Post by merprincess on Mar 16, 2017 0:27:34 GMT -5
For those of you who don't know, J.A.C. Redford (pronounced "Jack" Redford) is a very accomplished composer of film scores, composer of choral work, music arranger, orchestrator, and also a great conductor.
He was the conductor of the orchestra behind The Little Mermaid!
He is thanked during Alan Menken's speech when he won best score for The Little Mermaid at the 1990's Academy Awards, around 3:16 in this video:
I was a part of the American Choral Director's Association's (ACDA) National Convention this year in 2017 in Minneapolis, Minnesota where J.A.C. wrote a commission piece for our choir to sing at Minnesota's Orchestra Hall. It was a choir of professional chorale members and selected university students, which included myself! It's called Homing and our performance was a world premiere performance, no recording exists (yet).
The bad news is that I was struck with a bout of laryngitis and a cold for 2 weeks, and the worst of it happened right during final dress rehearsals and performances for ACDA, so I unfortunately wasn't able to sing.
I did get to attend one performance and as luck would have it, the composer was sitting right behind me! After the performance, I approached him and thanked him for writing this music that I so enjoyed rehearsing.
I was so excited to get to talk to him that I had completely blanked on trying to get a picture or even mentioning TLM and the other projects he's worked on (he also orchestrated and scored the film and song Skyfall! and Spectre! loooove those Bond films!).
There was so much I wanted to ask about what it was like working with Alan's first ever film score, and how it was like to work with Howard, or how in general he felt about the music of TLM while conducting, and just thank him for doing a really great job conducting it because I listen to that score every day and the emotional impact is has on me is always immense and never falters.
That's the power of music for ya.
But I didn't really have the time to say all that, he was busy talking to other conductors post-performance. Plus, I couldn't say much in general, I was nearly mute from losing my voice and wanted to express as much as I could without saying too many words to keep my vocal rest.
So I just did the baseline of what I wanted to do: I thanked him for the music he wrote for us and expressed how much I wished I could be singing it and how much I loved rehearsing it, even though I had just lost my voice and could barely talk at all. He thanked me for being a part of the process, said he knew he recognized me (?? I think he was at one of our rehearsals and I didn't notice, but I thought that was cool that he recognized me!), and wished me a speedy recovery. Also, I happened to be wearing a cardigan that had Ariel on the back, and since he was sitting directly behind me, he most likely saw Ariel smiling back at him
If you're interested in the piece he wrote, like I said no recordings exist at the present moment, but here's a brief synopsis, from J.A.C.'s own words in a letter he wrote to us during the rehearsal process. The piece is about 20 minutes long for full choir and orchestra:
He was the conductor of the orchestra behind The Little Mermaid!
He is thanked during Alan Menken's speech when he won best score for The Little Mermaid at the 1990's Academy Awards, around 3:16 in this video:
I was a part of the American Choral Director's Association's (ACDA) National Convention this year in 2017 in Minneapolis, Minnesota where J.A.C. wrote a commission piece for our choir to sing at Minnesota's Orchestra Hall. It was a choir of professional chorale members and selected university students, which included myself! It's called Homing and our performance was a world premiere performance, no recording exists (yet).
The bad news is that I was struck with a bout of laryngitis and a cold for 2 weeks, and the worst of it happened right during final dress rehearsals and performances for ACDA, so I unfortunately wasn't able to sing.
I did get to attend one performance and as luck would have it, the composer was sitting right behind me! After the performance, I approached him and thanked him for writing this music that I so enjoyed rehearsing.
I was so excited to get to talk to him that I had completely blanked on trying to get a picture or even mentioning TLM and the other projects he's worked on (he also orchestrated and scored the film and song Skyfall! and Spectre! loooove those Bond films!).
There was so much I wanted to ask about what it was like working with Alan's first ever film score, and how it was like to work with Howard, or how in general he felt about the music of TLM while conducting, and just thank him for doing a really great job conducting it because I listen to that score every day and the emotional impact is has on me is always immense and never falters.
That's the power of music for ya.
But I didn't really have the time to say all that, he was busy talking to other conductors post-performance. Plus, I couldn't say much in general, I was nearly mute from losing my voice and wanted to express as much as I could without saying too many words to keep my vocal rest.
So I just did the baseline of what I wanted to do: I thanked him for the music he wrote for us and expressed how much I wished I could be singing it and how much I loved rehearsing it, even though I had just lost my voice and could barely talk at all. He thanked me for being a part of the process, said he knew he recognized me (?? I think he was at one of our rehearsals and I didn't notice, but I thought that was cool that he recognized me!), and wished me a speedy recovery. Also, I happened to be wearing a cardigan that had Ariel on the back, and since he was sitting directly behind me, he most likely saw Ariel smiling back at him
If you're interested in the piece he wrote, like I said no recordings exist at the present moment, but here's a brief synopsis, from J.A.C.'s own words in a letter he wrote to us during the rehearsal process. The piece is about 20 minutes long for full choir and orchestra:
The American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) is an organization dedicated to inspiring
“excellence in choral music through education, performance, composition and advocacy.” Each
year, the ACDA Executive Committee commissions “a recognized composer to write a choral
composition in an effort to perpetuate quality choral repertoire.” A composer may not audition
or apply for this commission, but must be invited by the Executive Director. The fee for the
commission is paid from the Raymond W. Brock Memorial Endowment, a fund established in
1991 to honor the life and contributions of Raymond Brock, who had served as Administrative
Assistant for ACDA. The Brock is one of the foremost commissions available to composers of
choral music.
The commissioned works are premiered in even years at each of the seven ACDA regional
conferences, and in the odd years at the national conference, which actively invites
international participation. For example, the 2015 national conference, held in Salt Lake City,
included performances by choirs from Great Britain, Estonia, Japan and Korea. Guidelines for
the composition specify that the text be sacred (interpreted broadly) and that the music be
“substantial and accessible…of a kind and quality that will live and last for a long period of
time.”
Early in June 2015, I received a phone call out of the blue from Tim Sharp, Executive Director
of ACDA. He asked me if I would be interested in composing the Brock commission for the
national conference in March of 2017. I was thrilled and deeply honored, to pick only two of
the many emotions I experienced. Of course I said yes! The new work, about 20 minutes in
length, will be premiered in Minneapolis by the Minnesota Orchestra and a select choir of
university choral singers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have long been interested in what I call “crossing over” literature. By that I mean prose or
poetry that imagines the experience of transition from this life to the next, or that renders more
porous the borders between the material world and the world of spirit. Examples of this kind
of writing include “The Grey Havens,” the final chapter from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the
Rings or the last five chapters from The Last Battle, the concluding book of C. S. Lewis’
Chronicles of Narnia. Or the novels Phantastes by George MacDonald and Descent into he** by
Charles Williams. Or Dante’s Divine Comedy. Or the entire genre of magical surrealism.
After some consideration of my options for a text along these lines, I settled on the penultimate
chapter from Peace Like a River, a profound and beautiful novel by a Minnesotan author, Leif
Enger. I thought it might be abridged in the way Samuel Barber condensed James Agee’s prose
for Barber’s heartbreakingly beautiful Knoxville: Summer of 1915, a work I can scarcely imagine
my life without.
In the end, I was unable to obtain the rights to the novel. In the meantime, however, while in
England from August through mid-October working on Spectre, I began to get ideas for a text
of my own. Words or phrases just popped into my head, all of which I diligently transcribed
and catalogued. Soon after returning home to California, I had something near to a finished
text, divided into four poems. But I wasn’t sure if it was suitable for the Brock commission.
Accordingly, I sent the text to a few friends and colleagues (one a former Brock recipient). I
also sent it to Tim at ACDA. A unanimous thumbs up from my respondents gave me the
confidence I needed to proceed.
Art can be both inspiring and generative, allowing us to communicate across and beyond
ordinary boundaries of time and space. My text was written as “responsive poetry” to several
literary passages I love, as if I were conversing over dinner with the authors whose
contributions to the discussion are embodied in their works. In addition to their “crossing
over” qualities, these texts speak of what C. S. Lewis calls our “inconsolable secret,” that
profound human longing for a place where we belong, our true home, that “far green country
under a swift sunrise” in the “Springtime of which all springtimes speak.”
“excellence in choral music through education, performance, composition and advocacy.” Each
year, the ACDA Executive Committee commissions “a recognized composer to write a choral
composition in an effort to perpetuate quality choral repertoire.” A composer may not audition
or apply for this commission, but must be invited by the Executive Director. The fee for the
commission is paid from the Raymond W. Brock Memorial Endowment, a fund established in
1991 to honor the life and contributions of Raymond Brock, who had served as Administrative
Assistant for ACDA. The Brock is one of the foremost commissions available to composers of
choral music.
The commissioned works are premiered in even years at each of the seven ACDA regional
conferences, and in the odd years at the national conference, which actively invites
international participation. For example, the 2015 national conference, held in Salt Lake City,
included performances by choirs from Great Britain, Estonia, Japan and Korea. Guidelines for
the composition specify that the text be sacred (interpreted broadly) and that the music be
“substantial and accessible…of a kind and quality that will live and last for a long period of
time.”
Early in June 2015, I received a phone call out of the blue from Tim Sharp, Executive Director
of ACDA. He asked me if I would be interested in composing the Brock commission for the
national conference in March of 2017. I was thrilled and deeply honored, to pick only two of
the many emotions I experienced. Of course I said yes! The new work, about 20 minutes in
length, will be premiered in Minneapolis by the Minnesota Orchestra and a select choir of
university choral singers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have long been interested in what I call “crossing over” literature. By that I mean prose or
poetry that imagines the experience of transition from this life to the next, or that renders more
porous the borders between the material world and the world of spirit. Examples of this kind
of writing include “The Grey Havens,” the final chapter from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the
Rings or the last five chapters from The Last Battle, the concluding book of C. S. Lewis’
Chronicles of Narnia. Or the novels Phantastes by George MacDonald and Descent into he** by
Charles Williams. Or Dante’s Divine Comedy. Or the entire genre of magical surrealism.
After some consideration of my options for a text along these lines, I settled on the penultimate
chapter from Peace Like a River, a profound and beautiful novel by a Minnesotan author, Leif
Enger. I thought it might be abridged in the way Samuel Barber condensed James Agee’s prose
for Barber’s heartbreakingly beautiful Knoxville: Summer of 1915, a work I can scarcely imagine
my life without.
In the end, I was unable to obtain the rights to the novel. In the meantime, however, while in
England from August through mid-October working on Spectre, I began to get ideas for a text
of my own. Words or phrases just popped into my head, all of which I diligently transcribed
and catalogued. Soon after returning home to California, I had something near to a finished
text, divided into four poems. But I wasn’t sure if it was suitable for the Brock commission.
Accordingly, I sent the text to a few friends and colleagues (one a former Brock recipient). I
also sent it to Tim at ACDA. A unanimous thumbs up from my respondents gave me the
confidence I needed to proceed.
Art can be both inspiring and generative, allowing us to communicate across and beyond
ordinary boundaries of time and space. My text was written as “responsive poetry” to several
literary passages I love, as if I were conversing over dinner with the authors whose
contributions to the discussion are embodied in their works. In addition to their “crossing
over” qualities, these texts speak of what C. S. Lewis calls our “inconsolable secret,” that
profound human longing for a place where we belong, our true home, that “far green country
under a swift sunrise” in the “Springtime of which all springtimes speak.”
