Waterway Liner Notes
Lake Superior’s shape as it appears on a map has often been said to look like a wolf’s head: Isle Royale National Park as the eye, Duluth at the tip of the snout, Keweenaw Peninsula as the mouth, and Sault Ste. Marie at the base of the furry neck. This largest body of water in the world by surface area is second in expanse of fresh water only to Lake Baikal in Southern Siberia, Russia. If emptied, Lake Superior could submerge North and South America under a foot of water, that’s three quadrillion gallons (11,400,000,000,000,000 liters)!, or 10% of the world’s fresh water all in one place.
The music on this CD is an exploration and homage to water. It begins with a respect for what flows freely from American faucets. Water is a resource absolutely essential, even more than oil, and it seems that through our western plumbing habits (especially in a state like Michigan) we don’t know where to begin appreciating this incredible resource that surrounds us. How long until someone owns every drop on the planet? Our rain, lakes, rivers, and even puddles accounted for?
Andrew and I decided to write the Seasons of Lake Superior in August 2005 after our third summer performing and exploring along the south shore of Lake Superior. We wanted to write a work together that would not only reflect the natural areas in and around Lake Superior, but would be a fundraiser for the Nature Conservancy Great Lakes to raise awareness about water.
Lake Superior Spring recreates the feeling of ice and snow that slowly melts into a green landscape. Both instruments gradually accelerate with faster rhythmic subdivisions to the end of the piece. Lake Superior Summer represents the liveliness of people and animals who celebrate the few weeks in the summer when the forests surrounding Lake Superior are warm. Summer is in an odd-numbered meter, 7/4, with an interlude that uses a reggae sounding accompaniment also in 7/4. I got the idea to use a reggae backbeat accompaniment over a 7/4 meter after listening to the Les Claypool’s tune Duchess. Although it makes no difference to the listener, keeping track of seven as it switches between downbeats and offbeats has potential to throw the players off (which keeps us on our toes). Lake Superior Fall pays homage to harvest. Andrew used syncopated rhythms and an accompaniment pattern from Argentine tango dance to give the music its “stomp”. Lake Superior Winter reflects the stillness of snow and ice. I was scolded by a local arts organizer in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for my rendition of winter. It is after all the shortest track on the CD, and in a place in the world where winter is about nine months a year, the organizer told me our "winter" just shouldn't be that short! But, perhaps this movement is like a winter’s day in the north, sparse and really all too short.
Approaching the Wolf’s Head uses two church hymns, What Wondrous Love is This? and Let All Mortal Flesh to historically represent the Christian influence in the area around the lake as well as to give the piece a melodic basis to formulate variations. These two hymns eventually break down into other motives that twist together into a fugue reminiscent of J.S. Bach. The fugue ends with a surprise, a Latin-Swing groove that spins out to the end. The irony of the ending was represented physically in one experience that Andrew and I had walking up to the Grand Sable dunes outside of Grand Marais on a crystal clear day in the summer of 2005. Lake Superior emerged out of the shadowed woods so suddenly and the sensation was one of vastness and surprise as the water sparkled out from the white dunes.
Fog Break was inspired by the first week of our 2007 Artists’ Residency on Isle Royale National Park where our visibility range remained a constant ten feet for four days. The piece starts "in the fog, and then In the middle the fog breaks. But the break is patchy and leaves the listener to wonder if they will soon be covered by fog again. Fog Break is in a 13/8 time signature and utilizes multiphonics on the flute and has an imitation of a fog horn produced by singing into the flute.
The music for Waves and Waterfalls is inspired by rivers and waterfalls along the Lake Superior’s North Shore hiking trails between Duluth and Grand Portage, Minnesota. The movement enacts the flow of water over rocks, down gullies, through falls, and up splashes against rock formations. Andrew’s guitar part builds on a technique used by Brazilian guitarist and composer Heitor Villa-Lobos where chords move in parallel motion over open strings.
Wolves and moose are perhaps two of the most important biological features on Isle Royale, a National Park that is an island in the middle of Lake Superior. The longest running predator prey study in the world takes place on Isle Royale where researchers have been able to study these two species in a contained environment for over fifty years. Isle Royale is a forty five mile long by eight mile wide island. It is also 99% wilderness, making it an ideal place to study the interactions of wolves and moose without human factors to affect the population.
Alpha’s Last Dance is inspired by research on the island involving an alpha female wolf on the eastern end of Isle Royale that saved the wolf population on Isle Royale from extinction in the 1985. This wolf lived to be 17 years old, a ripe age for wolves. Wolves normally don’t make it past 10 years. This Alpha female’s story ended in an attack lead on a rival female wolf from another pack. Researchers last saw the Alpha female carefully eating from the ribs of her rival (although cannibalism in wolves is not common) before she vanished. No evidence of this heroic wolf’s body was ever found.
Walkabout Sparrow is held together motivically by a single call of one of the most prominent birds around Lake Superior, the white-throated sparrow. The flute part develops using the sparrow’s call, but later brings in other birds around Lake Superior such as the common loon. By the end of the work, it is as if the sparrow calls other birds around the lake into the conversation and the piece ends up sounding like a bird reunion.
Andrew Bergeron originally composed High Tide for solo guitar after he was given an assignment in graduate school to take a work by Maurice Ravel and use the form to write a new work. He later adapted High Tide for flute and guitar on Isle Royale.
Gauntlet of Death is a good title for an Iron Maiden song, but certainly unusual for the concert hall. The title ironically refers to the salmon runs in the northwest United States. My father, who works for the United States Geological Survey and studies the Salmon populations in Idaho, once told me that the passages that salmon take from streams and rivers in Idaho to the ocean and back are like a “gauntlet of death”. The 1,800 mile round trip journey that salmon in Idaho take (one of the longest salmon runs in the world) involve their passage through fourteen(!) dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers on the Idaho, Oregon, and Washington borders. “Many of them don’t make it through the turbines, or they get lost in the slack waters for the reservoirs” says my father. He quoted that in 2007 the hatchery in central Idaho released 100,000 sockeye salmon, a resident member of the endangered species list, and only five returned.
My additional thoughts if I reviewed my own CD:
Waterway presents pieces that challenge the listener's sense of time, such as Lake Superior Summer which includes a reggae section in a 7/4 meter, Fog Break which utilizes two metric modulations in 11/8, and Walkabout Sparrow which has a 13/8 ostinato in the guitar with written out bird calls over it in the flute part.
The duo also uses improvisation in two of their compositions, Approaching the Wolf's Head and Alpha's Last Dance both include sections that include improv soloing and interaction between the flute and guitar.
In writing for three different flutes (c flute, alto flute, and piccolo) the duo also sustains interest through a constant timbre change, especially in the work Calm to Storm that uses an ABA form with the alto flute for the "calm" (A section) and the "piccolo" for the storm (B section).
While the works on the CD are written to be performed as concert art music, many of the pieces are inspired and informed by social dancing. From their experiences not only and tango dance instructors, but also as arrangers and performers in a touring tango band, Carmen Maret and Andrew Bergeron perform pieces such as Lake Superior Fall that utilizes a tango beat and Alpha's Last Dance that uses a Tom Waits-like slow waltz in 3/4 with an honest sense for dance groove and rhythm.
Notes by Carmen Maret © 2008
756 Lyon Street N.E.. • Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503-4158 • 616 406 9655• www.foliasmusic@gmail.comet: