Flute Concerto No. 1 – Flute | Piano

Movement 1: Inspired by the French painter, Jean-Baptiste Camille Coro – Woman in Red Bodice holding a mandolin. “Young Woman in a Red Bodice Holding a Mandolin” is the inspiration for the concerto’s first movement 1868-70. This oil on canvas depicts a gypsy woman wearing a red bodice and holding a mandolin on her lap. The music is inspired to capture a variety of poetic “moods” reflected in the soft atmospheric setting within which the pensive woman sits. 13.17

Movement 2: Inspired by pulps leading speculative fiction author Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique Tales” were first published in Weird Tales. The premiere story that inspired this movement, “The Empire of the Necromancers”, made its debut in Weird Tales For September 1932. His own painting depicts a procession of mummies raised from the dead walking in fealty, servitors to their necromantic masters, and captures a mordant and decadent essentially eerie atmosphere that inspired the music of this “procession”. My own conscious ideal was to enrapture the listener into à “dance macabre” a “queer” mood of which his contemporary H. P. Lovecraft wrote: “In sheer daemonic strangeness and fertility of conception, Smith is perhaps unexcelled by any other writer living or dead. 6.30

Movement 3: New York-City-based illustrator and comic book artist, Barry Orkin, was commissioned to paint a Gypsy girl dancing with a tambourine for the compose Gypsy Americano collection of world Gypsy music for flute musicians. This third movement combines the power, passion, lightheartedness, and strong elements of magic and sorcery, much of which captures the essence of gypsy childhood fairy tales. One such tale, “How the Gypsies Became Musicians”, finds God placing a musical instrument on St. Peter’s shoulders. Peter asks: “What does this mean?”. God answers: “I made it for you so that you may play to people when they were lively and keep them in good humor and prevent them from picking quarrels. ” Peter answers: “If that is so, let there be more musicians.’ God asks Peter: “But who could there be?” “Let there be Gypsies”, answers Peter. “Let it be so”, said God. And so it was. 7.30 World Premiere by Miyazawa artist, Stacy Ascione

Total Duration: 28 minutes