25 February, 2020
On the evening of February 25, Mississippi University for Women (The W) presented a New Music at the W concert filled with premieres and great performances.
Classical guitarist and composer, Dr. Alan Goldspiel premiered his most recent composition for guitar and clarinet entitled, A Diluvian Response.
The piece consists of three movements: Enlil and the Noisy Humans, HaShem and the Sinners, and Zeus and the Bellicose World.
When asked about the inspiration for the piece, Goldspiel stated:
“A Diluvian Response recalls that there are many flood legends existing in different cultures. These common narratives usually involve a deity who destroys civilization as punishment for some wrong doing, some survivor(s), and ultimately the rebirth of civilization. Often closely linked to creation myth, our stories here involve writings from Mesopotamian, Hebrew, and Greek sources. My objective was to write this music for clarinet and guitar at the part of the story when it is decided to send the catastrophic waters because we rarely view the events from that side of things.”
Goldspiel was delighted to be joined by long-time collaborator Dr. Lori Ardovino on Clarinet for the performance, which was well received.
Later in the program, another premiere piece composed for tuba and two trombones by Goldspiel called A Winter’s Tale was performed by Joe L. Alexander (tuba), Demarcus Smith (trombone), and Ren Garrison (trombone).
A Winter’s Tale consists of two movements: If I Prove Honey-Mouth’d and Let My Tongue Blister. Goldspiel had this to say about the inspiration for the piece:
“A Winter’s Tale sparked from a bit of line from a Shakespeare play in which whimsy, deception, tragedy, and romance abound. While attending the play, the notion of “honey-mouth’d” and “tongue blister” caught my attention and I thought then what an interesting title for music they might make. The music for two trombones and a tuba tries to be evocative of deceit and guile and, because of it, the subsequent inability to express “my red-look’d anger.””
Among the other composers whose pieces were presenting during the evening were Lori Ardovino’s Eloquence II for Solo Bb Clarinet and Eloquence IV for Solo Eb Clarinet (both performed by Ardovino); Biraj Adhikari’s Midnight and Nightmare; Joe L. Alexander’s The Land of Maximus (performed by Alexander, Smith, and Garrison); Amy Beach’s Variations on Balkan Themes Op 60 Set (performed on piano by Julia Mortyakova and Valentin M. Bogdan); and Valentin Bogdan’s Subterranean Thoughts.