“ Interestingly, the work that tried to please the least was the most compelling. Hayes Biggs’ piece Ave Formosissima harkens back to the dance-mad, melismatic and slightly raucous music of the Middle Ages. But the score, with its zig-zagging lines and pungent dissonances, is genuinely contemporary.”
—New York Times
“ A Consuming Fire, a short, zesty trio by Hayes Biggs, led off the evening. The piece is framed by some engagingly angular rhythmic writing, with a lyrical nougat at the center.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“ [The] most convincing and coherent performance [was] Hayes Biggs’ homage to his composer/pianist colleague Eric Moe, E.M. am Flügel, a short piece with romantic gestures and echoes of Berg and Stravinsky.”
—Aufbau
“ The Mass for All Saints would be an exciting challenge for those choirs skilled in precise intonation and rhythmic agility. Biggs writes with knowledge of and respect for the expressive capabilities of the human voice.”
—Choral Journal
“ Hayes Biggs’s wedding motet Tota Pulchra Es, here being sung for the first time, impressed by its quiet solemnity and neat working of its expressive opening motif: not empty fanfares but a reminder of the seriousness and privacy of love.”
—New York Times
“ Mass for All Saints by composer Hayes Biggs releases shadows transformed into tendrils of light by the arabesque of the vocal line. Contrapuntal procedures are used to their utmost expressive effect. [It] is a work of a melodist of talent in the manner of Puccini, or better yet, Respighi.”
—La Liberté
“ The Biggs song, Northeast Reservation Lines, is a real party piece... the sneakiness of the changes, the liveliness of the music and the verve of the performance worked handily... a potential recital hit in the vein of Bernstein’s I Hate Music cycle.”
—The Village Voice
“ All the works tried a return to tonality typical of the decade; the most successful made the return oblique and ambiguous. Hayes Biggs’ O Sacrum Convivium took off from the motet of Tallis, yet it handsomely reconfigured early modes in a modernistic scheme of free tonality.”
—New York Times
“ Hayes Biggs’ To Becalme His Fever... is a vivid evocation of anxiety, fits and repose. The language embraces pointillistic colors, romantic lines and prickly episodes when the demons hover. Biggs claims a forceful and subtle dramatic hand, along with a keen command of instrumental resources.”
—The Plain Dealer
Dear Friends, Family, and Colleagues,
Though I am a child of the 1960s and 70s who grew up with the pop and rock music of that era, it is only recently that I started attempting to incorporate the musical vernacular of my misspent youth into my work as a composer. A few years ago I began setting John Keats’ The Eve of St. Agnes, for soloists, choir, and a chamber orchestra comprised not only of traditional “classical” instruments, but also including two electric (and acoustic) guitars, an electric bass, and a drum set. Working on that piece has given me a new confidence that the various, seemingly disparate and incongruous facets of my musical language can coexist in a way I couldn’t have imagined possible earlier in my life.
Because of my responsibilities teaching at Manhattan School of Music I haven’t had the luxury of returning to the Keats setting for any sustained length of time since last summer, but the upcoming Rockquiem concerts by C4 have afforded me a chance to continue exploring this side of my creative personality on a more modest scale. Though I have been using certain “stealth” jazz and rock elements in my music for the past decade, these concerts will mark the first public performances of a piece of mine using actual rock instrumentation. C4 has put together a program that includes a newly composed collaborative setting of a traditional Roman Catholic Requiem Mass in Latin, with different composers from within C4 contributing movements from that liturgy. Though I began singing with C4 in 2010, the last time I performed with them was two years ago, when we did another piece of mine (O Oriens/Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern). It will be a pleasure to be in the audience for this premiere. Please join me if you are able!
My contribution to Rockquiem is the Offertorium (Domine Jesu Christe), which uses not only the rock trio but an electronic wind instrument that acts as a surrogate for an alto sax. It features a mostly gentle, laid-back groove (with occasional outbursts), and ends with a quiet, meditative, quasi-minimalist postlude whose texture gradually dissipates.
Bryan Lin is the excellent conductor, and the excellent instrumentalists are:
Oren Fader, electric guitar; Billy Stark, electric bass; Will Hopkins, drums; and Evan Fontaine, electronic wind instrument.
Text and Translation:
Domine Iesu Christe, Rex gloriæ,
libera animas omnium fidelium defunctorum
de pœnis inferni et de profundo lacu:
libera eas de ore leonis,
ne absorbeat eas tartarus,
ne cadant in obscurum.
(O Lord Jesus Christ, King of glory,
deliver the souls of all the faithful departed
from the pains of hell and from the bottomless pit:
deliver them from the lion’s mouth,
that hell swallow them not up,
that they fall not into darkness.)
Hostias et preces, tibi, Domine, laudis offerimus:
tu suscipe pro animabus illis,
quarum hodie memoriam facimus:
fac eas, Domine, de morte transire ad vitam,
quam olim Abrahæ promisisti et semini ejus.
(We offer unto Thee praise with sacrifices and prayers.
Do Thou accept them for those souls
whose memory we keep today.
Grant them, O Lord, to pass from death to the life
that Thou hast promised once to Abraham and his seed.)
If you’re in the vicinity, are available, and can get to Shapeshifter in Brooklyn (837 Union Street) on Thursday, May 29 or Friday, May 30, I’d be delighted to see you there. Both performances start at 8:00 PM. Tickets are available at www.c4ensemble.org.
Leave a Comment | Posted in Composers, Hayes Biggs, News
Featured Audio —
© Hayes Biggs | Site by Roundhex