Une Recette Pour Le Portage De Gingembre-Chanson
Jack W. Stamps
About this work:
My grandmother gathers, sorts and prepares the ingredients for 3-Ginger Squash soup- Crystallized ginger, ginger root, powdered ginger, onion, squash, etc. She does so methodically and joyously. Accompanying her are songs, wafting from a nearby room, from her recently acquired BOSE® Wave® music system (despite my wholehearted efforts to convince her of how bad it really sounds). She watches my dog while I drive into school. I walked in one day to pick Nic up, and into this scene. The scents and sounds were oddly hard to tell apart. This piece…this scene…is dedicated to her, and all of her saintliness, as a sort of ‘thank you” for all that she does. If I could have, I would have composed the piece in ‘scratch and sniff’.
It was a great joy to be able to collaborate with Kristen Waligora. I learned much more about scoring for the guitar than I had hoped for. I want to thank her as well.
Version: Final
Year composed: 2005
Duration: 00:04:30
Ensemble type: Solo instrument, non-keyboard:Guitar (Classical/Acoustic)
Instrumentation: 1 Other Voice
Instrumentation notes: The phantom vocalist should be performed as such: Using a pair of inexpensive, innocuous walkie-talkies, the vocalist, who is to be offstage and out of site to the audience, will sing into one walkie-talkie while the other, which is
on and ready to receive a signal, is to be placed inside the body of the guitar on stage. Careful attention should be paid to the balance of the voice emanating from the guitar. The vocal melodies should be discernible but not prominent. The ambient sounds of the vocalist offstage must not be heard and may require not only a gentle, controlled singing voice, but some distance between the vocalist and the guitarist. Naturally, this distance should not exceed the distance the walkie-talkies are rated for.
a small onstage mic and back stage amplification system may be employed to ensure proper monitoring between the performers. The overall effect from the point of view of the audience should be that the guitar itself is singing.
The singer can sing the excerpts in one of 2 ways: 1. In conjunction with a pitched instrument for starting pitch only. 2. use an mp3 player to playback mp3 samples provided on enclosed disc, singing along with them into the walkie-talkie as per instructions in the score.