About this work:
CRIES AND ECHOES is best explained by a short allegory: The cellist, weary of the busy world he lives in and his many duties, walks in the woods to relax and renew. While there, he hears the swaying maple trees scrape against each other, an unearthly yet very familiar sound, reminding him that his very cello is the child of the maple tree. Entranced, he sits beneath the trees and contemplates his hectic life, hearing in his mind the scurry and endless bustle of contemporary life, and wondering where is the room for classical music in such a world.
The cellist thinks longingly of a past era when concerts and classical music were held in higher esteem, and he falls asleep thinking of the J.S. Bach Suite No. 5 in C Minor, which he has just been practicing. In his dream, several cellists are performing, and echoes of the Suite float by. He joins them with his cello, but his music is different. He is not of the past, and he can only comment on the music, with his owns voice, but not be a member of that hallowed group. He cries out in sorrow, and awakens.
Awakened by the vibrating trees and their plaintive song, he suddenly realizes that all music has its birth in Nature, that Mother Nature is the lead composer, and all instruments come from the earth. The beauty of the forest voices, including the birds in the trees, explains our music, be if from Bach, Brahms, Brubeck, and even McLean.
In CRIES AND ECHOES, all of the recorded sounds are from the cello played by Ronald Feldman (The Boston Symphony), as he worked with the composer Priscilla McLean on both sounds and cello images for the video and CD, and Mr. Feldman premiered the work in 2009 at Williams College, Williamstown, MA. The most obvious quotation from Bach is from the beginning of the Sarabande in his Suite No. 5 in C Minor, transcribed up an octave, which can be heard in a duet with a McLean melody two-thirds through the piece in the recorded music. The music as a whole is surrealistic and haunting, and explores the whole range of the cello. The DVD version has both recorded music, same as the CD, and uses tree and forest images at the beginning and end. The rest explores the cello in a surrealistic and colorful way, enhancing the soloist's performance.