WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO HEAR

Trad . / Amidon (b. 1981)

Appalachian Folk Songs arr. Nico Muhly

Saró

I See the Sign

Weeping Mary

Kedron

All is Well Wedding Dress

Adams (b. 1947)

Shaker Loops (1978)

Shaking and Trembling

Hymning Slews

Loops and Verses

A Final Shaking

Nobody can doubt music’s power to stir the emotions, to energise or console, to lift the spirits – and even, sometimes, to raise a tear. Peer deep inside many musical experiences, however, and there’s something of the transcendent, even spiritual, that can lift the listener out of everyday existence and transport them to – well, somewhere else entirely. It might be via the overwhelming sonic opulence of a climactic Mahlerian finale or a spine-tingling rock anthem, or the ever-intensifying devotional emotion of qawwali, or even the austere simplicity of music by a composer such as Arvo Pärt.

Today’s concert explores just that intersection of music and spirituality, bringing together works from two very different but interconnected US traditions.

Vermont-born singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sam Amidon is a musician steeped in US folk music, growing up surrounded by traditional tunes and choral hymns, playing fiddle from the age of three, and joining his first band at 13. Amidon has so far released 11 discs of his music, providing a forwardlooking perspective on centuries-old songs that brings in collaborators including New York composer Nico Muhly, British singer Beth Orton (who also happens to be Amidon’s wife), and Icelandic composer and producer Valgeir Sigurðsson.

The six songs Amidon has collected together in his ‘Redemption Set’ explore ideas of hope, forgiveness, love and mortality through American folk and hymn traditions. The opening ‘Saró’ began its long life as an English folk ballad in the 1700s (it’s probably at least a century older than the year 1849 mentioned in its lyrics). It later travelled to the US, where versions are sung in South Carolina and across the Appalachians. It’s a gentle, poignant song of love and loss, as a young man sets sail for the New World, leaving his beloved behind.

The powerful ‘I See the Sign’ is a 19thcentury African American congregational hymn, and with its circling, repeating verses and refrains, it was intended to be picked up and learnt in praise as it was being sung. That sense of inevitability matches the song’s subject matter, too: the sign of its title is an indication of the end times, with wild horses, angels and threatening clouds all prefiguring the Day of Judgement, encapsulated in the chorus’s unchanging closing line, ‘Hey Lord, time draws nigh’.

The far quicker, brighter ‘Weeping Mary’ is a white spiritual expressing glory in God, Jesus and Mary, one of the hymns included in The Social Harp compiled by Georgian farmer, singer and teacher John McCurry in 1855. Like Amidon’s next song, it was originally a shape note hymn, printed using different shapes for its different notes, so that congregational hymn-singing would be simpler for those who struggled to read music. ‘Kedron’ was originally published in Britain, in the 1762 Short Hymns compiled by Charles Wesley, before making its way to America, where it first appeared in South Carolina in 1799 in a harmonisation credited to the Rev Elkanah Kelsy Dare. It’s a popular and widely sung hymn, conveying the simple ideas of the inevitability of death, and Christ’s grace and patience as he slowly died on the cross.

Amidonreturnstoquestionsofloveinhisfinalsong. ‘WeddingDress’isanupbeatAppalachianmountain tunemadefamousbyPeggySeeger,possiblywith ScottishorIrishroots.

The theme of mortality continues in the heartbreaking ‘All is Well’, a hymn from the Sacred Heart singing community with a tune credited to JT White in 1844, and widely sung across US churches and beyond. It’s a simple but very powerful farewell to earthly life, and an anticipation of the life beyond.

Amidon returns to questions of love in his final song. ‘Wedding Dress’ is an upbeat Appalachian mountain tune made famous by Peggy Seeger, possibly with Scottish or Irish roots, in which a suitor excitedly asks his intended to prepare her marriage garment, only to discover she’s perhaps more interested in sewing than in marrying.

There’s undoubtedly a strong spiritual element to today’s next piece, not only through the Christian denomination its title namechecks, but also in the sense of trance and transcendence that John Adams’ music can generate. He’s often lumped together with Steve Reich and Philip Glass as a ‘minimalist’ composer, writing music concerned with repetition, gradual change, hypnotic soundscapes and driving rhythms. In truth, however, he has never quite fitted into that neat category. Shaker Loops , from 1978, was the first piece to bring his name to a wide international audience, but even here, he harnesses the unmistakable elements of minimalism in music that’s full of energy, power and emotional drive.

Adams wrote the piece while teaching at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and tried it out on willing student players as he was developing it out of an earlier conceptual piece, Wavemaker . There are several references embedded within its quirky title. First, ‘loops’ is a term still used for short repeating sections of music in pop and rock tracks. For Adams in the 1970s, it meant a literal loop: a section of pre-recorded tape attached to itself in an unending circle, and played over and over, as many times as needed. ‘Shaker’ refers to the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, the Christian denomination that had a defunct community near where Adams grew up in New Hampshire, and whose ecstatic praise is said to lead to bodily convulsions.

The word also sums up the movements that Adams’s string players carry out to achieve the rapid tremolos his music demands.

Those lightning-quick movements are most evident in the propulsive energy of Shaker Loops ’s first movement, ‘Shaking and Trembling’. After that frenetic activity, it feels as though time has stopped in the second movement, ‘Hymning Slews’, with just a few raindrop-like pizzicatos, sighing slides (the ‘slews’ of the movement’s title) and icy harmonics left. A solo cello launches the third movement, ‘Loops and Verses’, in which Adams pulls off a remarkable aural illusion of the music seeming to perpetually accelerate. In the last movement, ‘A Final Shaking’, he looks back over material from earlier in the piece before ending with the gentle, transcendental euphoria of apparently endless waves of sound.

Violin / Director PEKKA KUUSISTO

Violinist, conductor, and composer Pekka Kuusisto is renowned for his artistic freedom and fresh approach to repertoire. Kuusisto is Artistic Director of the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor & Artistic Co-Director: Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra from the 2023/24 season. He is also Artistic Partner with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, a Collaborative Partner of the San Francisco Symphony, and Artistic Best Friend of Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen.

In the 2022/23 season Kuusisto debuted with Berliner Philharmoniker and will perform with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. He will return to orchestras such as The Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco, and Cincinnati symphony orchestras, Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, and Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Kuusisto makes his debuts as a conductor with the Philharmonia, Gothenburg, and City of Birmingham symphony orchestras. He is also Sinfonieorchester Basel’s Artist-in-Residence with whom he appears as conductor, soloist, and recitalist.

As a conductor, recent highlights include appearances with Helsinki Philharmonic, Saint Paul Chamber, and European Union Youth orchestras, the Concertgebouworkest, and Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt, Orchestre de chambre de Paris and Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Kuusisto is an enthusiastic advocate of contemporary music and a gifted improviser and regularly engages with people across the artistic spectrum. Uninhibited by conventional genre boundaries and noted for his innovative programming, recent projects have included collaborations with Hauschka and Kosminen, Dutch neurologist Erik Scherder, pioneer of electronic music Brian Crabtree, eminent jazz-trumpeter Arve Henriksen, juggler Jay Gilligan, accordionist Dermot Dunne and folk artist Sam Amidon.

Pekka Kuusisto plays the Antonio Stradivari Golden Period c.1709 ‘Scotta’ violin, generously loaned by a patron through Tarisio.

For full biography please visit sco.org.uk