Landscapes with Father - Cole Cuchna

"Landscapes with Father" by Cole Cuchna for clarinet and two vibraphones. Prefacing the performance is a reading of "Nocturne (Or, Landscape with Father)" by Jaydn DeWald. Program Notes: Landscapes with Father is a musical adaptation of the poem Nocturne (or, Landscape with Father) by Jaydn DeWald. The poem is an elegy on the death of a father, written much like a cubist painting, in which various perspectives, memories, and points in time are simultaneously interwoven to create a single image. The result is uniquely moving, and reflects the way we experience memories in our own mind - fragmented, non-linear, and impressionistic. My piece attempts to mimic not only the emotional content of the poem, but these prismatic structural elements as well. The piece's main theme is drawn directly from Freddie Hubbard's "Blue Spirits," a record referenced throughout DeWald's poem. This theme becomes the musical embodiment of the poem's dying father and is set against a multitude of interconnected musical landscapes, sometimes clearly discernible, other times obscured. The landscapes themselves move quickly from one to the next, appearing and reappearing in new guises, never allowing the listener to become too comfortable in a given atmosphere. The aim is to limit as much linear structural experience as possible with the hope that the musical material will conglomerate in the same way that our mind's fragmented memories of a person merge to create an overall impression of someone.