CONTENTSCONTRIBUTOR BIOS: Evan Hause, 3 LIVE EVENTS
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GLOBAL EXPLORATIONSThis is the first of two articles pertaining to the ambitious project undertaken by pianist Kathryn Woodard to explore the music of Asia that is mostly unknown in Western countries. In the first leg of the project she has been focusing on the classical music of Turkish composers. The Music Hunter Goes to Hunter CollegeJon Liechty ‘MUSIC OF THE SILK ROAD.’ Ahmed Adnan Saygun: Anadolu’dan ~~ Franghiz Ali-Zadeh: Music for Piano ~~ I. Tumanov (trans. Mikhail Burstein): The Train ~~ A. Ogonbaev (trans. Mikhail Burstein): Lively Folk Tune ~~ Umar Temor (trans. K. Woodard): Bazme Rabbani ~~ Bright Sheng: My Song ~~ Keiko Fujiie: Pas de deux II. Kathryn Woodard, piano. Lang Recital Hall, Hunter College, NY. October 24th Pianist Kathryn Woodard has an ambitious project. Through concerts and presentations, she is bringing to Western audiences music from countries stretching from Turkey all the way to Japan, expanding people’s knowledge of "Western music" as it expands globally. Woodard came early to an international outlook: when she was 16 her family moved from Dallas, Texas to Germany, where she completed an undergraduate degree at the Hochschule für Musik. During this time she made her first visit to Turkey during an anthropology course, but she notes that her involvement with Turkish piano music didn’t begin until later. Woodard returned to the U.S. to continue her studies at the University of Cincinnati, where she received her doctorate in piano performance with a cognate in ethnomusicology, with particular emphasis on the musics of India, Japan and Java and their influence on music of the West. During this time, also, Woodard’s work with the music of Central Asia began: a 1997 article in the New York Times sparked her interest in the music of Turkish composer Ahmed Adnan Saygun, and she wrote her DMA thesis on his solo piano works. Since that time, Woodard’s music has carried her to Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. "Each country has its own relation to Western music and its own history with regards to adopting Western musical practices, such as establishing conservatories for the training of musicians and composers and supporting the performance of Western classical music," Woodard notes, adding that Central Asian nations are eager for contact with the West, but don’t have many resources to make it possible. Her work with the music of those nations brought Woodard into contact with the Silk Road Project of cellist Yo-Yo Ma; she brought to his attention Saygun’s Partita for unaccompanied cello. Ma’s performances of that piece have opened up Saygun’s music to many who would not have heard it otherwise. She was also involved in their decision to commission a work from Turkish composer Hasan Ucarsu. [note: cedilla under the ‘c’] Woodard has recently been working on a Silk Road project of her own, presenting recitals of piano music from several of the countries along the former Silk Road. "I have chosen to use the term "Silk Road" as a metaphor for the kinds of musical exchanges that have happened in the past century in the various countries represented on the program," says Woodard. Her program includes music from Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, China, and Japan. In selecting the work on the program, Woodard prefers to choose pieces related to the traditional music of their respective countries in some way. Saygun, for instance, uses folk melodies and rhythms in his music in a manner similar to that of Bartok; the two men worked together when Bartok visited Turkey in 1936. Frangiz Ali-Zadeh, while drawing on a full range of Western techniques and devices, bases her music on fixed sets of pitches between which she moves in a manner reminiscent of the classical Azerbaijani modes (muqam). In the case of Kyrgyz music, Woodard plays transcriptions of folk music rather than piano pieces composed in the Western style, because they are closer to the actual culture of the country. "While there are Western-style composers living and working there," she notes, "their activities seem a bit removed from the main musical life there." The tradition of Kyrgyz folk music includes virtuosity not only of playing technique, but of theatricality. Wide, sweeping gestures expand the scope of the music. In performing Mikhail Burstein’s transcriptions, Woodard’s expansive, flowing motions intensify the moods of the pieces. Woodard’s own transcription of a Tajik piece entitled "Bazme Rabbani" ("Spiritual Gathering") is particularly noteworthy. Musics from the Middle East or Central Eurasia do not always "sit" well on the piano: the tunings and tone colors of the original instruments are often quite different from the usual piano sound. The approach taken most often in transcription is to rewrite the music to fit the piano, alternating sharps, naturals and flats to compensate for microtonal intervals, and adding colorful harmony to make up for the differences in tone color. The results can be musically quite worthwhile, but there is the sense of something being lost. Woodard, in her transcriptions, carries to its logical conclusion an approach hinted at by Ali-Zadeh. Preparing the piano, she draws from it an array of evocative percussion sounds that go much farther toward the original music than is ordinarily possible. Woodard’s willingness to modify the instrument makes her unique in the interpretation of Tajik music on a Western keyboard. Her strong rhythmic sense, perfectly reproducing the "lilt" of the original, adds authority. The final pieces on Kathryn Woodard’s Silk Road program, by Bright Sheng and Keiko Fujiie, from China and Japan respectively, show the meeting of musics from different parts of the world in still another way. Both composers combine Western and Eastern styles seamlessly, in a language in which influences have traveled both ways. If Fujie’s work, for instance, shows some influences of minimalism, minimalism itself derived partly from the musics of the East, whose ideas Western composers adopted and adapted to their own instruments and situations. While Woodard continues her work with this particular project, she has other things on her plate as well. She performs regularly with the Balinese Gamelan Dharma Swara, and regularly commissions and premiers new piano works by American composers. Recent commissions have included Sequence by Moya Callahan and _run-on sentence of the pavement_ by Paula Matthusen. Recently she’s become interested in earlier Turkish classical music, in particular the work of Leyla Hanimefendi, a composer who was trained in the classical traditions of both Turkey and Western Europe while living in the Ottoman Imperial Harem in the mid-19th century. Kathryn Woodard’s work brings us cultural riches, and shows us the lively exchange of ideas which, from centuries past down to the present, have been embodied and symbolized by the Silk Road. Resources:Mahmut R. Gazimihal, Türk Avrupa Musiki Münasebetleri, Ankara, 1939. Leyla (Saz) Hanimefendi, The Imperial Harem of the Sultan: The Memoirs of Leyla Hanimefendi, Reprinted by Hil Yayin, Istanbul, 1998. Kathryn Woodard, "Creating a National Music in Turkey: The Solo Piano Works of Ahmed Adnan Saygun," D.M.A. Thesis, University of Cincinnati, 1999. Recordings:European Music at the Ottoman Court, The London Academy of Ottoman Court Music, Emre Aracı, conductor, Kalan Müzik Yapım, 2000. www.kalan.com Ottoman Music: Women Composers, Sony Music (Turkey), 2001. www.sonymusic.com.tr Ahmed Adnan Saygun, Symphonies 1 & 2, Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Ari Rasilainen, conductor, CPO Records, 2002. www.cpo.de |