"By Keeping Things Exactly the Way That They Are" from Photo-Op (5:03)
The Cummings Ensemble, CRI Emergency Music CD 627, Dora Ohrenstein soprano, Larry Adams baritone, Gregory Fulkerson violin, Daryl Goldberg cello, Andrew Sterman woodwinds, Conrad Cummings keyboards; lyrics by James Siena:By keeping things exactly the way that they are
we’ll find truth in the smallest things
that are just as good as the big ones that keep
this country great"The Bride Must Remember" from Positions 1956 (3:54)
The Avian Orchestra's "Love Machines & Shameless Hussies. . . Songs of love, lust, sex, and jealousy" concert at the Bill Young Studio, February 13 and 14, 2003; Laura Heimes, soprano; Chris Pedro Trakas, baritone; Andrew Sterman, woodwinds; Sarah Schwartz, violin; Clarice Jensen, cello; Conrad Cummings, keyboard; lyrics by Michael Korie suggested by popular marriage manuals of the 1950s:The bride must remember
In each fiber of her core
She must help, and hew
To her duty and grave obligation
For he is a man,
The pulse throbbing in his veins
Is the pounding of his elemental reproductive instinct!
He is alive with desire!
His organ must respond
In positions of intercourse
In the holy marriage bond!
She is equipped for pleasure
But hers is not essential.
Without his, her ecstasy is inconsequential.
He is alive with desire!
"Midgetman" from Insertions (5:51)
The Cummings Ensemble, CRI Emergency Music CD 627, Dora Ohrenstein soprano, Larry Adams baritone, Gregory Fulkerson violin, Daryl Goldberg cello, Andrew Sterman woodwinds, Conrad Cummings keyboards; lyrics by James Siena:Midgetman, Midgetman, what to do with Midgetman
well, I don't know — maybe your penis is too large
I wish you all to burn and kill
I wish you all to burn and kill
and all the more you burn and kill
the better it will please me.
yes yes yes yes
You are so sexy and you are so foxy
Increased performance
You are so sexy and you are so foxy
optimum lethality
You are so sexy and you are lethality
not so fast, slow and easy the times we had babe, the times we had —
those were the times, those were the times
You and me against the world
Put on your killing face
let me see your war faceA dog howls at the moon
a new family of ammunition
a dog barks at a stranger
the flag flies stiffly in the breeze
the bomb of the people is the bomb for peace
"Denouement" (9:23)
The Louisville Orchestra, Robert Spano conductor, February 10, 1994. A program note (by Jack Sullivan for the New Jersey Symphony performances):If the listener experiences the opening of Conrad Cummings' Dénouement — a sudden eruption of vivid brass riffs over churnings ostinatos — as coming out of nowhere, that is precisely the composer's intention. This colorful work plays with our sense of narrative context. Hearing Dénouement is like walking into the end of an intense conversation, one that has been going on for some time, or suddenly turning on the tape of a highly charged piece of music toward the end.
What Dénouement evokes is a desire to hear the whole story, mystifying us in a fun, novel way. The composer describes the experience in theatrical terms: "Imagine walking into the middle of the final act of a classical tragedy you don't know — right off the street, straight into the point of highest agitation. You have no idea how things got to this point. All that is left is for you to watch the action play out to its final fatal conclusion."
As this description makes clear, the music in Dénouement is a bit broader than its title implies. We actually have the climax, or crisis ("the point of highest agitation") as well as the dénouement, or resolution. The rapidly repeating chord patterns and slashing rhythms rise to a series of jolting climaxes before settling down into a droll dénouement.
"I’m Johnny Appleseed" from Tonkin (5:48)
The Cummings Ensemble, CRI Emergency Music CD 627, James Longacre tenor, Gregory Fulkerson violin, Daryl Goldberg cello, Andrew Sterman woodwinds, Conrad Cummings keyboards; lyrics by Conrad Cummings in association with Thomas Bird, additional material by Robert T. Jones:
I’m Johnny Appleseed
I travel through the world
Planting the seeds of Democracy in fertile soil.
People know me everywhere I go,
They greet me with open arms and hearts.
Places I’ve been ten years ago,
Why they point out the big apple trees,
The whole orchards that have grown up since I planted.
They love the apples.
We love the apples.
I plant,
I nurture,
I tend the sprouts,
I pull the Weeds.
Fertilizer, Good American Fertilizer.
And when they have apple trees,
Why pretty soon they’re electing school boards
And setting up a chamber of commerce.
Everywhere I go these sprouts of Democracy
Poke their little heads up out of the ground
Grow straight and all, stand with pride.
Real American Apples even here."I Wish They All Could Be..." (14.21)
San Francisco Contemporary Music Players at the Cheltenham International Festival of Music (UK), July 1986. A program note:Growing up a classical music kid in fog-soaked San Francisco, the Beach Boys were my secret musical alter-egos. Not the tormented genius of Brian Wilson, but the deceptively simple, sun-drenched, laid back, exuberant hymns of "California Girls," "I Get Around," and "In My Room."
"I Wish They All Could Be. . ." takes fragments from these three songs, with all their loose-jointed, sauntering gaits, and puts them next to the other world I lived in as a teenager: tense, precise, super-focused classical piano lessons.
The two worlds don't mix at first, they just butt up against each other, but something grows out of that jostling.
"I Wish They All Could Be..." was commissioned by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and received its premiere at the Cheltenham International Festival of Music (UK). Further performances included at the 92nd Street Y in New York by Musical Elements and at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. I got to conduct five performances of it with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players in a collaboration with choreographer Brenda Way, the Oakland Ballet, and painter Wayne Thiebaud; and Robert Spano led a memorable performance of it at Oberlin Conservatory.
"None Comes" from Eros and Psyche (5:02) Oberlin Opera Theater, Judith Layng Director, Hall Auditorium, Oberlin College, November 1983, Ann Panagulias, Psyche; Robert Baustian, conductor; libretto by Conrad Cummings:
(A garden in Psyche's palace. A fountain. Psyche alone.)PSYCHE:
(spoken)
Why do they only stare, these men who come from everywhere? Who do they look wide eyed and mouth agape, then catch themselves and recite orations and lay flowers at my feet and leave stunned? Who can talk with a stunned man?
(recit.)
They all admire me from a distance, but none comes near, none talks to me, none will sit beside me, none walks with me in the cool of the evening in this beautiful garden, none whispers in my ear, none is tender, none holds me in his arms. All I want is a fine true man to be my lover and husband.
(aria)
None comes, none comes, none comes.
They admire me but pass me by.
My sisters have tender attention
From kings and princes,
But none dares come near me, do I scare them?
Am I so frightful?
I may well be the most beautiful woman
In all the world,
But must I also be the single most lonely?
Then what is this beauty worth?
None comes, none comes, none comes.
"In Memoriam Marge Laszlo" (7:31)
The Avian Orchestra's "Play Ball!!!. . . When Music Slides into the Home Plate of Sports" concert in the gymnasium at the University Settlement House on New York City's Lower East Side, January 15 and 16, 2004; Clarice Jensen, cello; Blair McMillen, piano; Sarah Schwartz, violin, Andrew Sterman, clarinet; Ann Cecil-Sterman, flute. A program note:Marge Laszlo was one of Roller Derby's great players. The game was born on the West Coast and grew up with the early days of television. During its heyday in the 1960's a dozen teams bused all over the country. It was one of the first sports that women as well as men could make a living playing, and it provided a home and a livelihood for any number of outsiders.
Roller Derby looked anarchic. Players smashed into each other, collided into huge heaps of bodies, threw each other over the ropes into the audience, screamed at each other constantly, pulled hair, and whenever possible beat up the umpires. The highlight move was the Whip, where five or six players would link wrists to propel the player at the end into the opposing team like a projectile. Bodies would fly everywhere.
But behind all the chaos and apparent violence was actually a big extended family of players who lived and traveled together and worked out every pile-up, Whip, hair-pull, and fight sequence ahead of time. Despite the drama, athleticism, and the passionate loyalty of fans to individual teams and players, it came down to a companionable bunch of people gliding round and round the same oval track. My piece goes around its track four times.
Marge Laszlo herself is alive and well, but the game, alas, is no more. It started to lose TV viewers in the early 70's and was done in by the energy crisis when the teams couldn't afford gas for the buses taking them from city to city. But Roller Derby lives on happily in my memory, and I'd like to think that the end of my piece is Marge's farewell lap on her last game. Skate on, Marge!
"In the Department of Love " from Insertions (3:59)
The Cummings Ensemble, CRI Emergency Music CD 627, Dora Ohrenstein soprano, Larry Adams baritone, Gregory Fulkerson violin, Daryl Goldberg cello, Andrew Sterman woodwinds, Conrad Cummings keyboards; lyrics by James Siena:In the Department of Love,
Her outcome is her child.
In the Department of Kitchens,
The Leaders have got Hostilities.
Avoid spending time in Kitchens.
Children touch Kitchens.
Leaders do not touch Veterans.
The child in the Kitchen
Is in need of a Leader
The warm human Leader
Is in the Kitchen.
He is talking to a Veteran.
They discuss the Strategic Counterforce.
The Veteran says:
you make me feel
Like I have to kill you now
The Leader brings up
the subject of the child
and they discuss and they discuss
the subject of the child
in the Strategically Interfaced Kitchen.
The child touches the Veteran.
They are Industrialized.
