Debut CD hailed as…“Eclectic in the best sense of the word…” “…a top North American pick.” Gramophone Magazine

Eclectic in the best sense of the word. A strong sense of place pervades most of the handsome works on ‘Panorámicos,’ which takes its title from the piece by Margaret Griebling-Haigh that evokes panoramas of central New Mexico. Local color is far-flung, ranging from America and Europe to mystical Chinese terrain. But what binds these pieces is a clear sense of harmonic language, as well, as haunting and sometimes jaunty personality. Donald Rosenberg Gramophone May 2005, North American Reviews

Mary Kay Ferguson flute/piccolo
Lynne Ramsey viola and colleagues
Works by Griebling-Haigh, Morgan and Schulhoff

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La Bergère des Brises de Vallée, (The Shepherdess of Valley Breezes) for Flute doubling on Piccolo, Oboe doubling on English Horn, and Piano, was commissioned by Mary Kay Ferguson and Danna Sundet in 2002. The piece begins and ends with an extremely simple and yet highly ornamented melody reminiscent of cool refreshing breezes, the pipes of a shepherdess, and the small villages and pastoral hillsides of southern France. As the music progresses, the breezes become sometimes more menacing, making use of a figure based on the first names of Danna and Mary Kay; sometimes more capricious, in a scherzando based loosely on their initials (MKRF and DSS); and sometimes more hesitant and thoughtful. A rather passionate waltz is composed around the surnames of Sundet and Ferguson.

Herbert Variations — In a collaborative commission, sixteen notable flute and piccolo players from around North America, who have been either colleagues or students of the renowned former Cleveland Orchestra Solo Piccolo player William Hebert, commissioned the Hebert Variations for Piccolo and Piano in 2003 as an 80th birthday present in his honor. At the outset of the piece, sis chords based on the letters in the name “Hebert” are presented by the piano: B (standing in for “H”) — E — Bb — E — D (“Re”) — B (‘Ti”). All eight variations, each one in honor of one decade of Mr. Hebert’s life to date, are based on these six notes, and are characterized as follows: Variation I: cadenza, II: scherzando, III: tranquillo, IV: à la marcia, V: minacciavole, VI: cadenza, VII: chorale, and VIII: coda.

Bocadillos Panorámicos is a suite of four descriptive pieces for Viola and Piano composed as a gift for the composer’s sister, violist and composer Karen Griebling, in 2000. The movements are based on visual images of North Central New Mexico, as remembered from a vacation the sisters spent there together. The word bocadillo is Cuban Spanish for “a little morsel” and can be interpreted as a parallel of the French word bagatelle. The first movement, Aguacero, is translated as “cloudburst”, from a paradosical first impression of the desert Southwest, in which several torrential downpours were always preceded and followed by calm and seemingly innocuous sunshine. This movement begins with happy, lazy chords in the accompaniment, and a slow-moving “big sky” melodic line in the viola part, but soon the scene is interrupted by pizzicato raindrops and a fast and furious storm... el Bosque de Jemez follows. This movement represents the surprising scenery of the Jemez Forest, characterized by tall stands of straight pine trees on mountainsides, where desert landscape is replaced by alpine greenery and tranquility. As the viola strums quietly, the piano plays an ornamented melody with right and left hands four octaves apart. After some time, the listener notices rustling high in the pines and hears the calls of birds and insects. . . the third movement, La Perrita Fanimál, is an innocent interlude, written with Karen’s beloved little border collie mix, Fanny, in mind. At various moments the music jumps and plays, barks and growls, and becomes sad and lonely or silly and romantic, before finally waltzing off to sleep...

Bocadillos Panorámicos ends with an energetic and syncopated movement entitled Twisty Vista Tango, which is full of up and down motion, twists, and turns, and represents the thrilling scenery surrounding the canyons and mountains of New Mexico.

The Secret of the Golden Flower is an ancient esoteric treatise that was transmitted orally before being recorded on a series of wooden tablets in the eighth century by a member of the Religion of Light. The leader of the Religion of Light was Lu Yen. It is said that Lu Tzu became one of the Eight Immortals using the methods described in this treatise. One of the central ideas of this treatise is “action in non-action,” letting psychic processes occur without interference from the consciousness. I have found this principle to be a key to the creative process. Especially for those of us who teach music, it can be difficult to switch gears from the analytical and quantifiable to the creative space in which music is actually composed. One must ignore all of the little voices in the brain and suspend judgment of what flows forth.

This piece grows from the simple pentatonic theme initially stated by the cello. Various musical styles evocative of the Silk Road are alluded to as the piece progresses. These allusions symbolize the migration of the“Golden Flower” treatise from Persia to China.

Concertina for Flute/Piccolo, Viola, and Bass was written in 1925 The unique instrumentation for this work is based on the Baroque Trio Sonata, with each voice stretched to its outermost capacity.

"The accompaniment figure at the beginning of the first movement (viola/bass) was taken from a Russian Orthodox litany. Above this (as often found in old Slavic song) is a floating melody in the flute. The second movement is a scherzo, a “Beseda”, known as the Czech national dance, whose main factor is indicated by “Furiant” tempo marking. The theme of the slow movement, based on a Carpathian-Russian love song, is successively taken over unchanged by each instrument, always appearing within the ornamented framework of two voices. The last movement “Rondino” is based on the song of a Carpathian-Russian bear tamer, the second part is a Slovakian shepherd’s theme in the flute with ostinato accompaniment figures in the viola and bass. On the whole, this is a piece of folk music common to popular festivities in the eastern parts of the Czechoslovakian Republic, where people sing in cheerful minor keys and dance accordingly.

The harmonic structure of Concertino is based on Phyrigian, Lydian, and Mixolydian church modes.”

E. Schulhoff / trans. H. Weiner

Composers

Margaret Griebling-Haigh (b. 1960) began her musical training in early childhood with her parents, and was composing by the age of five. Ms. Griebling-Haigh won many awards in composition, including a grant from RMI and first prizes from the National Federation of Music Clubs and Music Teachers National Association. She was named “Ohio Composer of the Year 2003” by the Ohio Music Teachers Association. Her music is published by Jeanné, Inc., Ludwin Music, Inc., and Musicalligraphics. One hears a composer painting brilliant sonic images... suggesting Prokofiev's brooding lyricism and Shostakovich’s mystery and anger... a stunning explosion of ideas.” (The Cleveland Plain Dealer)

David Morgan is active as a jazz bassist, composer, theorist, and teacher. As a bassist Morgan has performed with many leading artists including Joe Lovano, Bob Brookmeyer, Cedar Walton, Benny Golson, John Hicks, and Larry Coryell. His compositions for classical and jazz ensembles are recorded and performed throughout the world, and the Jazz Unit has released a critically-acclaimed CD of his compositions entitled “Choices.” Morgan earned a Doctorate in Composition from the University of Texas at Austin and is currently Assistant Professor of Jazz Studies at Youngstown State University.

Erwin Schulhoff (b. 1894 - Prague, d. 1942 Wurzburg prisoner of war concentration camp, Bavaria) was considered in the 1920’s to be a progressive pianist and composer, a contradictory intellect, a wild, ‘tempermental musician and wastrel” who discovered musical inspiration in the tavern, in the sounds of the saxophone and contrabassoon, rather than in the concert life dominated by bourgeois tastes, with its expressively sobbing violins. (Erich Steinhard) Open to all trends, Schulhoff combined Dada compositions, jazz, neoclassicism, expressionism, Slavic folklore and popular dances, metrically free notation, and church modes.

Under the Nazi concept of entartete Musik (degenerate music), all works by Jewish composers, and works by non-Jewish composers whose style was perceived as tainted by non-Aryan influences, were banned, as the Nazis tried to erase them from history. This gradually dissolved into the mass deportation of Jews from Germany and the occupied nations to ghettos and concentration camps. Although the Holocaust was an assault on Jewish culture, others suffered as well in what was history's most vile instance of totalitarian suppression of intellectual and creative work. Musicians’ resistance took many forms, and crossed many national and religious boundaries. This resistance cannot have been in vain; we must remember these musicians through the preservation and performance of their music.

Performers

Mary Kay Ferguson — Flute, Piccolo, Alto Flute
Lynne Ramsey — Viola
Thomas Sperl — Bass
Molly Fung-Dumm and Takako Masame — Violin
Bryan Dumm — Cello
Mark George, Randall Fusco and Kathryn Brown — Piano