Release Date: October 14, 2016
Catalog #: AR0002
Format: Digital & Physical
21st Century
Cuban
Orchestral
Clarinet
Orchestra
Trumpet

Intersections

Cross-Cultural Collaborations In Sound

Jeffrey Jacob composer
Heidi Jacob composer
Steven Block composer
Sergio Cervetti composer
Christina Rusnak composer

This exquisitely produced album embodies the beautiful art whose creation has been enabled by the newly opened cultural exchange between the United States and Cuba. Through a collection of intriguing compositions by American and American-based composers, INTERSECTIONS showcases the talents of Cuban musicians in a variety of large ensemble and chamber settings. Moreover, the pieces in the album’s contents are replete with symbols that touch on the promise of this new beginning in American-Cuban relations, and suggest some of the darkness that preceded it.

This imagery begins with Jeffrey Jacob’s Awakening, an undulating work for piano and orchestra, which is performed by the composer and the Havana National Symphony. Jacob’s composition is built around two main ideas, the most salient of which is a lyrical melodic idea that opens in the low strings, and is passed through the orchestra and modified in other ways over the course of the piece. The second building block in Awakening is the gesture of a peeling bell, which first appears in the orchestral chimes before being transformed as a gesture in the piano and, eventually, as the abrupt attack of percussion that signals the work’s conclusion.

Awakening is hopeful and grand, yet ends ambiguously. In this way, Awakening seems to signal the highest aspirations the Cuban and American people may have for their new relationship, while also reminding us that the process of restoring normality remains unfinished. Two other works on INTERSECTIONS – Heidi Jacob’s untouched by morning, untouched by noon and Christina Rusnak’s choral composition Dearly Beloved – convey similarly hopeful symbolism to that in Awakening. For example, Heidi Jacob’s work, which is composed for a small chamber ensemble, begins desolately, marked by the ominous echoes of a strummed piano. Over time, however, untouched by morning, untouched by noon becomes much more joyful, a transition made clear by the reappearance of the piano, now played in the traditional manner.

Complementarily, Sergio Cervetti’s And The Huddled Masses, for clarinet quintet, and Steven Block’s Puttin’ It Together, for two saxophones, two double basses, and drum set, make more direct references to Cuba, its culture, and its history with the United States. Puttin’ It Together, with its deep and compelling jazz allusions, may be the most remarkable, as one of the saxophone parts imitates the tone and performance style of a classic double reed instrument in Cuban jazz repertoire: the corneta china. On the other hand, And The Huddled Masses speaks to the legacy of immigration from Central and South America to the United States. Cervetti, who immigrated to America from Uruguay in 1962, crafts a beautiful rendering of the hope and desperation that motivates so many to leave their homelands, including Cuba, for refuge in the United States.

Listen

Hear the full album on YouTube

Track Listing & Credits

# Title Composer Performer
01 Awakening Jeffrey Jacob National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba | Enrique Pérez Mesa, conductor; Jeffrey Jacob, piano 10:11
02 Untouched by Morning and Untouched by Noon: No. 1. Ingenuous Heidi Jacob Alden Ortuño Cabezas, bass clarinet; Yasek Manzano Silva, trumpet; Marisel González Valdés, trombone; Brian Church, baritone; Charles Abramovic, piano 0:56
03 Untouched by Morning and Untouched by Noon: No. 2. Wild and Raucous Heidi Jacob Alden Ortuño Cabezas, bass clarinet; Yasek Manzano Silva, trumpet; Marisel González Valdés, trombone; Brian Church, baritone; Charles Abramovic, piano 1:10
04 Untouched by Morning and Untouched by Noon: No. 3. Sultry, Languorous Heidi Jacob Alden Ortuño Cabezas, bass clarinet; Yasek Manzano Silva, trumpet; Marisel González Valdés, trombone; Brian Church, baritone; Charles Abramovic, piano 1:17
05 Untouched by Morning and Untouched by Noon: No. 4. Liquido Heidi Jacob Alden Ortuño Cabezas, bass clarinet; Yasek Manzano Silva, trumpet; Marisel González Valdés, trombone; Brian Church, baritone; Charles Abramovic, piano 2:36
06 Untouched by Morning and Untouched by Noon: No. 5. L'Escalier Heidi Jacob Alden Ortuño Cabezas, bass clarinet; Yasek Manzano Silva, trumpet; Marisel González Valdés, trombone; Brian Church, baritone; Charles Abramovic, piano 1:31
07 Untouched by Morning and Untouched by Noon: No. 6. Semplice Heidi Jacob Alden Ortuño Cabezas, bass clarinet; Yasek Manzano Silva, trumpet; Marisel González Valdés, trombone; Brian Church, baritone; Charles Abramovic, piano 1:38
08 Untouched by Morning and Untouched by Noon: No. 7. Mäßige Heidi Jacob Alden Ortuño Cabezas, bass clarinet; Yasek Manzano Silva, trumpet; Marisel González Valdés, trombone; Brian Church, baritone; Charles Abramovic, piano 0:51
09 Untouched by Morning and Untouched by Noon: No. 8. Distratta Heidi Jacob Alden Ortuño Cabezas, bass clarinet; Yasek Manzano Silva, trumpet; Marisel González Valdés, trombone; Brian Church, baritone; Charles Abramovic, piano 1:23
10 Puttin' It Together Steven Block Abiel Chea Guerra, drums; Jorge Sergio Ramírez Prieto, alto saxophone; Carlos Alejandro Gonzales Guerra, tenor/soprano saxophone; Rubén Gonzales López,double bass; Liset Toppe Benítez, double bass; Enrique Pérez Mesa, conductor 9:57
11 And the Huddled Masses: I. The Tired, the Poor, and the Huddled Masses Sergio Cervetti Alden Ortuño Cabezas, clarinet; Leonardo Pérez Baster, violin I; Luis Alberto Mariño Fernández, violin II; Yamed Aguillón Santa Cruz, viola; Lester Monier Serrano, cello; Enrique Pérez Mesa, conductor 7:39
12 And the Huddled Masses: II. Hâves, Déguenillés Sergio Cervetti Alden Ortuño Cabezas, clarinet; Leonardo Pérez Baster, violin I; Luis Alberto Mariño Fernández, violin II; Yamed Aguillón Santa Cruz, viola; Lester Monier Serrano, cello; Enrique Pérez Mesa, conductor 4:45
13 And the Huddled Masses: III. Noemí Alvarez Quillay Sergio Cervetti Alden Ortuño Cabezas, clarinet; Leonardo Pérez Baster, violin I; Luis Alberto Mariño Fernández, violin II; Yamed Aguillón Santa Cruz, viola; Lester Monier Serrano, cello; Enrique Pérez Mesa, conductor 8:12
14 Dearly Beloved Christina Rusnak Ensemble Vocal Luna | Sandra Santos González, conductor 4:16
15 Dearly Departed Christina Rusnak Ensemble Vocal Luna | Sandra Santos González, conductor 6:28

Recorded April 19-22, 2016 at Abdala 1, in Havana, Cuba
Recording Session Producer Dayron Ortega
Recording Session Engineer José Raúl Varona

Photography Michael Labrie

Executive Producer Bob Lord

Executive A&R Sam Renshaw
A&R Alex Bourne

Audio Director Jeff LeRoy

Art & Production Director Brett Picknell
Graphic Design Ryan Harrison
Marketing Mike Mahn

Artist Information

Jeffrey Jacob Composer

Jeffrey Jacob

Composer

In August 2020, Jeffrey Jacob was named Composer-in-Residence with the Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra. He has written six symphonies, three piano concertos, three string quartets, and numerous works for piano and chamber ensemble. Raymond Leppard and the Indianapolis Symphony premiered his Symphony: Winter Lightning. The London Symphony recorded his Symphony No. 3. The Moscow and St. Petersburg Symphonies premiered respectively his Piano Concertos 1 and 2 with the composer as soloist.

Heidi. Jacob Composer

Heidi Jacob

Composer

Composer, cellist, and conductor, Heidi Jacob is Associate Professor of Music at Haverford College. A graduate of both the Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School, she has performed throughout the United States and Europe, including the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, Bedford Springs Festival, “Mozart on the Square” in Philadelphia, the Dubrovnik Festival, and on National Public Radio. She has recorded for Capstone Records, Albany Records, and Navona Records, and was featured on WRTI’s “Notes from Philadelphia,” highlighting performances of her album conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Bryn Mawr. In addition, Curt Cacioppo’s “Invocation and Dance of the Mountain Gods,” conducted by Jacob, from the album LAWS OF THE PIPE was recently selected by PARMA Recordings for inclusion on the label’s online digital release FINE MUSIC, Vol. 4.

Steven D. Block

Composer

Steven D. Block was born in New York City on November 5, 1952. He is currently Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley after having served as Chair of the Department of Music at the University of New Mexico for 17 years. As Dean, he is building new Arts programs, including that of the School of Music, from two separate legacy campuses. Block has appeared in the various personae of composer, music theorist, music critic, pianist, and both classical radio and disco d.j., among others. His compositions have been performed worldwide including performances in Australia, Paris, and Poland. His articles as a music theorist and music critic have appeared in such journals and magazines as Perspectives of New Music, Integrales, Music Theory Spectrum, the Journal of Music Theory, the Annual Review of Jazz Studies, Music Library Notes, and High Fidelity.

Sergio Cervetti

Composer

Sergio Cervetti, a Uruguayan-born American composer, came to the United States in 1962 to study composition. By 1966 he attracted international attention by winning the chamber music prize at the Caracas Venezuela Music Festival. After graduating from the Peabody Conservatory in 1967, where he studied with Ernst Krenek and Stefan Grové, he was invited by the DAAD to be a composer-in-residence in Berlin, Germany in 1969-70. From 1972-97 and 2007-08 Cervetti was Professor of Music at New York University / Tisch School of the Arts.

Christina Rusnak Composer

Christina Rusnak

Composer

Christina Rusnak, a Northwest-based contemporary composer and explorer, is passionate about composing about place and the human experience. She works at the intersection of place, nature, culture, and history, and seeks to integrate context into her pieces. The composer also strives to create thought-provoking music that engages both the performers and the audience.

Notes / Texts

“Awakening” conjures many images: consciousness in both senses of the word, rebirth, rhythms of the natural world, reanimation. The works on this album touch and explore these and other themes related to the title.

Awakening for Piano and Orchestra, recorded by the Cuban National Symphony in Havana with the composer as piano soloist, takes for its inspiration Thomas Hardy’s magnificent poem of the same name. Hardy’s unforgettable images of the natural world as it struggles toward spring and rebirth were irresistible for the composer. The work begins with a somber fugato for strings, oboe, and percussion, gradually building in intensity and complexity. The piano enters as a melodic element and shares melodic themes and phrases with trumpet, horn, and oboe. Despite the complex texture of the work, the main emphasis falls squarely upon the melodic development. The final climax for full orchestra bursts into the change of season.

– Jeffrey Jacob

A set of 8 movements, each approximately one minute in length, untouched by morning and untouched by noon explores the duality of atonality and tonality using a range of musical styles in which I sought to observe the effect of the constraints of this brevity. The larger structural trajectory is determined by juxtapositions of these diverse styles and the interconnection of the various musical materials and texts.

The work is framed by the first movement, where the 60-second paradigm is set by the snapping of the baritone’s fingers, and the final movement, whose contrasting syncopations in the piano intend to evoke an ironic timelessness within the same limited boundary of one minute.

In a nod to Webern, his tone row from his Op. 21 finds its way into several movements. Various other composers and musical forms are alluded to and again contrasted, including a tarantella, followed by a lazy, jazz-infused bass clarinet solo. A 12 – tone movement, another with minimalist aspects and an abstract movement modeled after Webern’s Drei Kleine Stücke precede the conclusion.

– Heidi Jacob

“This debut collection [Beneath Winter Light] of crystalline chamber works wears the composer’s technical mastery lightly. Sparked by figures as diverse as Ingmar Bergman and CPE Bach, Jacob’s compositions are of complex mesmerizing beauty.”

BBC Music Magazine

“Heidi Jacob is an American composer with … close[r] stylistic links to European tradition…Her forthright expressiveness exposes a multitude of stylistic associations… The disc’s most bracing item is Salome Revisited..”

Gramophone Magazine

“Heidi Jacobs’ Two Inventions, in fact, was somewhere in the next hemisphere, drawing from a tone row in Arnold Schoenberg’s largely atonal Serenade in a work that had its own modernist personality. Some of the writing suggested variations on Debussy ….What a musical adventurer.”

David Patrick Stearns, Philadelphia Inquirer

“Heidi Jacob is a composer whose music very much bears hearing. She is a true artist. I hope to hear more of her work. Very recommended.”

Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review

TEXTS

  1. Time is a child playing a game of draughts.

HERACLITUS

  1. The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.

VOLTAIRE

  1. Duo sunt liquores humanis corporibus gratissimi,

intus vini, foris olei.

[The two fluids most pleasing to the human body are indoors;

wine, outdoors; olive oil]

PLINY THE ELDER

  1. Nature hath no goal though she hath law.

JOHN DONNE

  1. Bedizened or stark

naked, man, the self, the being we call human, writing-

masters to this world, griffons a dark

“Like does not like like that is obnoxious; ” and writes

error with four r’s.

MARIANNE MOORE

  1. untouched by morning and untouched by noon

EMILY DICKINSON

Puttin’ It Together was written in 1974 when the composer was 21 and working on his graduate degree at the University of Iowa when the UI Center for New Music was at its height. An ensemble that included then undergraduate student performer Steven Schick on the drum set performed the premier performance. The composition represents a lifelong dedication to Jazz and Free Jazz in particular. As a music theorist, Block later wrote groundbreaking articles on Free Jazz and compositional structure in Music Theory Spectrum 1990 and 1997 (Pitch-Class Transformation in Free Jazz and Bemsha Swing: The Transformation of a Bebop Classic to Free Jazz) and the Annual Review of Jazz Studies 1993 (Organized sound: pitch class relations in the music of Ornette Coleman). As a composer, Block wrote just two jazz-related composition (the second being Thelonious Rex, an ensemble transformation-variation of 5 compositions by Thelonoious Monk).

Puttin’ It Together reflects a compositional working out of a highly structured pitch and rhythmic scheme with little improvisation called for. A minimal amount of improvisation is written into the percussion part but the rest of the work was intended for musicians who would not necessarily have a background in Jazz or improvisation. Therefore, such accepted elements like “swing”, bending of notes and intonation, slides, honks, and sound effects are all written into a very detailed score. The result is intended to be heard as a recorded performance that confirms what Block later wrote as a seminal appraisal of Free Jazz in his 1990 article: “While early twentieth century composers constructed their pc relations, jazz musicians heard them in improvisation – which suggests that pitch-class and nontonal relations can develop naturally out of musical practice in the same way that tonal music grew out of modal music and nineteenth-century tonality grew out of that of the eighteenth century.” Puttin’ It Together in a sense reverses the improvisational process as a way of recreating a performance that simulates a highly constructed improvisation.

– Steven Block

The title And the Huddled Masses naturally brings to mind the image of 19th century immigrants greeted by the Statue of Liberty’s silent promise for a brighter future. Then there are today’s unwelcome migrants and refugees fleeing war-torn homelands to be confronted by closed borders.

Two years ago a clarinetist friend of mine suggested that I write a clarinet quintet since the literature of this genre is rather limited. It was an appealing challenge. Added impetus came when I read the tragic story of a young Ecuadorian girl who made the desperate journey from her native country to join her parents, illegal immigrants living in New York, and then committed suicide at the Mexican border when her entry was thwarted by immigration authorities. Because I was an immigrant to the U.S., under kinder, different circumstances in 1962, and because of today’s plight of Middle Eastern immigrants in Europe, I felt the need to express my thoughts and feelings in this work for clarinet and string quartet.

The elusive, fragmented, and introspective melodies, wavering harmonies, and disciplined elegance in the first and third movements that bracket the second movement’s ostinato 7/8 rhythm, reverently celebrate surely cherished but often unfinished lives. The final movement is an elegy for this young girl lost in the struggle faced by illegal immigrants today. A quote from Mozart’s canon, Ach, zu kurz ist unsers Leben Lauf, appears in order to reflect on the brevity of life and how suddenly it can be extinguished.

With no geography of discrimination that can originate due to nationality, creed, race or the state of one’s heart, mind, body and soul, there is some measure of comfort that music abolishes borders. Significantly this work was recorded in Havana in 2016 at a moment in U.S. and Cuban history when borders are opening up following restoration of diplomatic relations in 2014 after a long period of acrimonious isolation.

– Sergio Cervetti

Dearly Beloved was composed for the wedding of a close family member. This person has been my staunchest supporter for most of my compositional life – both my cheering section and my most honest critic. More traditional than many of my works, Dearly Beloved is not only my gift for him and his bride, but also a personal extension of myself, and the love I wanted to share with them on their wedding day. For nine parts, I envision the piece to be performed with nine or eighteen performers. With some adjustment, larger groups could perform it as well.

The piece opens with the most common phrase in the wedding liturgy. The vow text is not taken from any one source, but really a summary of the most common historical wedding vow statements. I interspersed with this, my own text, asides really, defining and/or describing the vows, comments from the wedding attendees, and the innermost thoughts of a bride and groom. The piece ends with a celebratory presentation of the marriage couple as the wedding concludes.

– Christina Rusnak 2011

LYRICS

Dearly beloved,
Friends and family
Those who love and care so much

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together
To join our son and our daughter
To join this man and woman in holy matrimony

Marriage is the union of husband and wife in heart, body and mind
What greater thing is this,
What greater joy,
For two human souls to feel joined together
Our souls feel joined

Strengthening each other
Sharing gladness, nursing sorrow
Sadness and death
As lovers and friends – best friends
I take you
Take me
Will you take me forever?
I take you to be with me, to have and to hold, from this day forward, always
To be with me
I want you, I take you
For richer and poorer, in sickness and health
I’ll be here, I’ll stay with you
To love you, to honor you, to cherish you always
Forsaking all others
I only want you

All here have witnessed this act of faith
Faith in each other’s hearts
This joining together
Take both my hands, hold them
Hold your hands
By the power vested in me
I now pronounce you
Here it comes
We’ve been waiting
I now pronounce you husband and wife

In planning to compose this piece, I researched liturgy from across faiths and found to my surprise that many, like my own hymnal, present a sequence of events with suggested psalms and scripture to be read, and hymns to be sung. Composers across the ages have created requiems and masses to remember a loved one who has passed on. Many people choose popular songs – often favorites of those the deceased.

I sought to create a piece, which would be equally appropriate for use in a congregational worship service, in a home, or at the graveside. I integrated fragments of liturgy, scripture, and, De Profundis (Psalm 130, out of the depths), which has been used by composers as diverse as Mozart, Arvo Part, and Jonathan Newman, and by poets such as Alfred Tennyson, Oscar Wilde and Federico Lorca. I’ve interspersed with this, is my own text, asides really, expressing the feelings of the funeral attendees and the innermost thoughts of a grieving family and friends.

– Christina Rusnak 2016

LYRICS

We are gathered here today
We are here because you’re gone
We are here for you
We are gathered here today to mourn
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be consoled
I don’t feel consoled at all
I just miss you
Dearly Departed, we are here for you

Give us grace
Give us grace to remember all that was good in her/his life
Life is so short, so short
Like the flowers in the field, we blossom, and then fade

We are gathered here today
It doesn’t feel real
To commend her/his spirit
Please tell me you’re not gone
You’re spirit lies in my heart
Eternal rest given to her/him, and perpetual light shine upon her/him

Courage and faith to those who are mourning
Please give us strength
I will remember the joy we shared
Joy and Laughter
I will remember laughter
I will remember sorrow
Your voice was music to my ears
I remember love we shared

Blessed, Blessed
Eternal rest given to her/him, and perpetual light shine upon her/him
Blessed are those who mourn
We are gathered here today
You lie in my heart
Like the flowers in the field
Like the grasses in the wind, we scatter

I remember, I’ll remember always
We are gathered here
Rememb’ring
We are gathered here today
We are here because you LIVED.