Triple Concerto
Flying Fish
FF 751
Distributed by:
Rounder Records
One Camp Street
Cambridge, MA 02140
<http://www.rounder.com>
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I met Dizzy Gillespie and the following spring I met Charlie Parker Both of them came to my basement apartment in Washington, DC for all-night music and rap sessions that lasted till dawn, They spent hours describing their favorite symphonic composers and how the brilliant creative energy of jazz could enhance the spirit of today's orchestras, and how the disciplined sounds and colors created by the great instrumentalists of these orchestras could enrich the scope of jazz They both encouraged me to continue as an improvising jazz French hornist and performer of what we now call World Music. They both emphasized the importance of honoring what I knew by using these special musical experiences in full-length compositions. In 1970, when I was commissioned by Leopold Stokowski's American Symphony Orchestra to compose a concerto for my jazz quintet and full orchestra, I realized I could finally write the symphonic work I had dreamed of composing since two great musicians had left a lasting influence on my life twenty years earlier. I thought of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker as I began to write the Triple Concerto and I thought of all the great musicians, some celebrated, some unknown, that I had been lucky enough to play with, who also shared the dream of bringing the beautiful musics of the world together in a symphonic setting. I worked day and night for three months, only taking time off to eat, sleep, and play with my quartet. I finished the first two movements and decided to include elements of Middle Eastern music as the primary source for the third movement, I had sketched the "Rondo a la Turca" and practiced the solo flute part on my Pakistani flute. Two-thirds of the way towards the completion of the final movement, I got stuck. I kept up a steady pace of writing, re-writing, and throwing away what I had written. I only had two months before the world premiere at the Lincoln Center in New York with the great Japanese conductor, Kazu Akiyama, and the American Symphony Orchestra eagerly awaiting the final pages. I called Dizzy Gillespie and told him I was coming into the home stretch. "You better finish it, David," he said, "because I'm coming to hear it," For a week I wrote and threw away more pages of music, but I knew I would find the right way to complete the piece. Now, in 1998, twenty-seven years later, I can look back with joy at how I came about completing the last movement. It came on an early morning at Menachim Dworman's Olive Tree Cafe on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village. Pepper Adams, Al Harewood, Herb Bushler, and I had finished performing around the corner at the Village Gate. Instead of going home to work on the last movement, I went around the corner to the Olive Tree Cafe to get inspiration from playing with the Greek, Turkish, Armenian, Arabic, and Israeli musicians who also dropped by to play for fun after their night's work was done. There was always good Middle Eastern food and a cosmopolitan audience of belly dancers, checker players, Souvlaki eaters, runaways, winos, guitar pickers, medical students, cab drivers, and off-duty postal workers to cheer us on. When I walked in, oud virtuoso George Mrgdichian and Ali Hafid, the great Moroccan dumbek player, were performing. I took out my Pakistani flute and joined them. As we improvised through the wee hours, George played the bass line to "The Sultan's Lament," a classic Armenian folk melody in 10/4 Ali Hafid was playing an accompanying rhythm also in 10/4, the Egyptian rhythm called the sami sakil. Suddenly I had a picture of how to construct the slow part of the third movement, as a contrast to the rapid sections of the "Rondo a la Turca," I instantly heard in my head a long melody and counter melody in 10/4 time that could fit over the Armenian bass figure and the Egyptian drum pattern. I put down my flute, let my Turkish coffee and dinner get cold, and began making a musical sketch. I continued to work until dawn. That chance meeting in November 1970 at the Olive Tree helped me complete the last movement by including the life-giving, timeless energy of Middle Eastern music the way I had incorporated the warmth and excitement of jazz in the first two movements. The whole concerto is a summing up of a lifetime spent where there are no more walls in music and where playing, singing, improvising, and conducting all flow back into composing. The Triple Concerto gave me a chance to play and improvise on piano, French horn, Pakistani flute, and dumbek in a composition of my own. Up until 1970, my only participation in my symphonic works was in the role of a conductor Finally, I had the chance to sit on the stage with a hundred brother and sister musicians and my quintet and be part of the music. Conductor Kazu Akiyama and Leopold Stokowski's American Symphony Orchestra gave a stunning world premiere performance at the Lincoln Center in New York on January 10, 1971 with great reviews and a standing ovation. Many other orchestras, including the Philadelphia, Chicago, and Toronto Symphonies performed it. The final movement of the concerto, "Rondo a la Turca," has been performed hundreds of times throughout the world in two subsequent versions, one a reduced orchestration for symphony and one a transcription for wind orchestra. This recording in 1973 was conductor David Zinman's first in the US. He has since become world-renowned as both a master of the classical treasures of the past and a dynamic interpreter of new music. The brass and woodwind quintets were drawn from the outstanding members of the Rochester Philharmonic. In 1977, the third movement, "Rondo a la Turca," was televised on a PBS Special with my quintet and members of the Chicago Symphony, which I conducted, as well as performing the solo flute part. During a different part of the program, Dizzy Gillespie joined my quintet. As we both watched the orchestral portion of the entire program when it was being edited, I reminded Dizzy of the evening of 1951 and how his generosity had guided me towards writing this piece. "All the beautiful musics and musicians must come together And it's happening," he said, "Elegy for Violin and Orchestra" was written two months after the Triple Concerto in memory of Jean Dale Katz, a truly dedicated woman, who, through years of hard work and little public recognition, made it possible for thousands of children to get together and make music every summer She also made it possible for residents of Queens, New York, to have their own fine symphony orchestra. "Elegy" was commissioned by members of the Queens Symphony and first performed on March 6,1971, at Coulder Hall, with Pinchas Zukerman as soloist and Jean's husband and director of the Queens Symphony, David Katz, conducting. Over the decades, "Elegy," like my "Violin Concerto," has become part of the repertoire of young violinists around the World.
-- David Amram, 1998
DAVID AMRAM has composed more than 100 orchestral and chamber music works, written many scores for Broadway theater and film including the classic scores Splendor in the Gross and The Manchurian Candidate, two operas including the ground-breaking Holocaust opera and ABC television event The Final Ingredient, and the score for the landmark 1959 Beat Generation documentary film with Jack Kerouac, Pull My Daisy. Amram and Kerouac collaborated on the title song and Amram appeared in the film. A pioneer player of jazz French horn, he is also a virtuoso on piano, numerous flutes and whistles, percussion, and dozens of folkloric instruments from 2 5 countries as well as improvising lyrics. He has collaborated with Leonard Bernstein, (who chose him as The New York Philharmonic's first composer-in-residence in 1966), Langston Hughes, Dizzy Gillespie, Dustin Hoffman, Willie Nelson, Thelonious Monk, Odetta, Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, Charles Mingus, Lionel Hampton, and Tito Puente, among others. Robert Sherman of the Now York limes wrote, "If you have not yet encountered this extraordinary man of music, you will marvel at his multiple gifts as a composer, conductor and solo instrumentalist." The award-winning documentary, Amram Jam, will be nationally televised and released as a home video in 1998, By the end of 1998 there will be twelve CDs of David Amram's music commercially available. His autobiography, Vibrations, is being reissued in paperback in 1998. He still tours the world, conducting, performing with his quintet, and creating new orchestral compositions based on his lifetime of experiences in the many worlds of music he calls home.
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