Richard Dirlam: Pure Saxophone

Pure Saxophone
Richard Dirlam
MCF-001
1985

Best that I can recall I read a review of this and thought it sounded appropriately different and since I liked saxophones I thought I might like this. I like to listen to jazz the wife refers to as "5th grade band practice," but this has never really taken with me. I suppose Pièce brève would be my favorite.

Released by the Minnesota Composers Forum, which is now the American Composers Forum, on their label Innova. No mention of Richard Dirlam at the ACF and the only Dirlam recording listed at Innova is She Sings She Screams. He does have a draft website.

Liner Notes

Richard Dirlam has concertized in the United States and Europe as a soloist and a frequent guest artist with the Minnesota Composers Forum, as well as L'ensemble International de Saxophone under the direction of Jean-Marie Londeix. He has been invited to solo at the Seventh World Saxophone Congress in Nurnberg, Germany with the Munich National Radio Orchestra, Werner Andreas Albert conducting.

While Studying with maitre Jean-Marie Londeix at the Conservatoire national de Musique de Bordeaux, France he received First Prizes and Medals of Honour in saxophone and chamber music. He continued his studies at the University of Minnesota, with Ruben Haugen, and at North Texas State University with French conductor Serge Zehnacker.

For Richard Dirlam "The twentieth century and its music is truly remarkable. The excitement of creating and exploring the modus vivandi of the human and musical expression of our time, and experiencing the sensuous character and essence of 'musical performance art' compels me toward new and ever-broadening musical horizons."

Side 1
Hanblecheyapi: Crying for a Vision, Michael Aubart

The composition of HANBLECHEYAPI was influenced by the horrr and sense of sorrow at the assissination of John Lennon. As the piece evolved it came to address not only the loss of Lennon but also a loss of innocence. The piece is a lamen similar in emotional mood to Hanblecheyapi, the "Crying for a Vision" ritual of the Oglala Sioux American Indian nation. Black Elk, a Sioux priest, describes this important way of praying in The Sacred Pipe "...there are many reasons for going to a lonely mountaintop to 'lament.' Perha[s the most important reason for 'lamenting' is that it helps us realize our oneness with all things, to know that all things are our relatives."

While completing his doctoral studies in music theory and composition at the University of Minnesota, Michael Aubart, born in 1952 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was approached by Richard Dirlam for a composition pairing saxophone and electronic tape. HANBLECHEYAPI is the result. Michael Aubart now lives in St. Paul. Minnesota, where he is a free lance composer.

1. I Cortege (6:53)
   
2. II Tenebrae (8:24)
   
3. III Hesperus (7:00)
   
   Side 2
   
4. Tag (1982), Eric Stokes (5:17). Eric Stokes died in an car accident on March 16, 1999 .
   

   Tag is a theater piece dedicated to Richard Dirlam using a live performer and a self-prepared tape. The role of the live performer is based on many aspects of tag: one who is tagged, who tags others, who tags along, who is it, who exults in eluding the others, who enjoys the play, who hides, who listens for the other, who is surprised in his hiding. Since this is a theater piece with choreographed movements and gestures, the aural dimension of Tag is represented in the recording.
   
   Eric Stokes was born in Haddon Heights, New Jersey, July 14, 1930 and now lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he is Professor of Music at the University of Minnesota.

   
   
5. Pièce brève, Kozo Masuda (7:57)
   

   Pièce brève is dedicated to Japanese saxophonist Keiji Shimoji, solo artist and member of the Tokyo Saxophone Quartet. This piece combines the mood of traditional Japanese music and European principals and techniques of composition. The beginning, marked adagio and calme, introduces an allegro section of dance-like rhythms and irregular metric accents. This piece closes with the return of the opening section.
   
   Born in 1934, Kozo Masuda graduated from the Kunitachi College of Music Tokyo, Japan. He continued studies at the Conservatoire Bational Superieur de Musique de Paris and the Akademie fur Musik in Vienna, Austria. He has studied composition with Saburo Takata, Henri Challan, Noel Gallon, and conducting with Hans Swarowsky. Presently Kozo Masuda is Professor of Composition at Kunitachi College of Music.

   
   
6. Tierkreis, Karlheinz Stockhausen (11:43). Karlheinz Stockhausen died of sudden heart failure, December 5, 2007.
   

   After visiting a music box factory in Switzerland, Stockhausen decided to compose original melodies for these boites a musique. Tierkreis (Zodiac) is a collection of twelve short melodies based on the twelve human characters of the zodiac. Though written for music boxes, these melodies can be played on any melodic instrument and/or chordal instrument. Richard Dirlam has played each melody twice and interpreted each melody using contemporary and extended techniques corresponding to physical and scientific characteristics of the planets or stars in each sign of the zodiac. The twelve signs and their corresponding planets or stars are:
   Aquarius -- Uranus
   Pisces -- Jupiter, Neptune
   Aries -- Mars
   Taurus -- Venus
   Gemini -- Mercury
   Cancer -- Earth
   Leo -- Sun
   Virgo -- Mercury
   Libra -- Venus
   Scorpio -- Mars, Pluto
   Sagittarius -- Jupiter
   Capricorn -- Saturn
   
   Karlheinz Stockhausen, born in 1928 in Modrath, near Cologne, Germany, has been an important figure in contemporary music. His experiments with electronic music in the 1950's, co-editorship of Die Reihe, and prolific compositions, utilizing electronic sound sources on tape, have placed him at the forefront of the European avant-garde. He demonstrates in both his writings and music complex aesthestic and philosophical discoveries made as a theorist and composer.