FYC

ABOUT

Winner of multiple international recording awards and a number of excellent, insightful reviews, this disc presents two new works for orchestra with soloist and is Knehans’ newest work Cloud Ossuary.

Recorded with tremendous fidelity and color the disc includes Knehans’ Mist Waves for solo violin and strings performed in this recording by the brilliant Czech violinist Pavel Wallinger. Wallinger’s keening lines sit wonderfully against the withheld backdrop of the Brno Philharmonic strings.

The second work on the disc, Knehans’ Cloud Ossuary is set in three related movements in a fast-slow-slow arrangement. These culminate in an extended setting for soprano and orchestra—utilizing only English horn, trumpet, two percussionists, harp and strings—of Knehans’ daughter’s poem Bones and All. Katarina Knehans, a professional writer, has already collaborated with a number of other composers and her sensitivity to vocal setting is very clear here. Her words give intensity, image, substance and philosophical depth to the work. With an extended soprano solo delivered with intense passion by rising star Judith Weusten, the work culminates in a luminous and darkly reflective mood.

The performances by the orchestra, conductor Mikel Toms and most importantly the fine soloists on this disc make it a significant and emotional statement by Knehans and his collaborators.

THE TEXT

I tend to the land grief
It started as barren and broken waste, So I watered it.
The water and salt of tears only grew grass, wild and unruly, not quite living.
On the precipice of this waste were trees; tall, dark and looming.
They sent you.

You were a sparrow, fragile and small
You came wrapped in barbed wire and grime cloaked in
scent of ruin. I untethered you, stitched up your wounds with blood soaked fingers, and fattened you up then returned you
to the wood. The world had not been kind to you, I thought this would be enough.

The grass sprouted flowers, blooming with vengeance, and in them found another.
The rotting carcass, burnt and branded by the world, its
flesh, ripped from its bones held together by mere strings
of muscle. I imagine you alive, sturdy, clever and striped.
Wearing your bandit mask properly—not skewed as it is
now—playing a violin.

I reconstruct you, slowly, heart first, on woven blankets
from grass. I cover your torn body with
flowers. I tuck your legs, hiding your shattered feet,
hiding your ripped neck, laying your head down.
You look almost asleep but I know this is never
enough.

I have buried so many in this wasteland;
Each one stays frozen in place, exactly where I left them.
Later they come for me, gathered in the rainforest of my
mind we sit together eating tropical fruits, shrouded by
sunlight, a greenish-golden glow bouncing off my skin
and refracting off their exposed bones.

They cannot be touched here, things are clean, soft.
We are loved by the sun, bones and all.

Katarina—10/3/2017

DISC CREDITS

Composer: Douglas Knehans
Librettist/Poet: Katarina Knehans
Performers: Pavel Wallinger, violin; Judith Weusten, soprano; Brno Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor: Mikel Toms
Sound Engineer: Jaroslav Zouhar
Mixing/Mastering Engineer: Silas Brown
Cover Art/Layout: Josephine McLachlan

Label: ABLAZE Records
Distribution: Ulysses Arts (London)

FROM THE COMPOSER

What is it everyone wants to know about music? WHY. Why did you make this thing and why did you make it in this way.

For any of you that know my earlier works you will know that my fascination with the organic and natural world is something that has captured my attention for many years now. Further, the external and easily understood variety within the unity of natural forms—trees, leaves, flowers, clouds, sea swell, mist and more—act as metaphors for me to the endless variety within the shared human, emotional, and psychological experiences we have. Every leaf is generically like another, yet each leaf is individually and distinctly different; just as our human emotions of love, loss, joy, transcendence and other psycho-emotional states are known to each of us both as a general states of being as well as uniquely individual experiences. So, very frequently when I write music about nature and natural forms, these act as clearly graspable metaphors for uniquely human and internal psycho-emotional states: the external eco-systems of nature mirroring the vast internal landscapes of our hearts, minds, and souls.

My latest disc takes this all one step further. The first work, Mist Waves, uses the metaphor of land-based cloud or fog and how it changes in density—sometimes very thick and opaque, and at other times thinner allowing for more of the landscape to be seen. So too, I think, human emotional states are like this—sometimes revealing almost all to us and yet at others being so clouded as to be almost ungraspable. This work lives in this changeable and veiled world revealing more questions than answers and yet with an undertone of consolation and solace.

The second work, Cloud Ossuary, my fourth symphony, takes my technique with handling this internal/external duality of worlds to a more tangible and narrative level. In three movements, the first movement imagines a person floating in the clouds, yet contained in a cage of bone, a bone box, or an Ossuary cage. This movement is about containment within an environment that should be free, formless, and floating: the clouds. Yet, in this freest of all atmospheres our narrator finds themself trapped in The Ossein Cage unable to fully experience freedom and gradually raging in torment against this containment.

Movement two, Breathe Clouded, imagines our narrator now either free of the cage or reconciled within it, but in any case, now able to breathe this misted, clouded air with its warm moist refreshment and natural, still, solace. Just as this more relaxed, expansive expression comes into focus, so too does a new type of cloud, a darker and cooler cloud. The dark cloud of something coming.

Movement three is a setting of the brilliant Katarina Knehans poem Bones and All. In this our narrator suddenly take voice and tells of being back on land and the story of:

I tend to the land grief

It started as barren and broken waste

So, I watered it.

Throughout this vast landscape of grief and loss the musical world moves from still to excited to still to glowing to darkly ruminative over its expansive 26 minute frame. Here we see the natural world as broken, sad, and desolate, but developing to a place of acceptance and love.

In this work I have been extremely lucky to have this dark and ravished poem by Katarina Knehans to set. Equally, the brilliance of young Dutch soprano Judith Weusten gives tremendously expressive life to these wonderful words. The orchestral backing of the luminous Brno Philharmonic is expertly, deftly, and insightfully led by British conductor Mikel Toms. In Mist Waves, the deeply expressive solo violin is given voice by Pavel Wallinger. All of these performances are captured beautifully by recording engineer Jaroslav Zouhar and mixing and mastering engineer and multiple Grammy award winner Silas Brown. The powerful visual design of the disc is thanks to the expert craft and vision of Ablaze's art director Josephine McLachlan.

I am very proud of the team that has given voice to this disc. I hope that you might take the time to sit with these pieces—they do not reveal themselves quickly and demand a kind of relaxed and languorous listening that I hope you might give over to when you have time to kick back and listen through a big journey like this one.

Thank you for your time and interest. I hope you enjoy Cloud Ossuary.

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