Voyage (2019)

Award-Winning composer Charlie Han seeks to find inspiration from different cultures and music genres, create beautiful music driven by attention to melodic, rhythmic, timbre texture and playful investigation of sounds. Han is a commercial music composer and producer; he composed for TV shows, games, commercials and festivals, his music has been performed in the United States and abroad, including CNN TV Program Music, San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade, Tencent Online Game Series.

Voyage was premiered by the Michigan State University Concert Orchestra in 2019. I revised it this fall as a gift of profound gratitude dedicated to the UVU Symphony Orchestra. The piece was inspired by the folk tunes of the Qiang people in China’s Szechuan province. The music rises and falls through groovy rhythms and ever-changing intervals of fourth and fifth to capture this exotic and mesmerizing motif. Throughout the piece, I strive to provide a distinct listening experience by combining both Fanfare-ish and oriental flavors with exhilarating energy and shiny rhythms. It also pays tribute to some impressive composers—Stravinsky, John Williams, Joe Hisaishi, Tan Dun, etc.—and their pieces that I had played and loved.

 

Of Our New Day Begun (2020)

Omar Thomas is an American educator, arranger and composer. Born to Guyanese parents, Omar moved to Boston in 2006 to pursue a Master of Music in Jazz Composition at the New England Conservatory of Music. Omar has been commissioned to create works in both jazz and classical styles. His works have been performed by such diverse groups as the Eastman New Jazz Ensemble, the San Francisco and Boston Gay Mens' Choruses, and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Thomas currently serves as an assistant professor of composition at the University of Texas-Austin, and has held positions at Berklee College of Music and the Peabody Conservatory. He has thrice been awarded the Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from Harvard University, where he served as a Teaching Fellow for four years. 

Of Our New Day Begun was written to honor nine beautiful souls who lost their lives to a callous act of hatred and domestic terrorism on the evening of June 17, 2015, while worshipping in their beloved sanctuary, the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. My greatest challenge in creating this work was walking the line between reverence for the victims and their families, and honoring my strong, bitter feelings towards both the perpetrator and the segments of our society that continue to create people like him. I realized that the most powerful musical expression I could offer incorporated elements from both sides of that line - embracing my pain and anger while being moved by the displays of grace and forgiveness demonstrated by the victims’ families.

Historically, black Americans have, in great number, turned to the church to find refuge and grounding in the most trying of times. Thus, the musical themes and ideas for Of Our New Day Begun are rooted in the Black American church tradition. The piece is anchored by James and John Johnson’s time-honored song, Lift Every Voice and Sing (known endearingly as the “Negro National Anthem”), and peppered with blues harmonies and melodies. Singing, stomping, and clapping are also prominent features of this work, as they have always been a mainstay of black music traditions, and the inclusion of the tambourine in these sections is a direct nod to black worship services.

 

Symphony No. 38 in D major, K. 504 (1786)

The Marriage of Figaro was greeted with only lukewarm enthusiasm by Mozart's Vienna in 1786. To the northwest, however, in the Bohemian capital of Prague, the Czechs loved it. They thronged to performances, adapted its arias into popular dances and sang its melodies in the streets. Hungry for the acclaim that continued to elude him in Vienna, Mozart set out for Prague in January 1787 to capitalize on Figaro's success.

He took with him a new symphony that he had completed in early December. Though it was probably completed before he decided to make the journey to Prague, the work has been known as the "Prague" symphony since its first performance there on January 19, 1787. K.504 is also known as “the symphony without a minuet," an unusual omission in Mozart's late symphonies. Music historians suggest that Czech audiences were accustomed to such curtailed symphonic form.  

An extensive slow introduction to the first movement presages the world of Don Giovanni. It shares the key of D with that opera's overture, as well as vacillation between major and minor modes, and sinister undertones in the majestic opening section. Many scholars consider the first movement to be Mozart's finest symphonic effort. The Allegro section overflows with the delighted exuberance Mozart must have experienced in receptive Prague. Its development section foreshadows The Magic Flute, particularly in the handling of the woodwinds.  

A relaxed Andante partially merges characteristics of both courtly minuet and cantilena. The finale, marked Presto, is mischievous and spirited, rounding out a work that is surely on par with Mozart's superb final symphonic trilogy.  

Mozart scored the "Prague" symphony for flutes, oboes, bassoons, horns, and trumpets in pairs; timpani, and strings.