Al Hakawati Premiered at 2024 Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music

Al Hakawati, a new work for soprano and orchestra received its premiere on August 2nd in Santa Cruz, CA at the 2024 Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, with soprano Miriam Khalil and conductor Cristian Mӑcelaru. The work will be repeated on September 21 by the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln in Germany. The work is a co-commission of Cabrillo, WDR and l’Orchestre National de France (who will do the work in 2026).

Al Hakawati (The Storyteller) presents fragments from an opera-in-progress entitled The Book of Tales. The opera is inspired by a recent discovery about a beloved story collection, the so-called “Arabian Nights.” The exact provenance of these medieval Arabic tales, properly known as Alf Laylah wa-Laylah [One Thousand and One Nights], has always been something of a mystery. That all changed in 1993 when a forgotten 18th century Arabic manuscript was found in the Vatican library. It was a travel memoir written by a 75-year-old Syrian storyteller named Hanna Diyab. In 1707, the young Diyab had embarked on an extraordinary, years-long journey to Europe. His incredible adventures culminated in a meeting with the Sun King, King Louis XIV, in the halls of Versailles. Diyab told his entrancing stories to everyone he met in his travels, including to Antoine Galland, a translator and archaeologist in Paris. It was Galland who, in 1710, first introduced Western readers to the stories of Ali Baba and Aladdin in Les Mille et une Nuits—though Galland makes no mention of the storyteller. Diyab returned to Syria in 1709 and eventually became a successful cloth merchant in Aleppo.

He seems to have had no idea how far his captivating stories had travelled.
The opera connects stories and storytellers across time and place: from the present day, to the Ancien Régime of France, to the imaginary world of Scheherazade. And, though the “frame story” is Diyab’s, the most significant characters in the story are women. The fragments in Al Hakawati comprise four “scenes” that feature the opera’s three principal female characters.

Al Hakawati co-commissioned by Cabrillo Festival, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln & Orchestre National de France

A new work for soprano and orchestra Al Hakawati, co-commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln & Orchestre National de France will premiere next season, with Canadian soprano Miriam Khalil and conductor by Cristian Măcelaru. The work will receive its premiere at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music on August 2nd. A second performance with WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln is scheduled for September 21, with a following performance in Paris, TBA.

Al Hakawati (The Storyteller) presents fragments from an opera-in-progress entitled The Book of Tales. The opera is inspired by a recent discovery about a beloved story collection, the so-called “Arabian Nights.” The exact provenance of these medieval Arabic tales, properly known as Alf Laylah wa-Laylah [One Thousand and One Nights], has always been something of a mystery. That all changed in 1993 when a forgotten 18th century Arabic manuscript was found in the Vatican library. It was a travel memoir written by a 75-year-old Syrian storyteller named Hanna Diyab. In 1707, the young Diyab had embarked on an extraordinary, years-long journey to Europe. His incredible adventures culminated in a meeting with the Sun King, King Louis XIV, in the halls of Versailles. Diyab told his entrancing stories to everyone he met in his travels, including to Antoine Galland, a translator and archaeologist in Paris. It was Galland who, in 1710, first introduced Western readers to the stories of Ali Baba and Aladdin in Les Mille et une Nuits—though Galland makes no mention of the storyteller. Diyab returned to Syria in 1709 and eventually became a successful cloth merchant in Aleppo. He seems to have had no idea how far his captivating stories had travelled.

The opera connects stories and storytellers across time and place: from the present day, to the Ancien Régime of France, to the imaginary world of Scheherazade. And, though the “frame story” is Diyab’s, the most significant characters in the story are women. The fragments in Al Hakawati comprise four “scenes” that feature the opera’s three principal female characters.

1. I shiver, I tremble
The famed storyteller Scheherazade contemplates her precarious circumstances: each night she tells stories to the murderous Shahryar to postpone her execution.

2. He sleeps, this one
Shahryar is finally asleep. Consumed with fury, Scheherazade prepares to set his bed alight.

3. Dance of the seven swords (orchestra)
Murjana dances for her husband, Ali Baba, and a visiting merchant. She alone has discerned their guest’s true intent: he plans to kill her witless husband, who has foolishly stolen treasure from a band of thieves. At the dance’s climax she dispatches the villain.

4. For all I know
Tarina Safar*, a modern-day scholar of medieval Arabic, has discovered Hanna Diyab’s manuscript in the Vatican library. She marvels at the power of stories and of storytellers.

* Safar’s character is fictional, but she is inspired by the American scholar of Islam, Nabia Abbott (1897–1981), the first female professor at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. Abbott discovered some of the earliest known fragments from the Thousand and One Nights.

Houston Symphony Orchestra commissions new work for 24-25 season

The Houston Symphony has commissioned a new work for orchestra, Al-Jazari’s Ingenious Clocks to feature in their 2024-2025 season. Conducted by Juraj Valčuha, the fairy-tale inspired program on March 14, 15 and 16th 2025 will also include works by Korngold (Violin Concerto) and Prokofiev (Cinderella).

Al-Jazari’s Ingenious Clocks is inspired by the fantastical inventions of 12th century Islamic polymath Ismail al-Jazari: scholar, inventor, en­gi­neer, artist and mathematician. His remarkable treatise, “The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices,” describes fifty machines he engineered to perform various tasks. Coupled with his own colorful illustrations, the fountain, a band of mechanical musicians, a hydraulic “perpetual flute,” a self-cleaning washbasin, and a mechanized“butler” who prepares drinks. book evokes a fairy-tale world of automated devices: a dancing water Known as the “father of robotics” for his revolutionary work in engineering and automation, al-Jazari’s devices are fascinating both functionally and aesthetically.

But perhaps his most beautiful and captivating designs are his many mechanical clocks. These include elaborate candle clocks (triggered by dripping wax), an astronomical “castle clock,” a programmable clock of mechanical drummers (who beat out the hours!), a portable “scribe clock” and a giant “elephant clock” (at right).

Al-Jazari’s Ingenious Clocks is an evocative time piece, a musical journey to a vivid world of invention and imagination. It captures the vision and whimsy of these enchanting time machines, built with a prescience that anticipates our automated modern world.

The Sky With All Its Stars

A January 16th recital at the Shepherd School of Music features the premiere of several new song cycles for voice and piano performed by guest artists Aidan Soder (mezzo-soprano), Wesley Ducote (piano), Mark Diamond (baritone), Michael Clark (piano), Marcus DeLoach (baritone), Grant Loehnig (piano), and Shepherd School students James Palmer (piano), Caitlin Aloia (soprano), Julia Holoman (mezzo-soprano) and William Dopp (bass-baritone). The program includes selections from Tagore Love Songs, Orange Torches Against the Rain, and Two Songs on poems of Reg Huston and the world premiere of: Vespertine Songs, Four Not So Serious Songs, Unsentimental Love Songs and Your Letter Pleased Me Greatly.

Vespertine Songs are melodies of the night. Of an Evening is drawn from the descriptive prose of Charles Dickens (1812–1870), whose brooding evocation of a darkening city emphasizes a timeless, cyclic quality. Marina Tsvetaeva’s (1892–1941) Insomnia has us wandering with a sleepless night owl and finding no solace in the streets. In Points and Lines Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) paints a beautiful metaphor of a night sky, a summer lake and the revelatory wonder of stars. “Anne Knish” is a pseudonym of Arthur Davison Ficke (1883–1945), a conservative American poet whose many “spectralist” poems like Nocturne parodied the imagist movement. Poetic irony then, that these are the only verses for which he is remembered. Nocturne is a nighttime soundscape of sorts: the enveloping noises of the evening fade into the distance, replaced by something even more magical.

Four Not So Serious Songs comprise light-hearted settings of two poems by Robert Graves (1895–1985) and two by me. In This Song is Going to End our poor singer faces a looming existential crisis. An intemperate child protests his lot in Careers, a song which takes the form of a school-yard taunt. The nested structure of Warning to Children makes it a perfect poem for a patter song, its tripping rhythms spiraling down the page. So You Say is a gentle rebuke of melodramatic love songs, and a parody of their romantic tropes.

Unsentimental Love Songs are devoted to the quotidian side of love. The text of This is the Question is drawn from a page in Charles Darwin’s diary (above), when the famed scientist methodically weighs the pros and cons of his impending nuptials. His sensitive, if somewhat self-absorbed character comes across charmingly in his amorous analysis. Edna St. Vincent Millay’s (1892–1950) sonnet I Shall Forget You Presently, My Dear is a classic unsentimental love poem, one of many to feature her delicate balance of scoffing wit and fragile sincerity.

Your Letter Pleased Me Greatly is based on text by Erasmus (1466–1536), from the Dutch theologian’s book on rhetoric, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style (1512). In a virtuosic demonstration of prose embellishment, he famously provides 195 variations of the simple sentence “Tuae litterae me magnopere delectarunt” [Your letter pleased me greatly]—each variation bringing a very different sense and sentiment to the same basic point. Twenty variants are used in my piece for soprano and piano, and the work’s approach reflects the same conceit: each short “variation” uses similar musical material, but projected with a succession of different moods, characters, and structural forms.

Merz Trio premieres Lines in Motion at Chamber Music Columbus

 

May 6th saw the Merz Trio premiere Lines in Motion at the concluding concert of Chamber Music Columbus‘ 75th anniversary season. Works by seven composers were commissioned by CMC over the course of their 2022-2023 season. (Lines in Motion was co-commissioned by Chamber Music Houston, where the work was played on January 17th.) The program, presented at the beautiful historic Southern Theatre, included works by Rachmaninov, Shostakovich and Schumann, and opened with a celebratory fanfare by Ching-chu Hu and poetry by poet laureate Jennifer Hambrick.