SAN FRANCISCO
COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Mark Alburger, Music Director
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral
8pm, Saturday, September 25, 2010, Old First Church, San Francisco, CA
Mark Alburger and John Kendall Bailey, conducting
Program
Lisa Scola Prosek
Piano Sonata
Jorge Liderman
Flautando
Michael Cooke
Love Letters
I. GAC
II. Minerva's Dance
Mark Alburger
Animal Farm: Grand Zoological Fantasy-Variations
Part 1 - In Cold Blood
I. Wasps
II. Flies
III. Spiders
IV. Crabs
V. Sharks
VI. Frogs
VII. Turtles
VIII. Snakes
Intermission
Loren Jones
Banyan
I. River
II. Forest
III. Desert
Terry Riley
In C
***
Begin editing Psalm 29, then off toward the Vaca Mountains, to get the requisite buzz-cut, adjacent to
intriguing enterprises,
swinging
by
print shop to prepare Animal Farm for tonight's performance, then homeward for Harriet, who will be narrator in same. Poetic superscriptions are
The Wasp
Ogden Nash
The wasp and all his numerous family
I look upon as a major calamity.
He throws open his nest with prodigality,
But I distrust his waspitality.
The Fly
William Blake
Little Fly,
Thy summer's play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
For I dance
And drink, and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
If thought is life
And strength and breath
And the want
Of thought is death;
Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.
A Noiseless Patient Spider
Walt Whitman
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
Strayed Crab
Elizabeth Bishop
This is not my home. How did I get so far from water?
It must be over that way somewhere. . . .
The Maldive Shark
Herman Melville
About the Shark, phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,
How alert in attendance be.
From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw,
They have nothing of harm to dread,
But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank
Or before his Gorgonian head;
Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth
In white triple tiers of glittering gates,
And there find a haven when peril's abroad,
An asylum in jaws of the Fates!
They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey,
Yet never partake of the treat --
Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull,
Pale ravener of horrible meat.
The Frogs
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A Pool was once congeal'd with frost;
The frogs, in its deep waters lost,
No longer dared to croak or spring;
But promised, being half asleep,
If suffer'd to the air to creep,
As very nightingales to sing.
A thaw dissolved the ice so strong,--
They proudly steer'd themselves along,
When landed, squatted on the shore,
And croak'd as loudly as before.
The Turtle
Ogden Nash
The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.
What the Rattlesnake Said
Vachel Lindsay
The moon's a little prairie-dog.
He shivers through the night.
He sits upon his hill and cries
For fear that I will bite.
The sun's a broncho. He's afraid
Like every other thing,
And trembles, morning, noon and night,
Lest I should spring, and sting.
15 minutes before the show, the place is filling up (always a good sign), and the concert goes very well, returning for the evening's Twelve Preludes and Fugues ("Topical") videos --
VIIb. Gonna Get and
VIIIa. People Can Fall Down.
