Shulamit Ran

Mixed.
A commission from the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, for any combination of instruments of her choosing, quickly sparked Shulamit Ran to create a trio for Flute, Viola, and Harp. She writes of this instrumentation: “something about its color palette reminded me of the image I have of Santa Fe as a sun-drenched city of warm hues, a thriving arts scene, and a spirit of relaxed tolerance.” In this subtle-yet-dramatic work, the instruments begin the journey with distinct, contrasting musical personalities, which gradually begin to coalesce, though not without surprise twists along the road.
A commission from the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, for any combination of instruments of her choosing, quickly sparked Shulamit Ran to create a trio for Flute, Viola, and Harp. She writes of this instrumentation: “something about its color palette reminded me of the image I have of Santa Fe as a sun-drenched city of warm hues, a thriving arts scene, and a spirit of relaxed tolerance.” In this subtle-yet-dramatic work, the instruments begin the journey with distinct, contrasting musical personalities, which gradually begin to coalesce, though not without surprise twists along the road.
Being commissioned by the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival to create a new work for the major milestone of its 50th anniversary was both an honor and a special delight. My choice of the flute, viola, and harp combination for this composition was reached quickly and almost instinctively, motivated not only because I relished the thought of composing for an instrumental ensemble I had not previously written for, but also because something about its color palette reminded me of the image I have of Santa Fe as a sun-drenched city of warm hues, a thriving arts scene, and a spirit of relaxed tolerance.In All Roads Leading I treat the instruments intermittently as three distinct characters who have their own individual “voices” and musical materials, while at other times they coalesce into a single, more unified entity. In the sections expressive of the instruments’ individual “souls”—as I like to call them—the music ranges from the songful, to the impassioned, but also the volatile. In contrast, where all three instruments act as a single entity, the music tends to be highly rhythmic, sometimes dance-like, even angular, and spiky.As the work progresses, the boundaries between these contrasting approaches become deliberately blurrier and more intertwined, perhaps reminding one of a tale with various twists and turns in the plot. And although eschewing a formal recapitulation, various motivic threads as well as emotive “states” are eventually brought full circle, as if to fulfill an intended role that crystallizes only as All Roads Leading plays out its full journey. Simultaneously with the general unwinding and relaxation that is reached nearthe end, a mutation of an earlier more threatening element appears at the very closing of the work, perhaps a reminder that the unknown always lies ahead.

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