2015 Events Archive Table |
Using the Events page:To view an event, simply click on the title text from the Table of Contents below. Doing so will take you to a description of the event and associated images. Clicking on the image will present a higher resolution version, clicking again restores the original image. At the bottom right of each detailed description, you will find a "top" link that will move you to the top-of-page and a "toc" (or table-of-contents) link that will move you there. Happy viewing!
--Webmaster
|
|
SEPTEMBER 2015
Marmalade and Great Conversation!
Monday, September 28th, 2015
Filmscorer, TV composer
David Raiklen
(who is a cordial and brilliant moderator of
Composer/Performer/Industry Panels and guests at the
Ravel Orchestration Workshop,
Studio City) met with
Carol Worthey
and her husband
Ray Korns
on a busy Monday (September 28th, 2015) at David's gracious
invitation.
Many fascinating anecdotes and insights into composing,
career and life were shared over a delightful breakfast at
cheery
Marmalade Cafe
on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, California. David
is so busy that he impressed Carol and Ray by multi-tasking
during all the lively conversation (not missing a beat)
because of all the recording coming up under his charge ---
a man who multi-tasks (extraordinary) and Carol and Ray
never felt neglected.
On this page is Ray's photo of
David Raiklen
and
Carol Worthey
at the table to give you an idea of the sparkle of
conversation and warmth.
David Raiklen
is one of the forces keeping the momentum and collaborative
spirit of the
Ravel Orchestration Workshop
going (after founder of the workshop and Academy of Scoring
Arts famous TV composer
Ron Jones
has gone into a delightful semi-retirement and moved to his
"mountain" paradise up North) What is the Ravel? A topnotch
group of composers (both emerging, student as well as
renowned), arrangers, performers, techie and recording or
film industry folks get together once a month at
Vitello's
Jazz Room to study various genius examples of orchestration
skill. In the past it has been Ravel's
"Daphnis & Chloe",
Copland's
"Appalachian Spring",
John Williams'
"Star Wars"
orchestral suite.
September's meeting featured the start of our score study of
Leonard Bernstein
's
"Symphonic Dances from West Side Story"
and featured videos of different interpretations of the
music (notably by Bernstein as conductor of the Israeli
Philharmonic and by
Gustavo Dudamel
conducting the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra.)
David Raiklen
interviewed Ravel Guest Speaker, famous Trumpeteer
Rick Baptist
and newly elected Vice-President at Musicians Union Local
47 in Hollywood, California. The interview was fascinating
and informative and covered many different areas of interest
and concern among composers and performers today. Rick has
retired from being one of the busiest and most respected
studio musicians in Hollywood to undertake handling some of
these concerns and intends to bring back a lot of the movie
jobs to Hollywood that have gone far afield. He is such an
ace.
David Raiklen
's interview was genius — he really knows how to bring
a guest speaker to the fore.
|
AUGUST 2015
Ten Composers and Five Great Sightreaders Flourish with
NEW MUSIC
at ASMAC Woodwind Quintet Reading Session!
Saturday, August 22nd, 2015, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Los Angeles City College
Music Band Room
Music by Carol Worthey
American Society of Music Arrangers & Composers (ASMAC)
presented a superb Reading Session with some great studio
musicians displaying their sightreading chops and
musicality:
Karin Hoesli
, flutist;
Dave Kossoff
, oboist;
Helen Goode Castro
, clarinetist;
Melissa Bulger Hendrickson
, hornist, and bassoonist
Chuck Fernandez
, read through the ten woodwind quintet works that
participating composers had created after attending the
ASMAC Writing for Woodwind Quintet Master Class run by
Chuck Fernandez
a month or so earlier.
On October 18th ASMAC will present all these works in a
special Woodwind Quintet Recital (location and time not yet
announced.)
Carol Worthey
says,
"The fact that the "Writing for Woodwind Quintet" Master
Class produced ten new pieces or suites by Los Angeles area
composers is outstanding --- a sign of how informative and
inspiring the ASMAC workshop was. Thank you, ASMAC and
Chuck Fernandez
."
Other composers participating (partial list) were
Deon Nielsen Price
,
Jeannie Pool
, and
Berkeley Price
who kindly conducted Carol's work as well as Deon's.
Here (from the Reading Session) is the recording of
Carol Worthey
's new woodwind quintet work,
"Home",
the first movement of her suite
"Journey"
for woodwind quintet.
The rest of the
"Journey"
suite will (after
"1. Home"
) be:
"2. Restless for Adventure", "3. Departure", "4. Danger at
The Crossroads", "5. Magical Encounter", "6. Endless
Horizon", "7. Home at Last".
Truly this work is designed to take the listener on a
"Journey."
|
|
|
|
MAY 2015
A Choral Calendar" Is Inaugurated!
A superb choir performs "May" on May 15th, 2015
Unistus Chamber Choir, Lonnie Cline, Director
Music by Carol Worthey
Inspiration can come as a gentle breeze or as a whirlwind.
One morning Carol Worthey read a poem on facebook that
someone had posted, depicting February. Carol answered it
with a poem about March, her birth month. What followed was
a breathless rush of words, as poems describing month after
month flooded into her universe, images and internal rhymes
and ironies lifting her into a veritable whirlwind of words,
almost faster than she could write them down. As Carol
wrote, what came to her that intense morning was how unique
each month actually is (the weather, the moods, the
holidays, the challenges and joys of each month) and yet
there is a reassuring flow from one season to the next that
rounds out the year in a circle of time. At the end of that
breathless morning, twelve poems were complete and could
have existed just as they were, but Carol Worthey is, after
all, a composer. She knew that expressive music would bring
the sensation of the passing year alive, so she decided to
set the "months" to music for choir.
A Choral Calendar
was born.
Once she had completed the settings of all twelve months, it
was ready for a superb Southern California chamber choir
that had previously premiered an earlier work --- the choir
director had requested the work and was all set to begin
rehearsals. However, no sooner was the last note added to
the score than Carol was dismayed to find out that the choir
had folded due to unforseen but unavoidable financial woes.
The search for an equally superb choir began. It would
demand a brilliant choral director and a choir with perfect
intonation, expressive phrasing and sensitive balance to
take on the challenge of rehearsing and performing this
major work, a versatile and varied 38-minute
a cappella
piece. This was not something a mediocre choir could even
attempt.
This search was to take several frustrating years. One
morning at Ravel Orchestration Workshop, Carol expressed
this frustration to her friend and founder of the workshop,
renowned TV filmscorer (Star Trek Next Generation; Family
Guy) and jazz bandleader Ron Jones (who had graduated with
Carol Worthey in the same class years ago at Grove School of
Music). Ron Jones suggested Choral Director Lonnie Cline
and his Unistus Chamber Choir. Ron was just about to go for
a two-day honorary celebration of his music and career at
his alma mater Clackamas College in Oregon where Lonnie was
an esteemed professor and music director. What a great
colleague and friend: Ron volunteered to take Carol's full
score there. When Maestro Cline looked at the score, he
understood it, he loved it and savored all its subtleties
and pizzaz. He even expressed to Carol that the overall work
made sense structurally in the way it moved through the
months with dramatic energy. Specifically, this is what
Lonnie wrote:
"Wow, I just finished outlining the harmonic scheme
for your Choral Calendar and again I'm knocked out! I have
always believed that great music is like great poetry. Some
poems tell an easily accessible story with a descriptive
narrative and most readers get the message right away. Other
poems are steeped in image and the reader is intrigued but
in awe with curiosity. The greatest poetry, in my opinion,
combines a strong narrative supported by profound image.
And, that's what you have done in a delightfully fresh
manner! I can't wait to begin rehearsing this bouquet of
notes and rhythms with my ensemble. It will be fun to get
their impression and feedback. Indeed...you knocked it out
of the park! Congrats!"
--- Lonnie Cline Choral Director
--- Lonnie Cline Choral Director
What a joy it is for a composer to be understood and
appreciated by a truly fine musician! And so Carol Worthey
is indeed proud to announce that the superb Unistus Chamber
Choir will world-premiere all of "A Choral
Calendar" in 2016! After extensive rehearsal, Lonnie
chose to give a little "preview" to whet the
appetite of his wide public in the area. And so
"May" was presented as part of
Inspiration... if music be the food of life
, a concert held in
Portland, Oregon at the First Christian Church on May 15th,
2015. Here is "May" from
A Choral Calendar
, ably performed by the
Unistus Chamber Choir under the direction of Lonnie Cline.
|
|
|
|
|
MARCH 2015
Music & Food
Art Fusion
World Premiere of
"The Ice Cream Sweet"
(Suite for Solo Piano)
Stanley Wong, Piano
Music by Carol Worthey
On March 15th, 2015 in Hong Kong Pianist
Stanley Wong
presented his very original concept
First Loves: Music & Food
Concert, the occasion for many delightful pieces by
contemporary composers from around the world, including
Boris Kozak
and
Judith Lang Zaimont,
and the World-Premiere of a work he commissioned from
Carol Worthey,
The Ice Cream Sweet
for Solo Piano. Apparently, as
Stanley Wong
tells it, the audience was completely rapt and enraptured
throughout the entire eighteen-minute work, with no
coughing, no sound whatsoever, just completely "with him"
during the performance! How delicious is that?!! Afterwards,
everyone enjoyed scrumptious dishes and desserts.
Carol's idea for the commission was to create a varied suite
of solo piano pieces depicting a spectrum of flavors chosen
to represent just some of the huge variety of tastes and
ingredients popular around the world. These would be
expressive, pianistic pieces that had the "flavor" (mood,
characteristics, and essence) of a select group of flavors,
almost like a tasting trip around the globe. When conceiving
the title, Carol decided to spell "suite" like "sweet"!
To unify the different sections and moods Carol employed a
similar approach to
Moussegorsky
's
Pictures at An Exhibition,
in that interludes, introductions and marches were
interspersed between the movements as connections to
transition from one "flavor" to another. The work begins
with a
Grand March of Flavors
that leads to
Vanilla Goes with Everything
— a charming turn-of-the-century march (vanilla was
first introduced at an International Exposition during the
Belle Epoque). A bell-like exotic interlude follows that
introduces
Ginger
(an Aria with a piquant, spicy and passionate lyricism
— think
Puccini
's
Madama Butterfly
or
Turandot
). Then a rhythmic and exciting
March for All Things Chocolate
begins the celebration of that beloved flavor introducing
one of the most unique pieces in the suite:
Double Fudge Chocolate Fugue,
a contrapuntal work based on the spelling of "fudge" with
the theme being F-D-G-E. An amusing anecdote details the
origin of this particular piece: When
Stanley Wong
heard that Carol had decided to compose a work in honor of
Double Fudge Chocolate, he misread "fudge" to be "fugue" and
thus was born the idea of actually creating a real fugue.
Following the fun formality of the fugue comes
Mango Meets Coconut,
a bossa-nova tropical smooth-jazz type work that contrasts
perfectly with the fugue. A radiant and romantic
Falling in Love
introduces
The Romance of Coffee and Butter Pecan
(Carol and her husband Ray's favorite flavors). Next
The Melting of Mint Chocolate Chip
features passages in staccato in imitation of the tiny
"chips." The gourmet delight of
Cherries Jubilee
(cherries in brandy over vanilla ice cream set aflame) is
serenaded in a passacaglia (repeated harmonic base that
builds in rhapsodic feeling), then nearly at the end is a
wild, dissonant, humorous depiction of
Rocky Road
with its chunks of chocolate, nuts and marshmallow, very
virtuosic and fun. The suite concludes with a return of the
Grand March of Flavors
and ends literally with a bang!
Carol Worthey
says, "Ice Cream! After the wheel, I honestly consider Ice
Cream to be the second best invention in human history.
After all, no one has been killed in the making or eating of
this delightful concoction... not to my knowledge. It is my
hope to evoke happy memories for children of all ages in
this work so that listeners actually feel as if they have
had a wee taste of each flavor and experience a return of
joy, playfulness and sweet times!"
