Stuart Saunders Smith: A River Rose: Music for Violin

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Release Date: 26th Aug 2014
Catalogue No: NW80754
Label: New World
Length: 61 minutes

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Smith, S S: Hearts

Work length11:49

$7.00

$9.80

Airi Yoshioka

I. The Disembodied Heart

Track length1:40

$1.00

$1.40

II. Passage To Heaven

Track length1:23

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$1.40

III. Physical Love

Track length1:43

$1.00

$1.40

IV. Alcoholism - The Broken Heart

Track length1:31

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$1.40

V. A Couple Having A Picnic And Watching The Clouds Go By

Track length2:34

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VI. Humor - The Light Heart

Track length0:41

$1.00

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VII. Palindrome - The Shape Of The Heart

Track length2:17

$1.00

$1.40

Smith, S S: Three for Two

Work length5:53

$3.00

$4.20

Airi Yoshioka, Maria Lambros

I. Across the Kennebec

Track length2:18

$1.00

$1.40

II. The Forks

Track length1:16

$1.00

$1.40

III. Caratunk

Track length2:19

$1.00

$1.40

Smith, S S: A Gift for Bessie

Work length10:14

$1.50

$2.10

Airi Yoshioka, John Novacek, Sue Heineman, Lee Hinkle

Smith, S S: Minor

Work length4:51

$1.00

$1.40

Airi Yoshioka

Smith, S S: A River Rose

Work length13:19

$5.00

$7.00

Airi Yoshioka, José “Zeca” Lacerda

I. -

Track length2:45

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$1.40

II. -

Track length3:10

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III. -

Track length1:40

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IV. -

Track length2:43

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V. -

Track length3:01

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Smith, S S: I've Been Here Before

Work length14:58

$3.00

$4.20

Airi Yoshioka, John Novacek

I. -

Track length13:56

$2.00

$2.80

II. -

Track length1:02

$1.00

$1.40

About
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About

Stuart Saunders Smith (b. 1948) describes himself as “a confessional composer who focuses on revealing in his music the most personal aspects of his life, in the belief that the revelations of the particular speak to the universal.” These six works feature the violin, unaccompanied and in a chamber context, and span four decades of compositional activity.

Minor (2001) and Hearts (2004)—the unaccompanied violin works on this album—offer a Janus-faced comparison of two interrogatory paths. Minor is unifocal, a soliloquy that delves into and elaborates upon a singularity. Hearts, on the other hand, is a series of miniatures that articulates a complex idea by moving from perspective to perspective, like a photographer trying to capture a sculpture by taking pictures of it from many angles. Both works, though, evince the characteristics of Smith’s compositional language: free atonality, occasional nods toward the extended triadic harmonies of avant-garde jazz, the intuitive use of pitch cells, and registral displacements that create implied counterpoint and compound melodies within single lines.

The four chamber works on this album— Three for Two (1972), A Gift for Bessie (1971), A River Rose (2005), I’ve Been Here Before (2008)—rely to varying degrees on elements of what Smith calls “music of coexistence”—music where each performer’s material is set, but its deployment in time in relation to other performers is not fixed. (Smith has sometimes referred to this practice as writing parts without a score.) The scores for these works do not appear to be especially complex—they look similar to his conventional solo and chamber scores—but by adjusting the synchronic relationships of the performers, Smith creates sounding objects that are breathing, vivid, and complex beyond the confines of intellectualism.

Stuart Saunders Smith: A River Rose

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