Instrumentation: Violin, Cello, Bass Clarinet & Percussion
Duration: 14 minutes
Year: 2023 – 2024
Audio Excerpt
Program Notes
Writing Living Waters started with an arduous process of research and discovery that began in September 2023 upon receiving the commission from the Moab Music Festival. I knew that the Colorado river had immense significance for many who live along it, therefore making it a monumental undertaking to distill the river into a musical composition for four performers to be presented in a chamber music format. My research in the form of readings, interviews, and articles, led me to better understand the crisis facing the river as well as its multi-faceted significance it holds for people across generations. At the same time, it became an immense challenge to translate what I had learnt on an intellectual level into something that would resonate with listeners on a musical and emotional level.
Months of readings yielded many notes and ideas, yet very few musical notes of value were produced. It wasn’t until April 2024 that I had a breakthrough. I was in Japan and Korea doing research into traditional music when I heard the musics of Pansori and Sanjo at the National Gugak Center in Seoul; the former a form of storytelling through voice and percussion and the latter a purely instrumental form for gayageum (zither) and percussion. The Korean musical aesthetic was one that was deeply connected with nature and experiencing the expressive power of Pansori and Sanjo led me to rethink my entire approach to this commission. I realized I had been overthinking and intellectualizing the piece and needed to return to the emotional core of what I want to communicate.
The idea that I landed on was Living Waters, based on a short paragraph from the book River Notes by Wade Davis. In it, he writes about the beliefs of the Paiute people who had lived along the Colorado for generations. He writes:
“The Paiute were a Water People, originally from the Great Basin… Though their material culture was rudimentary, Paiute beliefs were complex and their sense of place complete. They believed that springs and rocks, rivers and rain had life spirits that had to be honoured. They viewed the entire Grand Canyon as something holy.”
This idea was also partly advanced during our early conversation with renowned river guide John Weisheit where he spoke about the masculine and feminine properties of the Colorado and its tributaries. As a result of the confluence of various ideas, Living Waters became a piece about the life force of the river. The work opens in a declamatory fashion with three pitched instruments in unison before transforming into a vibrant dance fueled by percussion. Just as the Colorado is the soul of the desert, the bass clarinet was chosen to give voice to this timeless entity and act as the voice of the river. Several solos weave in and out of the texture in the slower middle section before building towards the return of the ‘masculine’ dance again. The work ends with the return of the reflective solo in the bass clarinet, representing the quiet yet yearning call of the river to flow once again as it had before.
I am immensely grateful to the Moab Music Festival, former artistic director Michael Barrett, and the commissioning club for making this project possible and entrusting me with this commission.
World Premiere
August 31, 2024
Yoonah Kim, Miclen Lai Pang, Serafim Smigelskiy, Ian Rosenbaum
Moab Music Festival, Red Cliffs Lodge
Moab Utah, USA
Score
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PDF Parts and Score: $50 CAD – Paypal
Roydon Tse 