The Long Bright premiere: Hila Plitmann with Orchestra 2001 and the Temple University Music Prep Children's Choir. Photo by Anthony Burokas.
Scored for: soprano solo, SSAA (suitable for girl’s, children’s, women’s or intergenerational treble chorus), orchestra Instrumentation: 1 flute (doubles picc./alto flute), 1 oboe (doubles E.H.), 1 clarinet in Bb, 1 bassoon (doubles contra-bassoon), 2 horns in F, 1 trumpet in C and Bb, 1 tenor trombone, 3 percussion (including timpani), harp, piano/celesta, strings Text: David Wolman Language: English Duration: one hour Premiere: April 26, 2004, Hila Plitmann, soprano solo, The Temple University Music Prep Children’s Choir (directed by Holly Phares), Orchestra 2001, James Freeman, conductor, Perelman Hall, The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, presented by David Wolman and Michael Lillys. Upcoming performance on March 11, 2010, Royce Hall, Los Angeles: www.longbright.org Commissioned by: David Wolman with support from the Richard T. and Martha B. Baker Foundation in memory of Anni Baker Published by: Self-published, Angelfire Press
Contact Andrea Clearfield for score and parts:
The Clearfield cantata joins a long line of works, such as Britten’s War Requiem and John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1, that speak their impassioned messages in no uncertain terms…Clearfield composed one movement as rap music (sung by a girls’ chorus), its rhythmic aggressiveness suggesting the mercilessness of disease, and, in a larger sense, the mercilessness of fate. There are also more original acts of compositional wizardry. Since Clearfield leads you to expect a fairly straight-forward harmonic language, mentions of “cancer” and “malignancy” are all the more penetrating when the harmonies around them unravel, cancerously, in all directions. One of the best pieces written recently by a Philadelphia composer.”
-The Philadelphia Inquirer, David Patrick Stearns
QUOTES
“An hour-long cantata on a husband’s poetic response to the death of his wife from breast cancer might have been maudlin and depressing. Instead, this is a terrific piece, uplifting, optimistic, hopeful, featuring a wonderful part for children’s chorus, and a virtuosic role for solo soprano, sung beautifully at the work’s premiere with Orchestra 2001 – surely one of our most successful premieres ever – by the extraordinary Hila Plitmann.”
-James Freeman, Artistic Director, Orchestra 2001
“I really can’t express what a glorious job (Clearfield) has done and how defined … and moving it is,” said Hila Plitmann, a soprano singer who will be the featured soloist in the concert. “There are parts of the piece that are very hard to get through because they are so moving, both lyrically and musically. The combination of the two is just so iridescent and full of light and beauty that you want to start crying yourself while you’re practicing.”
–Hila Plitmann, Grammy award winning soprano in the Daily Bruin, Los Angeles, March 15, 2010
““The Long Bright Cantata” is an exquisite work for Chorus, Orchestra and Soprano soloist composed by the very talented Andrea Clearfield. The piece is a beautifully orchestrated, very personal statement that is sometimes dramatic in tone, oftentimes with haunting melodies and sometimes with surprisingly pop irented flourishes. It is a great accomplishment and a work that should find its place among the repertoire of works for chorus and orchestra.”
-Charles Fox, Grammy award winning television and film composer
“The Long Bright encompasses poems written by Baker’s widower, David Wolman, during her years of illness, as well as bits of music Baker composed herself. In the background is inspiration that Clearfield gleaned from listening to tapes of Baker singing and knowing her in her final years….The Long Bright reflects the diversity of her world, with traditional harmony at some turns and, in others, a pioneering style of choral rap music in which the chorus chants in angry syncopation”
– The Philadelphia Inquirer, David Patrick Stearns
LISTEN
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The Long Bright is an hour-long cantata on breast cancer that was premiered on April 26, 2004 by Hila Plitmann, soprano, Jane Foster, off-stage soprano, Temple University Music Prep Children’s Choir and Orchestra 2001, James Freeman, Artistic Director. The premiere was held at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia and served as a fundraiser for breast cancer research. The Long Bright was awarded the 2005 Theodore Front Prize for Chamber and Orchestral Music from the International Alliance of Women in Music. The Long Bright is set to texts by David Wolman, who commissioned the work. Mr. Wolman wrote these poems during the five years between his wife’s diagnosis and her death from breast cancer. His wife, Anni Baker, was an acclaimed coloratura soprano, Broadway singer and a strong supporter of contemporary vocal music. Portions of The Long Bright are informed by Anni Baker’s varied repertoire that includes art songs, musical theater and opera. A number of fragments from Anni’s recital pieces appear in the “Melisma” aria and an excerpt from a folk opera that she composed is heard in the last movement. “There was a Time” pays homage to Anni’s Broadway career. The Long Bright also alludes to contemporary American popular music as well as to the music of Anni’s longtime friend, Samuel Barber.
There are two movements containing eleven smaller sections; the poem, “The Long Bright” frames the work. A 5-note theme is built from the opening two notes of the piece, heard in its entirety in the first choral passage. This recurring motif departs from and returns to the same note, representing the cycle of life.
The title, The Long Bright, may be perceived as the white light at the end of the tunnel of dying, the long but bright hope for a cure and the fierce brightness of our lives – the white light of our souls – within which, as the color white contains all colors, we can feel deeply all things. It is my hope that the piece will be a tribute to Anni Baker’s memory and the fullness of life that she embodied, and that it will generate an increased awareness of breast cancer and the need for finding a cure.
TEXT
Poetry by David Wolmen
MOVEMENT I
I. THE LONG BRIGHT (1)
Do not fear the view
The long bright
Shattered with light
Tomorrow is scorched with life
Living on
In fractured mirrors
II. THE BRIDGE
I shudder not the early hint of Fall
In ripples rocking
Ships as big as islands glide
But the day with handsome flowers
And the pink skies over our wooden decks
Smell of wood smoke
From my window
Ships moored against a shifting dock
Make the guy wires ring
Church bells
Move my darting eyes across
Tethered to hope
By the rusting Bridge
To cross
To cross to where
The sun rises
Silently
Like the stopping of breath
III. RISK FACTORS
Sometimes I think
Of that one safe moment
In night’s inertia
Our gentle ignorance
IV. METS
Bone mets
Liver mets
Who’s got the met nets
Bad news
Good news
Who’s got the good bets
Met mets
Who’s got the medicine
Why does it hurt
What do I have
Where am I
In the continuum
Keep it mum
Who to tell
Some are fine
And some are scared
And some are nuts
Who’s got the guts?
V. THERE WAS A TIME
In that place that once
Was
Ours
We had dirt
Like chocolate cake
Broken in our hands
We had a horse
And goats and sheep
In that place there was a time
Of cauliflowers as big as planets
Irises as bright as goddesses
Nebulas of spinach green
And out of the early morning smoke
On cold days
The white goat appeared
Of an epic
A unicorn
Or some mythical flirt
In that place that once
Was ours
There was a time
Greenhouse full of shoots
Beets as sweet as flutes
Baby on our back
I hate to remember this
I love to forget
Cancer
But if it were a flower
There must be beauty in all growth
In all growth
There must be death
And if it were a flower
Or a beautiful resplendent gourd
There must be beauty in all growth
In that place that once
Was
Ours
MOVEMENT II
VI. THE LONG BRIGHT (2)
Do not fear the view
The long bright
See how patiently
On the rock beach
The sunset lingers
Where lime canopies are
On fire with hot frost
And caressing you
With flaxen fingers
Are the whitecaps in relief
On the silver-bellied lake
You just now crossed
VII. MELISMA
How can I confess the notes I’ve heard
I was there when she started
It is the quiet now I cannot hear
That came like storms
To devastate the gardens
That were her songs
But what is sound and long ago?
Where do echoes die?
She must be still singing
As I am listening
VIII. THE WOLF
The wolf sits
On a hill panting
Gray and thin and erect
Watching for the weak
I trust animals
And storms
All my wizardry
Gone
I am malignancy itself
The Titanic veered
To avoid ice
And was torn
And drowned
IX. GOOD DAYS BAD DAYS
Good days bad days
What about a rest hey?
Which me what I
Never know the feel how
Up one down two
Can I have a straight run?
Warm me sun ray
Never have the same fun
Up there down here
Isn’t there a flip side?
Deep slide slow slide
When’s it going to break me?
Black sky white sigh
Who has got the safe key?
Time’s here hours short
X. BLOOM
Flowers are to be watched
The instantaneity of
Their gaudy sloth
If I could so cease
I would not be closer
To the puzzle
To finding that last piece
It is a lesson
Painfully to be won
There is a choice
To be ecstatic
Or to return
To take or to subsume
So involuntarily do
I repent and bloom
XI. THE LONG BRIGHT (3)
At that moment
Iridescent time
Never can be taken
From your ownership as
Brushes stroke the sky and
In abounding chants sing strong
I lift up my eyes
And I seek salvation
Come unto the Lord and hear His word
(Excerpt from “Come unto the Lord”, text and melody by Anni Baker)
Spraying with peach plumes
Quivers of violaceous arrows
Announcing
The pessimists are surely wrong
Nothing is really malignant
Epilogue
To cross
To cross to where the sun rises
The Long Bright
The Long Bright
The Long Bright premiere: Hila Plitmann with Orchestra 2001 and the Temple University Music Prep Children's Choir. Photo by Anthony Burokas.
Scored for: soprano solo, SSAA (suitable for girl’s, children’s, women’s or intergenerational treble chorus), orchestra
Instrumentation: 1 flute (doubles picc./alto flute), 1 oboe (doubles E.H.), 1 clarinet in Bb, 1 bassoon (doubles contra-bassoon), 2 horns in F, 1 trumpet in C and Bb, 1 tenor trombone, 3 percussion (including timpani), harp, piano/celesta, strings
Text: David Wolman
Language: English
Duration: one hour
Premiere: April 26, 2004, Hila Plitmann, soprano solo, The Temple University Music Prep Children’s Choir (directed by Holly Phares), Orchestra 2001, James Freeman, conductor, Perelman Hall, The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, presented by David Wolman and Michael Lillys. Upcoming performance on March 11, 2010, Royce Hall, Los Angeles: www.longbright.org
Commissioned by: David Wolman with support from the Richard T. and Martha B. Baker Foundation in memory of Anni Baker
Published by: Self-published, Angelfire Press
Contact Andrea Clearfield for score and parts:
See preview score pages: THE LONG BRIGHT CHORAL SCORE EXCERPT (PDF)
THE LONG BRIGHT FULL SCORE EXCERPT (PDF)
REVIEW
Hila Plitmann
The Clearfield cantata joins a long line of works, such as Britten’s War Requiem and John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1, that speak their impassioned messages in no uncertain terms…Clearfield composed one movement as rap music (sung by a girls’ chorus), its rhythmic aggressiveness suggesting the mercilessness of disease, and, in a larger sense, the mercilessness of fate. There are also more original acts of compositional wizardry. Since Clearfield leads you to expect a fairly straight-forward harmonic language, mentions of “cancer” and “malignancy” are all the more penetrating when the harmonies around them unravel, cancerously, in all directions. One of the best pieces written recently by a Philadelphia composer.”
-The Philadelphia Inquirer, David Patrick Stearns
QUOTES
“An hour-long cantata on a husband’s poetic response to the death of his wife from breast cancer might have been maudlin and depressing. Instead, this is a terrific piece, uplifting, optimistic, hopeful, featuring a wonderful part for children’s chorus, and a virtuosic role for solo soprano, sung beautifully at the work’s premiere with Orchestra 2001 – surely one of our most successful premieres ever – by the extraordinary Hila Plitmann.”
-James Freeman, Artistic Director, Orchestra 2001
“I really can’t express what a glorious job (Clearfield) has done and how defined … and moving it is,” said Hila Plitmann, a soprano singer who will be the featured soloist in the concert. “There are parts of the piece that are very hard to get through because they are so moving, both lyrically and musically. The combination of the two is just so iridescent and full of light and beauty that you want to start crying yourself while you’re practicing.”
–Hila Plitmann, Grammy award winning soprano in the Daily Bruin, Los Angeles, March 15, 2010
““The Long Bright Cantata” is an exquisite work for Chorus, Orchestra and Soprano soloist composed by the very talented Andrea Clearfield. The piece is a beautifully orchestrated, very personal statement that is sometimes dramatic in tone, oftentimes with haunting melodies and sometimes with surprisingly pop irented flourishes. It is a great accomplishment and a work that should find its place among the repertoire of works for chorus and orchestra.”
-Charles Fox, Grammy award winning television and film composer
“The Long Bright encompasses poems written by Baker’s widower, David Wolman, during her years of illness, as well as bits of music Baker composed herself. In the background is inspiration that Clearfield gleaned from listening to tapes of Baker singing and knowing her in her final years….The Long Bright reflects the diversity of her world, with traditional harmony at some turns and, in others, a pioneering style of choral rap music in which the chorus chants in angry syncopation”
– The Philadelphia Inquirer, David Patrick Stearns
LISTEN
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
WATCH
(Interview with Andrea about composing The Long Bright)
PROGRAM NOTES
Andrea with David Wolman and Hila Plitmann
The Long Bright is an hour-long cantata on breast cancer that was premiered on April 26, 2004 by Hila Plitmann, soprano, Jane Foster, off-stage soprano, Temple University Music Prep Children’s Choir and Orchestra 2001, James Freeman, Artistic Director. The premiere was held at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia and served as a fundraiser for breast cancer research. The Long Bright was awarded the 2005 Theodore Front Prize for Chamber and Orchestral Music from the International Alliance of Women in Music. The Long Bright is set to texts by David Wolman, who commissioned the work. Mr. Wolman wrote these poems during the five years between his wife’s diagnosis and her death from breast cancer. His wife, Anni Baker, was an acclaimed coloratura soprano, Broadway singer and a strong supporter of contemporary vocal music. Portions of The Long Bright are informed by Anni Baker’s varied repertoire that includes art songs, musical theater and opera. A number of fragments from Anni’s recital pieces appear in the “Melisma” aria and an excerpt from a folk opera that she composed is heard in the last movement. “There was a Time” pays homage to Anni’s Broadway career. The Long Bright also alludes to contemporary American popular music as well as to the music of Anni’s longtime friend, Samuel Barber.
There are two movements containing eleven smaller sections; the poem, “The Long Bright” frames the work. A 5-note theme is built from the opening two notes of the piece, heard in its entirety in the first choral passage. This recurring motif departs from and returns to the same note, representing the cycle of life.
The title, The Long Bright, may be perceived as the white light at the end of the tunnel of dying, the long but bright hope for a cure and the fierce brightness of our lives – the white light of our souls – within which, as the color white contains all colors, we can feel deeply all things. It is my hope that the piece will be a tribute to Anni Baker’s memory and the fullness of life that she embodied, and that it will generate an increased awareness of breast cancer and the need for finding a cure.
TEXT
Poetry by David Wolmen
MOVEMENT I
I. THE LONG BRIGHT (1)
Do not fear the view
The long bright
Shattered with light
Tomorrow is scorched with life
Living on
In fractured mirrors
II. THE BRIDGE
I shudder not the early hint of Fall
In ripples rocking
Ships as big as islands glide
But the day with handsome flowers
And the pink skies over our wooden decks
Smell of wood smoke
From my window
Ships moored against a shifting dock
Make the guy wires ring
Church bells
Move my darting eyes across
Tethered to hope
By the rusting Bridge
To cross
To cross to where
The sun rises
Silently
Like the stopping of breath
III. RISK FACTORS
Sometimes I think
Of that one safe moment
In night’s inertia
Our gentle ignorance
IV. METS
Bone mets
Liver mets
Who’s got the met nets
Bad news
Good news
Who’s got the good bets
Met mets
Who’s got the medicine
Why does it hurt
What do I have
Where am I
In the continuum
Keep it mum
Who to tell
Some are fine
And some are scared
And some are nuts
Who’s got the guts?
V. THERE WAS A TIME
In that place that once
Was
Ours
We had dirt
Like chocolate cake
Broken in our hands
We had a horse
And goats and sheep
In that place there was a time
Of cauliflowers as big as planets
Irises as bright as goddesses
Nebulas of spinach green
And out of the early morning smoke
On cold days
The white goat appeared
Of an epic
A unicorn
Or some mythical flirt
In that place that once
Was ours
There was a time
Greenhouse full of shoots
Beets as sweet as flutes
Baby on our back
I hate to remember this
I love to forget
Cancer
But if it were a flower
There must be beauty in all growth
In all growth
There must be death
And if it were a flower
Or a beautiful resplendent gourd
There must be beauty in all growth
In that place that once
Was
Ours
MOVEMENT II
VI. THE LONG BRIGHT (2)
Do not fear the view
The long bright
See how patiently
On the rock beach
The sunset lingers
Where lime canopies are
On fire with hot frost
And caressing you
With flaxen fingers
Are the whitecaps in relief
On the silver-bellied lake
You just now crossed
VII. MELISMA
How can I confess the notes I’ve heard
I was there when she started
It is the quiet now I cannot hear
That came like storms
To devastate the gardens
That were her songs
But what is sound and long ago?
Where do echoes die?
She must be still singing
As I am listening
VIII. THE WOLF
The wolf sits
On a hill panting
Gray and thin and erect
Watching for the weak
I trust animals
And storms
All my wizardry
Gone
I am malignancy itself
The Titanic veered
To avoid ice
And was torn
And drowned
IX. GOOD DAYS BAD DAYS
Good days bad days
What about a rest hey?
Which me what I
Never know the feel how
Up one down two
Can I have a straight run?
Warm me sun ray
Never have the same fun
Up there down here
Isn’t there a flip side?
Deep slide slow slide
When’s it going to break me?
Black sky white sigh
Who has got the safe key?
Time’s here hours short
X. BLOOM
Flowers are to be watched
The instantaneity of
Their gaudy sloth
If I could so cease
I would not be closer
To the puzzle
To finding that last piece
It is a lesson
Painfully to be won
There is a choice
To be ecstatic
Or to return
To take or to subsume
So involuntarily do
I repent and bloom
XI. THE LONG BRIGHT (3)
At that moment
Iridescent time
Never can be taken
From your ownership as
Brushes stroke the sky and
In abounding chants sing strong
I lift up my eyes
And I seek salvation
Come unto the Lord and hear His word
(Excerpt from “Come unto the Lord”, text and melody by Anni Baker)
Spraying with peach plumes
Quivers of violaceous arrows
Announcing
The pessimists are surely wrong
Nothing is really malignant
Epilogue
To cross
To cross to where the sun rises
The Long Bright
Download “The Long Bright” logo by Louise Clearfield