FROM THE COMPOSERS 

Arizona Limited

The American railway system has its own musical tradition. Not only did it transport passengers and goods, but it also transported stories, music, and ideas. Along the way, these songs and stories would be remixed and retold– acquiring new details here or a new verse there, distilling the early American zeitgeist.

 These songs fell into three main categories: songs about railway legends, like Casey Jones or John Henry; cautionary songs about railroad disasters, like “The Wreck of the Old 97;” and songs that use trains as a metaphor. “Arizona Limited” briefly explores all three: borrowing music and lyrics from the pre-existing tradition and mixing them with original material, harkening back to the tradition of using old stories to tell new ones.         --John Tafone

 love. songs

This cycle of songs characterizes and illuminates some of the many aspects of love: desire, infatuation, physical love, parental love, and eternal love. The following poems by E.E. Cummings are lush, descriptive, and poignant, captivating the reader with their vivid imagery. The first song, “burn,” sets the poem “unto thee i,” which incorporates Cummings’ typical idiosyncrasy of syntax (his own way of arranging words into larger phrases and sentences.) As a composer this poses a certain dilemma. Do I acknowledge the structure of the poem in the vocalist’s musical phrase, and if so, how could I do that most effectively? The carriage returns are so purposeful, and force the reader to consider certain words differently. Please read the poem “unto thee i,” and consider the placement of the word ‘burn.’ This significant assignment by Cummings greatly influenced my setting of the text, so much so that it gave the song its name. Not all of the songs in this cycle feature musical qualities that mirror Cummings’ distinctive syntax, yet these “interruptions” and punctuations were taken into account during the compositional process. The fourth song, “i love you much (most beautiful darling),” was written during the pregnancy of my first child, and is dedicated to him. ‘Sunlight and singing welcome your coming.’ It was a true joy to write this movement, and I knew it was appropriate for it to follow the third movement, “so quite new,” which vividly illustrates the act of physical love. The final song of the set depicts a great and true love that knows no boundaries: eternal love.     –Jocelyn Hagen

COMPOSER BIOGRAPHIES

JOHN TAFONE (b. 1994) is an award-winning, internationally-performed composer, born and raised in southern Rhode Island. Having studied composition at the Catholic University of America and Oxford University in the UK, John's music has been performed by numerous ensembles including:

The Washington National Symphonic Brass, The Chorus of Westerly, The Rhode Island Festival and Pops Orchestras, and members of The Boston Pops. His work has been performed at Synetic Theatre, Christ Church Cathedral (UK), The CenterStage Theater Company, The United Theatre, The Kennedy Center (Washington DC), and at The New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF). His work has also been featured on NPR and PBS.

John was awarded the top prize in the College Music Society’s annual composer competition (Mid Atlantic), and his musical "The Count of Monte Cristo" won the 2017 BroadwayWorld Award for Best Musical.

 SERGEI RACHMANINOFF (1873-1943) came from a music-loving, land-owning family; young Sergey's mother fostered the boy's innate talent by giving him his first piano lessons. After a decline in the family fortunes, the Rachmaninovs moved to St. Petersburg, where Sergey studied with Vladimir Delyansky at the Conservatory. As his star continued to rise, Sergey went to the Moscow Conservatory, where he received a sound musical training: piano lessons from the strict disciplinarian Nikolay Zverev and Alexander Siloti (Rachmaninov's cousin), counterpoint with Taneyev, and harmony with Arensky. During his time at the Conservatory, Rachmaninov boarded with Zverev, whose weekly musical Sundays provided the young musician the valuable opportunity to make important contacts and to hear a wide variety of music.

As Rachmaninov's conservatory studies continued, his burgeoning talent came into full flower; he received the personal encouragement of Tchaikovsky, and, a year after earning a degree in piano, took the Conservatory's gold medal in composition for his opera Aleko (1892). Early setbacks in his compositional career -- particularly, the dismal reception of his Symphony No. 1 (1895) -- led to an extended period of depression and self-doubt, which he overcame with the aid of hypnosis. With the resounding success of his Piano Concerto No. 2 (1900-1901), however, his lasting fame as a composer was assured. The first decade of the 20th century proved a productive and happy one for Rachmaninov, who during that time produced such masterpieces as the Symphony No. 2 (1907), the tone poem Isle of the Dead (1907), and the Piano Concerto No. 3 (1909). On May 12, 1902, the composer married his cousin, Natalya Satina.

By the end of the decade, Rachmaninov had embarked on his first American tour, which cemented his fame and popularity in the United States. He continued to make his home in Russia but left permanently following the Revolution in 1917; he thereafter lived in Switzerland and the United States between extensive European and American tours. While his tours included conducting engagements (he was twice offered, and twice refused, leadership of the Boston Symphony Orchestra), it was his astounding pianistic abilities which won him his greatest glory. Rachmaninov was possessed of a keyboard technique marked by precision, clarity, and a singular legato sense. Indeed, the pianist's hands became the stuff of legend. He had an enormous span -- he could, with his left hand, play the chord C-E flat-G-C-G -- and his playing had a characteristic power, which pianists have described as "cosmic" and "overwhelming." He became an American citizen a few weeks before his death in Beverly Hills, CA, on March 28, 1943. ©Patsy Morita

 FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809) epitomizes the aims and achievements of the Classical era. Perhaps his most important achievement was that he developed and evolved the most influential structural principle in the history of music: his perfection of the set of expectations known as sonata form made an epochal impact. In hundreds of instrumental sonatas, string quartets, and symphonies, Haydn both broke new ground and provided durable models; indeed, he was among the creators of these fundamental genres of classical music. He also wrote several masterful oratorios and masses, especially in his later years. His operas, too, have finally come to be regarded as well-crafted and deserving of far greater attention than they had historically received in the 20th century. His influence upon later composers is immeasurable; Haydn's most illustrious pupil, Beethoven, was the direct beneficiary of the elder master's musical imagination, and Haydn's shadow lurks within (and sometimes looms over) the music of composers like Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Brahms. Part and parcel of Haydn's formal mastery was his famous sense of humor, his feeling for the unpredictable, elegant twist. By one estimate, Haydn produced some 340 hours of music, more than Bach or Handel, Mozart or Beethoven. Few of them lack some unexpected detail or clever solution to a formal problem. Haydn was prolific not just because he was a tireless worker with an inexhaustible musical imagination, but also because of the circumstances of his musical career: he was the last prominent beneficiary of the system of noble patronage that had nourished European musical composition since the Renaissance.

Born in the small Austrian village of Rohrau, he became a choirboy at St. Stephen's cathedral in Vienna when he was eight, later joined by his younger brother, Michael Haydn, also destined to be a composer. After Haydn's voice broke and he was turned out of the choir, he eked out a precarious living as a teenage freelance musician in Vienna. His fortunes began to turn in the late 1750s as members of Vienna's noble families became aware of his music, and on May 1, 1761, he went to work for the Esterházy family. He remained in their employ for the next 30 years, writing many of his instrumental compositions, which included dozens of keyboard sonatas and trios for the now forgotten instrument, the baryton, and operas for performance at their vast summer palace, Esterháza. Musical creativity may often, it is true, meet a tragic end, but Haydn lived long enough to reap the rewards of his own imagination and toil. The Esterházys curtailed their musical activities in 1790, but by that time Haydn was known all over Europe and widely considered the greatest living composer. (He himself deferred to Mozart in that regard, and the friendly competition between the two composers deepened the music of both.) Two trips to London during the 1790s resulted in two sets of six symphonies that remain centerpieces of the orchestral repertoire. Five sets of string quartets were also published between 1790 and 1799. Haydn's final masterpieces included powerful and pictorial choral works: The Creation and The Seasons oratorios and a group of six masses. He stopped composing in 1803, after which he prefaced his correspondence with a little musical quotation (from one of his part-songs) bearing the text "Gone is all my strength; I am old and weak." He died in Vienna on May 31, 1809. ©allmusic.com

 GARY B. WHITE  was originally from Texas and played in the band Circus Maximus with Jerry Jeff Walker. He was later associated with Patrick Sky, David Bromberg and Larry Santos. He also had songwriting credits for Linda Ronstadt, notably the song "Long, Long Time".  In 1969, Ronstadt was opening shows for Jerry Jeff Walker at New York’s Bitter End. Songwriter and guitar player David Bromberg asked her after a show to accompany him to the nearby Cafe Au Go-Go, where Gary White was playing backup guitar for singer-songwriter Paul Siebel. “He said White had written some good songs, and there was one in particular that he felt would be perfect for me,” Ronstadt said. “We saw the last part of his very impressive show made rich with his cowboy falsetto, and then went backstage to meet him,” she writes of the first moment she heard the song. “He had already packed up his guitar, so he took it back out of its case, sat down, and began to sing [Long, Long Time]. I told Gary I wanted to record it immediately.”

“Long, Long Time” earned Ronstadt a Grammy Award nomination for Best Contemporary Female Vocal Performance.

 JOCELYN HAGEN (b. 1980) composes music that has been described as “simply magical” (Fanfare Magazine) and “dramatic and deeply moving” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis/St. Paul). She is a pioneer in the field of composition, pushing the expectations of musicians and audiences with large-scale multimedia works, electro-acoustic music, dance, opera, and publishing. Her first forays into composition were via songwriting, still very evident in her work. The majority of her compositions are for the voice: solo, chamber and choral. Her melodic music is rhythmically driven and texturally complex, rich in color and deeply heartfelt. In 2019 and 2020, choirs and orchestras across the country are premiering her multimedia symphony The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci that includes video projections created by a team of visual artists, highlighting da Vinci’s spectacular drawings, inventions, and texts. Hagen describes her process of composing for choir, orchestra and film simultaneously in a Tedx Talk given at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, now available on YouTube. Hagen’s commissions include Conspirare, the Minnesota Opera, the Minnesota Orchestra, Voces8, the International Federation of Choral Music, the American Choral Directors Association of Minnesota, Georgia, Connecticut and Texas, the North Dakota Music Teachers Association, Cantus, the Boston Brass, the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and the St. Olaf Band, among many others. Her work is independently published through JH Music, as well as through Graphite Publishing, G. Schirmer, EC Schirmer, Fred Bock Music Publishing, Santa Barbara Music Publishing, and Boosey and Hawkes.

 A celebrated instrumentalist who has worked with legendary figures in country, bluegrass, and folk (including Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Steve Earle, and Robert Plant), NORMAN BLAKE (b. 1938) is best known as a flatpicking guitarist, though he's also proficient on other stringed instruments, including mandolin, Dobro, and fiddle. Steeped in traditional styles, Blake is known for his clean, unpretentious picking, emphasizing melody over technical flash, and he earned a sterling reputation as a sideman and studio musician (June Carter, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Johnny Cash and others) before stepping forward as a solo artist, launching a career that extended into the 2020s. Blake made his headlining debut with 1972's influential Back Home in Sulphur Springs and collaborated with Tony Rice on 1987's Blake & Rice. 1996's The Hobo's Last Ride, recorded with his wife and frequent collaborator Nancy Blake, focused on material from the 1930s; 2004's The Morning Glory Ramblers captured him after a revival of interest in his work; and 2021's Day by Day was a set of tunes Blake cut in single takes in his home studio. © Mark Deming

 In 1927 one of JIMMY MCHUGH’s most important professional relationships began when he met DOROTHY FIELDS. One year later they had their first big hit with the enduringly popular “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby”, written for the all-Black Broadway revue Blackbirds of 1928.

In 1930 they wrote another favorite, “On the Sunny Side of the Street”, for Lew Leslie’s International Revue. From this show came also the hit and future standard “Exactly Like You.” For The Vanderbilt Revue, also in 1930, they wrote “Blue Again.” For a 1932 Chicago Revue called Clowns in Clover, Fields and McHugh wrote “Don’t Blame Me.”

The team then moved to Hollywood where they worked on the films Love in the [Rough] (1930), Singin’ the Blues (1931), Cuban Love Song (1931), Dinner at Eight (1933) and Clowns in Clover (1933). For the 1935 film Every Night at Eight, they wrote “I Feel a Song Comin’ On” and “I’m In the Mood For Love.”

Following the success of the 1935 films, McHugh and Fields co-wrote a new lyric for Jerome Kern’s “I Won’t Dance”. In the years that followed, Fields would work primarily with Kern, and won a 1936 Oscar for “The Way You Look Tonight.” McHugh found a new primary lyricist: Harold Adamson. ©songwritershalloffame.org