Commissioned by The Columbia School of the Arts in 2018 to commemorate the Year of Water, Mundoagua was meant to have its world premiere in 2019 in the Miller Theater at Columbia University. This was rescheduled because of the global pandemic caused by the Novel Coronavirus. It was a strange coincidence, because so many of the sub-themes in the narrative of the composition have to do with global crises caused by neo-fascism and the death throes of predatory capitalism, which are fundamental reasons for all human suffering - - and global warming with its resulting climate disasters, including the breaking of temperature records and cataclysmic weather events daily, if not hourly.

Still, the composition is neither optimistic nor doomsaying. It is a journalistic approach to telling the story of how a species is slowly, irrevocably killing its host, so that corporate entities benefiting a handful of reprobate individuals can engorge themselves while millions die.

Still, this is not the source of my inspiration. What is, is the inalienable free will that determines individual comportment. Ultimately, we have the choice to be cognizant of our individual contributions to global warming.

Mundoagua begins with the movement entitled Glacial. It is a study of four meditations on the gift of water. It begins with five prayers and a benediction loosely based on the five daily prayers found in the Islamic tradition, Fajr, Zuhr, Asr, Maghrib and Ishra. These are loosely represented by the initial composed (most prayers are formally structured) trumpet statements and then a setting of repose, which begs the four meditations that the trumpet players improvise (meditations are improvisatory).

The four meditations are based on four vast perspectives that we glean from a prayerful examination of the power and majesty of water. They are drop, sky, sea, and forest. Each succeeding meditative setting reflects the intensifying nature. A restatement of the setting of repose and we go to the second movement.

The second movement is called Mundoagua and is the contemporary setting where we find ourselves now. There are three thematic structures. The first is the initial whirlwind of a sudden awakening to impending crisis which is followed by a news-show-sounding fanfare.

I believe the 24-hour news cycle and its profit driven mantra of divisive repetition is as responsible for the rise of hatred as it is for the denial of capitalist driven climate suicide.

The movement continues with the sounds of melodic fragments swirling as if caught in a tornado or a hurricane. I originally composed this piece to be played by musicians scattered throughout a performance space so the audience could sense the fragmentation and flow of liquid and debris in a very intentional decision to imply not only the connection we have with our environment but with each other

This sound painting of whirling tornadoes and hurricanes is interrupted by a very clear reference to desertification which is also raging across the planet. The woodwind and trumpet “deserts” are reproduced musically and with individual notated instruction for the musicians to run out of breath. This section ends with the cold sound of an increasingly more mechanized world where drones, robot dogs, driverless taxis, food delivery robots, AI and the like continue to destroy jobs and wreak havoc in society, again so the handful can destroy life for the vast.

The third movement is the most vexing of all. The Politics of Water is a depiction of the collusion between elected officials and profiteering. From the purchase of a Supreme Court Justice by high level right wing political interests, to the conviction of countless elected officials on corruption charges, the list goes on. Whether Flint, Michigan to Los Angeles and beyond, the murky politics of clean water is always tainted by the flow of money into the pockets of politicians who are more interested in that flow than the H2O kind.

This movement begins with melodic groupings (duets and trios) that are somewhat alike but differ enough to confuse the thematic clarity. This is not unlike the language of politicians, which employs buzz words that sound similar to one another but deviate enough for the politician to sound like they are offering a unique message. The inevitable trope of patriotic American exceptionalism is represented by the Star Strangled Banner quotation.

The problem with exceptionalism is that it’s the very thing which makes the claimant unexceptional. Every country on earth sings this sad refrain and it is exactly the unprogressive, backwards stanza that denies true enlightenment, global thinking that could solve fascist territorialism, climate cataclysm. God forbid, we should ever have to fight extraterrestrials. Come to think of it, we’d be fucked!

The cacophony ends with an explosive bongo solo, and a single trombone note segue into what I call my greatest hope. This section is undergirded by a hidden and then blatant heartbeat. The voices of confusing, similar sounding blather become a canon of harmonious intercourse. A gathering of ideas in the pursuit of what is good for the whole as opposed to individual, or tribe.

Underneath it all, the heartbeat, the telltale sign that we still live, we still have choice autonomy, free will and that we can choose global survival. This planet has the resources to clothe, feed, educate and fill every human being with dignity and hope. We are not on that path and nowhere near it, in fact we are running viciously in the opposite direction towards our inevitable extinction, but………close your eyes…….listen….listen to your heartbeat, listen for the heartbeat of those you know and those you don’t. Those who are like you and those who differ greatly, therein is the key to our communal survival.
Just listen………

Blue Palestine

Carla Bley is iconic. Truly one of the greats. Her name should be used with the same reverence and deference we use when we speak of Duke Ellington, Aaron Copland, Gil Evans, Charles Mingus and even Chico O’Farrill (though the jazz gatekeepers still relegate him to the Mambo Lane). Perhaps if Carla were born with a different chromosome ratio, we would speak of her differently but then don’t get me started on the male domination of everything jazz. Thank God (whoever she is) it’s beginning to change.

A personal note. As a teenager I found myself playing in a bar in rural upstate New York with my stoned-out jazz nerd friends. We were playing originals mostly, and not standard “standards”. It was a tiny place and there were probably three people in the audience. As it turned out one of them was Carla. Several days later back in the City, her husband at the time, the great composer and trumpet player Mike Mantler reached out to me to invite me to meet Carla.

I went to New Music Distribution Service at 500 Broadway (Carla was innovative decades ago when she launched an independent label and her own distribution network) to meet Carla. She looked me up and down and invited me to join her band. Suddenly, I went from playing for beers in rural New York to playing as a headliner at the Berlin Jazz Festival. But this is not about career or even music. It’s about Carla giving a long-haired freaky kid a chance to experience her genius.
Carla’s giving me my first big break was an exceptional moment in my life. Not so much because it gave my career a Head Start but because I had up close exposure to a true artist who gave me my wings. She showed me the three most important ingredients a composer can have.

Curiosity, Integrity and Accuracy. The curiosity to follow one’s muse no matter where it leads. The integrity to execute based on that curiosity no matter what awards, polls, or magazines reward, and the accuracy to execute that vision with command of your skill set no matter how prodigious or rudimentary it is. Oh, and she also reminded me and all of us not to take it so seriously, that humor in music is not only appropriate at times but exquisite when applied accordingly.
We lost Carla almost a year ago. I had no clue that her passing would affect me so deeply. I was beside myself that day. When one loses a guiding light, two things happen. One is lost at first and then one must figure out how to navigate without that spirit guide. I realized that Carla has been the biggest influence in my work as a composer and much to my amazement, I was able to partially repay that grace by commissioning her final work. If this isn’t a full circle, I’m not sure I understand the meaning of that phrase. Calling her to discuss the commission, she asked me if I minded her “experimenting” with Middle Eastern and South Asian sounds. The result is Blue Palestine. It is based on her recollection of the old Simba movies of the 1950’s.