Winter Songs Today at UAA

The University of Alaska Anchorage's pre-eminent chamber group, the Alaska Pro Musica, will give their winter recital this afternoon at 4:00 p.m. at the UAA Arts Building Recital Hall. Walter Oliveros, violin, Mark Wolbers, clarinet, and Timothy Smith, piano will perform three works from the 20th century and one from this century. They'll also be introducing their new CD, which features one of the works performed today and two others that they have commissioned.

The CD features Seattle composer Ken Benshoof's Whimsical Solution, a set commissioned by the Pro Musica that has gone on to become an often-performed staple for violin-clarinet-piano trios around the world. I've performed with or collaborated with three groups who have featured this work, inspired by Dr. Wolbers' request for a new composition by Benshoof.

Craig Coray's Sanctuary, also on the CD, is one of Alaska's most introspective, deeply lyrical composer's most poignant creations. I wrote about Coray's recent book, Dnaghelt'ana Qut'ana K'eli Ahdelyax (They Sing the Songs of Many Peoples) here back in November.

My new work, Winter Songs, takes four poems originally published in the now-defunct Northern Rim poetry quarterly, Ice Floe. Winter Songs is the second of a contemplated four-work series of songs about the seasons, dedicated to Judy Youngquist, my wife. The first set, Summer Songs, based on three poems by Mary Oliver, premiered back in the last century. The ensemble will be joined by coloratura soprano Anastasia Jamieson for the songs.

Here are two of the poems I've used as lyrics for Winter Songs:

Somewhere

Somewhere in a crater-like formation
Of scalloped granite the snow falls all the time,
Even when the sun is shining, and were it not
For an alarming run of bad luck human
Civilization would have started there.

- Hayden Carruth


Light

Wherever you walk
Hunting on the tundra,
You feel so happy
When the light shines in the dark.

If you wander in a blizzard
Through a cloud of snow,
How strong is your desire
To see the light of a yarang.

Even if the night is quiet,
You go tired, nearly falling down.
But if a light suddenly twinkles,
Your body resumes nimbleness.

And your thoughts seem to be wings,
And your legs run by themselves.

- Vaalgyrgyn
(translated from the Chukchi by Charles Weinstein)

photo of the Alaska Pro Musica by Mike Dinneen