Search - Duo LiveOak, Frank Wallace, Nancy Knowles :: Woman of the Water

Notes
It is odd that our popular culture has championed the guitar as the ultimate accompaniment to the voice, but as yet the classical world has not embraced this magical combination. It is my goal to create a new repertoire that speaks from and to the heart. The recording opens with Pearly Everlasting, a lament on the death of our musical partner, John Fleagle, who founded LiveOak with us in 1976. The style of this duet combines many influences, from medieval drones to 17th century lute writing with dense counterpoint freed from any metrical ties. A Single Veil sets a wide collection of verse from several cultures and eras. This piece is particularly poignant for us, as it debuted a few weeks after 9/11/01. Its texts (and tunes) helped us through that difficult time. I composed Dake's Song for guitar builder Dake Traphagen. Débil del Alba (Tenderness of the Dawn) was conceived as a duet for guitar and dancer; I wrote it for my son Adam Wallace and dancer Jessyca Dudley. The title comes from Pablo Neruda. The beasts of Bestiary are from Roethke once again, as well as Star-nosed Mole of Nancy's creation. The musical language of each varies greatly from the slow imitation and waddling rhythms describing The Sloth; an English country tune with some off-color harmonies presenting The Cow; a 15/8 meter bringing on The Lady and the Bear; while the dark world of The Star-nosed Mole is gently crawled through on a 12-tone row; and The Serpent just has to sing in some shade of blue. The newest cycle on this recording, and its title piece, Woman of the Water, is a moving group of poems by the late American poet Theodore Roethke (pronounced ret-kee). Frank Wallace