Spring Sea. Music of Dreams. MUSIC FOR SHAKUHACHI AND HARP RILEY LEE MARSHALL McGUIRE

Transcription

1 Spring Sea Music of Dreams MUSIC FOR SHAKUHACHI AND HARP RILEY LEE MARSHALL McGUIRE

2 SpringSea Music of Dreams MICHIO MIYAGI arr. Marshall McGuire 1 Haru no umi (Spring Sea) 7 00 ANNE BOYD b arr. Riley Lee and Marshall McGuire 2 Goldfish through Summer Rain 5 05 KATSUTOSHI NAGASAWA arr. Marshall McGuire 3 Hoshun (First Stirrings of Spring) FRANZ SCHUBERT arr. Riley Lee and Marshall McGuire 4 Der Leiermann (The Hurdy-Gurdy Man) from Winterreise, D BENJAMIN BRITTEN arr. Marshall McGuire 5 Corpus Christi Carol from A Boy Was Born, Op BENJAMIN BRITTEN 6 Interlude from A Ceremony of Carols, Op ANNE BOYD arr. Riley Lee and Marshall McGuire 7 Cloudy Mountain 7 29 CHIKUHO SAKAI Tsuru no sugomori (Nesting of the Cranes) 5 05 KATSUTOSHI NAGASAWA arr. Marshall McGuire 9 Mayudama (The Song of the Silk Cocoon) 8 29 Total Playing Time Riley Lee shakuhachi Marshall McGuire harp 2

3 This recording is unique. It combines the sounds of t wo instruments which are almost as far removed culturally as possible within the panoply of musical traditions of the w orld. The instruments are the shakuhachi and the concert harp. The shakuhachi is a venerable yet extremely simple bamboo flute developed by the Japanese since receiving it from the Chinese in the eighth cent ury. For hundreds of years, it has been used by Zen Buddhist priests as part of their medit ative spiritual practice. Its expressive sound evokes the mystery of the Far East of another era, even to the modern-day Japanese. The concert harp is the culmination of an amazing engineering process whic h began in the mists of time, when someone first noticed that plucking the string on one s hunting bow produces a pleasing sound. Its relative, the smaller lap harp, is the instr ument of choice amongst the angels of Christian art. Though there are harps in many cultures of the world, the image evoked by the concert harp is distinctly European. Riley Lee and Marshall McGuire first performed together for the Sydney Spring Festival of New Music in 1996, playing works by Anne Boyd. Two of her pieces are included on this recording, Goldfish through Summer Rain and Cloudy Mountain. Both of these compositions were originally written for the Western transverse flute and piano. Upon hearing the harp and shakuhac hi combination, Anne Boyd stated that this was exactly the sound she had in mind when composing the pieces. As part of the efforts to publicise the concerts of Sydney Spring Festival, Marshall McGuire and Riley Lee were asked to record an excerpt of Goldfish through Summer Rain for a single broadcast on ABC Classic FM. The short recording was so well received that it was subsequently chosen for inclusion on The Swoon Collection II, one of the outstandingly popular series of ABC Classic FM CDs on the ABC Classics label. There are few, if any, pieces composed for the shakuhachi and concert harp. Consequently, this recording presents a collection of pieces, none of whic h was written specifically for harp and shakuhachi. Yet, as with Goldfish through Summer Rain and Cloudy Mountain, they could have been. Riley Lee and Marshall McGuire are confident that all of the composers of the pieces included in this recording, from Franz Schubert of 19th-century Europe to the 20th-century Japanese composer Katsutoshi Nagasawa, would be pleased with the result. 3

4 Haro no umi (Spring Sea) is one of the most frequently perf ormed pieces in the shakuhachi and koto (Japanese 13-stringed zither) repertoire. Michio Miyagi was inspired to compose this piece in 1929 while passing through the Seto Inland Sea of J apan. Goldfish through Summer Rain, originally scored for flute and piano, was composed by Anne Boyd while living in Hong Kong. Marshall McGuire arranged the harp part in Hoshun (First Stirrings of Spring) was written in 1971 by Katsutoshi Nagasawa for shakuhachi and koto. According to the composer, the shakuhachi is like a kite in the blue sk y, praising the clear heavens, loudly and without hesitation. At the same time, softly and gently, the koto (harp, on this recording) weaves in and out of the flowing shakuhachi part naturally, allowing the melody to be heard, yet standing on its own as well. Der Leiermann (The Hurdy-Gurdy Man) is the final song in Franz Schubert s great setting of Wilhelm Müller s poems, Winterreise. Composed in 1827, the cycle takes us on a journey as much physical as psychological through an increasingly troubled and sombre landscape. The Corpus Christi Carol from A Boy Was Born is a song composed by Benjamin Britten to words from a 15th-century carol. Interlude, for solo harp, is from Britten s second cycle of carols, A Ceremony of Carols, which was composed in In a work concerned with innocence and experience, the ethereal Interlude offers a reflective pause on the journey between the two states. The work begins with gently articulated harmonics and grows more and more elaborate until it e ventually evaporates into glissandi. Cloudy Mountain, by Anne Boyd, uses pentatonic scales which are found in the traditional sacred pieces for the shakuhachi, but differs from the traditional repertoire in its mesmerising rh ythms and lofty climaxes. Tsuru no sugomori (Nesting of the Cranes), composed by Chikuho Sakai in 1916, is one of many versions of this famous shakuhachi piece. It attempts to convey the mixed emotions of the young crane leaving the nest for the first time. Mayudama (The Song of the Silk Cocoon) was written by Katsutoshi Nagasawa in Cocoon-shaped cakes are hung on a festive bamboo branch at New Year celebrations in Japan, a ritual originally intended as a supplication for an abundance of silk-producing cocoons the following year. 4 Riley Lee

5 RILEY LEE Riley Lee began playing the shakuhachi in Japan in 1971, under the guidance of Chikuho Sakai II and Katsuya Yokoyama. In the early 1970s, he became the very first non-japanese professional taiko player, as a founding member of Ondekoza. In 1980, he became the first non-japanese to attain Grand Master (dai shihan) rank in shakuhachi. Riley holds a doctorate in Ethnomusicology from the Univ ersity of Sydney, and a BA and MA in music from the Univ ersity of Hawai i. He has made over fifty shakuhachi recordings, which are distributed worldwide. He has composed numerous pieces for shakuhachi and other instruments. Riley taught at University of Hawai i for six years, and in 2007 started a shakuhachi program at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He has been a research fellow at Osaka Unversity of Fine Arts and was a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University in 2006 and again in 2009, when he lectured in the Comparative Literature Department. In 1997, he co-founded TaikOz with Ian Cleworth, and he continues to perform regularly with this awardwinning ensemble. He was the Artistic Director and Executive Producer of the 2008 World Shakuhachi Festival in Sydney. Riley tours the world as a performer and teacher of the shakuhachi. In 2012, he is performing, teaching and recording in Australia, and in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Colorado, Hawai i, and again at Princeton University. Riley Lee lives in Manly, NSW, and teaches privately in Sydney, Canberra and throughout the world via the Internet. 5

6 MARSHALL McGUIRE Acclaimed as one of the world s leading harpists in contemporary and Baroque repertoire, Marshall McGuire studied at the Victorian College of the Arts, Paris Conservatoire and the Royal College of Music, London. His London debut recital was presented at the Purcell Room for the Park Lane Group. He has commissioned and premiered over 100 new works for harp, and in 1997 was honoured with the Sounds Australian Award for the Most Distinguished Contribution to the Presentation of Australian Music. He has performed as soloist with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, English String Orchestra, Les Talens Lyriques, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Australia Ensemble, and has appeared at numerous international festivals including Aldeburgh, Milan, Geneva, Brighton, Vienna, Huddersfield, Huntington, Melbourne and Adelaide. From 1988 to 1992 he was Principal Harpist with the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, and has been a member of the ELISION ensemble since He made his conducting debut in perf ormances of Mozart s The Magic Flute with Pacific Opera in From 1999 to 2001 he was curator of the Twilight Chamber Music Series for Sydney Festival, and in 2003 he was artist-in-residence at the Bundanon Trust. From 2003 to 2007 Marshall was Artistic Director of The Seymour Group / Sonic Art Ensemble; in 2004 he received a Creative Fellowship from the State Library of Victoria, and a Churchill Fellowship. He was the inaugural curator of the Utzon Music Series at the Sydney Opera House, founding President of the New Music Network, Co-Artistic Director of Ludovico s Band, and was Executive Manager, Artistic Planning with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra from 2006 to

7 Executive Producer Robert Patterson Recording Producer Patricia Lee Recording Engineer Michael Gissing Publications Editor Natalie Shea Marketing and Catalogue Coordinator Laura Bell Booklet Design Imagecorp Pty Ltd Cover Image Katsushika Hokusai The Great Wave of Kanagawa from Thirty-Six Views of Mt Fuji (reproduction on silk) Artist Photos Rudi van Starrex (Riley Lee), Bridget Elliot (Marshall McGuire) Recorded 19 August 1998 at Digital City Studios, Sydney ABC Classics thanks Jonathan Villanueva and Virginia Read Sound of Bamboo / Harpo Productions Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Universal Music Group, under exclusive licence. Made in Australia. All rights of the owner of copyright reserved. Any copying, renting, lending, diffusion, public performance or broadcast of this record without the authorit y of the copyright owner is prohibited. 7

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