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Martin Steinberg of the Associated Press writes about Richard Danielpour's new composition "Pastime," which is being performed in Atlanta for three days starting on May 31. The piece had its world premiere in Pittsburgh earlier this year.
Danielpour, in conjunction with several poets, wrote a work celebrating the lives of Josh Gibson, Jackie Robinson, and Henry Aaron.
It sounds interesting:
Written in the style of Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess," the piece starts with a swaggering introduction, complete with percussive strikes that conjure images of a pitch slamming into the catcher's mitt. The epilogue has a gentle, sentimental theme that is sidetracked by arrogant motifs, including a grotesquely distorted reference to "The Star-Spangled Banner" that suggests a lamentation for baseball's loss of innocence.
The inner movements, however, suggest that baseball was never really innocent.
You can find more information about the work on the Atlanta Symphony's site and you can also get the texts of the poems used. (pdf format.)
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