed by Jane Carver and C
Special thanks to Vlada Tomova and the ensembles Yasna Voices, Svitanya, and Slaveya. The techniques I have learned while part of these choirs are invaluable, and become no less mysterious as time goes by.