Carl: Warm Waxing Wail

Description

• Composer: Robert Carl (1954-)
• Instrumentation: Piano, Voice
• Work: Warm Waxing Wail (1986)
• Binding:
• Work Language: Non-lexical
• ISMN: 9790600233403
• Size: 8.9 x 12.0 inches
• Pages: None

Description

for singing pianist

Warm Waxing Wail is a piece designed for a solo performer: either a singer who plays the piano, or pianist who sings. As a result, the music has been composed with an eye to be as adaptable as possible to many different sorts of musicians. While a trained voice will inevitably execute certain sections of the work with more polish, a “rougher” vocal technique, it combined with real musicality, can create a particularly intimate, personal, and evocative performance. Performers with some jazz or popular music background may even be at an advantage here.

The basic material of Warm Waxing Wail was composed over one week in southern California, atop a small hill in Long Beach. Each day I composed a short one-minute piece, the entire group of which constitutes a sort of “California journal.” Upon returning to New England, these pieces were spliced, overlaid, and recombined with one another, rather like the effect of passage of time on series of memories. The sustained mood throughout is dreamy, delicate, meditative, and gently passionate. – – – Robert Carl