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Program - Dawn Upshaw, Gustavo Santaolalla and eighth blackbird (Thursday, October 27, 2005 - 7:30 p.m.)

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Program
  3. Program Notes
  4. About the Artists
  5. Translations

Introduction

Dawn Upshaw, Gustavo Santaolalla and eighth blackbird, with

This performance supported by Betsy Fahr in memory of Sam Fahr, and by Rhoda Vernon in memory of David Vernon.

Exclusive management for Osvaldo Golijov and eighth blackbird: ICM Artists, Ltd., 40 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019, David V. Foster, President and CEO.

Dawn Upshaw appears by arrangement with: IMG Artists, 152 West 57th Street, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10019, Tel: 212/994-3500.

Molly Alicia Barth performs on a Lillian Burkart flute and piccolo.

Matthew Duvall endorses Pearl Drums and Adams Music Instruments.

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Program

I. Songs by Gustavo Santaolalla

  1. Iguazu
    • Gustavo Santaolalla: Ronroco
    • Ensemble
  2. Porque?
    • Gustavo Santaolalla: Guitar and Vocals
    • Michael Ward-Bergeman: Accordian
  3. De Ushuaia a La Quiaca
    • Gustavo Santaolalla: Ronroco
    • Michael Ward-Bergeman: Accordian
  4. Guirnalda de Ambar
    • Gustavo Santaolalla: Guitar and Vocals
    • Dawn Upshaw: Vocals
    • Ensemble
  5. Y Siete Tambien
    • Gustavo Santaolalla: Guitar and Vocals
    • Dawn Upshaw: Vocals

II. Derek Bermel - Tied Shifts

III. Osvaldo Golijov - Ayre

  1. Mañanita de San Juan (Morning of St. John's Day)
  2. Una madre comió asado
  3. Tancas Cerradas a muru
  4. Luna (Moon)
  5. Nanni
  6. Wa Habibi (My Love)
  7. Aiini Taqttiru (My Eyes Weep)
  8. Kun Li-Guitari Wateran Ayyuha Al-Maa' (Be a String, Water, to My Guitar)
  9. Suéltate las cintas (Untie Your Ribbons)
  10. Yah, Anna Emtzacha (Oh, Where Shall I Find You?)
  11. Ariadna en su Laberinto (Ariadne in Her Labyrinth)

Featuring

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Program Notes

Tied Shifts (2004)

Derek Bermel (b. 1967). Written for eighth blackbird with funds from the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Commission of The Greenwall Foundation.

Derek Bermel has been widely hailed as clarinetist, composer, and jazz and rock musician. He has been featured at numerous international music festivals, and his commissions have included those from the National, Saint Louis, Albany, and New Jersey Symphonies, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, American Composers Orchestra, De Ereprijs (Netherlands), Birmingham Royal Ballet, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, New York International Fringe Festival, and cellist Fred Sherry. He has also received many of today's most important awards, including the Rome Prize, Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships, and residencies at the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, Tanglewood, Banff, and Yaddo. As clarinetist, he has premiered dozens of new works, including his clarinet concerto, Voices, which created a sensation when it was premiered at Carnegie Hall and performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, and Boston Modern Orchestra Project. His first recording, a disc of his chamber music, was recently released. Derek Bermel is the founding clarinetist of Music from Copland House and co-founder, music director, and co-artistic director of the Dutch-American interdisciplinary ensemble TONK. About Tied Shifts, the composer writes:

In August of 2001, I traveled to Plovdiv, Bulgaria to spend a month working with the great Bulgarian folk clarinetist Nikola Iliev. Fascinated by the melodies in odd meters executed at lightning speeds, I desired to gain firsthand knowledge of the Thracian folk style by learning to play the songs from a master musician. In transcribing melodies with compound meters—5/8, 7/8, 9/8 (sometimes), 11/8, 13/8, 15/8, and combinations thereof—I was particularly struck by the practice of tying melodic notes over a barline, resulting in an obscuring of the meter. This process made it virtually impossible to guess the meter of a song simply by listening, as downbeats could conceivably be inaudible. Thus, though implied and felt, the odd metrics of a song could remain unstressed; the knowledge of the "base" meter would be for players and familiar listeners alone. To make matters even more confusing to an uninitiated ear, tied notes were often decorated with mordents—I use the term generally designated for inflection similar to the baroque ornamentation—leaving the impression that the meter was in a state of constant flux, shifting with each passing measure. These impressions are those of a Western musician, and they became the points of departure for this piece. I attempted to fashion philosophical and physiological implications of the tied shifts into a work that structurally owes more to Western than to Thracian music.

Mordents occupy a central place in this piece, on both local and larger formal levels. The inflections generate their own material, and melodies are spawned from the contour of the rising mordent itself. The shape of all the melodic material stems from an obsessively repetitive cell that rises to a mordent-inflected appoggiatura, then inches up farther, always clinging to its origin. I imagined this tension—manifest throughout the work—as a physical being determined to stretch itself, to explore the outer edges of its horizon, but continually finding itself snapped back, as if tethered by an invisible rubber band its place of origin.

Within the octatonic harmonic language of the first movement, I emphasize certain chords, notably a particular inversion of the "sharp 9th" chord that forms the harmonic underpinning for several of my earlier pieces and that—though also derived from the same scale—would not be found in Bulgarian music. The second movement opens in a different harmonic world—a diatonic hymn, derived from the opening melodic material. As the hymn is overlaid with a variation of the original octatonic melody, the two harmonic fields collide and the mordents and inflections often assume the quality of "blue" notes. A second, mostly octatonic, hymn appears, this time in tight harmonic clusters typical of folksong settings rendered by Bulgarian women's' choirs.

During the writing process of Tied Shifts, I had considerable trouble deciding how to notate the agogic accents so that Western players would be able to negotiate the difficult rhythmic displacements most effectively. For their patience in considering several versions of the notation, I acknowledge the wonderfully competent and thorough musicians in eighth blackbird, for whom this piece was commissioned. Special thanks to Lisa Kaplan who initiated the collaboration, to the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Commission from the Greenwall Foundation, Yaddo, and to Barbara Eliason, Daniel Nass and Maggie Heskin, who provided invaluable assistance along the way.

-- Derek Bermel

Ayre

A Counterpoint of Cultures

Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960), commissioned by The Carnegie Hall Corporation through the generosity of The Maria and Robert A. Skirnick Fund for New Works at Carnegie Hall.

"Most people are principally aware of one culture, one setting, one home; exiles are aware of at least two and this plurality of vision gives rise to an awareness of simultaneous dimensions, an awareness that—to borrow a phrase from music—is contrapuntal." [Edward Said, from Reflections on Exile (2000)]

Osvaldo Golijov's life and music reflect an enormously complex personal geography. Born into an Eastern European Jewish family transplanted to Argentina, he was profoundly influenced by his years in Jerusalem, that unique crossroads of overlapping, intertwined, and conflicting cultures. His work grows naturally out of these experiences, true to music's ability to be deeply rooted in a specific place and, paradoxically, at the same time to transcend borders and cultural boundaries. At his childhood home in Argentina, Golijov heard European chamber music, Jewish traditional chants and klezmer melodies, as well as encountering the new tango pioneered by Astor Piazzolla. A crucial turning point in his career as composer came in the form of a commission from conductor Helmuth Rilling to write a large-scale musical telling of the Passion story in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of Bach's death in 2000. La Pasión según San Marcos combines the vibrancy of Latin American musical traditions and Jewish liturgical chant while remaining true to the spirit of the Bach Passions.

Soprano Dawn Upshaw has been an important muse and collaborator for Osvaldo Golijov. His first work for her, the beguiling song Lúa descolorida (1999), was subsequently incorporated into La Pasión and, in another orchestration, forms the centerpiece of his Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra (2002). She created the title role in Ainadamar (2003), Golijov's first opera, written with the playwright David Henry Hwang and based upon the life of Federico García Lorca. That same year, Carnegie Hall invited Dawn Upshaw to curate a two-year series of programs for the legendary auditorium as well as to help inaugurate the new Zankel Hall, an innovative underground performing space designed to embrace a wide range of musical traditions. It was perhaps inevitable that both the soprano and the hall would turn to Osvaldo Golijov to create a work that celebrated the artist and the new venue.

The initial inspiration for Golijov's Ayre came from the desire to create a companion work for Luciano Berio's Folk Songs (1964), a pioneering work that draws upon traditional melodies from America, Armenia, Sicily, Genoa, Sardinia, the Auvergne and Azerbaijan.

Golijov's Ayre—meaning "air" or "melody" in medieval Spanish—largely centers on southern Spain with its intermingling of three cultures (Christian, Arab and Jewish) in an era before the expulsion of the Jews in the late 15th century. The varying degrees of coexistence and conflict among these cultures have continued to reverberate into our own time. "With a little bend, a melody goes from Jewish to Arab to Christian," Golijov says. "How connected these cultures are and how terrible it is when they don't understand each other. The grief that we are living in the world today has already happened for centuries but somehow harmony was possible between these civilizations." Like Berio, Golijov draws upon a highly eclectic and personal selection of sources. The texts are in Ladino (the lost language of the Spanish Jews, the Sephardim), Arabic, Hebrew, Sardinian and Spanish. These words encompass a wide range of human experience, from love and jealousy, to raucous rage and to religious yearning and prayer. Golijov explains that "the idea is to create a ‘forest' and for Dawn to walk in it. There is no real sense of ‘form'—in the sense of Beethovenian development—but rather lots of detours and discoveries."

Golijov has scored the work for a richly colored chamber ensemble. The music originates both as found objects—a Sephardic lullaby or a Christian Arab Easter hymn—and from original melodies. "Most are well-known melodies that I arranged," the composer has said, "but some I made up. For example, for the first song I took a Sephardic romance. I don't know if it ever had music but I wrote a tune for it." The tale told in the song takes a most unexpected turn, beginning with the epic and quickly turning sardonically personal. "I love how the song zooms and telescopes from a huge battle to an unrequited love story." The purity of Dawn Upshaw's soaring voice is put to use in the high-lying cantilena of yearning in that first song, echoing the klezmer-tinged clarinet solos inspired equally by David Krakauer, one of the world's most celebrated klezmer innovators. But a very different and wholly unexpected side of the soprano's musical character is evident in the wild-eyed ranting of the third song "Tancas Serradas a Muru," based on an 18th-century Sardinian song. "I told her, look, this is a theatrical situation," says Golijov. "Imagine that you are at the front of a mob basically come to overthrow the power." The raw, snarling energy of the vocal setting perfectly suits the crazed dance of fury that ensues.

Much of Ayre calls for the simplicity and directness of utterance natural to a singer of folk songs. Dawn Upshaw grew up in the 1960s and ‘70s in a politically active household in which she joined her parents and older sister in an informal singing group. That early experience serves her well in some of Ayre's most touching and intimate moments, notably the lovely ninth song, "Sueltate las Cintas," one of two written by Golijov's close friend and frequent collaborator, composer-producer Gustavo Santaolalla.

To the largely historic texts, the composer adds a poignant commentary from the contemporary Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, an eloquent poet of exile, whose plea is astonishingly timely and timeless: "Be a string, water to my guitar,/ Conquerors come, conquerors go. . . / It's getting hard to remember my face in the mirrors./ Be memory for me/ So I can see what I've lost./ Who am I after these paths of exodus?" The first appearance of these words stands in stark contrast to the rest of the work—this is the only portion of the work that is spoken and in English. The Darwish poem returns again in the tenth song, now fragmented and alternating with a haunting setting of a 12th_century Sephardic call to prayer by Yehudah Halevy. This is for four voices only, all of them belonging to Dawn Upshaw—one speaking the words of Darwish, the other three, electronically layered, singing the Sephardic call to prayer. The first appearances of the prayer are for two voices characterized by Golijov in the score as "Harsh/Pain." These are joined eventually by a third sung voice labeled "In Wonder." As this voice begins to soar, it grows nearer; the pained voices begin to recede. In the words of Halevy: "Oh God, where shall I find You?/ Your place is high and hidden./ And where shall I not find You?/ Your glory fills the World." In this mingling of long-distant past and the present day, in this perpetual counterpoint of cultures, Ayre finds blessed grace.

-- Ara Guzelimian (Senior Director and Artistic Advisor at Carnegie Hall)

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About the Artists

Dawn Upshaw, joining a rare natural warmth with a fierce commitment to the transforming communicative power of music, has achieved worldwide celebrity as a singer of opera and concert repertoire ranging from the sacred works of Bach to the freshest sounds of today. Her ability to reach to the heart of music and text has earned her both the devotion of an exceptionally diverse audience, and the awards and distinctions accorded to only the most distinguished of artists.

Her acclaimed performances on the opera stage comprise the great Mozart roles (Pamina, Ilia, Susanna, Despina) as well as modern works by Stravinsky, Poulenc and Messiaen. From Salzburg and Paris to the Metropolitan Opera, where she began her career in 1984 and has since made nearly 300 appearances, Upshaw has also championed numerous new works created for her including The Great Gatsby by John Harbison; L'Amour de Loin by Kaija Saariaho; John Adams's nativity oratorio El Nino; and Osvaldo Golijov's chamber opera Ainadamar and song cycle Ayre, recently recorded for Deutsche Grammophon.

Ms. Upshaw opened the 2005-06 season at the Santa Fe Opera in a new Peter Sellars production of Ainadamar, which will be revived in January as part of Lincoln Center's Great Performers festival "The Passion of Osvaldo Golijov." The festival also features Upshaw in Ayre, which she tours in October with the instrumental ensemble eighth blackbird. She joins David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony in a season opener singing Henri Dutilleux's Correspondances, a work she premiered with the Berlin Philharmonic, and continues to Boston and Carnegie Hall with James Levine and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in performances of Lukas Foss's Time Cycle. Other season highlights include guest appearances with Richard Goode at Carnegie Hall as part of the Perspectives Series; the world premiere of John Harbison's Milosz Songs with the New York Philharmonic and Robert Spano; performances of John Adams's El Nino at Walt Disney Hall with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Esa Pekka Salonen; a first-time collaboration with Mstislav Rostropovich and the National Symphony Orchestra; a European tour with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Richard Tognetti, and a U.S. recital tour with pianist Gilbert Kalish.

It says much about Dawn Upshaw's sensibilities as an artist and colleague that she is a favored partner of many leading musicians, including Richard Goode, the Kronos Quartet, James Levine, Sir Simon Rattle, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. In her work as a recitalist, and particularly in her work with composers, Upshaw has become a generative force in concert music, having premiered more than 40 works in the past decade. From Carnegie Hall to large and small venues throughout the world she regularly presents specially designed programs composed of lieder, unusual contemporary works in many languages, and folk and popular music. She furthers this work around the country in master classes and workshops with young singers at major music festivals, conservatories, and liberal arts colleges. She is a member of the faculty at the Tanglewood Music Center, and in 2006 begins an association with the Bard College Conservatory of Music for which she has designed a master's degree program in the vocal arts.

A three-time Grammy Award winner, Dawn Upshaw is featured on more than 50 recordings, including the million-selling Symphony No. 3 by Henryk Górecki. Voices of Light—her most recent Nonesuch solo recording with pianist Gilbert Kalish—features music of Messiaen, Debussy, Golijov and Fauré. Her discography also includes full-length opera recordings of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro; Messiaen's St. Francoise d'Assise; Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress; John Adams's El Nino; two volumes of Canteloube's "Songs of the Auvergne," and a dozen recital recordings. Upshaw has also recorded several beloved Nonesuch discs of American music theater repertoire, which she has offered with the Chicago Symphony and the Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras, as well as at London's Proms Festival and on radio and television. She is featured on three recent NPR "Creators at Carnegie" programs, in live performances of Bach, Bartók, Berio, Golijov, and Mozart. She was the subject of a one-hour Bravo profile, and has been a featured performer in numerous PBS productions, including a hosting role on Evening at Pops' "Copland Centennial Celebration."

Dawn Upshaw holds honorary doctorate degrees from Yale, the Manhattan School of Music, Allegheny College and Illinois Wesleyan University. She began her career as a 1984 winner of the Young Concert Artists auditions and the 1985 Walter W. Naumburg Competition, and was a member of the Metropolitan Opera Young Artists Development Program. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, and raised in Park Forest, Illinois, she now lives near New York City with her husband and their two children.

Gustavo Santaolalla started his professional music career in 1967 at 16, when he founded the group Arco Iris, which made history as a pioneer in the fusion of rock and Latin American folk music. He has since become the most important name in Latin Alternative music, having won multiple Grammys for his work with Café Tacuba and Juanes. He has also produced critical and commercial successes for the million-album-selling Mexican group Molotov, as well as Julieta Venegas, Maldita Vecindad, Caifanes, León Gieco, Los Prisioneros, and Divididos, among others. After the launching of his SURCO label, he also played a major role in producing music for his label's roster of artists, including Bersuit, Arbol, and La Vela Puerca. Most recently he has entered the world of film music, scoring and producing the soundtracks to Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu's Amores Perros and 21 Grams, and Walter Salles's Motorcycle Diaries.

eighth blackbird, described by The New Yorker as "friendly, unpretentious, idealistic and highly skilled," promises its ever-increasing audiences provocative and engaging performances. It is widely lauded for its performing style—often playing from memory with virtuosic and theatrical flair—and its efforts to make new music accessible to wide audiences. A New York Times reviewer raved, "eighth blackbird's performances are the picture of polish and precision, and they seem to be thoroughly engaged…by music in a broad range of contemporary styles." The sextet has been the subject of profiles in the New York Times and on NPR's "All Things Considered"; it has also been featured on CBS's "Sunday Morning," "St. Paul Sunday," "Weekend America" and "The Next Big Thing," among others. The ensemble is in residence at the University of Richmond in Virginia and at the University of Chicago.

Highlights of eighth blackbird's 2005-06 tenth anniversary season include a California tour, with stops in Los Angeles, La Jolla, Stanford and Davis; a performance at New York's 92nd Street Y; and the group's debut concert at Boston's Celebrity Series. eighth blackbird will showcase its virtuosity in three innovative programs during the season. A tenth-anniversary program, "lucid, inescapable rhythms," features significant works honoring the ensemble's mentors and collaborators. A tour of Osvaldo Golijov's song-cycle Ayre with soprano Dawn Upshaw, and a special collaboration with the Blair Thomas & Co. puppet theater and soprano Lucy Shelton, performing a cabaret-opera version of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, round out the trio of presentations.

Last season eighth blackbird made its western European debut in Amsterdam, as well as its Toronto debut. In previous seasons the sextet has appeared in South Korea, Mexico and throughout North America, including performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, the Metropolitan Museum, the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the La Jolla Chamber Music Society, and it has performed as soloist with the Utah Symphony and the American Composers Orchestra. During the summers the group has appeared several times at the Great Lakes Music Festival, Caramoor International Music Festival, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and Cincinnati's Music X, and has also appeared at the Tanglewood Music Center and the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival.

Since its founding in 1996, eighth blackbird has been active in commissioning new works from eminent composers such as George Perle, Frederic Rzewski and Joseph Schwantner, as well as ground-breaking works from Jennifer Higdon, Derek Bermel, David Schober, Daniel Kellogg, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Jefferson Friedman and the Minimum Security Composers Collective. The group received the first BMI/Boudleaux-Bryant Fund Commission and the 2004 NEA/CMA Special Commissioning Award, and has received grants from BMI, Meet the Composer, the Greenwall Foundation, and Chamber Music America, among others.

The ensemble is enjoying acclaim for its three CDs released to date on Cedille Records. The first, thirteen ways, featuring works by Perle, Schober, Joan Tower and Thomas Albert, was selected as a Top 10 CD of 2003 by Billboard magazine. beginnings, featuring Kellogg's Divinum Mysterium and George Crumb's Vox Balaenae, was summed up by the New York Times: "The performances have all the sparkle, energy and precision of the earlier outings…It is their superb musicality and interpretive vigor that bring these pieces to life." eighth blackbird's third disc for Cedille, fred, with three works of Rzewski, was released in June 2005. The San Francisco Chronicle reported: "The music covers all kinds of moods and approaches, from dreamy surrealism to caffeinated unison melodies, and the members of eighth blackbird deliver it all with their trademark panache." A fourth CD, titled strange, imaginary animals, is scheduled for release on Cedille Records in fall 2006.

eighth blackbird is active in teaching young artists about contemporary music and, in addition to their residencies, has taught master classes and conducted outreach activities throughout the country, including the Aspen Music School System (grades K-12), the La Jolla Chamber Music Series, the Candlelight Concert Series and Hancher Auditorium at The University of Iowa.

The members of eighth blackbird hold degrees in music performance from Oberlin Conservatory, the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory and Northwestern University. The group derives its name from the Wallace Stevens poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." The eighth stanza reads:

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know

Visit the ensemble's official website for more information.

Osvaldo Golijov grew up in an Eastern European Jewish household in La Plata, Argentina. Born to a piano teacher mother and physician father, Golijov was raised surrounded by chamber classical music, Jewish liturgical and klezmer music, and the new tango of Astor Piazzolla. After studying piano at the local conservatory and composition with Gerardo Gandini he moved to Israel in 1983, where he studied with Mark Kopytman at the Jerusalem Rubin Academy and immersed himself in the colliding musical traditions of that city.

Upon moving to the U.S. in 1986, Golijov earned his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied with George Crumb, and was a fellow at Tanglewood, studying with Oliver Knussen. In 1990, Golijov received Tanglewood's Fromm Commission, resulting in Yiddishbbuk, which was premiered there by the St. Lawrence String Quartet in 1992. They were the first group of players to dive into Golijov's volatile and category-defying musical world and project it in its true, full form. In 2002, EMI released Yiddishbbuk, a Grammy-nominated CD of Golijov's chamber music, celebrating ten years of collaboration with the SLSQ, featuring also clarinetist Todd Palmer.

While at Tanglewood, Golijov became personally acquainted with the Kronos Quartet. This relationship, now more than a decade old, has become a central one to Golijov. He has collaborated on more than 30 works with them, including a series of arrangements of music from all over the world. Many of them appear in the CDs Caravan and Nuevo, both on the Nonesuch label. The continued collaboration with the Kronos Quartet also allowed Golijov to work with artists such as the gypsy band Taraf de Haïdouks (who also participated in the recording of Golijov's soundtrack for Sally Potter's film The Man Who Cried, starring Johnny Depp and Cate Blanchett), as well as the Mexican rock band Cafe Tacuba, Klezmer master David Krakauer, tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, legendary Argentine musician and producer Gustavo Santaolalla, and the Mexican film director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams).

In 2000, the premiere of Golijov's St. Mark Passion took the music world by storm. It was commissioned by Helmuth Rilling for the European Music Festival to commemorate the 250th anniversary of J.S. Bach's death. The piece featured the Schola Cantorum of Caracas, with the Orquesta La Pasión (especially assembled for this work by Golijov together with percussionist Mikael Ringquist), all conducted by Maria Guinand. The CD of the premiere of this work, on the Haenssler Classic label, received Grammy and Latin Grammy nominations in 2002.

Golijov has received numerous commissions from major ensembles and institutions in the U.S. and Europe and is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, among many other awards. His music is performed regularly by musicians such as Robert Spano, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Dawn Upshaw, Luciana Souza, Gidon Kremer, the St. Lawrence, Kronos and Borromeo quartets, and orchestras such as the Boston Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has been composer-in-residence at Merkin Hall in New York, the Spoleto USA Festival, the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Music Alive series, Marlboro Music, Ravinia, and several other festivals. Golijov is an associate professor at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, where he has taught since 1991. He is also on the faculties of the Boston Conservatory and the Tanglewood Music Center.

Recent works include a one-act opera, Ainadamar (Fountain of Tears), with a libretto by David H. Hwang, commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra for the Tanglewood Music Center. The premiere featured Dawn Upshaw in the main role, and Robert Spano conducting the Tanglewood Music Center Vocal Fellows and Orchestra. The opera was co-produced by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which presented it during the Walt Disney Hall's inaugural season with the same cast and Miguel Harth-Bedoya conducting the orchestra, and Lincoln Center, which will present it in New York in early 2006. In summer 2005 Ainadamar premiered at the Santa Fe Opera in a new production directed by Peter Sellars.

In March 2004, a set of folksongs, Ayre, featuring Dawn Upshaw and commissioned by Carnegie Hall, was premiered as part of the inaugural season of the new Zankel Concert Hall. For Ayre Golijov created a new group: The Andalucian Dogs, a collective of virtuosos, which also recorded the work for Deutsche Grammophon. Future projects on Deutsche Grammophon include recordings of Golijov's cantata Oceana, featuring Luciana Souza, the Atlanta Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, and his opera Ainadamar, with Dawn Upshaw and the Atlanta Symphony, all conducted by Robert Spano.

In January 2005, the European Broadcasting Union televised Golijov's last work to date: TEKYAH. This work was commissioned by the BBC especially for a film commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and was filmed there, performed by David Krakauer, Michael Ward-Bergeman and the Sinfonietta Krakovia.

Mr. Golijov is currently writing a symphony commissioned by director Francis Ford Coppola, to be used as the basis for the soundtrack of his next film, Megalopolis. Next projects include works for the Kronos and St Lawrence quartets, and for Yo-Yo Ma with the Boston Symphony.

In January and February 2006 Lincoln Center will present a festival called "The Passion of Osvaldo Golijov," featuring multiple performances of his major works, chamber music, late nights of tango and klezmer, and a night at the Film Society.

His works are published by Ytalianna Music Publishing and recorded on Nonesuch, Sony Classical, Hanssler Classics, Naxos, Koch and EMI.

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Translations

Mañanita de San Juan (Morning of St. John's Day)

In the morning of St. John's Day
Moors and Christians went out to war
They were warring, they were dying
Five hundred on each side.

Rondale, admiral of the seas,
Was taken captive.
His sword broke and in the middle of the battle
He found himself in prison and started to cry.

The princess heard him from the heights of her castle:
"Don't cry, Rondale, don't harm yourself
I'll give you 100 gold marks and
Whatever else you want
You'll marry me, my vineyards and brooks."

"May bad fire burn your vineyards
Your brooks and your homes
I have a wife in Paris: that's the one I marry"

When the princess heard this
She had him killed.

Una Madre Comió Asado (A Mother Roasted her Child)

And a mother roasted
and ate her cherished son:

"Look at my eyes, mother.
I learned the law with them

Look at my forehead, mother,
I wore the phylacteries there

Look at my mouth, mother:
I learned the law with it."

Tancas Serradas a Muru (Walls Are Encircling the Land)

Walls are encircling the land
Seized with greed and in haste,
If Heaven was on Earth
They would grab it too!

Luna (Moon)

Nanni

Sleep my sweetheart, sleep...
Sleep, apple of my eye.
Your father is coming,
And his spirits are high.

Open the door, wife.
Open the door
Because I'm coming
Tired from plowing the fields.

I will not open to you.
You are not tired.
I know you are coming 
From the house of your new love.

Wa Habibi (My Love)

My Love, My Love
What has befallen you?
Who saw you and grieved for you,
You who are righteous?
My Love, what is the sin of our times and our children?
These wounds have no cure.

Aiini Taqttiru (My Eyes Weep)

My eyes weep without pause
For there is no rest
Until God reveals Himself and gazes from the sky
I raised my prayers in Your name,
O God
Do not withhold your ear
Listen to my voice and come today.

Kun Li-Guitari Wataran Ayyuha Al-Maa' (Be a String, Water, to My Guitar)

Be a string, water, to my guitar,
Conquerors come, conquerors go...

It's getting hard to remember my face in the mirrors.
Be memory for me
So I can see what I've lost.

Who am I after these paths of exodus?
I own a boulder that bears my name
On a tall bluff overlooking what has come to an end.
Seven hundred years escort me beyond the city walls.
Time turns around in vain to save
my past from a moment that gives birth
to the history of my exile
in others and in myself.

Be a string, water, to my guitar.
Conquerors come, conquerors go...
Heading south as nations decompose
on the compost of change.

I know who I was yesterday,
But who will I be tomorrow
Under the Atlantic flags of Columbus?

Be a string to my guitar, water, be a string.
There is no Egypt in Egypt, no
Fez in Fez, and Syria is too far away.
No hawk on the flag of my people,
No river running east of a palm tree besieged
By the Mongols' swift horses.

In which Andalusia did I meet my end?
Here, in this place?
Or there?

I know I've died, leaving behind what is
Best of what is mine in this place: my past.

I've got nothing left but my guitar.
Be a string, water, to my guitar.

Conquerors come, conquerors go.

Sueltate las Cintas (Untie Your Ribbons)

Untie the ribbons of your hair and your skirt:
let's devour the night until dawn comes, just like this,

Barefoot girl.

We don't need the sky when you have my back
and I embrace your waistline, just like this.

Your silvery waistline.

If tomorrow, in the village, you laugh by yourself, wait,
keep the secret in which you carry me, just like this.

Weed, flower, honey and sand.

Yah, Anna Emtzacha (Oh, Where Shall I Find You?)

Oh, where shall I find You?
Your place is high and hidden.
And where shall I not find You?
Your glory fills the World.

I have sought Your nearness.
I called upon You with all my heart.
And in going out to meet You
I found You coming toward me.

Ariadna en su Laberinto (Ariadne in Her Labyrinth)

"Why do you cry fair child?
Why do you cry, white flower?"
"I cry because you leave me"

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The University of Iowa Center for Macular Degeneration
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