Carpe Diem String Quartet - Montana

Korine Fujiwara MONTANA "Fiddle Suite: Montana" is a piece about family, about traditions, and about the state in which I was born and raised, Montana. It is a work in five movements, written in a jazzy/ bluesy/fiddle style. Montana is the 4th largest state in the USA, after Alaska, Texas, and California. However, in the entire state, there are fewer than one million people, an average of around six persons per square mile. The first movement, "Montana," is scored very transparently, starting with solo violin, to represent the great vastness of this state, adding a solo viola, with a "cowboy lullaby" in the middle, and then finishing again with the two solo instruments to close the movement. The second movement "Stillwater Gorge," interrupts the quiet peace of the first movement with a jig in the 2nd violin which, later in the movement, morphs into a reel in the first violin. The Stillwater Gorge is one of my favorite places in Montana, in the Woodbine Campground area of the Beartooth Mountains. The Stillwater River, known for it's fly-fishing, is anything but "still" in this part of the country. Centuries of rushing water have carved a great canyon into the side of the mountain, so when walking around the gorge, to one side of the path the rocks appear ready to crash down upon the viewer, and the other side is met with a steep drop off, ending in churning whitewater rapids with a boiling energy. I tried to reflect this energy in the movement. The third movement is entitled "Walkin' in the Water," and is more of a personal nature. My parents love to share tales of an early "composition" by me as a toddler. They tell the story of taking me on a walk after a rainy day, and there were puddles of water everywhere. I apparently was marching around, singing a little song while stomping in the water that goes like this, "Walk, walk, walkin' in the water, Don't, go, walkin' in the water." (mi; do; so so do do re re; mi; do; so so do do re re) I have used this little song as an ostinato, and built the third movement around it. The fourth movement, "Cherry Blossom," honors the traditions from my father's side of the family. My father is half Japanese. One tradition his family kept and he also shared with us was: in the spring, we would sing the Japanese folk song "Sakura" (which means "Cherry Blossom") when the cherry trees would start to bloom in our yard, in our own family's celebration of the Cherry Blossom festival. He taught us the words in both Japanese and in English. I have taken the melody of Sakura, and slightly manipulated it into a major key, and have used it as the basis of the movement and have woven it throughout the piece. To me, this movement represents the beauty of the "now" and the precious thing that we know of as life, and how important it is to hold on to the moment, because like the delicate cherry blossom, life is fragile, and the winds of change come unexpectedly and blow petals to the wind, scattering our plans and ideas. We must celebrate and respect today, for we can know nothing of tomorrow. The fifth movement, "Peasebottom," honors the traditions from my mother's side of the family. Music has always been an important part of family gatherings. I grew up surrounded by music, but this was not the music of Mozart or of Beethoven. It was fiddle music. At every reunion, wedding, birth, funeral, holiday, or similar occasion when people were likely to gather, my relatives would show up with guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and/or a bass in hand, and there was always a piano where ever we gathered. If someone didn't play, they always sang. We would seat ourselves in a circle and make music, learn music, share music, create music, and commune with music. One place where this frequently happened was at my grandmother's very modest cattle ranch, located in an area known by the locals as Pease Bottom, named after General Pease stationed at Fort Pease during the Indian Wars. Pease Bottom is in the Yellowstone River Valley, surrounded by rolling hills and sandstone cliffs, and will forever be a special place for me. The piece Peasebottom is a hoedown in which I tried to capture the joy and exuberance of these family gatherings. For those of you who have never been to Montana, I hope this musical soundscape helps to share a few of the reasons I love my birthplace. For those of you who have visited, I hope you enjoy this return journey with all of us! ~Korine Fujiwara Entangled Banks "It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us... There is grandeur in this view of life, with it's several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species "Entangled Banks" for string quartet was composed during the summer of 2008. Inspired by the words of Charles Darwin, it is a musical landscape inspired by five existing entangled banks I encountered while composing this work. The melodic motif C-D-G-D is derived from Darwin's initials and God, symbolizing the juxtaposition of Darwin's theory of evolution and religion. This motif is interweaved with notes taken from the song of the Varied Thrush, one of two migratory birds who were the source of inspiration for this work. "Tarboo Creek" The piece begins with notes mimicking the song of the Varied Thrush followed by Swainson's Thrush, migratory birds, two of many encountered in the Pacific Northwest, where the first section of the piece is set. Reclaimed by the Department of Fish and Wildlife for coho salmon and cutthroat trout, Tarboo, with it's "re-meandered" twists and turns, cuts a path through a heavily wooded area on the Olympic Peninsula, next to the Olympic Music Festival grounds. Occasional patches of sunlight dapple the stream and the forest is filled with a deafening chorus of bird songs entwined with phrases of Beethoven and Schoenburg radiating from the "concert hall," a rustic barn set on a former dairy farm. Adaptation and change mirror each other here in both stream and farm, as both thrive in their present states, altered from their beginning forms. "Snake River" The Snake River winds it's way through central Colorado, passing through the village of Keystone. In places the water rolls quietly over rounded river stones. The polyrhythm of the chirping crickets and birds living in the protected wetland area are the only interruptions of sound. Dragonflies patrol the marshy areas, while large fish hide in shady places, and the long grasses and willows hide an abundance of unseen creatures observing the human who sits in their midst. "Peru Creek" Usually a cheerful running stream in Summit County, Colorado, in this particular encounter Peru Creek was a tumultuous maelstrom. Having started a hike to the top of Torreys Peak via Grizzly Peak a little on the late side of the morning, our group of hikers was chased off the summit by an early afternoon thunderstorm. In an attempt to get below treeline as quickly as possible, we quickly descended without regard to established paths and headed down a slope of scree and talus. Having lost our trail, fighting our way through the wet brush of the thick willows as we were being pelted by hail as well as rain proved to be slow, tedious, and painful. We ended up sloshing through the middle of Peru Creek for a few miles at top speed while the lightning continued to chase us through the valley. The violent force of the swollen stream, the treacherously slippery rocks