Omnifenix is a sonic roller-coaster ride, featuring saxophone supported by drums with orchestra. The solo part consists mostly of directed improvisation, allowing the saxophonist to express their unique style of improvisation within a dynamic framework of symphonic proportions.
Omni: Borrows a term from DJ Shadow, jazz and hip hop (and classical) are omni-genres, held together more by musical and cultural philosophies than by any limiting parameters of style.
Fenix: The idea of rebirth and reinvention (die improvisation) being different each time.
Jazz harmony is woven through the entire fabric of the piece, providing a familiar reference for listeners, before it steps off into entirely new musical galaxies.
The full exploitation of classical dynamics means the piece can go places rarely visited by a standard jazz lineup. On the other hand, the improvisational scope given to the soloist means the piece is a genuine extension of the concerto form.
11 time Grammy winning saxophonist Michael Brecker, premiered the piece in 2000. Along with legendary arranger Gill Goldstein, he described the saxophone concerto as one of the very best at bringing together the symphonic and jazz traditions. Michael described the history of attempts at merging the two traditions as leaving “a lot of musical corpses in its wake”, but felt that the concerto fit a jazz performer of his caliber “like a glove”.
Ill health prevented Michael Brecker recording the piece and so Joshua Redman stepped in, providing his own definitive interpretation, and in doing so extending the ongoing life of the piece.
This saxophone concerto, later renamed Omnifenix, was commissioned by the 6th Concorso Internazionale ‘2 Agosto’, and first performed on 2 August 2000 on the Piazza Maggiore, Bologna, Italy, (and broadcast live throughout Europe) by Michael Brecker (saxophone), with the Orchestra Sinfonica dell’Emilia Romagna ‘Toscanini’ conducted by Marcello Rota. |
True to its name, the title track was written while John was staying close by the fabled Mt Olympus.
The View From Olympus concerto has no relation (as some might expect) to John's Olympic Games music. In fact, thematically, and perhaps ironically given its modernity, its narrative themes mine a much deeper vein of Greek classicism.
John Psathas has composed for piano and percussion more than any other instruments, and in this orchestral context he is able to employ that experience to powerful effect. Michael Houstoun and Pedro Carneiro are provided a full palette of Mediterranean tonal colour in a piece that is sometimes open and poignant, but builds to an intensely rhythmic and climactic ending.
View From Olympus has three orchestral movements, followed by an optional chamber duet.
I The Furies
The Furies were avenging spirits of retributive justice whose task was to punish crimes outside the reach of human justice. Their names were Alecto, Megaera and Tisiphone. “This movement contains an adapted transcription of a fragment of improvised playing by one of my favourite Greek violinists Stathis Koukoularis.”
II To Yelasto Paithi
(The Smiling Child)
“This is the closest I’ve come to expressing, in a way not possible with the spoken or written word, the feelings inspired by my precious children, Emanuel and Zoe. In this movement is also caught the summer I spent working on the concerto at my parents’ house just outside the village of Nea Michaniona – a house perched on a cliff which looks down on the Aegean and up to Mt Olympus.” [JP]
III Dance of the Maenads
Draped in the skins of fawns, crowned with wreaths of ivy and carrying the thyrsos (a staff wound round with ivy leaves and topped with a pine cone), the Maenads roamed the mountains and woods, seeking to assimilate the potency of the beasts that dwelled there and celebrating their god Dionysos with song, music and dance. The human spirit demands Dionysiac ecstasy; to those who accept it, the experience offers spiritual power. For those who repress the natural force within themselves or refuse it to others, it is transformed into destruction, both of the innocent and the guilty. When possessed by Dionysos, the Maenads became savage and brutal. They plunged into a frenzied dance, obtaining an intoxicating high and a mystical ecstasy that gave them unknown powers, making them the match of the bravest hero.
IV Fragments
(An encore chamber duet for piano and percussion)
View From Olympus was commissioned by percussionist Evelyn Glennie and premiered during the XVII Commonwealth Games at Bridgewater Hall, Manchester on 26 July 2002 by Evelyn Glennie, pianist Philip Smith and the Halle Orchestra conducted by Mark Elder.
The piece was funded as original research by Victoria University and competed during John Psathas’ sabbatical leave in 2000 in the northern Greek village of Nea Michaniona.
View From Olympus received a SOUNZ Contemporary Award at the 2002 APRA Silver Scroll Awards |
“Michael’s playing inspired me throughout its composition, and his enthusiasm for the work as it grew boosted the confidence that can be sensed in the music.”[JP]
Michael Houstoun: “John Psathas’ Piano Concerto is, in my view, the first truly great work for piano and orchestra to have been written by a New Zealander. It is one of the most exciting pieces I have ever learned.”
I Aria
This uses the piano as a singing instrument, not something that comes naturally to a mechanical instrument. But it is not a lullaby, it is a great paean of triumph, an ecstatic hymn to the sun, a celebration of nature, of humanity.
II Inferno
The second movement was inspired by the haunting and deeply disturbing images in James Nachtwey’s photographic elegy Inferno. Nachtwey travels to the world’s most troubled places, looks at the grimmest sights to be seen there and photographs them in such a way as to thrust them into the view of the world. It seems impossible to go through Nachtwey’s book in one sitting – to do so gives the feeling that one’s own soul is irretrievably dissipating.
Musically, energy is constantly atrophying in this movement, yielding to despair. It requires the positive energy of the entire final movement to pull one out of the pit.
III Sergei: Book 3,
Chapter 1
As the finale to the work evolves it becomes a celebration of one of the most ebullient passages in piano concerto literature; the initial allegro passage in the first movement of Prokofiev’s third concerto. “This material has inspired me for the entire course of my musical life to date, and I have always wished that it lasted longer and went further. As I composed the final movement of my concerto, there developed an irresistible gravity which drew together the energy in Prokofiev’s concerto and that in my own.”
Commissioned by the NZSO at the instigation of and dedicated to Michael Houstoun , this piano concerto in three movements was premiered in 2004.
Originally written for Michael to perform - in the event of a protracted hand injury US pianist Stephen Gosling gave the premiere performances, and the NZSO performed this concerto during its 2005 international tour.
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