Tina Davidson

Composer

Composing a Life, Note by Note

My Heart is a Cello

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Of all the instruments, cello is the closest to my heart.

Growing up, I was the pianist in a household of strings. My mother was an avid amateur violinist and insisted my sisters learn to play violin and viola. I envied their ability to play with others, while I was continually alone on my own.

In college, I took up cello in addition to studying composition and piano. At times I studied with Michael Finkle, who, mustached, quirky, was full of joy. Up in a large room on the third floor of the music building we gathered weekly to play cello quartets and octets late into the evening. As a night cap, he turned off the lights and we improvised in the dark.

Soon I was transcribing Palestrina and Farkas for cello quartet. Later, I wrote a cello concerto for the wonderful Maxine Neuman, and Dark Child Sings, a cello quartet, which she recorded. And of course, many string quartets and piano trios.

It was Anna Cholakian, the cellist of the Cassatt Quartet, who cemented my love for cello. Delicate and long-haired dark hair, she played with a intensity and passion that belied her small frame.  Listen to her play the opening of my string quartet, Cassandra Sings.

 What exactly is it about the cello that calls to me? The high notes are clear and bell-like, and the low notes have a width and groundedness to them, moist and vibrant.

But mostly, the cello is the only classical instrument where you must open your legs and embrace the instrument to play. The broad back of the cello lightly rests against your sternum, almost touching each knee – it is a full body experience of sound. Sitting squarely, you become a tripod, a solid stance with flexibility of movement. You are the cello. You are the music.

CASSANDRA SINGS
Commissioned by the Kronos Quartet and recorded by the Cassatt String Quartet, “builds to a climax of tremendous richness, throwing out a soundscape that would seem to be much greater than merely four instruments can produce.  An extended coda achieves a resolution of sublime dimensions” (Fanfare).
https://open.spotify.com/artist/2y5Z17bEilAiViMp9FMuJh

DARK CHILD SINGS 

 

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Redemption Song

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Each Monday I work with the residents who live in the YWCA shelter facility for women and their families. I have just started my Meet The Composer residency, and will work with the women, helping them to write operas of their own lives.

I am teamed with writer and director Zadia Ife, who runs the IYABO program, a parenting skills class. She is lovely and thin, and suffers from a chronic illness that often leaves her exhausted, sometimes for days. I know, first hand, the carefulness with which she leads her life. We go out to lunch; she has forgotten her coat. She stops and silently calculates how much energy it would cost to run back. She shivers all through lunch.

We meet with the women in the kitchen of the shelter in evenings. Sitting in a circle in the large blue tiled kitchen, I am quiet during the first couple weeks, and feel my privilege with embarrassment. I am a total novice. Under Zadia’s guidance, I begin to learn. I use her credibility to gain admittance into this world; she is my access card.

The women in the residence are kind to me, and slowly over the weeks, we get to know each other. They reveal their stories of poverty, child abuse, beatings and addictions. Many of them have lost their children to foster care. All are homeless, but tough and resilient.

I lead a meditation to help them reconnect with their stories. We close our eyes and go back to the house of our childhood. “Listen,” I tell them,  “What do the walls remember?” Memories emerge, triggered by a door, a closet, or a heating grate. They sing their stories; I write them down.

We begin to create a performance piece they call Redemption Song. Zadia will write the script and they will compose the songs. They will perform it next year at the Jesus Be Ready Church.

Taking down the pots and pans of the kitchen, we make a drum circle as part of the piece. Laughing, singing and sometimes crying, they create a work containing their stories, their songs – their sorrows, joys, and their hopes for a different life.

Tina Davidson’s Meet The Composer residency (1991-94) was their first national residency that worked directly with a social service agency. With host organizations, OperaDelaware, Newark Symphony and the YWCA, she wrote a major work for each  organization, and worked weekly with women at the YWCA shelter, helping them compose operas of their lives.

Listen to Tina Davidson’s opera, Billy and Zelda

Random Thoughts, #7

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Notes from my Journal

July 28
A beautiful, clear, bright and cool day. The children sit on an animal swing with four chains in the park, swinging back and forth. The chains creak and scream, high and overlapping, a shrill cry.I am composing finally; “After two days of ranting and raving, mercy descended.”

August 4
I begin the saxophone concerto with earnestness. It is on my mind constantly. I listen, knowing both time and persistence are on my side.

Sometimes I have to hear all the old ways first, before I can steer clear to a new place. Always, a balance between movement and patience. If I move too soon, I run over myself. If I relax too much, there is nothing. I work and wait.

September 1
I focus on the solo, the “first person” of this piece. This is, in many ways, the first flight. Rupture – big glissando section. Out of the disorganization comes the voice. Out of sound come melody and energy. How do I give the saxophone space to improvise without boxing him in?

November 20
Today, the work on this piece discourages; I lose heart and go shopping for Christmas presents. I contemplate a movie. I eat gummy bears, drink coffee, and sigh over a new flannel nightgown. I snarl at smokers.November 22
In morning’s first light, all is not lost. Even my music has possibilities.

November 30
My piece is almost complete. I have a few weeks of orchestrating, and it will be done by first of the year. The last ten days have been a wonderful slide home. Once I was able to accept the flaws and disappointments of the piece, I started making progress.

Music with Saxophone by Tina Davidson

LULLABY
for solo & unspecified instrumentation (6-8)
Lullaby is the song we all sing to our children, amid the distant noise of the outside world, cradling and surrounding them with a protective love.
“a gorgeously gentle piece” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
https://open.spotify.com/track/77Nm1qrUp6RKBRWhti8z2S

TRANSPARENT VICTIMS
for soprano/alto saxophones & pre-recorded saxophones
 “Davidson has created accessible music of real substance.”  (Classical Insites)
https://open.spotify.com/track/4u13FNvMkWlx9AhLxU6mJJ     

\CEL”E*BRATE\
alto saxophone, bass clarinet, piano & percussion 
To commemorate, bless, carouse, ceremonialize, commend, dedicate, drink to, eulogize, feast, glorify, honor, jubilate, keep, laud, let loose, lionize, make merry, make whoopee.
https://soundcloud.com/tina-davidson-3/celebrate-for-alto-sax-b-clar-piano-percussion

 

Bleached Thread, Sister Thread

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for string quartet

June 28

Cody, Wyoming, the first afternoon, is dark and overcast. At night, I cannot see the full moon. But today is blue and so bright; the mountains are clear and tremendous. As I walk, I am reminded of other spastel, in the gardenolitary walks and weeping landscapes – green, green, meadows and black grey skies.

The new work I am hearing is different. I feel its weight and am reluctant to take up the responsibility. Bleached Thread, Sister Thread, commissioned for the Mendelssohn Quartet, takes the title from one of my sister’s, Eva Davidson, poems. These are old issues; sister bonds, attachments, and delicate fine stuff – a sense of joy and release.

Gratitude reappears in my mind. I find it difficult to accept gifts without payment. So used to a bad turn, a broken heart, it is almost beyond my understanding to accept the gift of returned health without sacrifice. Pain has always defined me. Will gratitude now make me one of them? One of whom?

Opening one’s self to grace.

 July 15

I begin to hear.  Quietly, and with bursts of light, a song emerges out of rubbing – a soft shuddering

          what was gathered or what was learned;

          and now you and I will tell each other

          what we know, that to be distant

         is sometimes closer than to be near. (1)

September 16

The shape of the quartet keeps changing. In this piece, I am guided more by the material than the form. There is a dark black energy in my stomach. Despite the clear, calm weather, the days are unsure.

At first I was conflicted over the work moving a direction I had not planned. But when I viewed the construction with curiosity instead of tension, the work reveals itself. The energy of the music is fierce in its optimism, constantly moving forward and changing. I feel the animation of health restored, of a future fullness refreshed.

Yet, still, still – a disconnection. Despite the celebration, a fracture in my life shows itself. The piece ends in a deep sadness. I cannot control this; I only allow what is.

Excerpted from Let Your Heart Be Broken, Life and Music from a Classical Composer by Tina Davidson.  © Tina Davidson, 2022

(1) excerpt from Bleached Thread, Sister Thread, poem by Eva Davidson

In the Garden, pastel by Tina Davidson

 

 

 

 

 

Random Thoughts #5

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Notes from my Journal

 April 6

I am in between a state of reluctance and anticipation. I can “hear” the new work better than I can understand it, something about mountains, fires, sexuality and the dark pounding of the heart.

March 31

“What is the relationship between artists and their work?” a friend asks.

I can only speak of my landscape – to economize my life so that I am available. Not as an act of abstinence or poverty, instead, of allowing. When my life is work centered, all else falls off. I am at the essence of my life. The choice is time, energy and clarity. The rest – family, friends, fun – falls into place naturally.

Being available is an act of love I give myself, for here is where my spirit lives. As I go out in my work, it is all me, and at the same time, not me. When my work connects with others, my face becomes many faces, both anonymous and personal, both unrecognizable and identifiable.

The risk of art is to be at the edge of selfishness, which seems to be vanity, but is not. Vanity keeps me separate and elevated from others. Art grovels in the same mud, but ascends.

For today, I ask what my work needs and thereby know how to live my life. Letting the non-essentials go, I keep the treasures. The rest flows from me like fall leaves tossed on the river stream, riding the current happily away from me. The love I put into my work is the same that pours into my life, family, and community. A source that renews itself continually.

October 9

The string quaMysterium, drawing, colored pencilrtet continues to fall into shape, and the work is exciting. The previous agony was pressure during the most vulnerable stages of composing, of gathering the raw material together, finding tiny bits of flesh, atoms or protoplasm. The stuff of creation is a delicate process, full of uncertainty and patience. It is a time when I am open to outside fears and pressures.

The first section is almost completely mapped out. The rhythm tears along, bumping into sounds that are both unexpected and comfortable. I spin through reams of material, yet it is all connected somehow; tense, pressured, chased, inescapable, and swept away. I stitch together the fabric of the piece carefully, paying great attention to the transitions. The directions surprise the ear, and are, somehow, just right. The new shape of the piece pleases me, and has released the music inside. Unbelievable.

Excerpted from Let Your Heart Be Broken, Life and Music from a Classical Composer by Tina Davidson.  © Tina Davidson, 2022

Drawings by Tina Davidson:  Orb #1, charcoal and water color, Mysterium, colored pencil

Listen: