A thumbnail diary of a commission

I’d have to say this all started with my friend and former teacher, Yehuda Yannay.

I first heard about Stas Venglevski from Yehuda, in an exchange in which he described his piece My Main Squeeze, written for trumpet, cello and bayan (a Russian accordion). Stas, an acclaimed authority of the bayan hailing from Moldova, played in March 2001 at the University of Wisconsin as part of a conference of the Wisconsin Alliance for Composers. Shortly after I saw that performance, Yehuda began to suggest that I write a piece for Stas.

The prospect of writing for accordion was a mixed blessing. My earliest experience with the accordion was a brief lesson from my father in second grade; the adult-size accordion was a bit too large to be a comfortable experience. Moreover, I could never reconcile the chord buttons of the left hand of the accordion to the myriad possibilities of a piano keyboard.

My view of the accordion began to change in the late 80’s, with my very accidental discovery of the band The Pogues (wow, the accordion is capable of more than polkas and waltzes!), and even more by a chance decision to catch a duo-accordion concert by Guy Klucevsek and Pauline Oliveros at the Woodland Pattern.

Still, it wasn’t until after chance meeting with a group of Russian musicians in 1997 that I wrote my first piece involving accordion, a brief trio entitled E-Valse. A suite of short pieces for accordion followed in 2007, as a 60th birthday present for a composer friend. But even then, the prospect of writing a large piece for bayan was something I approached with some trepidation, amplified by the fact that anything I knew about writing for a conventional keyboard was not going to be much help.

Still, Yehuda kept suggesting that we get together.

Finally, Stas and I met in early June of 2012. I proposed writing a 15 to 20 minute, multi-sectional piece for bayan. Sketching began a couple weeks later, with a clean copy emerging at the end of August. Email flowed fast and furious during the early weeks of September, alternating between technical questions about the bayan and finished pages of the score. To my happiness and relief, none of the emails were answered with “David, there is a problem.”

I titled the composition Fantasy to connect with my earlier pieces of the same name. I settled on the subtitle Gathering Threads. The images of a weaver selecting the materials to become the warp and weft on their loom fit with the flow of the piece, beginning with a two-part texture that spins ever more complex.

While a premiere early in 2013 was contemplated, the premiere date was finally set for September 20th, just over a year after the completion of the piece. In the interim, Stas surprised me by recording my pieces the Suite and the E-Valse— the latter with Misha Litvin and Roza Borisova– and I was amazed at how uncannily the recordings matched what I heard in my head.

I met with Stas on two occasions during the summer of 2013 to go over the piece and was thrilled to hear it come together. Very little needed to be said about Stas’ interpretation of the piece, as he grasped the character intuitively.

Now all that waits is the first public presentation of the piece.

Fantasy: Gathering Threads will receive its first performance on Friday, September 20, at 7:30 PM in the Recital Hall of the Peck School of the Arts, UWM. Stas is joined by former MSO associate concertmaster and current Lawrence faculty member Samantha George. Tickets are $12, $10 for seniors, and free to students and faculty, available online, on-site, or at (414) 229-4308.