Shai Wosner - Variations on a Theme by FDR (2022) Hi-Res

“...remember, remember always, that all of us... are descendants of immigrants and revolutionists.” This poignant Franklin Delano Roosevelt quote was the prompt Shai Wosner supplied Derek Bermel, Anthony Cheung, Wang Lu, John Harbison, and Vijay Iyer for this commissioning project on behalf of The People’s Symphony Concerts, the fruits of which are heard on this EP release. In our fractured era, where issues around immigration and identity are intensified by partisan battles, five composers sidestep the heated rhetoric, contributing instead moments of thoughtful sonic contemplation on the nature of the immigrant experience in a nation whose history is inextricably tied to the paradigm of immigration.

The collection opens with Derek Bermel’s Pequenas Memórias (“Small memories” in Portuguese), a work dedicated to his wife Andreia Pinto Correia’s immigrant experience as well as a reference to the great writer José Saramago’s memoir. Evoking his wife’s artistic trajectory and how living in her adopted country shaped her path, Bermel weaves in stylistic references to Bach, Chopin, Ellington, and the Beatles. An accumulating melodic figure in the right hand is embellished by jazz-inflected grace notes over a chromatic descending bass. The immigrant’s identity, represented by the core melodic idea, is subjected to the vicissitudes of this often chaotic country of ours, at times open to those born elsewhere and at others relentlessly inhospitable.

Anthony Cheung’s Bitter Seas is an homage to South Korean born San Francisco raised artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha whose life was taken tragically ay the age of 31 in 1982. Inspired by the multiple layers of interwoven meaning and creative fragmentation techniques in Cha’s work, Cheung’s piece is taut with internal conflict and dialogue. Sharp accented chords trigger scalar flourishes and insistent cascading dyads are framed by shimmering chordal sonorities. The abstraction at the surface of Cheung’s piece seems to capture the sometimes disjointed nature of immigrant experience, a splitting of the psyche into different zones of affiliation.

John Harbison’s Passage is inspired by the life story of the iconic songwriter Vernon Duke, neé Vladimir Dukelsky. Encouraged by Gershwin to change his name, Dukelsky embraced the world of American popular song and found considerable success. Harbison’s work traces this transformation, at times evoking a curiosity about the materials of the jazz age and Tin Pan Alley, before quoting one of Vernon Duke’s most famous songs “I Can’t Get Started,” and closing with music more overtly shaped by the jazz piano tradition.

Wang Lu chooses Chinese American architect I.M. Pei as the inspiration for her work Lacuna, focusing on the balance within his work between tradition and abstraction. Sharp articulated chords activate the piano as a resonating body and force the listener to consider its physical architecture. Shimmering figures then slide in to occupy the space of its frame. A poised approach to breath and silence within phrases gives the work a three dimensional, spatial aspect.

Vijay Iyer’s Plinth (for Kwame Ture) is dedicated to the life and activism of Ture, born Stokely Carmichael in Trinidad. The piece opens with an insistent series of alternating chords between the right and left hand which sets up its motoric regularity. Fleet scalar passages, elegiac octaves over a flowing bass ostinato, and a percolating groove in 13/8 follow before the work ends with towering chords, played heroically by Wosner, who is the ideal advocate throughout for the many moods through which these works pass. Iyer final passage is a fitting close to this celebration of the immigrant experience in the United States, resolute and steadfast in the pursuit of a meaningful life away from one’s native home.
- Dan Lippel