VIOLIN & VIDEO ARTS

Karen Bentley Pollick, violin 

Incanto Teatro, Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco Mexico

Sunday, February 26, 2023 at 4:00 pm

 

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750)

         Ciaccona from Partita #2 in D minor BWV 1004 (1718 – 1720)

                                                    Video by Stuart Diamond (2017)

 

Ludmila Yurina (b. 1962 Uzyn, Ukraine)

        DUMA for violin (2022)                                                                                    

        Distant Lands for violin & electronics (2022)                                                  

 

Žibuoklė Martinaitytė (b. 1973 Lithuania)

        Serenity Diptychs for violin, tape and still images (2015) 

         Photographic Imagery & Video by Philip Van Keuren 

         Visual & Digital Production by Melissa Tran

 

Intermission

 

Karen Bentley Pollick (b. 1963 Redwood City, CA)

         Paean to St. Francis for violin, voice & electronics (2020)

Video by Stuart Diamond

In memoriam: Samuel Bayne Bentley 

 

Myroslav Skoryk (1938 Lwow – 2020 Kyiv Ukraine)

           Melodiya for violin & piano (1981)  from the music to the film The High Pass 

 

Brian C. Moon (b. 1975)

          Duetto con Bobik for solo violin and electronics (2010)                                                                      

Video by Aistė Ptakauskė (2015)                                                                                               

 

Fanitullen: The Devil’s Tune (1724) for Norwegian Hardangerfele

         Poem by Jørgen Moe (English translation by David Golber)

         Tune after Odd Bakkerud, Nes, Hallingdal Norway

 

 

Johann Sebastian Bach

Ciaccona from Partita #2 in D minor BWV 1004 (1718 – 1720) 

For centuries, scholars have puzzled over what appear to be mathematical structures embedded in the Ciaccona. The pillars of sonic architecture are cast in three distinct sections that unfold in sets of variations over the same bass line in a triple meter with a Sarabande rhythm. The first section in D minor is comprised of 33 variants, the second section in D Major consists of 19 repetitions, and the third section returns to the home key of D minor with 12 variations.  Do the proportions between the Minor and Major modes, the number and nature of variations, and how they interchange, reflect some deeper mathematical or even cosmic meaning? Some suggest that the almost perfect proportions of the 64 variations presented in three contrasting sections mirror The Golden Ratio – a set of satisfying proportions that underlie masterpieces of architecture, paintings, and even in nature itself. That in some way, Bach’s genius allowed him to intuit the very nature of reality, and that his creative mind was so attuned to his own essence that the music he wrote exemplified these structural truths. 

Or such conjecture could simply be the arbitrary musings of academics – philosophical meditations that have little to do with the art of a workaday composer, who wrote the work in grief, and perhaps tribute, after returning from a trip to discover that his wife (and the mother of seven of his children) had died.

The visuals fuse geometrical and mathematical representations of The Golden Mean, Fibonacci Series, Pyramids of Egypt, as well as the Greek letter “φ“ that has come to represent this Divine Ratio, creating a tribute to Bach’s own motto “Soli Deo Gloria”.

Ludmila Yurina

Duma is one of the genres of Ukrainian folklore, a purely Ukrainian recitative folk and heroic epic, which was performed by traveling singer-musicians – kobzars, bandurists, lyre players in Central and Left Bank Ukraine. Later, this term began to define the genre of an epic poetic work, an epic song of a heroic plan. Fables and plots of thoughts, as a rule, are connected with the historical past of the people. DUMA (2022) for solo violin is written using narrative-recitative motifs and intonations close to original Ukrainian dumas. The construction of explosive climaxes makes it more emotional, designed to excite the listener, to touch the thinnest strings of the soul. Taking into account that I am writing a piece for solo violin for a modern performer and audience, I wrote this duma to be more expressive and dramatic. DUMA is dedicated to the defenders of Azov and all defenders of Ukraine, living and those who have left.

Distant Lands was written at the CCRMA studio inspired by the vision of refugees from Ukraine to Europe and other countries. The imagery of the piece draws pictures of the chimeric lands of the distant homeland and the internal state of the people leaving it. The acoustic part and electronics do not contrast and do not conflict, creating a general picture of the various stages of a person’s inner experiences. Distant Lands uses the original audio track recorded on the Lviv-Warsaw refugee train.

The piece is dedicated to Karen Bentley Pollick.

Žibuoklė Martinaitytė

Serenity Diptychs for violin, tape and still images (2015)

When I first encountered photographic diptychs of Philip Van Keuren, I was struck by the “endless pairs of things” and the unexpected dialogues appearing between the images. According to the artist “often the more “distance” between the shear physicality of the paired images, light-dark, near-far, etc. results in a stronger emotive resonance, creating the “conversation” between images. The diptychs pair seemingly ordinary but disparate visual, cultural, and historical entities in order to illuminate and amplify their equivalent fictive, numinous, poetic, and emotional qualities. Two realities are placed side by side that would never be adjacent in the real world”.

The idea of pairing became a focal point in Serenity Diptychs. The piece itself takes a form of an enlarged diptych consisting of two distinctly different adjacent musical worlds – one of a dynamic nature and another of transcendence, stillness and reflection. The first part with its continuous forward motion resembles a hike up a high mountain. Endless and tireless repetitive patterns are swirling ceaselessly and accumulating energy until the very top of the mountain is reached. There… everything suddenly becomes still. One just stands in awe, mesmerized by the breathtakingly spacious vistas and mountain ranges overlapping each other in a far distance. Thus, the second part reflects this state of heightened sensitivity where stasis bears a somewhat ecstatic quality.

The relationship between music and images can be perceived as a diptych as well. Each of them is governed by unique shaping principles – sounds are following a linear logic of time, whereas images display multidimensional nature of space in a non-linear fashion. Images are changing as flashbacks of memories, randomly appearing in the mind without any emotional involvement or attachment with no particular narrative. Music is independently creating a coherent flow and revealing its own story line.

Another pairing is formed between solo violin and tape part where real acoustic sound is merged with imaginary voices.

Karen Bentley Pollick

Paean to St. Francis is an early morning vocal tribute to St. Francis of Assisi recorded al fresco in a pool in San Pancho, Nayarit on October 4, 2020 after 10 days of celebratory fireworks and rockets honoring Patron Saint Francis.  Dedicated to all sentient beings great and small, crawling, flying, walking, and swimming who were traumatized by the annual festivities. The mermaid song with reverb in a cave forms the basis of Paean to St. Francis, over which electronics by Stuart Diamond performed on his Electronic Wind Synthesizer in his Manhattan apartment were added to create an evocative C minor mood.  Live violin and video of rising and setting planets complete the multi dimensional tapestry. 

Myroslav Skoryk

Melodiya is a work written by M. Skoryk for the film “High Pass” commissioned by film director Volodymyr Denysenko. Melodiya is by far Skoryk’s most recognizable and performed work. This work in different arrangements became a kind of “intonation mark” of the late 1980s – early 1990s.

Melodiya has a pronounced lyrical character. Perhaps the main reason for this recognition is the incredibly accurately found melodic idea, the combination of an improvisational-narrative manner with a climactic wide octave move, with a peculiar rhythmic pattern, which is perceived both as a lyrical excited monologue and as a sad violin melody of a folk virtuoso.

Brian C. Moon

Duetto con Bobik, a piece for solo violin and electronics, was written for violinist Karen Bentley Pollick in 2010. The electronics for this piece are comprised entirely of manipulated recordings of Bobik—a stray hound dog that took up residence at the President’s home on the campus of Birmingham-Southern College. These recordings influenced the rhythmic, textural, and melodic composition of the work, resulting in a quirky, fun, and surprisingly tonal experience. Though most of the melodic material in the tape part did not need to be auto-tuned, some material was tweaked using the “I Am T-Pain” application on an iPhone.

The video by Aistė Ptakauskė stars Fella, a beagle/dachsund mix who daily frequents the streets of Vilnius joyfully. The vocals of Bobik fused with Fella’s energetic meanderings on the cobblestones achieve an artistic union via reincarnation, rejuvenation and regeneration.

Fanitullen 

Fanitullen is a famous piece of traditional Norwegian folk music and is played in alternate scordatura tuning A-E-A-C#, known as troll tuning. Legend tells us that it originated from a bloody wedding in Hemsedal in 1724 when the devil was discovered playing the tune perched on a beer barrel in the cellar and tapping time with his hoof, inciting a knife fight amongst two of the guests on the floor above.  Nowadays Norwegians bring knives with a 1 cm blade to a wedding to avoid succumbing to temptation.

Karen recorded Odd Bakkerud’s version of Fanitullen at Skywalker Ranch on October 24, 2001 as the final track on Dancing Suite to Suite, merging Dance Suite for solo violin & viola by Swedish composer Ole Saxe with the D minor Partita of J.S. Bach. It is purported in Scandinavian mythology that a fiddler must spend time in the water to achieve excellence and inspiration. The cover photo represents a fiddler seated on a rock in a stream at the base of Mount Shasta, absorbing fluidity and virtuosity from Noekken the water spirit.

A native of Palo Alto, California Karen Bentley Pollick studied with Camilla Wicks in San Francisco and joined the class of Josef Gingold at Indiana University, earning BM and MM degrees with a cognate field in Choral Conducting. She has performed with the Paul Dresher ElectroAcoustic Band since 1999. Her multimedia project ‘Solo Violin and Alternating Currents’ received a grant from the NEA and evolved into ‘Violin, Viola & Video Virtuosity’. Karen received a Seed Money Grant for Disseminated Performances from New York Women Composers. While residing in Vilnius she performed ‘Resonances from Vilna’ with pianist Jascha Nemtsov and premiered David A. Jaffe’s violin concerto How Did It Get So Late So Soon? with the Lithuanian National Opera & Ballet Theatre Orchestra. Karen’s debut recording for Toccata Classics presents Hermann Graedener’s two violin concertos with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. Her recent recordings garnered top recognition in the Global Music Awards: Graedener Violin Concertos, Chamber Music of Ivan Sokolov, and Orchestral Music of Ole Saxe, featuring the premiere recording of his violin concerto My Manchu Princess & Dance Suite.  A founding member of Virtuosos de Cámara, Karen presents chamber music concerts in Puerto Vallarta and Nayarit. Recent concerts include the premieres of  Pietà by Jerry Mader and ROMANTARCTICA by Henning Kraggerud, plus live video of MAQA VIOLIN by Yitzhak Yedid. She presented ‘Homage to Ukraine’ with music by Ukrainian composers Ludmila Yurina and Virko Baley at Stanford University’s CCRMA in September 2022.

For more information about the composers and video artists:

www.kbentley.com 

www.stuartdiamond.com

www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludmila_Yurina

www.zibuokle.com  •  http://philipvankeuren.blogspot.com  •  http://parlavue.com

www.diamondvideo.net/Paean-to-Saint-Francis.php

www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myroslav_Skoryk

www.solarbean.com • www.aiste-ptakauske.com

www.norskkornolfestival.no/2019/06/18/fanitullen