A Lifetime of Song
A Lifetime of Song spans Simon Sargon's career and includes some of his favorite compositions, such as, Jump Back, A Clear Midnight, Let It Be You and Shema. The concert also includes the World Premier of River of Honey.
Join Voces Intimae for this celebration of song on Saturday, March 3, 2018, at 7:30 pm at SMU's Caruth Auditorium. The performing musicians are: Donnie Ray Albert, Bass; Roslyn Jhunever Barak, Soprano; William Joyner, Tenor; Theodor Carlson, Baritone; Rainelle Krause, Soprano; Julian Reed, Pianist; Helen Blackburn, Flute; and Gerry Woods, French Horn. The concert will be followed by a birthday cake reception.
Simon Sargon
Learn about world famous composer, Simon Sargon
Q & A with Simon Sargon
1) As a multi-dimensional composer who has written symphonies, operas. chamber works and choral anthems, what interests you about writing vocal art song? When did you realize that composing was your passion? Tell us about your earliest compositions? Did your parents sign you up for music lessons at an early age?
SAS: When I read certain poems I find that there is a world of music in them, either in the sounds of the words or the rhythmic flow of the lines, which call forth melodic motives from me. Some poems create definite moods and I want to underscore and intensify those moods through the power of music.
I went to the Piano Recital of a school friend of mine when I was six. I fell in love immediately with the sound of the piano and asked my parents to buy a piano for me so I could start piano lessons. Once I learned to read and notate music I began to jot down short piano pieces. And that is how it all began.
2) Walk us through a timeline of your career.
SAS: After my college years - Brandeis and then Juilliard - I remained in New York City for the next 10 years, performing in concerts, teaching and composing. During those years, my composing was put on the back burner, as had to keep up my piano technique. I devoted much time to practicing and learning the vocal and chamber music repertoire. I played concerts throughout the U.S. but the height of my appearances as a pianist was the concert at Carnegie Hall in 1964 in which I accompanied Jennie Tourel. It was the concert honoring the French composer, Francis Poulenc, and we performed a song cycle of his. It was indeed a heady evening, with Benny Goodman and Leonard Bernstein also performing. I had the unforgettable honor of turning pages for Bernstein.
In 1970, I received a grant from the American Israel Cultural Foundation to move to Israel and build up the Vocal Department of the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem. During my three years in Israel, many of my works were successfully performed throughout the country. I returned to the States in 1974 to take the position of Music Director at Temple Emanu-El in Dallas,Texas. About a decade later I was appointed to the faculty of SMU, where I taught simultaneously with my work at the Temple. Those years were devoted to composition, choral conducting, concertizing and to outreach to the Dallas musical community with educational lectures for the Dallas Symphony and the Dallas Opera. I moved to Washington D. C. in 2016, settling in with my daughter and her family. I have remained active in Washington with composing and teaching.
3) How has your composing changed over the years?
SAS: My work has achieved a more focused emotional expression and is clearer in terms of its structure an organization.
4) Do you have favorite or memorable compositions that you have written?
SAS: I believe some of my works are more successful than others. Some of the others I would go back re-work now, if it were possible. But a father has to love all of his children equally, and not pick favorites among them!
5) Tell us about the World Premier piece River of Honey. What was your motivation for writing this song cycle?
SAS: I love to combine voice with instruments and have written a variety of works for voice and clarinet, voice and horn, voice and cello, etc. To me the challenge of writing a work for voice and flute was intriguing, insofar as both the flute and the voice sing in the same register, and while there are many possibilities for imitation of motives, they must be kept clearly differentiated. Incidentally, this cycle was not an easy piece for me to write. I had drafted it back in 2002, but did not complete it until 12 years later - in 2014.
6) You seem to be a connoisseur of poets? What do you enjoy about poetry?
SAS: I love poetry, but then all of the arts call to me. Of course I am biased. To me music is the greatest of the arts that God has given to mankind. It goes directly to the human heart and, I believe, touches human beings more profoundly than any of the other arts.
7) The concert A Lifetime of Song gives us a perspective of your writing from Jump Back written in 1965 to your opera Saul written just a few years ago. Can you give us a more personal perspective into any of the compositions in the concert?
SAS: There is a deeply personal element in all the songs which I have written, corresponding to my own inner personal growth. It is there perhaps most obviously in the cycle of love poems "A Star in a Haymow" which I wrote as a young man in New York. I had fallen in love with Bonnie Glasgow, who has been my wife and partner for over 50 years. Other songs or cycles were written for fellow musicians or vocal artists - "Hunter, What Quarry?" to exploit the artistry of Greg Hustis on the horn, "A River of Honey", for the many-hued flute playing of Helen Blackburn, "A Clear Midnight" for the rich voice of Donnie Ray Albert, etc. The opera "Saul" was written to explore a number of psychological and spiritual questions with which I have wrestled throughout my life.
Q & A with Simon Sargon
1) As a multi-dimensional composer who has written symphonies, operas. chamber works and choral anthems, what interests you about writing vocal art song? When did you realize that composing was your passion? Tell us about your earliest compositions? Did your parents sign you up for music lessons at an early age?
SAS: When I read certain poems I find that there is a world of music in them, either in the sounds of the words or the rhythmic flow of the lines, which call forth melodic motives from me. Some poems create definite moods and I want to underscore and intensify those moods through the power of music.
I went to the Piano Recital of a school friend of mine when I was six. I fell in love immediately with the sound of the piano and asked my parents to buy a piano for me so I could start piano lessons. Once I learned to read and notate music I began to jot down short piano pieces. And that is how it all began.
2) Walk us through a timeline of your career.
SAS: After my college years - Brandeis and then Juilliard - I remained in New York City for the next 10 years, performing in concerts, teaching and composing. During those years, my composing was put on the back burner, as had to keep up my piano technique. I devoted much time to practicing and learning the vocal and chamber music repertoire. I played concerts throughout the U.S. but the height of my appearances as a pianist was the concert at Carnegie Hall in 1964 in which I accompanied Jennie Tourel. It was the concert honoring the French composer, Francis Poulenc, and we performed a song cycle of his. It was indeed a heady evening, with Benny Goodman and Leonard Bernstein also performing. I had the unforgettable honor of turning pages for Bernstein.
In 1970, I received a grant from the American Israel Cultural Foundation to move to Israel and build up the Vocal Department of the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem. During my three years in Israel, many of my works were successfully performed throughout the country. I returned to the States in 1974 to take the position of Music Director at Temple Emanu-El in Dallas,Texas. About a decade later I was appointed to the faculty of SMU, where I taught simultaneously with my work at the Temple. Those years were devoted to composition, choral conducting, concertizing and to outreach to the Dallas musical community with educational lectures for the Dallas Symphony and the Dallas Opera. I moved to Washington D. C. in 2016, settling in with my daughter and her family. I have remained active in Washington with composing and teaching.
3) How has your composing changed over the years?
SAS: My work has achieved a more focused emotional expression and is clearer in terms of its structure an organization.
4) Do you have favorite or memorable compositions that you have written?
SAS: I believe some of my works are more successful than others. Some of the others I would go back re-work now, if it were possible. But a father has to love all of his children equally, and not pick favorites among them!
5) Tell us about the World Premier piece River of Honey. What was your motivation for writing this song cycle?
SAS: I love to combine voice with instruments and have written a variety of works for voice and clarinet, voice and horn, voice and cello, etc. To me the challenge of writing a work for voice and flute was intriguing, insofar as both the flute and the voice sing in the same register, and while there are many possibilities for imitation of motives, they must be kept clearly differentiated. Incidentally, this cycle was not an easy piece for me to write. I had drafted it back in 2002, but did not complete it until 12 years later - in 2014.
6) You seem to be a connoisseur of poets? What do you enjoy about poetry?
SAS: I love poetry, but then all of the arts call to me. Of course I am biased. To me music is the greatest of the arts that God has given to mankind. It goes directly to the human heart and, I believe, touches human beings more profoundly than any of the other arts.
7) The concert A Lifetime of Song gives us a perspective of your writing from Jump Back written in 1965 to your opera Saul written just a few years ago. Can you give us a more personal perspective into any of the compositions in the concert?
SAS: There is a deeply personal element in all the songs which I have written, corresponding to my own inner personal growth. It is there perhaps most obviously in the cycle of love poems "A Star in a Haymow" which I wrote as a young man in New York. I had fallen in love with Bonnie Glasgow, who has been my wife and partner for over 50 years. Other songs or cycles were written for fellow musicians or vocal artists - "Hunter, What Quarry?" to exploit the artistry of Greg Hustis on the horn, "A River of Honey", for the many-hued flute playing of Helen Blackburn, "A Clear Midnight" for the rich voice of Donnie Ray Albert, etc. The opera "Saul" was written to explore a number of psychological and spiritual questions with which I have wrestled throughout my life.