Composer Dan Locklair is now Composer-in-Residence at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, but many years ago he was Organist/Choir Master at First Presbyterian Church in Binghamton so, although I never knew him then, there are certainly lots of people in the area who did -- and still stay in touch with him.
So it was a real pleasure to get a copy of a recording of some of his music from the Naxos label in their American Classics series. And then Performance Today programmed his concert overture "Phoenix" for the day after Thanksgiving, so now I have a good excuse to write about it.
There are five works on the CD, performed by the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, led by Kirk Trevor. The first the Symphony No.1, "Symphony of Seasons." It is, as you might guess, a trip through the year, beginning with Autumn and end in a celebration of Summer with a fantasia on "Sumer is icumen in." And if listen very carefully, you can hear "In the Good Old Summertime." If this is Symphony No.1, I eagerly await No.2.
"Lairs of Soundings" is next. It is a triptych for Soprano and String Orchestra, based on two poems by Ursula K. LeGuin, the well-known sci-fi/fantasy author. These form the outer movements, while the soprano, Janeanne Houston, becomes a wordless part of the orchestra for the middle movement. This work a little more challenging, both for the listener and for the soprano, as some of the words are a little high in the tessitura to be fully understood; it's best to have the lyrics in front of you the first time you listen.
The following work, "Phoenix and Again" is not, as I first thought, the same work as "Phoenix." The former was written in 1983 and uses the Wake Forest Alma Mater. The latter, which was performed on Performance Today, was written in 2007.
On the back of the CD, the conductor is quoted as saying of the next piece "After the first read-through of In Memory -- H.H.L., I realized that we had found a worthy successor to the Barber Adagio (for Strings). i really can't add anything to that description, other than to mention that it seems to me a warmer, more personal piece, with maybe a hint of humor in it.
Harpists might want to take note of the last piece, the Concerto for Harp and Orchestra, which is written in standard concerto fashion: two lively movements enclosing a slow, tender middle movement. The harpist, Jacquelyn Bartlet, is never lost in the orchestral texture, and even gets to be her own percussionist a few times.
One quibble about the packaging: I thought that the days were long gone when people posed for photographs with nicotine-delivery devices, but that said, it's really the music inside that counts.
Once again, the CD simply called "Dan Locklair" and it's on the Naxos label, catalog number 8.559337.
- Bill Snyder is the classical music director at WSKG.
