Daugherty's Ghost Ranch: Alsop to conduct premiere
(January 2006)
Daugherty's Ghost Ranch: Alsop to conduct premiereThe latest orchestral work by Michael Daugherty, one of America’s most frequently performed composers, is unveiled in Bournemouth under the baton of Marin Alsop on 8 February. Ghost Ranch was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 for the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and following its Poole premiere, the work travels on to Exeter, Portsmouth and Basingstoke (9-11 February), and is broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 14 February. Michael Daugherty signed an exclusive publishing agreement with Boosey & Hawkes in 2005, and Ghost Ranch is the first new orchestral work under the contract.
The three movements of Ghost Ranch were inspired by the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), the rugged individualist who distanced herself from the art world, living for over forty years at her Ghost Ranch in the New Mexico wilderness. Her paintings from this period draw upon the desolate landscape, with its open sky, jagged canyons, and parched earth. Michael Daugherty describes how "her art, like my music, hovers between realism and abstraction. Ghost Ranch is a musical journey into a stark terrain of extremes and contrasts."
The first movement, Bone, refers to the bleached animal bones that O’Keeffe collected and painted, and combines bone-like sounds with an orchestra split into three ensembles to reflect the multiple layers of O’Keeffe’s paintings. The second movement, Above Clouds, is a skyscape attempting the same geometric abstraction that appealed to the artist. Black Rattle, the third and final movement, is a depiction of the "black place" loved by the artist, with its rattlesnakes and terrifying lightning storms.
Michael Daugherty, born in Iowa in 1954, first came to attention in the 1990s with a series of witty, dark-humoured, brilliantly-scored pieces inspired by 20th-century pop-culture phenomena, including Dead Elvis, Le Tombeau de Liberace, Jackie O, UFO and Metropolis Symphony. Recent works have shown a broadening of expressive range and a greater degree of lyricism. His music features bright, gleaming instrumental colours and propulsive rhythms, with colliding tonalities and blocks of sound. His works have been championed by conductors including Marin Alsop, Neeme Järvi, Leonard Slatkin and David Zinman.
"…maverick imagination, fearless structural sense and a meticulous ear".
The Times
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Photo: Grant Leighton
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