Dear Members of the DSO:
I just found out that you will be performing CUT TIME. How nice!
It is an honor to make music together with you and my admired colleague, Professor Harry Davidson. CUT TIME is a short piece, and it is the composer’s job to give the message succinctly and then to get out of the way. Two minutes. The message? Enjoy the moment. Have fun in the improbable and give thanks for the legacy of American music. That’s all, folks.
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If you would like to know more about CUT TIME I have created the following threads for you.
For the members of the Duke Symphony Orchestra, September 27, 2024
ENJOY THE MOMENT, the improbable joy of precision and fun: in short, MUSIC!!!
- Cut Time for Orchestra originated as CUT-TIME SHOUT for two pianos. Cut-time Shout was commissioned by faculty colleagues in the Department of Music at UNC-CH as a retirement present for Profs. Barbara Rowan and Frances Whang, a piano duo. The gift was to be an encore piece for two pianos. I wanted them to feel joy, humor and the improbable fun of making music. The recorded performance is by Quattro Mani.
- Cut Time for Orchestra was created for the National Symphony Orchestra as thanks for their championing of my Concerto for Cello and Orchestra. The National Symphony adopts different states in the US each year, and as part of this program, they adopted North Carolina in 2005. For their tour the NSO gave nine or ten North Carolina performances in March 2005. Conducted by Leonard Slatkin, the Raleigh performance of CUT TIME turned out to be the first performance of any piece by an American composer in Meymandi Hall. (In 2006, Meymandi Hall was new. It was donated by Assad Meymandi (1934-2024) an immigrant from Iran who became a psychiatrist and philanthropist in Fayetteville. May his memory be an inspiration for all immigrants to our great country, as we aspire to be a beacon of freedom.)
- DNME, our graduate-student run music performance collective, did a hilarious send-up of Cut-Time Shout in 2015. Here are excerpts of two of the pieces:
Alex Kotch: Cut Time Shout (Hott Remix, two excerpts)
Kotch, Hot Remix II
David Garner: Half-Time Whisper (concluding excerpt)
4. KidZNotes, Durham’s El Sistema affiliate school and orchestra, collaborated with the Durham Symphony. I created a special way for them to learn the rhythms—which you have noted are tricky. Here they are, under Maestro William Henry Curry, performing at the Kryzewski Center: Cut Time II Video excerpt
It’s hard to tell in this video, but what the students learned through discipline and fun was the following, presented in piano score and including stomping, clapping,etc.. The upper stemmed notes are the clapping pattern for one choir, and the lower stemmed notes the other–Cut Time IIa is purely didactic. Audio:
Colleagues like Harry Davidson, William Henry Curry, Béla Bartók, Verena Møsenbichler-Bryant and Gustavo Dudamel (himself a product of El Sistema) illustrate that a tiny little piece can extend into musical learning in the community, and to ongoing togetherness. This builds a more peaceful world. Will you join? If you want to volunteer for tutoring at KidZNotes, either I or Professor Davidson will help connect you.
THE LEGACY OF AMERICAN MUSIC
CUT TIME evokes several currents of music I have absorbed as an American composer. I am grateful for all kinds of roots. There is the joy of gospel music evident in the hand-clapping and foot-stomping, in short, a whole soul and body expression of the Spirit among us. The roots of Gospel music also inspired countless musicians to create jazz, Motown, and all other manner of Black Music that continues to grow and grow. (I used to take groggy FOCUS students to hear the context of Gospel Choral Music by taking them to St. Joseph’s AME Church on Fayetteville Street, which has the longest unbroken tradition of five-part Gospel singing in NC. The 8:15 service was memorable for the students as they understood that music was part of the whole congregation’s uplift, and everybody was important in this image of God.)
As Duke Ellington said about one of his 1943 compositions: “The climax reminds us that even though the Negro is “Black, Brown and Beige”; he is also “Red, White, and Blue” (Ellington). In an age when our schools and institutions of higher learning feel the hot breath of state legislatures meddling in their teaching plans, never forget what Ellington’s title embodies: America’s history is also: Black History.
THE LEGACY OF AMERICAN MUSICAL MODERNISM
Like Ellington and say, Jason Moran or William Grant Still, musical modernism influenced the formation of my musical style. I’m an original composer —-and that’s what composers should strive to be. At the same time, the currents around us are rich!
Cut Time’s Symmetry: the short work is in C major. The two boogie bridge sections are symmetrically placed to radiate around C: they begin in Db major (m. 17 ) and B major (m.56), the first one half-step above the central key, the second a half step below the central key. The rhythmic language is also frequently symmetrical, augmenting straightforward rhythms by variation, including by half of the rhythmic value, thus:
becomes
Anton Webern, Olivier Messiaen and Ruth Crawford Seeger are among the composers that explored these ideas before me. In this context, you can also hear the perpetual call and response characteristic of Gospel music as the answering party responds with their own variant.
Enjoy music always.
