Barbara Monk Feldman was born in Quebec, Canada. She received a Master in Music from McGill University, Montreal, and Ph.D in Music at State University of New York at Buffalo, where she studied with Morton Feldman, to whom she was married in 1987. This is the first monographic CD devoted to her music.
The works on this programme are part of a series of compositions that take their inspiration from nature – in particular from aspects of nature that the composer experiences as resisting an alignment with her ideas about musical form.
The composer writes: "At the Gaspé peninsula in Quebec where the St. Lawrence river widens into the sea, the opposite shore appears across the water as a mirage that is either enhanced or diminished by the intensity of the light on the water ...
I was interested in the reaction of the composer Lou Harrison to In the Small Time of a Desert Flower after we listened to the recording of the premiere of this work, performed by Aki Takahashi, for whom the piece was written. He was very enthusiastic and his first remark was, “The rhythm of the piece seems to come from the geography of a landscape — something I have never heard before!”"
The interpreters are a stellar group of new music performers: pianist Aki Takahashi who has a long connection with both Monk Feldman’s and Morton Feldman’s music, the duo Sabat/Clarke, and percussionist Dirk Rothbrust of Ensemble Musik Fabrik.
Both works are first recordings.
Liner notes by Barbara Monk Feldman.
