[#284] December 30, 2024
2019 | Wind Ensemble | Grade 4 | 5' - 10' | Tone poem
La flor más linda by American composer, vocalist and visual artist Gilda Lyons is our Composition of the Week.
La flor más linda was commissioned by Glen Adsit for premiere by Foot in the Door Ensemble, Edward Cumming, conductor, at the CBDNA National Convention in Tempe, AZ.
It was premiered at this convention on February 22, 2019.
It has a duration of 6 minutes, and it is scored for the following set:
2(picc)2.2.bcl.2.
ssax.asax.tsax.bsax/2.1.1.0.
pno.perc(2)-db
“In September 2018, as protesters from Nicaragua's Carazo region prepared to march against the increasingly dictatorial Ortega government, my tios (my aunt and uncle) wrote us with pictures of blockades and descriptions of the armed forces that awaited protesters. A world away, I responded by recording and posting a verse of Carlos Mejia Godoy's Nicaragua, Nicaraguita, a song that has become as clear a symbol of the resistance as the blue and white Nicaraguan flag. It was a cry into the abyss, but, to my surprise, it actually landed with dear ones and their friends in Nicaragua who wrote that they felt our family standing with them. From this urgent sense of reaching across distance through music grew la flor mas linda, written for Glen Adsit, Edward Cumming, and the Foot in the Door Ensemble. With arms outstretched through sound, sonic images I associate with Nicaragua are slammed together: the basilica bells that toll freely during the Festival of San Sebastián; the pito and chischiles of the dance of the Toro Huaco, for which stand in flute and maracas; the firecrackers that announce celebration; scalar gestures that conjure the strong wind that blows through Diriamba, my mother's home town; fragments from Los Amores de Abraham, a tune my grandfather and his brothers played in their ensemble Marimba Diriangen; and a single gesture from Godoy's Nicaragua, Nicaraguita. Despite an impulse to center on vibrant imagery, celebratory sound mutates into the sinister, and song becomes lament. Estamos con la gente de Nicaragua, siempre. Viva Nicaragua libre.” Program notes by Gilda Lyons
Dr. Gilda Lyons holds a B.A. in music composition, vocal performance, and visual arts from Bard College (1997), where she studied with Joan Tower and Daron Hagen; an M.A. in music composition and theory from the University of Pittsburgh (2001), where she studied with Eric Moe and Anne LeBaron; and a Ph.D. from The State University of New York at Stony Brook (2005), where she studied with Daria Semegen and Peter Winkler. Lyons also studied voice, first at Bard with Arthur Burrows, then privately with heldentenor Barry Busse.
Current projects as composer include Corazón de Esperanza, commissioned by Esperanza Arts Center for the Dalí Quartet, percussionist Ben Toth, and Gilda Lyons, vocalist; commissioned works for HAVEN Trio, 534 Productions, Wintergreen Music, and soprano Laura Strickling; and consortia commissions for University of Missouri Kansas City Conservatory and ASPIRE. Recent premieres include commissions by Brooklyn Art Song Society, Lyric Fest, Mid-American Conference Band Directors Association, Musica Viva NY, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Quince, and Resonance Works.
Lyons serves as composer-in-residence for Chautauqua Opera Company, co-chair of the composition program at Wintergreen Summer Music Academy, Va., and as visiting assistant professor of composition at The Hartt School, Conn. She is artistic and executive director of The Phoenix Concerts, New York's "intrepid Upper West Side new-music series" (The New Yorker), and serves on the board of advisors of Composers Now and the Steven R. Gerber Trust.
Other Works for Winds include:
• Cenizas (2022)
• You are here, for wind quintet (2024)
More on Gilda Lyons