Work Information
Rob Kapilow : Summer Sun, Winter Moon
Programme Note
Robert Kapilow’s Summer Sun, Winter Moon was premiered by the Kansas City Symphony Chorus on September 19, 2004. The work was commissioned by the Carlsen Center, the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and the Louisiana Philharmonic for the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial. This symphony in two movements narrates the Lewis and Clark expedition from a Native American perspective, blending fragments of Indian melodies with more traditional symphonic music.
Reviews
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A year ago, Rob Kapilow set out to compose a symphony about Lewis and Clark that gave voice to the Native American view of the expedition. SUMMER SUN, WINTER MOON is written as a single, continuous gesture, though the text includes two main parts: the first a series of words that the explorers had to translate (numbers, seasons, days) and the second a libretto by Blackfeet Indian poet and author Darrell Robes Kipp. The musical idiom was lush, accessible, at times cheerfully agitated in a manner recalling Stravinsky or Janacek. There was ingenious use of recurring motifs, and Kapilow showed a knack for setting text in a free-flowing, natural way, the way we might speak it.
Paul Horsley, Kansas City Star
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