Page 80 - GTMF 2024 Season Program

July 12 & 13 PROGRAM NOTES

Clarice Assad

PLAY!

AT A GLANCE

Born: 1978
Date of Composition: 2023
Instrumentation: PLAY! is scored
for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets,
2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets,
2 trombones, tuba, timpani,
percussion, strings, solo vocalist
and percussion quartet (who play
dozens of instruments including
musicbox, elephant bells, pig
squeaky toy, slide whistles and
assorted rubber chickens).

We aficionados of symphonic and
chamber music are sometimes
obliged to tilt against the windmills Clarice Assad
of misleading names for the
music we love, such as the
wholly inappropriate “classical”
music. Even worse is “serious” from life’s stresses, fostering that exhorts us to make journeys
music, a veritable albatross of a creativity and imagination… yet, of self-discovery. The finale is
label that conjures up images of darker shades exist, like a child named Kinetic Energy and it’s
beetle-browed old duffers toiling toying with fire or a devious just that—a virtuoso blowout for
away at lugubrious compositions mind playing psychological everybody involved.
that, to borrow a line from games,” she tells us. “Play has “I’m so excited for this work,”
English comedian Anna Russell, always meant exploring new says Francesco Lecce-Chong,
we should all listen to even if worlds and finding awe in the Music Director of the Santa Rosa
we don’t like them. little things. As an artist, I seek Symphony, lead commissioner
How grim. But that’s not how connections throughout playful of PLAY! together with
composer-pianist-poet-singer- art, transcending differences co-commissioners Wheeling
teacher Clarice Assad sees it. and worries, uniting us in a Symphony Orchestra and Grand
Consider what it is that we do harmonious symphony of life.” Teton Music Festival. “Clarice
with a piece of music: we play it, PLAY! is structured in three has such a wonderful sense of
that’s what. Play. Music is played movements. Tick, tock, scrape, adventure and fun in her music.”
by players. Thus play is “a word of pinch, blow, hit, splash, rip is
boundless meanings” says Assad, all about narration, theatrical Lead Commissioner:
whose wide-ranging interests, from elements, sound effects and even Santa Rosa Symphony
jazz through Brazilian and other “foley”—i.e., those manufactured Resident Orchestra of the Green
world music, inform her 2023 sounds that accompany movie Music Center
PLAY! Concerto for percussion action such as splashes, crashes Co-Commissioners:
quartet, vocalist and orchestra. and bangs. The Hour features a Grand Teton Music Festival
For some, play “offers an escape vocal soloist with text by Assad Wheeling Symphony Orchestra

78 Grand Teton Music Festival Season 63