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Songs and Dances of Macondo (2004)

Instrumentation: woodwind quintet (fl/ob/cl/hn/bsn)
Duration: 14'
Commission: Aspen Music Festival
Premiere: Student fellows, Aspen Music Festival, Aspen, CO (July 2004)

I. Song of the Birds
II. March of the Gypsies
III. Song of Francisco the Man
IV. Waltz of the Clocks
V. Pianola Dances
VI. Sunset Hymns and Psalms
VII. The Last Dawn of Macondo

excerpt from mvt. I Song of the Birds


excerpt from mvt. VI Sunset Hymns and Psalms

Student fellows, Aspen Music Festival, Aspen, CO (July 2004)

The fictional town of Macondo is the setting of Gabriel García Márquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude. This suite for woodwind quintet (here imagined as a band of street musicians) was conceived as a songbook of sorts, inspired by musical elements and episodes in the novel. For the most part, these songs and dances employ a shared melodic and rhythmic vocabulary; each develops through harmonic and timbral modulations, while collectively, their chronological sequence loosely traverses a broader narrative thread.

Songs and Dances of Macondo was commissioned by the Aspen Music Festival. The piece was recognized with first prize in the 2005 Prix d’Été competition at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, and a 2005 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award.

Songs and Dances of Macondo, mvt. III. Song of Francisco the Man. 5.11.2011, Quintet of the Americas with Sonia Manzano (reader), Symphony Space, New York, NY.

Songs and Dances of Macondo, mvt. VI. Sunset Hymns and Psalms. 5.11.2011, Quintet of the Americas with Sonia Manzano (reader), Symphony Space, New York, NY.