CREDO

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Note from Meridian Arts Ensemble

This recording follows the Meridian Arts Ensemble model of recordings from years past. It contains a variety of music from different time periods representing different styles. Some of the works on the recording were written for the group. Two pieces are by an ensemble member, and one is a Meridian commission. The rest of the pieces were arranged for the group by ensemble members. Every piece is a piece we believe in. Every piece we play represents our greatest effort at stylistic authenticity. This is our credo.

Meridian Arts Ensemble

Jon Nelson and Sycil Mathai, trumpet

Daniel Grabois, horn

Ben Herrington, trombone

Tom Curry, tuba

Credits

Recording Engineer: Chris Jacobs

Editing: Tom Curry, Daniel Grabois, Matthew Onstad, Jon Nelson, Chris Jacobs

Mixing and Mastering: Chris Jacobs

This recording was made at the University at Buffalo, in the Lippes Concert Hall of Slee Hall. Eric Huebner - Chair, Phil Rehard - Concert Manager, Chris Jacobs - Director of Music Technology

The composition of Daniel Grabois’ Gravikord was made possible through generous support from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF).

Special thanks to Andrew Rindfleisch, Tim Beyer, Faustino Díaz Mendez, Brass Monkey Music.

The creation of this recording was made possible through generous support from WARF.

Credo, by David Sanford

This is the third piece Meridian has commissioned from the brilliant American composer David Sanford. Sanford’s music is inspired by many different styles, as is plainly evident in this four-movement work. The first movement seems to emerge from the world of noise into the world of music, each instrument making nontraditional sounds until a coherent bass line emerges in the tuba, eventually pulling the other instruments into coherence. The second movement is a trill-filled frenzy. The third movement starts with a noble melodic fragment in the trumpet, then sets up a groove and builds and builds, the melodic fragment reappearing in various guises. The final movement opens with a staccato trumpet solo, then develops into a rhythmic extravaganza for the entire ensemble, the instruments chattering at each other, arguing, and coming together.

Note from the composer:

Credo (2021)

Credo for brass quintet was commissioned through the generous funding from the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Library of Congress for the Meridian Arts Ensemble. It is the third piece for which I have been fortunate to be commissioned by that ensemble, and it was premiered by the MAE September 13, 2021, at Cleveland State University. The title suggests religious or spiritual faith, and on one level it shares the formal cantata-like kinship with my earlier piece for the group, Corpus (1997). However, the majority of Credo is more abstract and less tied to recognizable tropes (such as rock and jazz in Corpus).

The opening movement introduces the ensemble and takes inspiration from the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s use of “little instruments” – bells, small percussion instruments, found objects – to create a light sonic mist/texture at certain moments, which I remember vividly from the beginning of a performance of theirs in 2003. In this work a small number of extended techniques are employed to briefly replicate actual little instruments, whose sounds precede the entrance a ground bass that lasts for the remainder of the movement.   

The third movement is the most conventional in its connection to a typical 6/8 march. On some level it revisits the similarly triple-subdivided rhythmic mode of Corpus’s fourth movement (“Kreuz-Männer”), although more concerned with the dodecaphonic explorations of that form by Hugh Ragin, concert marches by Morton Gould and Hindemith, and the song “Atlas” by the rock band Battles.

--David Sanford

Feldpartie, by Franz Josef Haydn (arr. Jon Nelson)

Early in his career, Haydn wrote a series of pieces of outdoor music for wind band. Rustic in style, these pieces contrast with the tremendous refinement of much of Haydn’s music, and they bubble with energy and life as so much of his music does.

Drift, by Daniel Grabois

I composed Drift during the pandemic shutdown. I teach at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I play in the faculty Wisconsin Brass Quintet (my twice-over colleague, MAE tubist Tom Curry, is also in that group). During the shutdown, the WBQ was envisioning coming back, post-pandemic, with a program that showed off the state of Wisconsin. That program never materialized, but the idea inspired the composition of Drift. The title comes from the “driftless area,” a part of the state just west of Madison that was untouched by the glaciers, which scoured and flattened a huge part of the state. There are hills (“mountains” would be an exaggeration), rock outcroppings, trees, and majestic views everywhere. I tried to capture the majesty of the driftless area in this piece.

Two Fanfares, by Igor Stravinsky

Stravinsky wrote the Fanfare for a New Theatre to be played at the opening of the New York State Theatre at Lincoln Center. Written for a pair of trumpets, it draws on the heraldry of the ancient trumpet and the dissonance of the 1960s. Meridian trumpeters have played the piece for years. Raymond Stewart, our now-retired tubist, arranged a short fanfare from Stravinsky’s ballet Agon for low brass trio (horn-trombone-tuba) as a complement to the trumpet fanfare.

Suite for Brass Quintet, by Igor Stravinsky (arr. Raymond Stewart and Jon Nelson)

Featuring Sarabande Step from Agon and selections from String Quartet #1

Nothing in our Suite for Brass Quintet was written for brass quintet. Retired Meridian tubist Raymond Stewart arranged Sarabande Step for the group years ago, and we merged it into a suite with two movements from Stravinsky’s String Quartet #1. These pieces present classic Stravinsky style: sometimes angular and aggressive, sometimes smooth and almost mournful. The sound of the String Quartet movements is radically transformed by the brass instruments, but is still true to Stravinsky’s sound world.

Adagio mesto from Piano Sonata, by Samuel Barber (arr. Daniel Grabois)

Samuel Barber’s ultra-romantic piano sonata from 1949 was commissioned by Irving Berlin and Richard Rogers. Meridian here presents the second movement of that piece, filled with neoromantic angst. Though originally a solo piano work, it feels symphonic, with soaring melodies and thick textures

Gravikord, by Daniel Grabois

In writing this piece, I was inspired by a small African thumb piano, a kalimba, that I had in my studio. You play it by plucking metal tines with your thumbs. The tines that are next to each other play notes a third apart. I started alternating hands: two adjacent notes plucked on the right, then two on the left. This material became one of the elements of the piece. Another element was the musical version of my initials, DSG (with the S being represented by the German “es” or Eb). The kalimba is like a miniature version of the African string instrument the kora. In 1984, an electronic version of the kora was invented and named the “gravikord.” If the ramped-up kalimba is a kora, the ramped-up kora is the gravikord. Since I was ramping up my kalimba melodies and harmonies into a large brass quintet, I thought Gravikord would be an appropriate name.