As I ride the late night freeways (2015)

(for singer and orchestra)

Performance by Ann Moss, soprano,and the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Milnes

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Program note

As I ride the late night freeways is a work for soprano and orchestra, inspired by ‘Census,’ a poem about California living, written for this project by Cathy Park Hong. In Hong’s poem, the thin veneer of civilization in California seems to melt away during the Huntington Beach riots of July 2013, when the spectators of a surfing competition destroyed the main street of a quiet ocean-front town for no apparent reason. Taking cues from her poetic imagery, a freeway drive became the guiding idea for streamlined music echoing the turbulent flow of air rushing over a speeding car. I analyzed recordings of racecars using a computer, looking for the pitches that best characterized their passing roar, and deriving from them the composition’s harmonic unfolding. As the music moves onwards, it reverberates with the complicated feelings of the poem.

Text

Census by Cathy Park Hong


The sun hollows our bodies.
Sunglass shacks melt to molten then molded
back to blackest fetish masks.
And Surfers riot, beached boys
in parking lots, punching down Port-a-Potties.
They’ll go out roaring in this
Vaseline light
where infinity pools sparkle like geodes.


Fade to twilight.
My shyness is criminally vulgar.
My hatred is gentle,
as I drive the late-night freeways,
rampart after rampart
shut down.
Night glows with the velocity of cars
thinning to a stream
of white light, and sodium street lights
and tennis courts
holy as an ashram.


Further information: [Article in the OM Composer’s Book 3], [escholarship dissertation entry, 2015]

Image from related computer-assisted composition programs:

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