The recital is past but I’m adding some links to recordings and notes.

David Lidov – Recent Compositions 

Faculty Recital, Accolade East, Department of Music, York University

Thursday Evening at 7:30 on October 24, 2013

For Artist Bios-Contacts, click here for their URLs

Marianne’s Requirements (2009) Concert Aria on a text from Sense and Sensibility of Jane Austen)  —  Vania Chan, lyric coloratura;  Erica Crinó, piano MR – Recording

The new passion in London, at the time of the novel, was the waltz, very controversial, couple dancing, indecently close.  You bet Marianne would have loved it; her sensible sister, Elinor, would have disapproved.  That’s conjecture, of course.  Ms. Austen did not stay in London and does not write about waltzing.  Ms. Chan suggested the text to me.  Now, she has returned to York as a doctoral student after the launch of a promising operatic career and with a masters from the Manhattan School in NYC. Erica Crinó, who works often with Vania, leads a trio, “sTREgo”.  She is a versatile musician with energy and initiative.

Obedient Ears  (2011)  —  Andrew Timar, sulings,  David Lidov, piano

Andrew Timar, one of York Music’s first students and with us again as a Master’s candidate, has centred much of his life’s work in the music of the Sundanese culture of West Java, Indonesia. He is a master the traditional bamboo ring flutes (suling) and of the orchestral gamelan tradition which he labours to share and bring into contemporary Canadian musical life. The first part of Obedient Ears is for suling degung, the four-hole flute. After an interlude for piano, the second part with suling tembang, six holes and at a lower range, offers the same themes reworked with fuller harmony, and melodic interjections in laras salendro, a tuning system unfamiliar to most Western ears.The title is from Arthur Waley’s translation of “On Being Sixty” by Po Chü-i.  The poem got me imagining two lively old codgers strolling in the countryside, delighting in everything fresh and beautiful, telling jokes by number, and rehearsing their favourite philosophical and political arguments.

 Happy Birthday Chopin:  A Practice Tempo Remix  (2010)  —  Mark Chambers, cello,  Elizabeth Acker, piano   HB recording

  Maybe, at moments, Scriabin and Rachmoninoff came close, but really, it is impossible to imitate Chopin’s extraordinary and elusive style.  You can only sample.  Hence, some quotes: Chopin’s Sonata for Cello and much else.  This performance is a premiere.Since Professor Chambers joined our Department, string instruments and an orchestra have taken on new life.  Elizabeth Acker is an early graduate of the York Music program whose studies have never ceased.  Her fluid pianism that absorbs experience in jazz, improvisation and Carnatic music, has become a constant lesson and inspiration to me. 

  In Memory of James Tenney

Fibonacci Songs for Jim (2006) David Lidov, piano, with video Le Tombeau de Fibonacci  by Mani Mazinani  (2013)

 James Tenney (1934-2006), my colleague for twenty years at York, was a widely influential composer and theorist. The strict formality built in both of these works with the Fibonacci series is a homage to Tenney’s clarity and perseverance in composing from theoretical premises.  Mani Mazinani produces work in video, installation, music, painting, photography, printing, performance and sound.  His studies at the Univesity of Toronto (2008) combined philosophy and visual art, and he has collaborated with distinguished groups and artists including Arraymusic and Michel Snow.  It was a surprise to learn from Mani, after I proposed this venture, that he was already a devotee of Tenney’s music.

 Prelude and Fugue for Cello (1985) —    Mark Chambers, Cello

            This is the oldest composition on the program but the most newly recorded.  You will find it on Professor Chambers CD, “Canadian Voices”.

Excerpts from the Musical Drought in Eden (1912-13)  —    Vania Chan, Eve, Dylan Hilyer, Adam, Erica Crinò, keyboard, Benjamin Smith, piano, Niall Lyn-McKee, percussion.

 Drought in Eden is a musical adaptation of the Biblical tale of the Garden as an ecological crisis caused by the original sin of greed.  The Canadian scholar, Ronald Wright, wrote in A History of Progress, “[The] Sumerians. . .with their mad irrigation schemes, turned what the Jews considered Eden and the Christians call Paradise into a desert.”  2005.  We will hear a bit from the beginning and a bit from towards the end.  Learn lots more. 

 Three Tunes for Ron  (2010)  —  Ron Westray, Trombone, Flugel, Al Henderson, Bass, Anthony Michelli, Kit, David Lidov, lipsynching at the piano, Bonnie Brett, vocal (III)

                         Prof. Ron Westray, who holds our Oscar Peterson Chair in Jazz, approached me a few years ago with his harmonic cycles of Bi-chords.  Perhaps he hoped for a theoretical commentary or a semiotic pronouncement, but three tunes based on his system were all I could come up with a that moment.  

            I. Westray’s Interstellar Ergonomic Stationary Bi-Cycle (with Trombone)  II.  Westray’s Polycarbonate Ergognomic Stationary By-Cycle.  (with Flugelhorn) III.  Westray’s Ergonomic Stationary Blue Bi-cycle

                                 The last is my upgrade of the traditional ballade “Frankie and Johnny” inspired by memories of Michael Coghlan’s little opera with same source.  Imaginethese-all-stars from York jazz letting me to sit in on a session with them! It’s  the scariest courtesy I have ever been offered.