PROGRAM NOTES
Inaugural Performance
July 10 at 7:30 pm
pre-concert talk 6:45 pm
Highline Performing Arts Center
Read about the pieces we are presenting at our Inaugural Women’s Orchestra Festival & Concert.
Starburst by Jessie Montgomery (2012)
Indian-American astronaut Kalpana Chawla said “When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel that you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system.” Jessie Montgomery was 31 when she created Starburst for the renowned Sphinx Virtuosi ensemble in 2012, the same year that she received her Master of Composition from New York University. Her work with Sphinx was a part of her development since 1999, and contributed to her finding and expanding her voice as a composer and a performer. The players she had in mind while writing Starburst were indeed virtuosic trailblazers, and you can hear and feel that in the music.
The piece starts with an explosion of joyful sound and rhythm, a rocket launching from earth (in the low strings), sending the lister into outer-space on a journey through the cosmos. The interplay of constellations is heard in the shifting patterns and colors of the music, as rhythmic gestures illuminate the skies. The piece is over in a flash of energy, and inspires a breathless wonder. We feel it is the perfect way to invite you, our audience, on this journey with us. We are travelers in this astonishing solar system together!
Program notes by Denise Dillenbeck
Concerto for Double Bass and Orchestra by Dr. Sarah Bassingthwaighte (2022)
This piece has been described as a symphony with the double bass as the superhero!
In deciding the general stylistic approach to the piece, I wanted to create something that would be virtuosic and fun for the bass soloist, the would be engaging and interesting for the orchestra, and expressive and exciting for the audience. The first movement, Lacrimosa, is the most serious and dramatic movement. The year it was composed involved some very painful losses for both the bassist and for me, and this movement expresses some of that grief – lacrimosa refers to tears. At the climax, the bass blends into the fabric of the orchestra, with a tutti fortissimo – the woodwinds and upper strings in a flurry of runs, the brass doing glissandi, and the low strings and low winds pounding out the 4-note motive. After this, is left to grieve alone and quiet. The ending has a surprise bass technique – watch for it!
The Scherzo lightens the mood, with bouncy, syncopated rhythms, performed by just percussion and pizzicato strings. The percussion gets to pull out some of their fun auxiliary instruments – temple bells, vibraslap, castanets, bongos among them. In the middle of the movement, the bass plays a 7-note pattern over the percussion 3-beat pattern, intentionally feeling loose and ungrounded. In the bass part, you’ll hear glissandos and slapping the strings. The final movement, the Pesante furioso, is the high-energy climax of the piece. Short, driving, accented motives are tossed between the bass and the orchestra. The music is often somewhat dissonant, but always directional. A challenge in composing for bass is balance between the bass and the orchestra. Rather than thinning the orchestra, in this movement, I chose to have them alternate quickly, so the orchestra could play with fullness and energy without overpowering the bass. The middle of this movement slows to a dark, mysterious scene, with a persistent 4-note ostinato that is traded through the winds, brass, percussion, strings, and harp. Fairly quickly, the music returns to the virtuosic, driving bass themes, pushing toward the dramatic final repetition of the opening statement. I hope this concerto gives you a fresh appreciation for the beauty, energy and versatility of the double bass.
Program notes by Dr. Sarah Bassingthwaighte
Spider Boots- A joint composition and tribute to Seattle by Sarah Bassingthwaighte and Tessa Brinckman (2026), that combines Deep Listening and music groove, where the audience creates the sound world along with the orchestra.
Years ago, Tessa was living in an old building on the corner of Bellevue Ave and Olive Way. She was reading at her kitchen table at midnight when she heard a "ticka-tacka-ticka-tacka" sound. She couldn't figure out where it was coming from. When she turned around to look towards the refrigerator, she saw a spider on the floor, walking towards her. It was so quiet, the floors so resonant - that spider had boots.
We've made this piece as a double tribute - and we're grateful to Unsound Symphony for this opportunity. It's a tribute to Deep Listening composer matriarch, Pauline Oliveros, who nurtured listeners to hear the world and themselves anew. And it's a tribute to the back-ity-back days of 70's Seattle, when life was more affordable - it was possible to make a living as musician from jazz clubs - and where talents like Quincy Jones came up, surrounded by all the old jazz and improvisation greats. Ancestors, everybody! Listen for ferry horns and Amtrak whistles, carefully transcribed from Seattle’s very own boats and trains.
Spider Boots invites you to remember the things that made sense to you and yours, to kick them back up, and put the sauce back into your lives. We invite you to join us in creating this music – participation is optional and there are no wrong sounds! Listen intently, play your part, leave space for others, and leave the sound world better than you found it.
Program notes by Dr. Sarah Bassingthwaighte & Tessa Brinckman
Montgomery Variations by Margaret Bonds (1964)
Movements I,V,VI,VII
Margaret Bonds' "Montgomery Variations" is a seven-movement work written after the composer visited Alabama in 1963. This piece responds to anti-segregation activism and increasingly violent racist resistance, culminating in the terrorist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church which killed four young girls. In her own notes on the piece, Bonds writes that she approached her theme, which is from the spiritual "I Want Jesus to Walk with Me", like a Bach partita, with "a bold statement of the theme, followed by variations... in the same key – major and minor. Because of the personal meanings of the Negro spiritual themes, Margaret Bonds always avoids over-development of the melodies." Although she transforms and fragments the theme throughout the work, it remains recognizable throughout.
The first movement "Decision" introduces us to the spiritual theme, clearly stated, and represents activists' decision to begin a bus boycott in heavily segregated Montgomery. In movement V, "One Sunday in the South" a solo trumpet presents the theme above a lilting string accompaniment. Woodwinds and strings play together by passing around a falling baroque-feel figure, which then combines with the trumpet's restatement of the theme. This serene and peaceful community is then violently interrupted by the bombing, represented by percussion and ending the movement. Movement VI, "Lament", presents the theme in minor with beautiful string harmony, then restates it simply and at a whisper. As some winds join, it builds to a more forceful and complex expression of grief, leading us to the final movement, "Benediction". A lovely, emphatic melody in the upper winds supported by rising strings builds to a full-orchestra climax, carrying sorrow and anger while creating hope for the future. Listen for the theme's final return in the brass; it's triumphant, but inconclusive. There's still a lot of work to be done.
Kauyumari by Gabriela Ortiz (2021)
Kauyumari, the blue deer, arrives as a quiet sign from the spirit world, showing us a world beyond our own. In Huichol tradition, the blue deer appears at the end of a long pilgrimage and a ceremony involving peyote, a sacred cactus believed to open the way to ancestral wisdom. Each year, pilgrims symbolically “hunt” the blue deer, giving thanks for the healing and renewal it represents. When Gabriela Ortiz was invited to write a piece for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s return after the pandemic, this image felt right to her. Kauyumari moves between worlds, and that echoed our own step back into live music — that feeling of coming out of isolation and suddenly being surrounded by sound, energy, and people again.
At the center of Kauyumari is a Huichol melody sung by the De La Cruz family, guardians of traditional songs. Ortiz lets the melody begin simply, almost like a small ritual, and then she gradually builds it out — developing it, stretching it, and letting it transform. She describes shaping the melody and its accompaniment so that it becomes the blue deer itself, eventually dissolving into a complex rhythmic world where the original tune is almost unrecognizable, like a vision seen through shifting light. Out of that texture, a glowing, choral‑like sound rises in the winds, while the steady rhythm underneath keeps reminding us that the world, in its own way, continues forward. At its heart, Kauyumari is a story of healing and return, but also of celebration — a joyful reminder that music can lift us, gather us, and carry us into new beginnings.