Nanci Belmont, bassoon, Scott Wheeler piano
Bargemusic, New York.
September 3, 2023
Portrait Gallery is a collection of six piano portraits organized into five movements for bassoon and piano. My musical portraits follow the compositional method of my teacher Virgil Thomson. That is, they are written from life in the presence of the sitter. (Since many composers write directly on computer, I should explain that I do this in the old-fashioned way, writing my musical ideas silently on music paper with pencil.) The object is to capture the character of the subject in a single sitting, typically lasting about 90 minutes. When I first had a chance to work with Nanci Belmont I realized that she would be the perfect collaborator to re-imagine these pieces, creating her own vivid characterizations, with the strong support of the piano as partner musician.
Park View is a portrait of Barbara Senchak, a vibrant personality who has worked in radio and whom I met through her work with the MacDowell Colony. Cowley Meditation is a portrait of composer, pianist and organist James Woodman. The portrait’s title refers to James’s position as the organist of the Society of St. John the Divine in Cambridge, MA, whose Cowley Press retains this monastic order’s former name of the Cowley Fathers. Cookie Waltz and Galop is a portrait of Elizabeth Cranstoun when she was seven years old, done at her home in Middleton, MA. The fourth movement is an Interlude, intertwining portraits of Kathy and Ed Ludwig. Kathy’s portrait, Oracle, was written in my studio at the MacDowell Colony; Ed’s portrait is Tracing Shadows, written at my home in North Reading, MA. The finale of the set is Bleecker Study, a portrait of Fern Lopez, who is a writer and director of films, a stage director, and at times a composer. I wrote the portrait in the study of his apartment on Bleecker Street. While it’s typical for portrait subjects to read during a sitting, or for artists to sketch, Fern was at his computer, listening on headphones as he edited a film soundtrack. I think both his genial nature and the force of his intellect are evident in this portrait.
Portrait Gallery is dedicated to Nanci Belmont.
Scott Wheeler
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