Let the larks play! They sing us into spring on Now Is the Time, Saturday, March 29th at 9 pm at wrti.org and WRTI-HD2. Jennifer Higdon considered "exaltation" not only to be a wonderful collective noun but also a pretty good title, so she wrote the romantic and soaring An Exaltation of Larks for string quartet. We get to hear, appropriately, the Lark Quartet in this recording.
Daniel Goode loves birds, too, and weaves examples of different thrushes into one mega-birdsong for an unusual orchestra in Tuba Thrush. Benjamin Beirs describes circles, whorls, and storms in Fluidity. It's for his instrument, the guitar, and is inspired by the paintings of Sunny Gibbons, who is his sister. Book-ending the program are two works—one for marimba, one for vibraphone—by Alvin Singleton. He titles them Argoru, which is the Ghanaian word meaning "to play."
PROGRAM:
?Alvin Singleton: Argoru VI?
Jennifer Higdon: An Exaltation of Larks?
Benjamin Beirs: Fluidity
?Daniel Goode: Tuba Thrush?
Alvin Singleton: Argoru VII
Every Saturday night at 9, Kile Smith brings you Now Is the Time, all styles of contemporary concert music by living American composers on WRTI's all-classical stream.