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An Overture to Vera
for fourteen players (1995)
Premiere
28 April 1998
Rennebohm Theater, Madison, Wisconsin
Present Music Ensemble / Donna Hagen
Instrumentation
oboe, 2 clarinets, bassoon, 2 trumpets, horn, trombone, drum kit, synthesizer, violin, viola, cello, and bass
Duration
16'

Program Note
Composed in New York City and completed on 11 August 1995, 'the piece has four ideas --' writes the composer, 'a groove consisting of a sixteen-beat-long, repeated ostinato that evolves over the course of the piece, a melody, a chorale fragment, and a skein of running sixteenth notes that I call the snake.' The entire piece consists of continual collaging of these four ideas in different ways.' In addition to these four compositional ideas, the composer periodically superimposes a rhythmic grid that proceeds at a different speed than the rest of the ensemble.

First performed on 7 September 1995 by the Present Music Ensemble of Milwaukee, at the Rennebohm Theater, in Madison, Wisconsin, An Overture to Vera was originally titled Everything Must Go! (Fourteen Player Remix) for its premiere. The piece was retitled by the composer to reflect the function that it ultimately served as the set of core musical materials that he used to create the 1996 opera Vera of Las Vegas.

--- Bill Rhoads, 2003
Reviews
...the work had distinct anti-snob qualities, which I liked ... [it] threw together elements of string quartet, jazz improvisation, big-band sound and a Gershwin/Tin Pan Alley aspect, much of it tinged with an eastern flavor.
--- Jess Anderson, Isthmus, 9/15/95

It's 'Scheherezade' meets 'A Night in Tunisia,' complete with bop-inspired walking bass lines and exotic, chromatic tunes snaking up and sliding woozily across the strings. Out of nowhere, Tchaikovsky's ghost bursts in with mournful chorales for violin, viola and cello. I'm not sure what to make of all this, but I can report that it held my interest and made me laugh.

--- Tom Strini, Milwaukee Journal Sentinal, 9/10/95