FRANK STEMPER, COMPOSER
Blue 13 (2014)
for solo piano [8:40 mins.]
World Premiere by Junghwa Lee 3 October 2014 at the Bacau New Music Festival in Romania
and
recorded by Junghwa Lee on the Albany Records (TROY 1555) recording of
"Frank Stemper — The Complete Music for Piano"
Opus 77 — A.S.C.A.P. work I.D. 886839200
SCORE
and
recorded by Junghwa Lee on the Albany Records (TROY 1555) recording of
"Frank Stemper — The Complete Music for Piano"
Opus 77 — A.S.C.A.P. work I.D. 886839200
SCORE
PROGRAM NOTES:
As a kid, performing jazz piano was my entrée into music. I first learned my trade by mimicking jazz players and then by gigging, well before I was old enough to go into the bars where I performed. I then gravitated toward Beethoven and those cats, absorbing the larger more involved forms, and later the composers who were pushing the extremes, or, if you will, advancing the art form. I was home. But Jazz is my Classical music. That influence is infused in everything I’ve written for the past 40+ years, but BLUE13 is the most overt reference to my Jazz core.
As I age as a person and composer, I find myself embracing my roots. My music is becoming more exposed in regard to technique and style. I am not concerned with trying to stretch the musical esthetic as I did when I was a younger composer. I am more interested – desperate, in fact – in getting the music written, saying what I have to say. I am not trying to fit into any genre of music, nor out to impress. I am simply explaining myself, whatever that means, wherever it leads, whatever good it does. I have always written for the listener, but I cannot alter what I am doing to reach them — that would be false. There is only one way to say what I have to say, and it is up to the audience to absorb it. So I will not “dumb-down” my music. But neither will I “dumb-UP” my music for what Samuel Barber called the Minority Elite.
I consider music a very personal experience, for the musicians, for the listeners, and for the composer.
As a kid, performing jazz piano was my entrée into music. I first learned my trade by mimicking jazz players and then by gigging, well before I was old enough to go into the bars where I performed. I then gravitated toward Beethoven and those cats, absorbing the larger more involved forms, and later the composers who were pushing the extremes, or, if you will, advancing the art form. I was home. But Jazz is my Classical music. That influence is infused in everything I’ve written for the past 40+ years, but BLUE13 is the most overt reference to my Jazz core.
As I age as a person and composer, I find myself embracing my roots. My music is becoming more exposed in regard to technique and style. I am not concerned with trying to stretch the musical esthetic as I did when I was a younger composer. I am more interested – desperate, in fact – in getting the music written, saying what I have to say. I am not trying to fit into any genre of music, nor out to impress. I am simply explaining myself, whatever that means, wherever it leads, whatever good it does. I have always written for the listener, but I cannot alter what I am doing to reach them — that would be false. There is only one way to say what I have to say, and it is up to the audience to absorb it. So I will not “dumb-down” my music. But neither will I “dumb-UP” my music for what Samuel Barber called the Minority Elite.
I consider music a very personal experience, for the musicians, for the listeners, and for the composer.
PRESS NOTICE
BLUE13
—performed by Junghwa Lee
"Blue 13, Stemper’s most recent piano work (all of the pieces save the first are pre- sented in chronological order), and in it he hearkens back to his jazz roots, hinted at in the Second Sonata, but overt here. This, I should emphasize, is not a jazz piece, but it is the next thing to it. The stylistic hallmarks of the other works on this disc are heard in this work as well, but they are unquestionably filtered through the sieve of jazz."
David DeBoor Canfield
Fanfare vol. 39, No. 1 2015
BLUE13
—performed by Junghwa Lee
"Blue 13, Stemper’s most recent piano work (all of the pieces save the first are pre- sented in chronological order), and in it he hearkens back to his jazz roots, hinted at in the Second Sonata, but overt here. This, I should emphasize, is not a jazz piece, but it is the next thing to it. The stylistic hallmarks of the other works on this disc are heard in this work as well, but they are unquestionably filtered through the sieve of jazz."
David DeBoor Canfield
Fanfare vol. 39, No. 1 2015