OCTET Ensemble: Scatter My Ashes

Valeria Di Matteo created this album trailer for OCTET Ensemble‘s album Scatter My Ashes

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Streaming everywhere

MUSICIANS:
Music by William Susman
Poems by Sue Susman

Members of Octet:
Vocals: Mellissa Hughes
Saxophone: Demetrius Spaneas
Trumpet: Mike Gurfield
Trombone: Alan Ferber
Drums: Greg Zuber
Piano: Elaine Kwon
Electric Piano: William Susman
Double Bass: Eleonore Oppenheim

PRODUCTION CREDITS:
Produced by William Susman
Sound engineer and mixing: John Kilgore
Recorded and mixed at Kilgore Sound, New York City
Mastering engineer: Alan Silverman Mastered at Arf! Mastering, New York City
Additional sound engineer: Josiah Gluck
Additional mixing by Stephen Hart, assisted by Ana Sophia Dunham at The Site, San Rafael, California
Cover design by Daniel Sofer / Hermosawave
Photography by Ken Goodman
Cover image by Ben Swift

For Bookings:
Peter Robles
music@klassicalfirst.org
http://www.klassicalfirst.org

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From Poetry to Music

In the early 90s, pianist Joan Nagano had recently formed a group here in the San Francisco Bay Area called The Belmont Ensemble.  The instrumentation was voice, clarinet, french horn and piano. They were all supeerb musicians drawn from the SF opera orchestra. They asked me to write them a piece. I asked my sister Sue to send me some of her recent poems. I selected three for this song cycle that I felt spoke to each other and could tell a story. The result was Moving in to an Empty Space (1992).

When I set her poetry to music, I was also drawn to her shorter poems. They paint a picture using  words that are bubbling with motion and sound. In many ways, setting her poems to music was cathartic. Her words almost composed the music for me.

In the first poem called Hot Time, the line, “At night people scurry and run together in packs,” and, “as the music blasts into flashing strobe-lights, the walls begin to swell and breathe,” are filled with sonic gestures. The way I treat the vocal line with these words is a centuries old technique called word or tone painting. The melody and dynamics here reflect the literal meaning of the words.

The title of the second poem in the song cycle, Begging the night for change, is filled with movement and also is a stunning metaphor.

And, in the third poem, Moving in to an Empty Space, the closing existential lines, “There is no message, no sound just the silent reflection of my own face shining in the night to remind me that I have always been here,” are pregnant with music.

When I formed OCTET ensemble around 2010, I wanted to create an instrumentation that drew on my background playing in jazz ensembles. This band takes its sound from the big band music I played as a teenager: trumpet, sax, trombone, rhythm section plus vocals. When looking for repertoire, it was natural to arrange Moving in to an Empty Space for OCTET. In 2018, my sister’s poems were published in a collection called The Forest Within.

The second of three songs, Begging the Night for Change, in its original instrumentation of voice, clarinet, horn and piano.

Begging the Night for Change arranged for OCTET Ensemble.

Piano and Poetry

French pianist Vanessa Wagner and singer/songwriter Arthur H appeared together to celebrate Piano Day 2020. The concert was filmed on March 9, 2020 at Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris.

They performed a number of piano pieces and poems including my Quiet Rhythms no. 9 with an extract from Yves Bonnefoy’s Le haut du monde 

Watch the entire Piano Day ARTE Concert with Vanessa Wagner and Arthur H

Philipp Glass – Glassworks, ouverture
Hans Otte – Das Buch der Klange, Part X
Bryce Dessner – Ornament 3
William Susman – Quiet Rhythms, Prologue and Action No. 9
Philipp Glass – Etude No. 9
Philipp Glass – Etudes No. 5

Poèmes :
Jacques Prévert – Sables mouvants. Chansons. Sanguine
Henri Michaud – Poteaux d’angles (extrait court)
Gaston Miron – La marche à l’amour (extrait)
Yves Bonnefoy (extrait)
Arthur H – Anatalius sans remord ni regret
Arthur Rimbaud – L’éternité

 

Fanfare’s 2nd Album Review of Collision Point – “Crystalline Music”

SUSMAN Camille¹. Clouds and Flames ². Motions of Return³. The Starry Dynamo⁴  —  ¹Piccolo Accademia degli Specchi (^3,4Alessandra Amoreno, fl; ⁴Claudia Di Pietro, alto sax; ^2,4Giuliano Cavaliere, vn; ^2,4Rina You, vc; ²Assunta Cavallari, ^3,4Fabio Silvestro, pns)  —  BELARCA 007 (47:01)

 

Back in Fanfare 38:2, I wrote about a disc of William Susman’s music entitled Scatter My Ashes. Like the current disc, similarly on the Belarca label, playing time was short, but a sense of fun and enjoyment of life was long. Susman’s minimalist tendencies are fully on display again in this release, itself entitled Collision Point.

Scored for flute, alto sax, violin, cello and piano four-hands, Camille (2010) is based on the Afro-Cuban clave rhythm, with 3+2 layered against 2+3 in the first movement, “Vitality”. Susman suggests the aural equivalent is that of Escher’s woodcut Illustrations, where the eye can choose to concentrate on wither white fish or brown fish; here, it is the ear that opts which division of the measure to concentrate on. Booklet annotator David Sanson puts it well when he refers to Susman’s music as a “labyrinth of rhythms, a perpetually moving trompe-l’oeil,” a statement that seems to fit particularly well with Camille. The contrasting second panel “Tranquility,” is like a slowly turning kaleidoscope, before the pulsating finale, “Triumph,” emerges. The work was written for the current ensemble and is performed with the sense of rhythmic cleanliness and exactitude minimalist music requires.

The 2010 piece Clouds and Flames finds the scoring reduced to piano trio. Seven short movements are inspired by events in Colum McCann’s novel Let The Great World Spin and also by the tightrope walk of Philippe Petit between the World Trade Center towers on August 7, 1974. The central theme of Clouds and Flames is remembrance and loss, nowhere more evident than in the fourth movement, “The Alphabet of Dying”. The title of the next movement, “Collision Point,” a restrained movement built on slow-moving piano against pizzicato strings, also forms the title of the disc as a whole. The scoring for piano trio gives the piece a brilliant sort of clarity completely different from the ensemble used or Camille; again, the performance is beyond criticism.

The two remaining pieces date back into the 1990s. Based on cyclical melodies and chord progressions, Motions of Return for flute and piano (1994) takes its title from Francis Bacon’s 1627 The New Atlantis and is, like Camille, based on the idea of illusion. The agile flute part is superbly rendered by Alessandra Amoreno; Fabio Silvestro is the most fluent-fingered of pianists. Together, they negotiate the tricky asynchronous passages with great confidence.

The disc is bookended by ensemble pieces, that for The Starry Dynamo (1994) only one pianist short of that used for Camille; the original clarinet part has been replaced here by the alto sax of Claudia Di Pietro to fit in with the line-up of Piccolo Accademia degli Specchi. And, as in Camille, it is an Afro-Cuban rhythm that forms the basis, this time especially the montuño, a repeated syncopated figure.  It is a poem by Allan Ginsburg, HOWL, that forms the inspiration for The Starry Dynamo, including the line, “angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night”. This is a work that, in one continuous movement of nearly 15 minutes, goes further than any on this disc to offer a sense of immersion into Susman’s world.

Performances are superb throughout, while the recording is perfectly judged, enabling the crystalline aspect of Susman’s music to shine through. Recommended.

Colin Clarke

Five stars: Performances are superb, while the recording enables Susman’s crystalline music to shine.

Fanfare Magazine, March-April 2020 Issue

LISTEN HERE: Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon Music, Spotify and other streaming platforms

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Collision Point Reviewed in Fanfare

 

 

SUSMAN Camille. Clouds and Flames. Motions of Return. The Starry Dynamo ● Piccola Academia degli Specchi ● BELARCA 007 (47:01)

On the face of it this album of chamber works by the accomplished Chicago-born composer/pianist William Susman is very accessible, delivering ingenious variations on Minimalism’s familiar techniques from a confident and fertile musical imagination. But bit of exploration into Susmnn’s biography reveals an intriguing story, a capsule history, in fact, of where modern American music has traveled over the past decades.

Born in 1960, Susman studied both classical and jazz piano. He is probably the only performer who learned from both a student of Artur Schnabel’s (Pauline Lindsey) and a pianist with Louis Armstrong (Steve Behr). He founded his own jazz ensemble when he was 13 and later performed with big bands and Afro-Cuban groups. That’s merely the beginning of a complex web of influences that led him to gravitate toward Xenakis and Ligeti in the Eighties. At 25 he enjoyed a major breakthrough by becoming the youngest composer to be awarded a commission from Harvard’s prestigious Fromm Foundation. There were graduate studies in computer-generated music at Stanford and an invitation from Pierre Boulez to engage with IRCAM in Paris.

For a composer rooted in the European avant garde, using arcane methods based, for example, on Fibonacci sequences to generate rhythmic repetitions, his eventual encounter with American Minimalism came as an “aesthetic shock” and a kind of spiritual awakening. In a booklet note Susman relates that “The way Riley, Reich, and Glass incorporated the things they liked—Indian or African influences, for example into their music led me to think about the things I knew and admired.”

As listeners we are so accustomed to following our personal tastes that it might be hard to relate to a young composer tightly identified with mid-century Modernism (and receiving commissions and praise for adhering to that idiom), but Susman’s awakening moment was a kind of liberation. In a much publicized shift, another arch Modernist, the conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, had a similar conversion to Minimalism as a composer.

In none of these cases does the shift represent a move from complexity to simplicity. No one could be more theoretical than Glass or more steeped in the Modernist styles he rejected. The hidden texture inside today’s Minimalism consists of personal and private influences being brought to bear. For Susman, his style today is inspired by Afro- Cuban montuño, medieval hocket and isorhythm from the École de Notre-Dame de Paris, and jazz.

I’ve gone into these facets out of fascination but also to illustrate how these four chamber works came about—you couldn’t guess it by ear alone. The instrumentation varies from a duo for flute and piano (Motions of Return) to a standard piano trio with violin and cello (Clouds and Flames), with a sextet, Camille, and quintet, The Starry Dynamo, that call upon the largest complement of the Rome-based ensemble, Piccola Academia degli Specchi (Little Academy of Mirrors), which is flute, alto saxophone, violin, cello, and two pianists (they play four-hand in Camille). While listening to Camille, which opens the program, I thought that Susman should consider writing film scores, because he uses Minimalism to express a range of feelings that can be unusually tender or bold. My impression was justified, as I discovered later, because Susman has composed a number of award-wining film scores.

Needless to say, Minimalism has evolved into more than one thing, and for me, Susman’s version is appealing because it isn’t mechanical and the harmonic shifts don’t occur with glacial slowness. This is quick-witted music guided as much by emotional change as rhythmic and harmonic modulations. The flute and piano duo, Motions of Return, is necessarily fairly monochromatic, so here the focus is on rhythmic changes that might well be mathematically based. The quintet and sextet, since they use piano and alto sax, are more colorful and jazzy, I’d say, although Susman is capable of considerable surprise and unpredictability.

In all, I recommend this release to fans of Minimalism and more broadly to general listeners interested in an intriguing American voice. The performances are energetic and committed, the recorded sound excellent.

Huntley Dent

Four stars: An enjoyable and original version of today’s Minimalism

Fanfare Magazine, March-April 2020 Issue

LISTEN HERE: Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon Music, Spotify and other streaming platforms

 

Checkout This New Album Trailer

Video artist Valeria Di Matteo created a stunning album trailer for Collision Point . Valeria also designed all the album artwork.

Enjoy more of Valeria’s work here!

Belarca Records presents Collision Point, a new album by American composer William Susman and Rome-based ensemble Piccola Accademia degli Specchi celebrating a 10-year collaboration.

Collision Point features music inspired by love, loss, redemption, and the writings of Allen Ginsberg, Colum McCann and Francis Bacon.

Streaming everywhere October 11, 2019.

The Forest Within

My sister Sue Susman recently published a new collection of poetry called The Forest Within. This stunning work spans several decades. Her poetry touches on the sublime as well as everyday occurrences with language that is direct and natural. There are many wonderful testimonials to Sue’s poetry, and this one especially rings true:

“These poems are the voice of courage, so much more courageous because it dares to be tender. An honesty that finds simplicity in its many layers, a silence that sings, filling the sky.” – Louise Cloutier, Women’s PowerVoice.

The connection to Sue’s poetry goes back many years. Some of the poems in this book I set to music, first in the song cycle Moving In To An Empty Space and then, with Scatter My Ashes.

The collection opens with a poem from the song cycle and eponymous album title Scatter My Ashes.

Even in the Dark

The forest breathes in and out
as I sleep and curl
like a cat snuggled into a bigger sleeping body.
Even in the dark,
I wake
and see light from above,
the moon burning into black earth.
Stars,
glittering chips of glass,
scatter in a strange design.
I keep my eyes open until morning.

A review of The Forest Within aptly called Waking Up From the Dark Night of the Soul  is at The Mindful Bard

Listen to more of Sue’s poetry set to song on the album Scatter My Ashes at Amazon, iTunes, Spotify et al:

 

Melancholy, Unconscious, and Postmodern Solitude in Poetry

A recent review of the album Scatter My Ashes in The Voice gives new insight into the poems of my sister Sue Susman. Wanda Waterman discusses how they were set to music as well as doing some in-depth research into the compositional approach.

Here are some excerpts from the review entitled Where Multiple Streams of Inspiration Joyously Meet and Mingle:

“The poems of his sister seem to arrive, first, from a melancholy soul and, second, from the common unconscious of a culture unnerved by rapid transitions, growing shallowness, and ignorance.”

“…we explore the absurdity of postmodern solitude by means of the poem itself…”

“…the harmonious intertwining of jazz and Western classical, of straight rhythm with swing, of notes rich with sobriety overlaid by cheerfully rippling melodies. …”

“This album, in addition to being delightfully listenable, serves as a short introductory course in new developments in serious music…”

Scatter My Ashes – CD back cover

Setting a Poem to Music

Title Track from OCTET ensemble’s album debut featuring soprano Mellissa Hughes.

The poem Scatter My Ashes is by my sister Sue Susman. I originally set this poem for voice and piano. It was subsequently arranged for OCTET ensemble. I like the sound of these words, their message and the movement they create in their meaning and  story. I try to let the music capture the narrative’s essence sculpting words into motion.

Scatter my ashes before I die.
Let me blow and fade
in the wind
over water
into nothing.
Watch me dissolve in air.
Scatter my old bones.
I am keeping the young ones
fresh, strong the blood circles
and weaves me into a whole piece
with long slender red thread
buried under my skin.

copyright © 1984 – 87 by Sue Susman. All Rights Reserved.

The Poetry of Sue Susman

I am drawn to my sister’s poems because they tell honest and flowing stories. They are truthful and insightful narratives about things we see or ought to see.

Recently, I asked Sue to talk a little about her poems sung on the album Scatter My Ashes. You can download the  album booklet  which includes the poems heard in the two song cycles. -William Susman

“I wrote Scatter My Ashes when I was standing on a street corner handing out leaflets for a political candidate.  No one was around, so I had nothing to do.  I wrote this poem on the back of one of the leaflets.  It just came to me.

With Hot Time, I did have some inspiration.  Some friends and I had just come out of a movie theater.  We were on Clark and Division, an area in Chicago where there a lot of bars.  The whole poem is a description of the way I experience bars.  The “hot dark rooms filled with sweating, hungry bodies, dancing with fever into the morning.” “You can choose one to take home with you,”  is about “one night stands, people picking up strangers in bars and taking them home. “You can go on alone” is the choice not to pick someone up and just go home yourself.   “You can help yourself” has a double meaning—“You can help yourself” to the many people around you to take home with you or you can “help yourself”, as in you can take care of yourself and not need another person to do it.

In Begging the Night For Change, I was in a parking lot and a woman came up to me and asked me for money.  “I said, ‘No’ and walked away.”  I wrote the poem afterwards.  It was a real experience.

In Moving In To An Empty Space,  I was on a personal retreat, staying in a cabin in St. Charles, IL.  I went there fairly often when I was in graduate school.  I spent some of the time writing and some of the time just taking long walks.  I didn’t see anybody for most of the time.  That’s what I came there for, silence and peace.  I wrote “Moving In To An Empty Space” after standing outside in the cold.  It was winter then. I was looking up at the night sky filled with stars.  There was no sound and the words just came to me and I wrote the poem.” -Sue Susman