Steve Lockwood now teaching Piano in Denver, Colorado.
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New Live Zoom Gig
What times we are in now! With so many Social Restrictions currently in the US we are adapting to the times. The Denver Rocky Mountain Chapter of the American Guild of Organists presents “Reflection and Remembrance: Music, Readings, and Prayers Live-Streamed from Christ Church Denver” Come join us Live Friday, November 13, 7:30 PM MST. Click here watch via Zoom.
For more information on The Denver Rocky Mountain Chapter of the American Guild of Organists and this special event download the Program here.
Connections!
In the mid 70’s I presented my first concert of a combo of Jazz, Classical music and dance music to be performed live with dancers. Since I wanted to play some classical pieces, I felt I should mentor with a teacher that works with working professionals to present classical works. So, I asked a local pianist who played jazz and studied Classical music also if there was someone he could recommend. He mentioned Donald Betts an instructor in piano at Macalester College in St. Paul Minnesota I studied a Beethoven sonata and some works of his. He composed also and wrote in an original format he called “full piano”. As well as the played technique of piano, he included use of plucked and stopped strings in his music. During our work together, he gave me the score of Alan Hovhaness’ “Bardo Sonata” and told me to give it a look; that I might enjoy it.
Well, it stayed on the shelf for all these years. Then the March 20 Lenten recital was discussed at an American Guild of Organists (AGO) board meeting in February. One of the board members volunteered an organ piece by Alan Hovhaness that would work well. I automatically thought of the “Bardo Sonata”, and volunteered to play it at the recital. I worked on it about a month or so, and was ready to play it when the Covid-19 pandemic forced event cancellations everywhere.
One day after practicing the piece recently, I found myself humming a melody that I used to hear when I was a child at Catholic mass. At the time, priests used to sing parts of the holy mass in Latin. I had no memory of those moments listening to the chant melodies since I heard them as a child. The Bardo sonata brought those melodies/chants back to my memory, I felt a real connection to the piece because of this. This piece sat on my shelf for over 40 years for a reason!!
Of course, I’d like to record it, but don’t right now know the how’s and why’s of how I’ll do it.
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An Opera of all Operas!
If you turn to the “Listen” page on my website, you’ll see the recording I was involved with called “ATLAS an opera in 3 acts” by Meredith Monk. This double CD was recorded in 1992 with the entire original cast. It was one of the most amazing ensemble works that I did with Meredith, let alone anyone else! I was so excited to hear that the LA Philharmonic and Yuval Sharon producing and directing the piece I could hardly wait to actually see it. I did see 2 performances this past summer (2019) at the Los Angeles Philharmonic with a new cast (Save Music Director Wayne Hankin who played in the orchestra).
“Choosing Companions” from Meredith Monk’s ATLAS
Well, to write any kind of statement about this Opera is difficult, because of its all encompassing power, strength and universality. It says so much, gives so much, and leaves no stone unturned when it comes to saying it’s an opera for all time!
A young woman stifled by her loving but short sighted parents, gets the “call”; an epiphany that illuminates a path towards a true and future self. Eventually, her parents learn to let go of her, so that she may put down her guitar and find her life’s path, her own journey. She acquires companions who share the same needs and are asking the same questions. They all learn methods of survival as well as a vision of union between land and community. Next we are shown their first real destination: an agrarian society. Later, they encounter an Arctic community. One from the community joins the travelers in the same quest. Then many temptations threaten the traveler’s including lust, depression, and spirits that would endanger or even destroy them. Finally, they arrive in a forest. Here, they locate an ancient wise man who takes all their many questions, the wisdom of which is unfortunately unable to be translated for them. Another of the travelers faces the post-human world, driven by capitalism and consumption. He gives into it with friends chasing him in the groups last landscape: the contaminated future. The group is desperate to escape, and ends up leaving one of their own. Fast forward through many years of the central character’s life, and she ends where she began; her childhood home where she picks up her guitar and reflects on all that has happened.
Click here to view the ATLAS Program Online
Monk’s odyssey lives on the threshold of the real and the imaginary. ATLAS takes us beyond our world into new galaxies of sight and sound. Like both its predecessors, Monk’s great opera feels simultaneously ancient and revolutionary. Also, this vision is not a contradiction or correction to the original but as an affirmation of it: by conceiving and executing a new reading of this piece, we stake a claim for the work’s immortality. What was prophetic in the original 1991 version now appears visibly on the horizon line. Like the original, it is not contradictory with the voice of warning over the future of our planet. This opera asks us to an enormous act of our collective imagination. Saving our planet.
