Over the past several months, I’ve been working on crafting a new solo recital program, which I’ll be performing in several states over the next few months — premiering (February 21st!) at beautiful Grace Farms in New Canaan, CT; where I am the current Artist-in-Residence. This program is a reflection of the things I’ve been thinking about and going through in this period of my life — in taking in all the devastation, frustration, and confusion surrounding what’s going on in the world around me; always considering and rethinking why I am an artist and what that means in responding to our collective experiences; and feeling the ever-more-challenging draw to search for light and hope through darkness. In dreaming up this program, I was looking for music that has fought through tragedy by bringing people together, by reminding us of our shared humanity, by collecting grief and rage and inspiring it into action.
Program notes (for Grace Farms):
In developing this program, I was inspired by the idea of community music – the most obvious example of which is folk music, but really includes music across genres that foster a sense of community or encourage a shared bonding experience. In a time where we as a society seem to become increasingly polarized by the day, I am interested in how music can bring people together and remind us how much more we have in common than we think. The title “InCommon Folk” is a play on “uncommon folk,” aiming to draw people in not only to the concept but to one another. This program aims to interweave familiar tunes with ones you may never have heard before – and perhaps share old favourites in surprising new ways.
I view a musical program as a story, and also as a playlist – where each piece of music relates to what’s become before and after, allowing us to flow seamlessly through. The interplay between pieces and how they highlight short gestures and small details in one another is part of the joy of bringing music together! This playlist is full of some of my most cherished pieces of music – an offering from my heart that pairs and juxtaposes pieces to bring out new features in one another, and that tells a story of how art helps people communicate with one another, and has enabled people across hundreds of years to turn tragedy and frustration into hope, wonder, and activism.
We start with a conversation with nature (and a favourite song in my household) – Little Birdie – an Appalachian folk song from the early 20th-century. The song features someone in conversation with a bird, with perhaps the most famous line being: “I’ve a short time to be here, and a long time to be gone.” The rendition we listen to most is Pete Seeger’s, so that inspired Frankie’s cellistic arrangement.
The end of Little Birdie brings us into American classical/jazz/bluegrass cellist-composer Mark Summer’s arrangement of Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming – an old German hymn that I hope may elicit warm cozy feelings in you as it does me; filled with memories of family, holidays, and love. While not a folk song, hymns are very much community-based music that bring people together, and this rendition is filled with joy — featuring Mark Summer’s signature percussive and pizzicato techniques alongside jazz-and-fiddle-inspired writing.
The third piece on the program is Timo Andres’ brand new Wilton Songs – commissioned by Grace Farms specially for this recital! Knowing I was envisioning a folk-inspired communal theme to the program, Timo found a collection of recordings made just down the road from Grace Farms in Wilton, CT 91 years ago, and ultimately chose 3 to reinvent as pieces for solo cello – Frankie and Johnny, Poor Stranger, and Ten Thousand Miles. Of the work, Timo says “I was struck by the flexibility of Aunt Molly Jackson’s voice, and her repertoire, which conveys a veritable catalogue of human tragedy: betrayal, isolation, lost love, murder. This music seemed to me less an aesthetic statement than a communal repository of stories, warnings, and consolations.”
Following our world premiere, we have Kenji Bunch’s arrangement of We Shall Overcome. A traditional folk song known to many as the anthem of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s/60s, this song has a long, winding origin story dating back, at least in fragments, to the 1700s. In the early 1900s, Reverend Charles A Tindley popularized it, and in 2020, Kenji made this powerful arrangement, dedicating it to the memory of George Floyd.
Meredith Monk’s Cello Talk brings an exuberant rebirth into the next chapter of today’s program. Meredith is a prolific composer (and former Grace Farms Artist-in-Residence!) known for her vocal innovations, including a wide range of totally wild extended techniques, which even her instrumental works harken to. Deeply rooted in interdisciplinary experimentation, Monk has stated that her works seek emotional, ritualistic, communal experiences. Meredith has said that Cello Talk “is about different parts, registers, colours of the cello "talking" to each other (almost like a solo hocket).”
That energy propels us into incarcerated artist Paul V Cortez’s Lotus Petals Unfolding, which is 1 of 12 movements from his Cello Suite Bouquet, written for me through Carnegie Hall’s Musical Connections program in 2023. Paul comes from backgrounds in rock, folk, and Broadway music, and all of those flavours shape his conceptions of classical music. Of this composition, Paul wrote “[this music] is an offering reminding us of the essence of our humanity, so finely depicted in the flower (one of the most fleeting expressions of beauty that nature offers). A reminder of how quickly our lives expire on earth, and to lead with peace, love, and humility to blossom into the beauty we were meant to share with one another.”
As the final chord resounds, we elide into Frankie Carr’s reimagining of the traditional English folk tune, Scarborough Fair (made popular in America by singer-songwriter duo Simon & Garfunkel). Then we hear a short arrangement of Irving Berlin’s popular jazz standard, Blue Skies (inspired mainly by jazz-scat singer Ella Fitzgerald’s rendition), which leads us naturally into jazz and classical composer Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s Calvary Ostinato from his Lamentations: Black/Folk Song Suite. On Lamentations, Perkinson wrote “the common denominator of these tunes is the reflection and statement of a people’s crying out”. The music blends classical/baroque compositional techniques with those of African American spirituals, blues, and folk idioms – in this movement, featuring a repeating pizzicato bass line (an “ostinato”) over which the Calvary melody sings.
The first half ends with Sonata for Solo Cello by George Crumb, an American avant-garde composer who drew much inspiration from folk music. Crumb was heavily influenced by Béla Bartók, who was a pioneer classical composer blending folk and classical music; spending much of his life collecting and studying folk traditions from his native Hungary. Crumb’s favourite folk song was the 19th century North American tune Shenandoah, so I made a short arrangement to precede his Sonata.
Zoltán Kodály’s Sonata for Solo Cello Op 8 opens the second half of this program with a bang. This is one of the most monumental works ever written for solo cello, challenging the limitations of what people thought a cello could do and reinventing the instrument as a solo instrument. Kodály worked alongside Bartók, revolutionizing 20th century music through their study and integration of Eastern European folk music into their classical compositions.
From the first movement of Kodály’s Sonata, we hear Andrea Casarrubios’ SEVEN, written in 2020 as a tribute to essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to those who lost their lives and suffered due to the crisis. Written in Manhattan during the early days of lockdown, the piece ends with seven bell-like sounds, alluding to Manhattan’s daily 7pm tribute during the lockdown, where community gathered out their windows, clapping and banging pots and pans, celebrating all those putting their lives on the line to try to save others. A true celebration of the power and beauty of community; finding light, hope, and gratitude in one another despite immense tragedy and hardship.
To round out the program, we have one final set of improvisations imagined by Frankie Carr, this time on Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land. Based on another tune called “When the World’s On Fire,” it’s fundamentally a protest song (Guthrie originally wrote it as a sarcastic rebuttal against Irving Berlin’s God Bless America in 1940). Aimed to highlight America’s beauty alongside stark inequality, struggles of working class people, and the wealth disparity, it became an anthem against blind patriotism.
This program has come together over the past several months of my life, in noticing what I lean on in hard times; what music helps me feel closer to other people, and how music helps foster a sense of community and empowerment. The program has been heavily influenced by Grace Farms itself – spending days imagining and reimagining the music, and how it would be experienced in the Sanctuary: in conversation with the landscape surrounding, and in a place of great peace, community spirit, and grounding serenity – a respite from the world around, but not to be used as an excuse to ignore the world beyond.
Program for Grace Farms (variations including different movements and pieces for RI, NY, and PA performances):
Traditional, arr Frankie Carr: Improvisation on Little Birdie
Mark Summer: Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming
*Timo Andres: Wilton Songs (Frankie and Johnny, Poor Stranger, Ten Thousand Miles)
Traditional/Charles A Tindley, arr Kenji Bunch: We Shall Overcome
Meredith Monk: Cello Talk
Paul V Cortez: Lotus Petals Unfolding
*Traditional, arr Frankie Carr: Scarborough Fair
*Irving Berlin, arr Arlen Hlusko: Blue Skies
Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson: Lamentations: Black/Folk Song Suite, III. Calvary Ostinato
Traditional, arr Arlen Hlusko: Shenandoah
George Crumb: Sonata for Solo Cello
—intermission—
Zoltán Kodály: Solo Sonata for Cello, Op 8, I. Allegro maestoso ma appassionato
Andrea Casarrubios: SEVEN
*Woody Guthrie, arr Frankie Carr: This Land
*world premiere
For more information, please visit https://gracefarms.org/event/music-at-grace-farms-arlen-hlusko.