Tormenta Cantata
for Soprano, String Quartet, and Amplified Painters Brush
Explanation
W hat is the interplay between art and music? Tormenta Cantata explores the similarity between gestures, language and even notation in the creation of visual art and music. It raises the question of culture and of past influencing the present and future.
Tormenta (woman in black) is young, she’s rich, she’s beautiful but she doesn’t know who she is- and neither do we, because we never see her from the front. But sometimes the back can reveal as much as what is up front in a person. Things were always happening in front of her, but she never really is apart of it, like history taking place in many different guises. She is in observation of her own creation. She has a timeless quality to her, like a simple black dress.
Tormenta (woman in black) is young, she’s rich, she’s beautiful but she doesn’t know who she is- and neither do we, because we never see her from the front. But sometimes the back can reveal as much as what is up front in a person. Things were always happening in front of her, but she never really is apart of it, like history taking place in many different guises. She is in observation of her own creation. She has a timeless quality to her, like a simple black dress.
Links
La Tormenta (Spanish: Storm) Cantata premiered at the opening celebration of the César E. Chavez Center at UCLA on May 14, 1995. It was performed by soprano, Yvonne Regalado, artist, Gronk, and the Kronos Quartet. It was also performed at the Theater Artaud in San Francisco May 9, 10, 11, 1996; at the exclusive Villa Montalvo in Saratoga, California, September 1996; and at the Union Memorial Hall on the campus of Madison, WI, February 26, 1998. It was also performed by Gronk, members of the New Mexico Symphony, and soprano Rebecca Geneva Biorn at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, Albuquerque, NM in 2000.
I. Echo
II. Paper Panes
III. Tormenta
I. Echo
II. Paper Panes
III. Tormenta
Description
A string quartet sits in a straight row at an angle to a large wall. A soprano is off to the opposite side in a black dress with her back to the audience. The string quartet and soprano perform while Gronk paints a piece with an amplified paint brush. Gronk's’ brush movements are written on the musical score.
Program
Scene One
Echo (from the past)
A non pehua non quica
Translation from Nahuatl:
I raise my songs
from the Cantares mexicanos, National Library of Mexico, fol. 53 v.
Scene Two
Paper Planes
The artist adds paper planes onto the canvas, they have a folk element to them yet are performed with a modern harmonic language. Sophisticated and classical design- cocktail glass- Tormenta appears on the wall. The light elements are ideas- the lamp and the candle (paintings of these objects on the canvas are suddenly turned “on” by stage lighting) and represent an ancient and modern form of light. They ar +e also an echo- the past and the present.
Scene Three
Tormenta
Tormenta is an observation of her own creation. The music borrows gestures from "The Storm Cantata," the piece Bernard Herrmann conducted at the climax of Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. Tormenta has a false shadow, it is not emanating- it could be a lie. Like the echo which is like a story, it gets retold and altered at the same time (Tormenta was inspired by Hitchcock's Notorious). Like Tormenta, what she reflects in the shadow is not the same. She has been altered with music. She is an imaginary being, a myth being made.
Echo (from the past)
A non pehua non quica
Translation from Nahuatl:
I raise my songs
from the Cantares mexicanos, National Library of Mexico, fol. 53 v.
Scene Two
Paper Planes
The artist adds paper planes onto the canvas, they have a folk element to them yet are performed with a modern harmonic language. Sophisticated and classical design- cocktail glass- Tormenta appears on the wall. The light elements are ideas- the lamp and the candle (paintings of these objects on the canvas are suddenly turned “on” by stage lighting) and represent an ancient and modern form of light. They ar +e also an echo- the past and the present.
Scene Three
Tormenta
Tormenta is an observation of her own creation. The music borrows gestures from "The Storm Cantata," the piece Bernard Herrmann conducted at the climax of Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. Tormenta has a false shadow, it is not emanating- it could be a lie. Like the echo which is like a story, it gets retold and altered at the same time (Tormenta was inspired by Hitchcock's Notorious). Like Tormenta, what she reflects in the shadow is not the same. She has been altered with music. She is an imaginary being, a myth being made.