CFAMC Listening Page #23: Gregory Pascuzzi

The CFAMC Listening Page ismonthly musical offering by a composer member of the Christian Fellowship of Art Music Composers. Both your listening and comments are encouraged.

SEPTEMBER 17, 2006

1. Vocalise for Novgorod performed by Face2Face (string quartet & trumpet)

2. Easter Prelude performed by All Souls Orchestra Noel Tredinnick, conductor

PROGRAM NOTES

Vocalise for Novgorod is for either wordless soprano, clarinet
or, by default in this case, trumpet and string quartet. It was written as a
goodwill gesture for a sort of mission/music trip I did to Novgorod, Russia
with a UK based group called Face2Face. Most of the gigs were in orphanages,
hospitals, senior centers, a prison as well as a couple churches and recital
halls including the Rachmaninoff School. The recording is from one of those
concerts, sounding surprisingly decent as it was done with a ghetto blaster
in the balcony. The title's a nod to Rachmaninoff as he's from that region
of Russia. It sounds perhaps a bit Russian and American at the same time,
maybe a morph between the Copland "Quiet City" and Shostakovitch. ("Quiet
Kremlin"?) The violinists are Graham and Alison Cracknell, viola is Theresa
Rodwell and Judith Brearly on 'cello... All highly respected London players
as well as incredibly committed Christians. (I'm honking trumpet on it.
Again, it wasn't originally intended as a trumpet piece, it just worked out
that way. But it seems to work OK this way).

Easter Prelude was written for the London based All Souls Orchestra at the
invite of their conductor, Noel Tredinnick. The recording is from one of the
ASO's "Prom Praise" concerts at the Royal Albert Hall. ("Prom Praise" is a
Christian take on the Last Night of the Proms, the semi-rambunctious finale
to a remarkable festival of otherwise very serious concerts put on by the
BBC). The piece is based on two Hymntunes, the Palestrina “Alleluia” and
“Jesus Christ is Risen Today”. I've sometimes described it, mainly to
non-musicians, as a sort of filmscore-ish tone poem that follows the events
of the first Easter morning; Starts very quietly fairly tense as the women
are walking toward the tomb. Their stress level goes up as they find the
tomb's empty, assuming that Christ's body had been stolen. They're then
given some data that must have been initially a bit difficult to process,
that being that Christ had been resurrected. (Remember we've heard about
this 1000+ times, but they were sight-reading the situation). After the news
sinks in, their mood elevates considerably and they run back to town to tell
the guys. Actually, I don't remember if I was consciously writing a
programmatic piece or if all that came as an afterthought. Stylistically
it's, well, filmscore-ish. So, yeah, portions probably sound like Copland,
Bernard Hermann and John Williams with about one bar of Mahler and maybe a
bit of Rimsky-Korsakov...The trombone statement about halfway through, maybe
an unconscious reference to his Russian Easter Overture. (Maybe I should
have called it American Easter Overture?)

STATEMENT OF FAITH BY THE COMPOSER

Writing a statement of faith would be
difficult even when I'm in reasonably good shape spiritually, which I'm not
really at the moment. I've been a Christian for 30+ years, my conversion
happening while still the West Point Band, shortly before being transferred
to Washington in 1974. Like most things in my odd life, even my conversion
was a bit, well, unorthodox. The devise that God used was a copy of the Hal
Lindsey pop-eschatology classic, Late Great Planet Earth, loaned to me by
someone in the band who I'm still not sure was (is) a Christian himself. For
the first few months, the closest thing I had to discipleship was a few
chats with a Seventh-Day Adventist door-to-door book salesman. (The
discipleship task was taken care shortly after transferring to one of the
Washington bands, mainly by two percussionists named Messerschmidt and
Himmelberger).

Among the verses that keep me from slipping into a lazy Unitarianism is
where Christ states he's the "way, truth and the light". If that was a
factually inaccurate statement, then Jesus would be, at the very least, the
supremely reprehensible butthead of the ages. But if it's an accurate
statement (which we're all counting on), then he was just giving his job
description!

There's another place where it says "we will see him as he is". An
interesting thing about being in the music business is sometimes
encountering a lot of "known' or famous people. There can be a big contrast
between one's preconception of what they might be like compared to the
reality. (For example, I think Kirk Douglas was a bit shorter than Radar
from MASH. Three conductorial giants in their respective fields were Eugene
Ormandy, Frederick Fennell and William Revelli... I'm not sure if any of
them were quite 5 feet tall). The point of this trivia is that Christ (who's
quite a big name, ya know) will probably be vastly different from whatever
lame preconceptions we may have.

For reasons that completely escape me, I seem to have been involved in one
way or another for over twenty years with most of the major Christian
musician groups on the planet. (At least 9 of 'em, including CFAMC. BTW,
they're not all American based). There are certainly far better trumpet or
piano players or composers, not to mention far better specimens of
Christians around than me. (I don't get it either). Maybe my life verse
should be that bit where God uses the foolish things to confound the wise,
as I manage to baffle pretty much everyone! (End of this lame Statement of
Faith).

BIO (or BIO-degradable)

Born 1952 in Pittsburgh to musician parents. Father
(Wayne) was percussionist w/the Pittsburgh Symphony for about 30 years
(Reiner and Steinburg eras) and original drummer w/the Ice Capades. (Shortly
after the invention of ice). Mother (Wanda) is still teaching piano lessons
at age 92. Fairly brief, sporadic periods of composition study included
about a year with Henry Mazer (associate conductor of PSO at the time),
Frank McCarty (University of Pittsburgh, for a year before essentially
getting drafted) and Karel Husa (at Eastern Music Festival in 1972 and every
once in a while since then). Anything else was learned more or less OJT,
from colleagues, from countless PSO rehearsals/concerts looking over scores,
etc....Not so much at schools. (I still don't have a college degree. I
remember writing and trying to orchestrate some goofy waltz while in 2nd
grade but don't know if I did the transpositions for the instruments
correctly. OK, I was a nerd). Had a piece played by the PSO while a HS
sophomore, which was of course a great 'though pretty scary way to break
into the writing business. Have written for/had things (originals or
arrangements) played by several professional orchestras (Detroit, Baltimore,
Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, etc.), several of the major service bands in the
US, UK, Russia and Japan, some college/university groups, etc. Also some
chamber things (Anne Martindale Williams, Marietta Simpson, Jose-Luis
Garcia, etc.). Seven pieces (mostly premieres) at several International
Trumpet Guild conferences (including performances by BBC Big Band, Royal
Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra as well as some great trumpet
players.). Also some Christian groups like the All Souls Orchestra, New
English Orchestra, Crescendo, etc. Also co-direct the Annapolis Christian
Big Band and freelance in the Baltimore/DC area on piano, trumpet, some
percussion and bass, as well as church work (not to mention those wedding
and Bar Mitzvah gigs. (Yep, a lot of time in d-minor wearing a yarmulke). A
lot of my output are hymn tune based pieces, Easter Prelude being a pretty
good example. It's quite possible that if I've actually managed to crank out
anything of any real importance, it would be these. (Models for these would
include the RVW Tallis Fantasia, Schumann "New England Triptych", even the
Husa "Music for Prague", aside from the obvious Mendelssohn "Reformation"
symphony). (That's enough BIO stuff)

- - -  SOLI DEO GLORIA! - - -

For personal comments, you may e-mail Greg directly at: Skootchman@aol.com
Visit a webpage about Greg at:
http://www.usna.edu/USNABand/biographies/PascuzziBio.htm

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To read and listen to recent CFAMC Listening Pages, go to the following
links:

August 2006: John Akins: "A Symphony of Praise"
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cfamc/message/1599

July 2006: Andrew Sauerwein: "String Quartet No. 2" (2nd Movement)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cfamc/message/1594

June 2006: Clive Davis: "Songs from Turtle Island - War Song"
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cfamc/message/1570

May 2006: Greg Scheer: "91 Days"
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cfamc/message/1563