Fable

May 30, 2015 at 8:00 pm

The Drawing Room

56 Willoughby Street

(between Lawrence & Jay Streets)

Brooklyn, NY 11201

Program

The Golden Harp

Music by Manuela Lechler

Piano - Kyoko Oyobe, Trombone - William Lang

Alto Sax - Manuela Lecher, Actor - Fedly Daniel

A traditional Welsh fairy tale.

Archipelago - Islands 1, 2, & 3

Music by Jay Kauffman

Guitar - Jay Kauffman

Each one of these Islands is a musical stop on a trip through a

guitarchipelago (yes, I did make that horrible pun.),

giving you a sense of setting for your sojourn there.

This piece only lands on the first three islands of what will

hopefully turn out to be much larger archipelago once it is fully

explored. These first three Islands are located, without doubt,

somewhere in Latin America and borrow heavily from the folk and

popular musical traditions of this continent without

falling under the jurisdiction of any one genre. On

Island One,

an optimistic Milonga rhythm, forerunner of the Tango,

entangles itself into all of the scenery.

Island Two

is probably where you'd want to seek out a great candle-lit restaurant by the beach,

infused with jazz, samba, blues and bossa-nova. On

Island Three,

horses, picturesque mountain trails, a lovely valley,

and the promise of adventure.

So Close and So Far Away

Music by Kyoko Oyobe

Piano - Kyoko Oyobe

I collaborated on this tune with my dear friend Rui Kodemari,

a popular Japanese novelist. She wrote a novel called

So close and so far away where I appeared as Kyoko Oyobe,

a jazz pianist. She gives me so much serenity and inspiration.

Cinderella Suite

Music by Ann Warren

Text by Nancy Greening

Accompanies Cinderella (a fairy film in shadow show)

by Lotte Reiniger (1922)

Adapted by Robert Morton

Piano - Kyoko Oyobe, Flute - Alice H. Jones,

Guitar - Jay Kauffman, Trombone - William Lang,

Alto Sax - Manuela Lechler, Drums - Joe Tucker

A new look at the archetypal tale.

Part 1 is the pathos in 11/4.

Part 2 is based on Fernando Sor’s Ballet Cendrillon.

Part 3 is the chase in 7/4.

The Strange Library

Music by Whitney George

Text by Haruki Murakami

Flute - Alice H. Jones, Violin - Adam Von Housen,

Trombone - William Lang, Percussion - Joe Tucker,

Actor - Fedly Daniel

The Strange Library is a musical setting of the recent novella by Haruki Murakami.

Designed and illustrated by famed book jacket designer (and frequent Murakami collaborator) Chip Kidd,

the novella is packaged like a graphic novel, whose moody and mysterious depictions of a child’s

darkest dream match Murakami’s surreal imagination. The plot is equally eerie: a little boy enters a

quiet library -- “even more hushed than usual,” we’re told in the opening line -- and is sent to Room 107,

where he meets a creepy old librarian who leads him deep into a maze of dark catacombs beneath

the library. There, we learn of the librarian’s ghoulish designs and the boy encounters a small man

wearing the skin of a sheep and a pretty young girl pushing a teacart, their worlds now “all jumbled together.”

Not even fresh-made doughnuts can sweeten the boy’s nightmarish predicament as the librarian’s prisoner.