ADES AUDITORIUM

March 12, 2017


Charlotte Raines, dancer

PROGRAM

Electronic Prelude: Sci-fi/Fantasy Dream

Cinema by Avtandil Chacibaia


Songs from Distant Planets

Amanda Rose-Austin, soprano; Justin Austin, baritone; Gulli
Björnsson, guitar; Vivian Chang, cello; Michael Davis, viola;
Isabel Gleicher, alto flute; Tamika Gorsky, percussion; Alejandro
Lopez, trumpet; Sergio Sandi, celeste; Eric Umble, bass clarinet

Electronic Interlude: Prehistoric Dream

Cinema by Peter Lee


Whence Come We, Whither Do We Go?

Amber Evans, soprano; Isabel Gleicher, bass flute


Electronic Interlude: Dream of Utopian Isles

Cinema by Peter Lee


The Unshadowed Shore

Amanda Rose-Austin, soprano; Tamika Gorsky, percussion;
Sergio Sandi, celeste; Johanna Wienholts, harp


Electronic Postlude: Futuristic Cyber-Dream in Hyper-Polyphony
(“Failure, My Beginning”)

Peter Pavlakis and Sarah Laties, cinema


Texts

SONGS FROM DISTANT PLANETS

1. It’s just before daybreak I enter those cities of dream
(Jene Städte der Träume)
Whose charmed, curving avenues our feet seem to know,
Where the children again are playing
(Die Kinder spielen)
And where the scent of crushed almonds
Becomes a nostalgic melody tormenting my heart,
(Ein Melodie quält mein Herz)
And dissolving as I awaken in the Land of Disenchantment.

2. For a moment, when the sun returned
And warmed the old stone wall overrun with blackberries,
And the finch’s immemorial song gilded the afternoon,
(Der alte Lied der Fincken vergoldet den Nachmittag)
We seemed to remember the reason we’re here–
How we came to this world, and who we truly are.

Then came clouds of oblivion
(Volken des Vergessenheit)
And poetry, our hope.

3. When the ships appear,
When the long-fluted, dream-crusted ships
Fall from the milky stars
And settle again in our midst,
What will I say then?
How explain that, on your account, I cannot leave?
(Ich kann nicht gehen.)

4. I come upon a precipice and pause
To wonder what dark truth awaits below:
(Welch dunkle Warheit?)
A place that I’d forgot and now recall?
The countries of my dreams become substantial?
(Die Orte meiner Träume)
A new existence where I am a bird?
This one, same life eternally replayed?
I come upon a precipice and pause
To wonder what dark truth awaits below.
(Welch dunkle Warheit?)

5. The soul’s an archipelago
Where sing the sundry, secret selves
Upon a thousand fragrant isles
In esoteric harmony
Surrounded by an amber sea.
(Die Seele ist ein Archipel.)

6. (Das schüchterne Kind)
The shy child you befriended
With your russet-freckled smile, your strawberry hair,
(Welches zaghaft an den Fenster klopfte)
Who tapped on your window lightly
And brought you chestnuts,
(Das Kind!)
The boy who tossed a ball with you
On the afternoon of a thousand robins–
(Er ist immer noch hier)
He is still here – here!
Beyond the reach of time,
(Gefangener der Lieb)
Love’s prisoner.

7. (Ich schwebe)
I float above the days and years
And look on what I’ve left behind:
(Der Bettler)
The beggar’s hand outstretched,
(Eine Frau)
A woman sobbing in the night,
(Die gefallene Vogel)
And the fallen bird by the roadside.
Humbled beyond all vanity,
No longer desiring to be,
I find myself prepared at last
To live again and mend the past.

8. Unnameable object of desire,
Unreachable city dissolving in gloom,
Faces without souls,
Hands grasping emptiness;
Who will deliver us from these shadows
Into the Land of the Living?
(Das Land des Lebenden)


WHENCE COME WE, WHITHER DO WE GO?

Words come too late for us and for the world
The winds of memory die on life’s still sea
We live and row unknowing with sails furled
Adrift ‘twixt origin and destiny


THE UNSHADOWED SHORE

We wandered…off the path…
Through brambles, over stones and rotting trunks,
Beyond the vast, assembled, staring dead…
Land’s end, darkening water,
Dome of sky and a distant sail
(Our fathers’ faces shadowed in the waves),
The fleet, elusive fish, the current strong,
Horizon beckoning…

And came at last to that unshadowed shore
Where the porpoise cavorts in the shallows
And the thaumaturg comes down from the mountains
With his potions and his beads:
Oh! We lived for a while in the clear sight of angels,
And played with the children of days gone by.

Till morning’s bell dissolved the spell
And cast us back upon the world.
‘Twas ever thus: awake, we pine
For fantasies we must resign.