PROGRAM NOTES
Touching on themes of home and migration, AFC’s season opener “Homeland” showcases music interwoven across time and place. This concert features clarinetist Kinan Azmeh and pianist Dinuk Wijeratne, whose brilliant clarinet concerto is a poignant musical biography of Azmeh’s emigration from Syria to the United States.
Kareem Roustom (b. 1971)
DABKE
Kareem Roustom was born in Damascus to an American mother and Syrian father. When he was 13 the family relocated to the United States. It was an uprooting that Roustom sought to heal through music, exploring the creative heritage and melodic syntax of both cultures equally. Largely self-taught in his craft, Roustom has become one of the most sought-after composers of our time. Commissions and performances have included groups such the Kronos Quartet, The Crossing choir, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, and numerous others. Demonstrating remarkable flexibility, Roustom has also composed twenty film scores, including his Emmy Award winning score for the documentary The Mosque in Morgantown, and has worked on arrangements for artists such as Beyoncé, Wyclef Jean, Tina Turner, and Shakira. As an educator, Roustom currently holds the position of Professor of the Practice at Tufts University.
Kareem Roustom’s program note for Dabke is as follows:
Dabke is a folk dance and a type line dance from Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, that is typically performed at joyous occasions. The leader of the dance line, called a hawaash, directs the movements of the dancers behind him. There are many variants of this dance that involve men and women and the rhythms that accompany it. This movement is based on a six beat dabke rhythm called sudaasi. Dabke is an arrangement of the third movement of Kareem Roustom’s A Voice Exclaiming; a work for triple string quartet that was originally commissioned for the Kronos Quartet and Providence R.I. based Community MusicWorks.
Dabke has been performed by a wide number of ensembles ranging from professional orchestras such as the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Oregon Symphony Orchestra, the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen, the Staatstheater Kassel Orchestra (Germany), the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra as well as college and youth ensembles in the US and as far away as Malaysia, Morocco, Chile and elsewhere. Dabke was also recorded by the Philharmonia Orchestra in London’s famed Abbey Road Studio One. It gives me great pleasure to see a work of mine continue to be performed almost ten years after it was written and reaching across both geographical and generational boundaries.
Kinan Azmeh (b. 1976)
IBN ARABI POSTLUDE
When asked during an interview what is the role of art, Kinan Azmeh responded, “My personal philosophy is that you do art to experience emotions you don’t have the luxury of experiencing in real life.” That creative point of view expresses itself in what the New York Times has called the “intensely soulful” quality of Azmeh’s compositions. Born in Damascus, Syria, Azmeh’s ongoing music education brought him to New York’s Julliard School and on to the City University of New York where he earned a doctorate in 2013. In high demand as both a performer and a composer, Azmeh has been commissioned by ensembles such as the New York Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, The Knights orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Brooklyn Rider string quartet, and many others. He performs with his own Arab-Jazz Quartet, CityBand, and his Hewar trio, and as a member of the Silkroad Ensemble since 2012. With Yo-Yo Ma and Silkroad, Azmeh received a Grammy Award for the 2016 album Sing Me Home, on which he appears as clarinetist and composer.
Kinan Azmeh’s program note for Ibn Arabi Postlude is as follows:
Ibn Arabi was an Arab Muslim mystic and philosopher, born in 1165 in Murcia and died in 1240 in Damascus. The piece is inspired by his life journey, his writings and also by a school of thought in which love and free thinking are as sacred as religious beliefs are.
This work, which can be best described as an obsessive ritualistic dance, enjoys a rather circular form while maneuvering between persistent ideas and rhythms, allowing for the improvised and the composed to work seamlessly together.
Ibn Arabi’s writings have inspired me for many years, and two of his most famous quotes became the springboard for this work:
"Hearing is the origin of existence... that every existent vibrates"
“السماع منشأ الوجود ، فإن كل موجود يهتز”
"every scene that does not project the multiple in one sight, cannot be relied upon...every love that comes with a request, cannot be relied upon…every longing that is calmed by an encounter.. cannot be relied upon.."
“كل مشهد لا يريك الكثرة في العين الواحدة، لا يعول عليه
كل حب يكون معه طلب، لا يعول عليه
كل شوق يسكن باللقاء لا يعول عليه”
While these lines are not sung in this piece, this work became the final movement of a three movements orchestral work “Ibn Arabi Suite” for singer, clarinet and symphony orchestra.
Dinuk Wijeratne (b. 1978)
CLARINET CONCERTO
In interviews Wijeratne has described his artistic journey as a path to try and reconcile his identity, reflecting, “It was interesting growing up because I had this sense of multiple identities or no identity, it was like these two things were two sides of the same coin. And after a while I just thought well, embrace this paradox.” Wijeratne was born in Sri Lanka and moved to Dubai at the age of four where he lived until departing to study at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England. After being invited directly by composer John Corigliano to join his studio, Wijeratne continued his studies at the graduate level at The Juilliard School. He then went on to study conducting at Mannes College of Music, and later earned his doctorate studying with Christos Hatzis at the University of Toronto. Wijeratne’s multifaceted career has won him multiple awards including a JUNO. Collaborations with artists and ensembles have included Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, Zakir Hussain, DJ Skratch Bastid, hip-hop artist Buck 65, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and numerous other symphony orchestras across Canada and the United States.
Dinuk Wijeratne’s program note for his Clarinet Concerto is as follows:
This concerto for clarinet is part autobiographical immigrant story, part response to the Syrian conflict, and part exploration of the notion of ‘home.’
Kinan Azmeh and I have been close friends and musical travelers since our student days at both the Juilliard School and International House, New York City. Our ‘Art of the Duo’ project – a recital of original music for clarinet and piano – continues to take us to concert venues around the world. For me personally, our 2009 Middle East tour left an indelible impression. Particularly memorable were the two concerts in Kinan’s native Syria, in the cities of Damascus and Aleppo.
It seemed natural to me that this piece would become my response to what has transpired in Syria since that time. At the time of writing, the Syrian conflict has claimed 400,000 lives. Since the uprising began in 2011, over five million have fled their country as refugees, the Canadian government having resettled over 40,000 Syrians. At the heart of this music is the question of how one might define – or be forced to redefine – the meaning of ‘home’.
The solo clarinet represents ‘the traveler,’ an individual in turns either in line or at odds with his/her environment(s). The concerto has an approximate duration of 27 minutes, comprising six episodes which are designed to run into each other without interruption:
Part I – ‘Prologue: Foretelling’ is a dark musical dream-sequence. The clarinet, beginning offstage, is heard in an anguished premonition of things to come.
Part II – ‘The Dance of Ancestral Ties’ celebrates a carefree childhood, with its essence deeply rooted ‘at home’ both geographically and socially.
Part III – ‘Flux’ destabilizes the traveler’s sense of security. There is a sense of dislocation.
Part IV – ‘Exile: The salt of bread and rhythm’ is a desolate response to the essay ‘Reflections on Exile’ by Edward Said, in which he quotes the poet Mahmoud Darwish. In Said’s words: “[Exile] is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.”
Part V – In ‘Cadenza: Solitary Traveler,’ the clarinet is left alone to play a cadenza, or solo passage.
Part VI – In ‘Epilogue: Home in Motion,’ the traveler learns to be ‘at home’ everywhere.
Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996)
SYMPHONY NO. 10 IN A MINOR, OP. 98
Mieczysław Weinberg was a prolific composer of twenty-six symphonies, seventeen string quartets, and dozens of other works in various genres, who suffered tremendous personal losses at the hands of political tyranny. During World War II most of Weinberg’s family was executed by the Nazis, and his father-in-law’s murder was ordered by Stalin. He would spend his adult life and career under the thumb of the Russian Soviet authorities. In 1953, Weinberg was jailed for three months due to government suspicion about his wife’s uncle, a physician in the Kremlin, during the antisemitic “Doctor’s Plot” conspiracy theory. He was freed in part due to the efforts of Dmitri Shostakovich, a close friend and colleague about whom Weinberg reflected, “Although I took no lessons from him…Shostakovich was the first person to whom I would show each of my new works.” Through it all he persevered in writing music, though for many years that music was little known outside of the Soviet Union due to intentional neglect, or overt blacklisting, inflicted by Soviet censors. Recently, that has begun to change with increased numbers of performances and recordings being brought to the global public.
Sheets of dissonance descend in block chords to open the Symphony No. 10, triggering in the listener’s mind echoes of the initial gestures Tchaikovsky wrote in his Serenade for Strings. Written in 1968, this is music of remarkable intensity in both its passion and melancholy. Occasionally, all falls silent but the soliloquy of a solo instrument. There are hints of folk music rhythms. Moreover, Weinberg’s 10th symphony seems to have a life of its own—communicating something deeply intimate to anyone who will listen.
Kathryn J. Allwine Bacasmot is a pianist/harpsichordist, musicologist, music and cultural critic, and freelance writer. A graduate of New England Conservatory, she writes program annotations for ensembles nationwide.
