Partnering with oceanographer Georgy Manucharyan and six visionary composers, violinist Rachel Lee Priday will embark on a musically rich project that blends classical music with the visual poetry of fluid dynamics experiments, including a new album, Fluid Dynamics, with pianist David Kaplan out Friday, August 23, 2024 on Orchid Classics. The album features world premiere recordings of works commissioned specifically for this project by Gabriella Smith, Paul Wiancko, Cristina Spinei, Timo Andres, Leilehua Lanzilotti and Christopher Cerrone. Liner notes have been contributed by Katy Hamilton.
The genesis of this ambitious project traces back to an unexpected encounter in 2019 when Priday, newly appointed to the University of Washington’s School of Music, crossed paths with Georgy Manucharyan of the School of Oceanography, who studies what he describes as “the physics of the ocean – how currents move, and what causes their motion.” Fascinated by Manucharyan’s research on ocean currents and fluid dynamics, Priday recognized a unique opportunity to synergize their disciplines.
The first single, Paul Wiancko’s Waterworks, is out now.
Manucharyan’s experiments, captured in visually captivating videos available to the public this fall, became the canvas upon which the composers crafted evocative musical responses. “In talking to him more,” Priday explains, “I found it interesting that every time he does the same experiment, it comes out differently: even though the principles are the same, you just never know what’s going to happen. And I related that to what a performer does – to performance and interpretation, chance and timing, how every time we play is different.” The live world premiere of these works with their multimedia accompaniment takes place on October 8, 2024 at the Meany Center for the Performing Arts in Seattle, WA.
There was, importantly, no fixed brief: just the chance to view some of the videos, decide what might work and consider how the music and film footage might interact. And gradually, as more and more composers eagerly took up the challenge, a larger project – of this album, and of live musical performances with visuals – was born. Each composer approached the project with a distinct perspective, from Smith’s dynamic exploration of wind and water in Entangled on a Rotating Planet to Spinei’s precise synchronization with fluid movements in Convection Loops and Wiancko’s energetic response to swirling vortices in Waterworks.
Manucharyan expressed his delight at the unexpected musical interpretations, sharing how the composers’ perspectives expanded his own understanding of the experiments, creating a rich tapestry of artistic and scientific exploration, remarking, “It was completely new! Full of suspense and very sharp transitions."
The culmination of this collaboration will be showcased in live performances tailored for a variety of venues, including theaters, museums and potentially even aquariums.
The first newly completed work was by composer, cellist and ecologist Gabriella Smith. As luck would have it, she too had just moved to Seattle and visited Georgy’s lab to see some of his experiments in person. Her Entangled on a Rotating Planet uses a geostrophic adjustment experiment, simulating the interplay of wind and water at a surface level.
Lanzilotti’s ko’u inoa is an anthem the composer first wrote as a way to feel connected to her home in Hawaii whilst spending time in Germany. The title translates to “my name is,” and the minimally notated, free-flowing score calls on the violinist to seek out the overtones and variety of colors they can access by moving their bow from the normal playing position across the strings, up towards the fingerboard and back down towards the bridge of the instrument. The player is also asked to hum a succession of consonants and vowels through the closing section as they play. The piece pairs beautifully with a wave experiment that brings attention to the serious problem of ocean pollution. Priday commissioned Lanzilott’s in a forgotten language for this project, and its title is taken from the poem Witness by W.S. Merwin (1927-2019).
Paul Wiancko’s Waterworks turns the entire film-to-music process on its head. Inspired by the violence and energy of a whirling red vortex, it spins along in “joyfully mechanical” circling figuration, often in double stops, sometimes in sudden and unexpected new directions. Wiancko composed his piece as a freestanding entity, and the video was then cut to fit. “Something about the rapid changes/alterations/additions to the constant energy of the vortex speaks to my music well,” he observes. “And the red dye brings in some interesting notes of drama/science/violence.”
By contrast Cristina Spinei, who is highly regarded for her work with a range of distinguished American dance companies, wanted a tight brief and pre-cut video to “choreograph” musically. Convection Loops takes the name of its experiment at face value, deploying a loop pedal to gradually stack layer upon layer of solo violin lines as the color inks drop, swirl, and are pulled through the water.
The remaining works on this disc are described by Priday as “old friends of mine.” Timo Andres’ Three Suns was commissioned by Priday in 2018 and received its filmed premiere during the COVID-19 pandemic. The suns of the title are a reference to repeated figurations which, as they rise, “gradually take on varied characters, threatening to pull apart the structure.” The whole is framed by a slow-moving, chordal chorale, the calm before and after the storm – whilst the faster music is matched on screen with the luminous beauty of rainbow-refracting surface tension patterns on bubbles.
Finally, Christopher Cerrone’s Violin Sonata was written for Priday in 2015. The violinist was struck by the appropriateness of this movement, in particular, to the project at large: “The piano and violin get out of sync progressively and then at a certain moment it snaps back in time – a perfect match for a video showing light illuminating complex interference patterns of two-dimensional turbulence on the surface of a soap bubble. A furiously fast finale, all stabbing attack and ringing chords, eventually gentles and the sun bursts through for the final few pages, the chorale harmonies of the first movement returning.”
As he got used to these new soundworlds, Manucharyan realized that the composers had often picked upon different aspects or levels of motion in the experiments than those he had been focusing on from a scientific perspective: “Then I understood what the composer was seeing in the video.” Besides being a learning process for all, the project was described by Manucharyan as “an exceptionally fulfilling experience.”
To learn more about the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at the University of Washington, please visit https://deep.ocean.washington.edu/gfd.html.
Celebrated for her “dazzling technique” and “captivating” performances (The Strad), violinist Rachel Lee Priday has appeared as soloist with major international orchestras, among them the Chicago, Houston, National, Pacific, St. Louis and Seattle Symphony Orchestras, Boston Pops Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Germany’s Staatskapelle Berlin. Her distinguished recital appearances have brought her to eminent venues, including Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ Mostly Mozart Festival, Chicago’s Ravinia Festival and Dame Myra Hess Memorial Series, Paris’s Musée du Louvre, Germany’s Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival and Switzerland’s Verbier Festival.
Passionately committed to new music and creating enriching community and global connections, Rachel Lee Priday’s wide-ranging repertoire and multidisciplinary collaborations reflect a deep fascination with literary and cultural narratives. Her work as soloist with the Asia / America New Music Institute promoted cultural exchange between Asia and the Americas, combining premiere performances with educational outreach in the US, China, and Vietnam. She has premiered and commissioned works by composers including Matthew Aucoin, Christopher Cerrone, Gabriella Smith, Timo Andres, Leilehua Lanzilotti, Cristina Spinei, Melia Watras, and Paul Wiancko. In 2022, she premiered a new Violin Concerto, “Kuyén,” written for her by Miguel Farías, which depicts the Moon in Mapuche mythology, with the UC Davis Symphony at the Mondavi Center.
Recent season highlights have included a duo recital with composer/pianist Timo Andres in Seattle and for the Phillips Collection, exploring the through-lines of American twentieth and twenty-first century violin and piano works, and a third tour of South Africa, where she appeared in recital and performed the José White Lafitte Concerto with the Johannesburg and Kwazulu-Natal Philharmonics. Upcoming and recent concerto engagements include the Portland Symphony, Springfield (MO) Symphony, Pensacola Symphony, Symphony San Jose, South Carolina Philharmonic, and Bangor Symphony.
Since making her orchestral debut at the Aspen Music Festival in 1997, Rachel has performed with numerous orchestras across the United States, including the Colorado Symphony, Alabama, Knoxville, Rockford, Annapolis, and New York Youth Symphonies. In Europe and in Asia, she has appeared at the Moritzburg Festival in Germany and with orchestras in Graz, Austria, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Korea, where she performed with the KBS Symphony, Seoul Philharmonic and Russian State Symphony Orchestra on tour. She has toured South Africa extensively, and has given recitals in the United Kingdom at the Universities of Birmingham and Cambridge.
Rachel Lee Priday began her violin studies at the age of four in Chicago, after she saw the sheep puppet Lamb Chop pretend to play the violin in “Lamb Chop’s Play-Along.” Shortly thereafter, she moved to New York City to study with the iconic pedagogue Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School. Her teachers and mentors include Itzhak Perlman, Catherine Cho, Won-Bin Yim, Robert Mann, and Miriam Fried. She holds a B.A. degree in English from Harvard University and an M.M. from the New England Conservatory. Since 2019, she serves on the faculty of University of Washington School of Music in Seattle as Assistant Professor of Violin.
Rachel Lee Priday has been profiled in The New Yorker, The Strad, Los Angeles Times and Family Circle. Her performances have been broadcast on major media outlets in the United States, Germany, Korea, South Africa and Brazil, including a televised concert in Rio de Janeiro, numerous appearances on Chicago’s WFMT and American Public Media’s “Performance Today.” She has also been featured on BBC Radio 3, the Disney Channel, “Fiddling for the Future” and “American Masters” on PBS, and the GRAMMY Awards. Learn more at www.rachelleepriday.com.
David Kaplan is a New York-born piano soloist and chamber musician, praised by The Boston Globe for “grace and fire” at the keyboard. He has appeared as soloist with the Britten Sinfonia and Das Sinfonie Orchester Berlin, and in the 2023-24 season makes debuts with the Symphony Orchestras of Hawaii and San Antonio. He has given recitals at the Ravinia Festival, Washington’s National Gallery, and New York’s Carnegie and Merkin Halls, and in addition to his work with Decoda, has collaborated with the Attacca, Ariel, and Tesla String Quartets.
Kaplan is the Assistant Professor and Inaugural Shapiro Family Chair in Piano Performance at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, where he has taught since 2016. A graduate of UCLA, Yale, and a Fulbright scholar in Berlin, Kaplan’s teachers and mentors include Claude Frank, Walter Ponce, Miyoko Lotto, and Richard Goode. Away from the keyboard, he loves cartooning and cooking, and is mildly obsessed with classic cars. Learn more at www.davidkaplanpiano.com/.
1. Gabriella Smith (b. 1991) – Entangled on a Rotating Planet [4:37]
2. Paul Wiancko (b. 1983) – Waterworks [4:15]
3. Cristina Spinei (b. 1984) – Convection Loops [5:18]
4. Timo Andres (b. 1985) – Three Suns [8:29]
5. Leilehua Lanzilotti (b. 1983) – ko’u inoa [5:59]
6-8. Leilehua Lanzilotti – to speak in a forgotten language
i. [1:15]
ii. [2:31]
iii. [1:13]
9-11. Christopher Cerrone (b. 1984) – Sonata for Violin and Piano
i. Fast and focused, with gradually increasing intensity [4:24]
ii. Still and spacious, but always moving forward [4:21]
iii. Dramatic, violent, rhythmic, very precise [5:57]
Total Time: 48:19
Rachel Lee Priday, violin
David Kaplan, piano
LC20037
Recorded at Bastyr Chapel, Kenmore, Washington on 18 January, 3 April & August 6-7 2023
Producer: David Sabee
Engineer: David Sabee, Dave West, John Winters
Cover photography: Dario Acosta
