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ArpaViva S001:
A Compendium of Catskill Native Botanicals, from Book 2: Athrium filix-femina:
LADY FERN
Jason Eckardt
PREMIER RECORDING OF THE PIECE BY
VICTORIA JORDANOVA
“In 2014 I began a long-term project to compose several short
“character” pieces based on plants native to the region of upstate New York where I live. Lady Fern is inspired by the deciduous perennial that is ubiquitous throughout the Catskills. The long, tapered fronds often undulate with the slightest breeze, suggestive of the swirling gestures and suspended, languid melodies found in my composition.”
– Jason Eckardt
“For me as a performer, this was an immensely inspirational piece. The mere sound of the plant’s Latin name Athyrium filix-femina stirred up my imagination. I was curious to read about this elusive feathery species of ferns native of shady woodland environment. And so I set out to paint in sound the gestures that the score called forth and to explore the mysterious ambience of the music.”
– Victoria Jordanova
Jason Eckardt (b. 1971) played guitar in jazz and metal bands until, upon first hearing the music of Webern, he immediately devoted himself to composition. Since then, his music has been influenced his interests in perceptual complexity, the physical and psychological dimensions of performance, political activism, and the natural world. He has been recognized through commissions from Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, the Koussevitzky and Fromm Foundations, Chamber Music America, New Music USA, the Guggenheim Museum, Meet the Composer, and the Oberlin Conservatory and awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the League/ISCM, Deutschen Musikrat-Stadt Wesel, the Aaron Copland Fund, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Eckardt’s music has been performed at major festivals including the Festival d’Automne in Paris, IRCAM-Resonances, Tanglewood, ISCM World Music Days, Darmstadt, Musica Strasbourg, Voix Nouvelles, Musik im 20. Jahrhundert, and Musikhost; and recorded on several labels with two portrait albums on Mode, and a third on Tzadik. His complete catalog is published by Carl Fischer. Eckardt teaches composition at City University of New York’s Graduate Center and Brooklyn College and lives in the Catskill Mountains.
Jason Eckardt’s wesite:
www.ensemble21.com/eckardt/home.html
Victoria Jordanova is an American composer, harpist and media artist born in the former Yugoslavia. Jordanova melds experimental techniques, electronics and improvisation with her classical music education. Wishing to create her own sonic world Jordanova extends harp playing technics resulting in a “unique lexicon of timbre, sonority and color” (Stereofile, November, 1997). Working both as a composer and a performer with singularity of vision “she has single-handedly revised the script for harp and harp music.” (Fanfare Magazine, December 2010) Recordings of Jordanova’s music were published by Composer’s Recordings Inc., Innova, and ArpaViva labels. Her music was included in CRI’s The Composer-Performer 40 Years of Discovery, Anthology of American Music. Her 1997 album Dance to Sleep, featuring her new works for traditional harp with different electronic modules applied to each piece and published in CRI’s Emergency Music series, received critical acclaim “for having brought harp into the 21st century.” (Village Voice, New York, 1997) With ArpaViva label Victoria Jordanova produced first ever published recording of John Cage’s Postcard From Heaven for 1-20 harps in 2007 and album In A Landscape dedicated to works for solo harp by different American composers. Victoria Jordanova holds Bachelor of Arts in harp performance, from Michigan State University where she studied with Lauralee Campbell, and received her Masters of Arts in Musicology from New York University. She was awarded the French government fellowship for harp graduate studies with Jacqueline Borot, professor of harp at the Paris Conservatoire. While in Paris, Jordanova was an Artist-in-Residence at the Cité International des Arts.
Victoria Jordanova’s wesite:
victoriajordanova.com