SKU: HL.49045834

The relationship between music and architecture has for many decades been source of fascination for Gilbert. A range of works reflecting on the complexity and beauty of French medieval cathedrals has been the result. Ziggurat is in many ways a companion to these, albeit the type of structure it was engendered by existed a good millennium earlier. It was commissioned in 1993 by the Duo Contemporain, Henri Bok, bass clarinet and Miguel Bernat, percussion, as a sequal to a number of pieces hed written for them reflecting on the architecture of Chartes Cathedral. Although it was a type of memorial to a leading figure in Babylonian (or indeed Amerindian) society, the ziggurat celebrates life. Starting at ground level, a pathway or staircase winds up around the conical structure, decorated with passages of visual narrative and imagery. Gilberts duo for bass clarinet and marimba engages in a similar journey, continuously climbing but also episodic, withpassages of wild virtuoso music separated by steady, directed motion. Colour-changes involving bass clarinet multiphonics and rich chordal writing for the marimba feature strongly. In its original form the work lasted over eighteen minutes; in 2014 Gilbert decided to extensively rewrite the work in order to sharpen its musical focus. It is now just over two thirds of its original length, with resultant heightened intensity.

SKU: PR.11441825S

UPC: 680160643745. 9 x 12 inches.

In 2011, Barbara Garrop, my mother, commissioned me to write a piano trio in memory of Norman Garrop, my father, who passed away about thirty years ago. When I started brainstorming about topics for the piece, I found it difficult to recall many moments of my early life involving my father. Too many years had passed, and the memories that I could summon were of achild looking up to her father, not an adult relating to an equal. However, while collecting stories of my father from various family members, along with discovering a number of objects that had once belonged to him and that I had stored away in boxes decades ago, I began to realize that this piece wasn't so much about my father as it was about my re-discovering the man that he was: a loving husband and dad who cared deeply about his family and his passions (which included bike riding, collecting coins, strumming our guitar, playing baseball, watching football games, entertaining people, helping to run local theater and puppet productions, and carving objects out of wook); an accountant who dreamed of a better future: a treasurer of our local synagogue; an early advocate for computers (we owned an Apple II+); and a pranster with a great sense of humor. Ultimately, I decided to musically tell the story of my search for these memories. In the first movement (Without), a child calls out in a sing-song voice, searching for her lost parent. This search intesifies over the course of the movement through a series of themes, including a stepping motif in which a two-note progression steadily climbs higher, a pseudo-jewish folksong, and a passionate longing theme. The child's search becomes increasingly intense throughout the movement, calling out fervently and repeatedly to the parent; the movement ends in a moment of great tnesion and uncertainty. The second movment (Within) quietly opens with the lost parent finally answering, represented by a solo cello; the child (now personified by the violin) has found the parent within the sanctuary of her own heart. This movement highlights the joy and solemnity of this beautiful discovery. -S.G.