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PROGRAM

Friday, Saturday & Sunday
Nov. 11, 12 & 13, 2005

Grand Rapids Symphony
Deborah Henson-Conant, featured soloist
David Lockington, Conductor
John Varineau, Guest Conductor , Clarinet
DEVOS PERFORMANCE HALL
DeVos Place • 303 Monroe • Grand Rapids, MI 49503

Following are descriptions Deborah wrote of each of the pieces on the program.
Shara Dunn took the photos at the Workshop Performance of the project in Sept. 2005.
This page is a work-in-progress. More photos will be forthcoming.

I'll play the first half of the program on the "small" strap-on body harp
PHOTO TO COME LATER	COSITA LATINA: “Bullfighter meets Samba Band” could be one way to describe Cosita Latina. While the basic melody is a happy little samba, it’s intercut with driving flamenco-type interludes and a soaring, romantic countermelody. My motivation in writing this piece was two-fold. I heard the melody in a dream, woke up dancing and wrote it down. I’d been able to create flamenco fire and rhythms on the pedal harp in “Baroque Flamenco,” but I’d never been able to do it successfully on the lever harp. In Cosita Latina, I was finally able to achieve that.
THE WILD HARP: The old Irish ballad “The Minstrel Boy” is the jumping-off point for this piece. The the story that’s told in that song, a Minstrel marches into battle with his father’s sword and his “wild harp flung behind him.” The minstrel dies in battle, but before he does, he tears the strings from his harp so that, when the instrument is captured, it won’t be played by enemy hands. The melody is haunting, but I could never reconcile the fact that the when the harp and the minstrel are both destroyed, the story is ended. I believe that both the music and the instrument must have lived on and provided strength and reconciliation somehow. So in “The Wild Harp,” the instrument itself becomes a ... well, an instrument ... of reconciliation. It’s found by the approaching hoards and wins the hearts of the enemy in a way that the Minstrel himself was never able to do. In “The Wild Harp,” I explored this idea musically by using the traditional Reel “Reconciliation.” This piece features a both a tender and an aggressive style of harp playing.
PHOTO TO COME LATER	WAY YOU ARE BLUES: Ever since I first went to teach at the Edinburgh Harp Festival, I’ve realized that the lever harp is an incredible blues instrument. The levers are perfect for sliding into those moaning “blues notes,” and because you can tune different octaves of the harp in different keys, you can get certain dissonances and blues-like chords with much more ease than on a pedal harp. “Way You Are Blues” is a 12-bar blues featuring the lever harp and voice, with a high-energy “distorted” harp cadenza (think rock guitar to get an idea how this sounds).
NIGHTINGALE: This song didn’t even seem like a song, at first. It was so simple, and so expressive of a feeling I’d had for so long, that it seemed as natural as sighing. I wrote it at a time when I was still trying to prove myself as a dynamic player, and it was such a simple, honest and revealing piece that I was nervous about performing it. Several other performers finally convinced me to risk singing it, and instantly audiences began to ask for it again and again. Orchestrating it was also a challenge for me. Most of my orchestrations before had all been bombastic and rhythmic. This piece was so tender I simply wasn’t sure how to approach it. so I just approached it as delicately and simply as I could, with a reduced orchestra (strings and woodwinds). Particularly when I’m performing the orchestral version, this piece has a magic for me, an ability to transport me to a series of moments in my life. The one thing each of these moments share is that my mother is singing. I must have subconsciously tried to portray that in the orchestration because one day a few years ago when I was performing with the Syracuse Symphony, and when the English Horn was playing so soulfully and tenderly, I felt suddenly that her spirit was completely alive in the piece, and coming through his instrument.	PHOTO TO COME LATER
PHOTO TO COME LATER	BELINDA [story to come later]
CATCHER IN THE RYE: In about 1990, I was playing with some friends in Scotland, when I was struck by the paradox of the achingly beautiful Scottish ballads and the driving rhythms of the contemporary Scottish bands. I was also thinking about how these ballads had infused our American culture, and how the simple ballad “Comin’ Through the Rye” had been the moving theme of the great Amercian coming-of-age novel, “Catcher in the Rye.” I knew that both the longing of the ballad and the ..... of the novel are part of me, part of my emotional and cultural vocabulary. I wanted — I could say I needed — to put them together in one piece of music. This piece connects the original ballad with a single, pivotal paragraph of the novel. Instrumentally, it features the electric lever harp and timpani or frame drums, strings and brass, with a haunting solo for English Horn
INTERMISSION
The second half of the show features the pedal harp.
	DANGER ZONE: In the mid-90’s the editor of the “Journal of Improbable Results” gave me an article entitle “Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown” and suggested that I write a suite based on it. I did write that suite, and “Danger Zone” was one of the movements. It’s a quirky, bombastic piece for harp and orchestra. It has very colorful orchestrations, a big Trombone solo and an “experimental” harp cadenza that explores some of the lesser known effects available on the harp. To get the full effect, I’ve asked the entire orchestra to play dressed in lab coats. Will they do it? You can find out!
MERCEDITAS: I met Mexican harpist Mercedes Gomez in the mid-90's. The freedom of Mercedes’ imagination matches my own and our friendship bubbled like hotsprings, our emails mixing the impossible and the everyday in a special magic of words and images. We wanted to spend more time together, to play music and to experiment mixing music and dance, so I decided to write a piece we could play together. In fact, I wrote a whole concerto for two harps, which was commissioned by the CAMAC harp company -- and Mercedes and I premiered it at the World Harp Congress in Prague that year. The second movement, a lush waltz, was the most romantic piece I had ever written -- because both Mercedes and I were falling in love — me with my partner Jonathan, and she with her current husband, Bosse. We both had much to overcome in these relationships and when I wrote this movement I poured our longing and love into the notes, and could feel us, each in different worlds, dancing to the same music with the men we would spend the rest of our lives with. I don’t think I have ever written any piece that was more unabashedly romantic. Originally for two harps and orchestra, I rewrote it in 2005 for solo harp and orchestra, and premiere that version on the DVD with the Grand Rapids Symphony in 2005.	PHOTO TO COME LATER
	996: My work has always been half-story, half-music. So it’s no accident that the story of Sheherezade, the woman who saved her own life by telling stories, had a special attraction for me. In the early 90's, I wrote a solo piece about Sheherezade and called it “996” in reference to the 1001 Arabian nights -- the 1001 stories Sheherezade told to save her life. In 2005, when we received the go-ahead for the symphonic DVD, I asked conductor David Lockington if he had any requests for the project. He said that his only request was that I write a piece for him and me to play together. For me this was a thrilling request. David is a dramatic and willing performer, and as I searched for the right piece for us, I realized I wanted to arrange the story — I mean the music — of 996 as a sort of concerto for harp and cello. By doing that I hoped to bring out the drama and emotion not just of Sheherezade herself, but the of her relationship with the Sultan who would have killed her but for the stories she told. What I couldn’t have expected was that David’s involvement would reveal an even more compelling part of the story: the redemption of the Sultan through the power of storytelling. Why is it the piece called 996? Ah ... all this will be explained in the performance and the DVD! Technically, this piece is fascinating to play, as it utilizes the full range of the harp and techniques like pedal slides and string bends to create both atmosphere and Middle Eastern melodies. And "How is it," you may ask, "that the conductor can step down off the podium, play cello with the soloist and still lead the orchestra?" Aha! One of the great benefits of working with the Grand Rapids Symphony is their wonderful associate conductor, John Varineau, who agreed to guest conduct on this program. John will take over the podium for this piece.
HEALING THE WATERS: Healing the Waters is a passacaglia for harp, cello and clarinet, which will be played by me on harp, David Lockington on Cello and John Varineau, the GRS Associate Conductor, on Clarinet. “Healing the Waters” is a love song for the man who made this collaborative project possible, Peter Wege. Peter is a passionate environmentalist and supporter of the arts. Peter and I became friends after my first performance in Grand Rapids. We are both passionate about water, and one of Peter’s projects is the healing of Lake Michigan, a project he calls “Healing the Waters” and one he’s poured his heart and his soul into. "Healing the Waters" is choreographed for two dancers by Grand Rapids Ballet artistic director Gordon Peirce Schmidt, who I've long hoped to collaborate with. The collaboration is an offering of love and appreciation for a man who has personally affected the lives of everyone on stage and whose spirit and dreams have enriched my own life in a thousand ways. (The dancer in this photo is my friend Karen Montanaro, who came to help us workshop the piece in September '05)
PHOTO TO COME LATER	CONGRATULATIONS, YOU MADE IT THIS FAR: Turning 40 was a trauma for me. In part because I never thought I’d live that long — and in part because the longer I live, the more I realize it’s impossible to live up to the image of success I had when I was a kid. I wrote this song just to help me make it through that birthday. And I’ve been singing it every since. Apparently a lot of other people sing it, too, judging by the number of emails I get about it. Hearing the audience singing back at me during this song is always very emotional. Performing it with symphony orchestra just puts that emotion over the top for me. And here’s the kicker: we’re recording this DVD Nov. 11, 12 & 13. And my birthday is ... Nov. 11. How I’ll get through this song on stage that weekend I don’t know.
BAROQUE FLAMENCO: I started the harp seriously when I was 22. A few months after I started playing, I landed a job playing background music in a ritzy hotel. I got the job based on the fact that I had the wardrobe (a long gown), not on my playing ability. Basically, I could play four tunes, most of them out of a beginner’s book called “Medieval to Modern.” My saving grace was that I could improvise, so I was able to make each piece last anywhere from 15 – 20 minutes. My favorite harp tune was a little minuet by Jean Jacque Rousseau. I loved it because of the melody and because it had two contrasting sections. One was melodic and recognizable, the other was structured in a way to make it easy and satisfying to improvise over. So I would play the melody, then improvise on the contrasting “B” section until I got hopelessly lost. Just as the dining patrons were beginning to wonder if I knew what I was doing (as you may be wondering vis-a-vis this description.) I would go back to the melody, and once I had my bearings and they'd stopped looking at me askance, I'd start improvising again. So the piece was not just music, but a musical game, and a safe place to experiment. Little by little, as I got more comfortable playing it, the two sections began to contrast each other more, and as the years went on, the piece became more and more varied. One day I realized the two sections had completely diverged: one sounded completely Baroque and the other was markedly Flamencish. I followed the lead of the tune and after more expreimentation, I discovered a whole new world in the music: a story of Flamenco dancers and a time machine that took them to Marie Antoinette’s boudoire. From there the piece developed to fulfill the story, as the Flamenco dancers ultimately take over the French court. The piece became my signature piece, with a dramatic, percussive Flamenco Cadenza. When the Boston Pops called me in 1995 and asked me to perform as a featured soloist with them, I knew I wanted to arrange this piece for full orchestra. I've probably played this piece more times than any other in my repertoire -- and it's still just as challenging and just as much fun.		PHOTO TO COME LATER
SNEAKY SNEAKY: HERE ARE THE ENCORES Ha! Of course we prepare encores! We only hope the audience will beg for them — and that we’ll have time left on the program to perform them! Unlike solo performers and bands, huge orchestras can’t keep playing encores ad infinitum or they’ll be fined “overtime” fees. So IF there’s time, here’s what we’re preparing for encores. Pssst! Don’t tell the audience! It’s supposed to be a surprise.
PHOTO TO COME LATER	GARBAGEMAN: Around Thanksgiving 2004, I decided I wanted to write a Song of Thanks. I said to myself, “But Deborah, tell me honestly now, what are you TRULY thankful for?” Immediately one image came to my mind: my garbageman. Ever since learning of the theory of relativity, and realizing that garbage — unless it’s biodegradable -- never really disappears, I’ve had nightmares that someday I will be confronted by every piece of plastic and styrofoam I’ve ever thrown away. Seeing the garbage collectors each week is a profound relief. I’m not joking! I have to admit, I also like the noise of the trucks, the cans and the yelling (which sounded a lot to me like my mother’s opera singing, when I was a kid). I premiered this ode to the garbage collector in 2004 and it became an immediate audience hit, especially the garbagecan cadenza.
NEW BLUES: This was one of the first “blues” I wrote for the harp, before I understood the 12-bar blues form, and the idea that the Blues is usually a slow “bluesy” type of tune. This is really more of a bebop tune, with a melody that’s a combination 12-bar blues and 16-bar blues (don’t ask how I did that. It's the kind of thing you can only do when you don't know what you're doing.) I premiered the orchestral version of this piece with the Grand Rapids Symphony in 2001. Their harpist, Elizabeth Wooster, had been playing with them less than one season, so when she came out to the front of the orchestra, tore off her black orchestra gown and played this piece with me in mini-skirt and fishnet stockings, the crowd went wild -- and everyone in the orchestra's eyes nearly popped out. Will she do it again on the DVD? Wouldn’t you like to know!!	PHOTO TO COME LATER