Our Time by Quadre - The Voice of Four Horns

Humans may be the only living things that are conscious of time. Not time as it refers to the routines or appointments we keep, but growing old and dying. Then we fear time; we grieve it in calmer moments; we fill our days with activity to avoid it; we may even position ourselves around the energy of children. However we may cope, we have few alternatives to carrying on. And so we make our choices the best we know how.

How do we spend our time? Henry David Thoreau once wrote, "To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts." In this spirit, we chose to look at our time as it refers to living and growing older, and how we might respond to and express the concept of aging musically.

Our Time, Quadre's fourth album, is the culmination of a two-year journey to commission new composers and to collaborate with non horn-playing artists to create and record music within the gamut of Thoreau's "highest of arts." During our time together, composer Jamie Keesecker wrote a horn quartet, The Impetuous Winds, which might represent those raw emotions we all sometimes experience: anger, anxiety, aggression upon waking up, say, on the wrong side of the bed.

Composer, Mark Carlson's Night Music for flute/alto flute and horns, featuring Molly Barth, is a soulful song full of longing and grief, something like trying to resist acknowledging a familiar scent in the night air that hints of an impending and distinctive change of season-like summer to fall-carried by a deliberate and melancholy wind.

Composer and performer, Daniel Wood's new work, In Time, for horns and percussion, featuring James Kassis, is a song cycle without words. This poignant piece catalogues a specific yet familiar event in a life-the emotional undulations within a broken heart in the aftermath of a failed love. Moments of Luck, Love, Lies, Loss, and Laughter punctuate the plot of this painfully familiar story. Yet the context with which Daniel has treated this triteness is anything but trite. The hope, strength, and lightness we are left with are testaments to the resilience of our not-so-fragile hearts.

Composer and performer, Nathan Pawelek's new composition, Midlife Crisis, for horns and marimba, highlights the emotions middle agers face upon reaching their 44 1/2 birthdays. At once, such people are left with a choice as their bodies deteriorate: release thy earthly bonds or put on a thong and dance!

Composer and physics professor, Brian Holmes has contributed Three Hunting Songs for horns and soprano, sung by Elizabeth Weigle. Inspired by the poetry of Sir Walter Scott, Yeats, and e.e. cummings, Holmes captures three fox hunting scenes, the once prized sport of aristocratic French and English royalty. Their pursuits are encapsulated in this look back on bygone days narrated by soprano and dramatized by horns. There is one passage from this work that would underscore the concept of our time passing and a fitting response:

Waken lords and ladies gay!
Tell them youth and mirth and glee
Run a course as well as we.
Time, stern huntsman, none can balk
Staunch as hound, and fleet as hawk.
Think of this and rise with day,
Gentle lords and ladies gay.

In acknowledging the relative brevity of our time, our worthiest response is to waken, lords and ladies, and keep ourselves awake to the amazing moments of our days, the most amazing of which is cherishing each breath, even in our lowest and most challenging moments. For being conscious of our consciousness is the gift of being present, which is the best we can hope for, and the only time of our time over which we have any sort of influence.

*****

Composer Biographies
Mark Carlson is a versatile composer whose nearly 100 works include art songs, chamber music, choral music, concertos and other large ensemble works, and songs for musical theater. The recipient of over 50 commissions, his works have been premiered and recorded throughout the world. He resides in Los Angeles, where he teaches composition and theory at UCLA.

Brian Holmes, hornist, composer and professor of physics at San Jose State University, usually writes for chorus or solo voice. He has published twenty compositions, won a dozen composition contests and completed a dozen commissions. He is a nationally recognized expert on the physics of brass instruments, giving many invited talks all over the country.

Jamie Keesecker is a composer of new music who writes for a variety of musical ensembles. He resides in Durham, North Carolina, where he is a James B. Duke Fellow pursuing a Ph.D. at Duke University. Jamie is also a horn player who enjoys performing new music whenever possible.

Composer and hornist, Nathan Pawelek is interested in humor, technical challenge in performance, and the preservation of the endangered melody. He has written numerous works for orchestra including a symphony, a clarinet concerto, a song cycle, and a children's program for narrator and orchestra, as well as chamber music for woodwind quintet.

Daniel Wood, hornist and composer, founded Quadre in 1998 after working as a music contractor in Los Angeles. He has composed for all four of their albums as well as many other ensembles, including jazz and concert band. He also presents solo shows as an improvisational musician using the horn, piano, and electronics.

Performer Biographies
Quadre - The Voice of Four Horns has been pioneering the brass chamber music genre by composing, commissioning and arranging new music for horn quartet since 1998. In addition to their mission to explore and expand the dynamic potential of the horn quartet, Quadre is committed to educating and reaching out to diverse audiences across the country.

Described as "ferociously talented" (The Oregonian), Grammy-Award winning flutist Molly Barth is an active solo, chamber, and orchestral musician, specializing in the music of today. A founding member of the new music sextet eighth blackbird and, more recently, Beta Collide New Music Project, Molly has performed throughout the world and recorded numerous CDs. She is the Assistant Professor of Flute at the University of Oregon.

Percussionist James Kassis, an active freelance musician and teacher in the San Francisco Bay area, is a faculty member of Santa Clara University and the Mountain View Community School of Music and Art. James has performed with the San Francisco, California, San Jose, Monterey, and Santa Cruz Symphonies, Opera San Jose, the California Shakespeare Festival, the American Musical Theatre of San Jose, and the Cabrillo Music Festival.

A native of Harrisburg, PA, soprano Elizabeth Weigle has earned critical acclaim for her "fine-spun performance", with her "exquisite control of volume, pitch and line and her easy adornments" (San Jose Mercury News). An enthusiastic advocate for music of her own time, Elizabeth frequently premieres works written for her. She has recorded for the Nonesuch, Erato, Koch, Albany, New Focus Recordings, and BMOP Sound labels.

Track Order
1. The Impetuous Winds 4:40 Jamie Keesecker

In Time 16:21 Daniel Wood
for percussion and horn quartet
2. I. Luck (2:55)
3. II. Love (3:01)
4. III. Lies (3:08)
5. IV. Loss (3:59)
6. V. Laughter (3:18)

7. L’oiseau des Bois 5:52 Albert Franz Doppler
for flute and horn quartet

Three Hunting Songs 13:45 Brian Holmes
for soprano and horn quartet
8. I. Hunting Song (3:18)
9. II. Ballad of the Foxhunter (5:36)
10. II. all in green (4:51)

11. Concert Companion #1 2:52 Nathan Pawelek

Midlife Crisis 11:01 Nathan Pawelek
for marimba and horn quartet
12. I. 44 1/2 (6:28)
13. II. Mojo (4:33)

14. Night Music 8:48 Mark Carlson
for flute/alto flute and horn quartet

15. Moonshine from the Hills of Attleby 5:03 Daniel Wood
for percussion and horn quartet

Total Time 68:26


Lyrics
1. Hunting Song
(Walter Scott)
Waken, lords and ladies gay!
On the mountains dawns the day.
All the jolly chase is here
With hawk and horse and hunting spear.
Hounds are in their couples yelling
Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling
Merrily, merrily mingle they -
Waken, lords and ladies gay!
Waken, lords and ladies gay!
The mist has left the mountain gray.
Springlets in the dawn are streaming,
Diamonds on the brake are gleaming.
And foresters have busy been
To track the buck in thicket green:
Now we come to chant our lay -
Waken, lords and ladies gay!
Waken, lords and ladies gay!
To the greenwood haste away.
We can show you where he lies,
Fleet of foot and tall of size:
We can show the marks he made
When 'gainst the oak his antlers frayed.
You shall see him brought to bay -
Waken, lords and ladies gay!
Louder! Louder! Chant the lay!
Waken, lords and ladies gay!
Tell them youth and mirth and glee
Run a course as well as we.
Time, stern huntsman, none can balk,
Staunch as hound and fleet as hawk -
Think of this and rise with day
Gentle lords and ladies gay.

2. The Ballad of the Foxhunter
(W. B. Yeats)
"Lay me in a cushioned chair,
Carry me, ye four
With cushions here and cushions there
To see the world once more.
"Put the chair upon the grass
Bring Rody and his hounds
That I may contented pass
From these earthly bounds."
His eyelids droop, his head falls low,
His old eyes cloud with dreams.
The sun upon all things that grow
Falls down in sleepy streams.
And now moves many a pleasant tongue
Upon his withered hands,
For leading aged hounds and young,
The huntsman near him stands.
"Huntsman Rody, blow the horn,
Make the hills reply!"
The huntsman loosens on the morn
A gay, wandering cry.
Fire is in the old mans eyes,
His fingers move and sway,
And when the wandering music dies,
They hear him feebly say,
"Huntsman Rody, blow the horn,
Make the hills reply!" ...
The servants round his cushioned place
Are with new sorrow wrung,
The hounds are gazing on his face,
Aged hounds and young.
One blind hound only stands apart
On the sun-smitten grass
He holds communion with his heart
The moments pass and pass.
The old hound with a mournful din
Lifts high his withered head,
The servants bear the body in,
The hounds howl for the dead.

3. All in green went my love riding
(e. e. cummings)
All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.
four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the merry deer ran before.
Fleeter be they than dappled dreams
the swift sweet deer
the red rare deer.
Four red roebuck at a white water
the cruel bugle sang before.
Horn at hip went my love riding
riding the echo down
into the silver dawn.
four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the level meadows ran before.
Softer be they than slippered sleep
the lean lithe deer
the fleet flown deer.
Four fleet does at a gold valley
the famished arrow sang before.
Bow at belt went my love riding
riding the mountain down
into the silver dawn.
four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the sheer peaks ran before.
Paler be they than daunting death
the slim sleek deer
the tall tense deer.
Four tall stags at a green mountain
the lucky hunter sang before.

"All in green went my love riding" from COMPLETE POEMS: 1904-1962, by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage, is used with the permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.

Copyright © 1923, 1951, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1976 George James Firmage.

Selected by the National Endowment for the Arts and Chamber Music America as one of only a handful of chamber music ensembles for a rural residency, Quadre began its professional calling in Alabama in 1999. Quadre has since collaborated with award-winning artists, including Grammy winning flutist, Molly Barth; Los Angeles studio legend, James Thatcher; and Philadelphia soprano, Elizabeth Weigle.

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