One to One to One

For 3 Female Voices, 3 Cellos, 3 Basses (2016)

Study Score

A setting of Poet Robert Creeley's "The Finger" in response to Jim Dine's "At the Carnival." One to One to One is recorded on the GRAMMY-nominated album, LUNA PEARL WOOLF: Fire and Flood.

by Luna Pearl Woolf

$70.00

SKU: LPW-VC001 Categories: , , Tags: , , , ,

Description

Video


For three female voices, three cellos and three basses.

Music by Luna Pearl Woolf
A setting of "The Finger" by Robert Creeley

Commissioned by the Arte Musica Foundation. Inspired by "At the Carnival" by Jim Dine at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Jana Miller, soprano
Ellen Weiser, soprano
Kristin Hoff, mezzo-soprano

Cellos:
Matt Haimovitz
Hannah Craig
Carmen Bruno

Basses:
Kathryn Schulmeister
Brandyn Lewis
Yannick Chênevert

Duration

20 min

Premiere

May 16, 2016
Montreal, QC, Canada
Bourgie Hall, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Jana Miller, soprano
Ellen Weiser, soprano
Kristin Hoff, mezzo-soprano

Cellos: Matt Haimovitz, Hannah Craig, and Carmen Bruno
Basses: Kathryn Schulmeister, Brandyn Lewis, and Yannick Chênevert

Commissioner

Commissioned by the Arte Musica Foundation in response to “At the Carnival” by Jim Dine at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Instrumentation

S(2).M(1) / vc(3).db(3)

Text

Robert Creeley : The Finger

Program Notes

For millennia the Venus de Milo has been a symbol of beauty, grace and the feminine ideal. In his “At the Carnival” Jim Dine creates three renderings of that instantly recognizable figure, now headless and towering – at 14-feet tall ­– and carved in broad strokes with a chain saw out of immense trunks of redwood, then painted in harlequin colors. Yet Dine’s reverence for the female form is evident in every cut, and the piece’s overwhelming presence speaks to the power wielded by these intoxicatingly compelling women.

In 1969 the poet Robert Creeley, a good friend to the artist Jim Dine, published his lyric poem, “The Finger.” One of the longest poems in Creeley’s oeuvre, it is spoken by a man, reeling in the presence of a woman, and finding in her the almost emasculating power to demand his own performance as a man.

In One to One to One we hear three women, watching and laughing at our protagonist in his writhing, self-flagellating efforts to impress, or at least to comprehend the figure in front of him. These three women, observing a man, in turn observing a woman, are the creative palindrome to the three ladies of “At the Carnival,” passionately wrought by Dine and interpreted in music by myself, in this whimsical attempt to celebrate the eternal complication of each of us looking at the other. Our subject’s efforts ultimately come to no avail, and the best we can conclude is there in Creeley’s text: “And the power to tell is glory. One unto one unto one. And though all mistake it, it is one.”

–Luna Pearl Woolf