Two Backyard Songs (1990)

Soprano, flute, piano – 8 mins.

Audio

Score (Free Download)

Program Note

Backyard Songs was commissioned by the Jubal Trio, a trio of voice, flute and harp. In its original form, there are three songs surrounded and connected by scat interludes. Two of the songs have been transcribed to substitute piano for harp and make a short suite. The poetry is by Chicago’s Afro-American Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Gwendolyn Brooks.

Backyard Songs (1990) emulates the carefree virtuosity heard in the jazz singing of Ella Fitzgerald and the raw emotional power communicated by Memphis blues singer Ruby Wilson. The voice-dominated “songs” — settings of poems by Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago poet Gwendolyn Brooks — are introduced and linked by “scat” sections in which the voice is instrumentally integrated to create a real mixed-trio texture. Dramatically, the set moves from the whimsical naughtiness of “a song in the front yard,” through the threatening suppressed violence of the up-tempo “We Real Cool,” and concludes with the wrenching, cathartic blues-cortège “of DeWitt Williams on his way to Lincoln Cemetery.”