#4550, Music Based on Century-Old Tragedies

Hear works based on three catastrophes in the 1910’s from Julia Wolfe’s Fire in My Mouth based on the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911, Gavin Bryars’ The Sinking of the Titanic in 1912, and Jacob Cooper and Steven Bradshaw’s Sunrise, derived from an end-of-pandemic song from 1918-1920's influenza pandemic.

Hear Sunrise, a collaboration between composer Jacob Cooper (Philadelphia-based creator of electronic songs) and the vocalist Steven Bradshaw (founding member of both Variant Six, The Crossing). This expansive long-form electro-acoustic piece derives its text from a popular song composed around the end of the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic: “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise.” Created during the 2020-2021 quarantine, Bradshaw recorded vocal melodies and improvisations that Cooper then subjected to electronic manipulation, unspooling all the threads of the century-old song and weaving it back together like a hi-tech emergency blanket. Listen to two of the five movements of this piece.

Gavin Bryars’ The Sinking of the Titanic, features recordings of survivors of the Titanic, appearing like “sonic ghosts” in the piece. The work mixes string instruments, spoken-word fragments, distant percussion, and reverberated drones but suggests ocean and how sound lingers in the water.  Bryars intended for it to sound like if the melody that the musicians were playing simply kept on going even after they had been swallowed by the sea.

Julia Wolfe’s intense and moving Fire In My Mouth, was inspired by the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and written for the New York Philharmonic. (Revisit this conversation about the piece on New Sounds #4274.) The 146 workers who died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire were mostly young immigrant women, and Wolfe’s score calls for a large chorus — 146 female singers - made up of female members of The Crossing and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City. There are also creative uses of giant scissors, string parts written to suggest sewing machines, and other devices to evoke the tools of clothing manufacturing in the second movement, "Factory." - Caryn Havlik

Program #4550, Music Based on Century-old Tragedies (First Aired 10/15/2021)

ARTIST: Jacob Cooper and Steven Bradshaw
WORK: Sunrise - two excerpts [22:24]
RECORDING: Sunrise 
SOURCE: Cold Blue Music
INFO: coldbluemusic.com

ARTIST: Gavin Bryars
WORK: The Sinking of the Titanic [15:31]
RECORDING: The Sinking of the Titanic
SOURCE: Point Music #446 061
INFO: Try Amazon.com. More info at: gavinbryars.com

ARTIST: NY Phil, Jaap Van Sweden, cond.; The Crossing, Donald Nally, cond and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, directed by Francisco J. Núñez.
WORK: Julia Wolfe: Fire In My Mouth - II. Factory [8:41]
RECORDING: Julia Wolfe: Fire In My Mouth
SOURCE: Decca Gold
INFO: https://deccagold.lnk.to/Fireinmymouth | nyphil.org