...of dark and bright

Resonance Works presents one of the first US performances of Missy Mazzoli’s concerto for double bass, Dark with Excessive Bright with Jeffrey Turner as guest soloist!  Turner is former principal bassist of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra who retired last year after 31 years with the ensemble and now serves as professor of music in double bass at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music.
Premiered in February 2018, Mazzoli’s piece was commissioned by the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Aurora Orchestra in the UK. The work is inspired by bassist Maxime Bibeau’s instrument, which was constructed in 1580. As Mazzoli explains, “…I imagined the instrument as a sort of historian, that could accumulate melodies and history, and that this piece would be [the instrument] sort of telling its story.” The title of the work, Dark with Excessive Bright, is taken from Milton’s Paradise Lost, and is a phrase that according to the composer seems to describe the double bass itself, which produces a very dark sound that is enchanted by a kind of luminosity.
Our exploration “of dark and bright” includes a number of other works that were also inspired by classical and folk music of the past. A major highlight is Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw’s To the Hands for voices and strings, which was commissioned as a response to Ad manus from Dieterich Buxtehude’s 17th century masterpiece, Membra Jesu Nostri. Built upon plainchant and fragments of Latin texts from Buxtehude’s seminal work, Shaw incorporates modern texts including elements of Emma Lazarus’ 1883 sonnet The New Colossus, whose famous lines adorn the base of the Statue of Liberty, as well as figures of displaced persons by country, sourced from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). According to Shaw, these additions emphasize the piece’s core considerations, which include “the suffering of those around the world seeking refuge, and of our role and responsibility in these global and local crises.”
The balance of the program will include Chen Yi’s Shuo, Ottorino Respighi’s Ancient Airs & Dances, Suite 3, Gabriela Lena Frank’s Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout, and more!