Samuel A. Livingston: Gentle Winds: Chamber Music of Samuel A. Livingston
Navona

One of the more striking things about Gentle Winds concerns its creator's bio. Aside from a stint in his twenties as a member of the U.S. 4th Armored Division Band, Chicago-born Samuel A. Livingston (1942- ) has never worked as a professional musician, though he does play clarinet in a number of groups around his home base of central New Jersey. Further to that, he's an entirely self-taught composer, which seems even more incredible given the sophistication of the chamber music on the album. Performed by Arcadian Winds, the Pedroia String Quartet, and clarinetist Yhasmin Valenzuela, the collection presents three-movement works that are lyrical, melodic, and euphonious, with the wind ensemble performing three (in trio, quartet, and quintet configurations) and the quartet and clarinetist one.

The pieces, which the composer characterizes as “folk-inspired classical chamber music” that in some places reflect the influence of Western movie scores, share other properties, too. For example, the opening movement is typically in sonata form, while the second movement assumes an ABA structure and the third a theme-and-variations form. Certain things, however, stand out as most characteristic of these works beyond their formal elegance and melodic richness, counterpoint for starters. The players repeatedly echo and complement one another through the use of contrapuntal patterns, so much so that Livingston's material often calls to mind Bach's brilliant use of same in his own chamber writing. This element lends Livingston's material buoyancy, lightness, and drive when each expression by one instrument is passed on to another, with either the statement extended or responded to.

Also deserving of mention is his incorporation of metres not commonly used in Western classical music. His interest in doing so originated out of experiences he had as a member (with his wife) of an international folk dancing group where he was intrigued to discover that though the tunes were set in uneven metres they still felt completely natural. Inspired by this discovery, he aspired to compose heavily syncopated material that would be rhythmically unconventional yet feel natural, and thus composed the chamber pieces so that the three movements are in, respectively, 7/8, 5/4, and either 7/8 or 10/8. The general pattern in a given work is for a slower central episode to be framed by energized outer movements.

As the title of the opening work suggests, Gentle Winds exudes a powerful pastoral quality, not only in the fresh, outdoorsy feel of Livingston's writing but in the acoustic sonorities of Arcadian Winds' playing and the multi-hued arrangement for flute, oboe, clarinet, and horn. Without ever sounding contrived, the central part's lilting rhythms evoke the character of a carefree summer's day with its gentle breezes and swaying grasses, whereas the uptempo third most vividly reveals the influence of folk dance rhythms. Arcadian Winds reduces to flute, clarinet, and oboe for the as-graceful The Old Man is Dancing, with melodies spiritedly handed back and forth, much like partners changing hands on a nineteenth-century ballroom dance floor; when their lines intertwine so fervently, it's easy, for example, to visualize Mark Miller's clarinet and Vanessa Holroyd's flute as dance partners. Marina Krickler's robust horn leads the charge in Call to the Mountains, which the flute, clarinet, oboe, and bassoon respond to with their own assertive statements, before Quiet Summer Night announces a switch in timbres with the pairing of the Pedroia String Quartet (which includes violinist Jae Cosmos Lee, the founder of the Boston-based chamber orchestra A Far Cry) and Valenzuela. Her clarinet, not surprisingly, stands out clearly when heard alongside the luscious strings of the quartet, the combination adding sparkle to the uplifting tone of Livingston's material.

December 2018