Copland, Somewhere, U.S.A.

Copland, Duo

I had 10 minutes to set up and record.

One of the shortest stops we made en route through the midwest by Greyhound from Chicago to Detroit was at a gas station near this bridge…didn’t catch the name of the town, somewhere between two Springfields in two different states, if I’m not mistaken. This underpass of Interstate 94 is what’s etched in my mind, along the opening of a piece by the quintessential American composer, Aaron Copland, that I had been reintroduced to a few days earlier at the Flute Convention.

I was determined to record this opening while still in the United States after an incredible experience in Albuquerque.

Back on my first day at the conference I had managed to make the early morning ‘Yoga for Flutists’, straggling in sometime around 8.15 AM, requisite Starbucks in hand, to discover a vast conference room simply jammed with musically inclined, yogic enthusiasts. I’m glad I made that class, and I kinda needed it after sitting on a bus for two days straight from Toronto.

It was what followed - my first and only masterclass of the convention as it turned out - that really put the whole experience in Albequerque into high gear: I walked in with the session already underway to see flute virtuoso Paula Robison leading a still larger conference room full of flutists, standing, arms outstretched, through some of Martha Graham’s signature dance gestures as they pertained to the piece being performed. “Now when you upturn your hands, do you notice how the energy just simply flows from you?”, is the paraphrase that I recollect from that interactive portion: and we all did.

It set the tone for a wonderful session with a capable, gifted student working her way through the three-movement Duo for Flute and Piano the elegaic piece is poised, poignant and especially plaintive in the opening and middle movements.

I only had time for a couple of takes of the evocative opening flute solo, and the spontaneous dialogue with passing traffic overhead and on the roadway beneath the bridge just behind me create a dramatic and even devestating emotional effect.