Located in the UK
Located in the USA
Located in Europe
- Olly Wilson
Episodes for Orchestra (2001)
- G Schirmer Inc (World)
Commissioned by and dedicated to the Detroit Symphony Orchestra
- 3(pic,afl).2+ca.2+bcl.2/4.3(pictpt).3.1/timp.3perc/pf.hp/str
- 14 min
Programme Note
Composer Note:
I’m naturally drawn to working in the vernacular of blues and jazz, which my studies of African music have helped me to understand in a much deeper way. All forms of African-American music, from the slave songs to jazz, have clear and strong roots in Africa. But my own music uses many tools. Certainly, I’ve been influenced by great jazz musicians such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, but such important 20th century composers as Stravinsky and Webern also have helped to shape the way I think about writing music.
In some respects, I’m in the vanguard of many American composers—and not just African-American composers—in feeling equally at home in popular idioms and music’s more cultivated forms. But isn’t this really a reflection of the times we live in? Ours is an age of instant communication. We see and hear everything. America has been transformed in its musical sensibility over the last 30 years. We have become more cross-culturally conscious. A convergence of ideas is inevitable. What a composer, or any artist, does is to process this wealth of information through the filter of his or her own experience.
Episodes [is] all very much my own interpretation of African and African-American ideas. It’s important for the listener to remember I’m not writing jazz, but in a jazzlike manner. I know Episodes can be a dizzying encounter. But I hope it’s also an extremely exciting one.
—Olly Wilson
I’m naturally drawn to working in the vernacular of blues and jazz, which my studies of African music have helped me to understand in a much deeper way. All forms of African-American music, from the slave songs to jazz, have clear and strong roots in Africa. But my own music uses many tools. Certainly, I’ve been influenced by great jazz musicians such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, but such important 20th century composers as Stravinsky and Webern also have helped to shape the way I think about writing music.
In some respects, I’m in the vanguard of many American composers—and not just African-American composers—in feeling equally at home in popular idioms and music’s more cultivated forms. But isn’t this really a reflection of the times we live in? Ours is an age of instant communication. We see and hear everything. America has been transformed in its musical sensibility over the last 30 years. We have become more cross-culturally conscious. A convergence of ideas is inevitable. What a composer, or any artist, does is to process this wealth of information through the filter of his or her own experience.
Episodes [is] all very much my own interpretation of African and African-American ideas. It’s important for the listener to remember I’m not writing jazz, but in a jazzlike manner. I know Episodes can be a dizzying encounter. But I hope it’s also an extremely exciting one.
—Olly Wilson
Reviews
Olly Wilson's EPISODES FOR ORCHESTRA is a beguiling world-class delight. Wilson has pulled together rhythms and colors and melodic gestures from a wide range of popular and formal musical styles to forge a highly personal and thoroughly engaging work for large orchestra... Fashioned as seven tightly integrated sections [in] a single movement, Wilson's constantly evolving essay displays great finesse. It's also an elegant exercise in orchestration...But what makes "Episodes" even more appealing is its warm persona-its vibrancy, lyricism and sly wit.