Program Note:

The genesis of An Overture to Vera is as much an act of assembly as it is of creation. Completed at the Yaddo artist colony on June 21, 1992, the work was originally conceived for brass quintet under the stark title Everything Must Go!. To create it, I adopted a “non-expressive” mechanical process, distilling the musical material into four distinct cells: a D-A-B♭ motive, a rhythmic groove, a skein of sixteenth notes, and a quartal harmony chorale.

By placing these ideas on flashcards and shuffling them at a table, I allowed a “dealt” chance to dictate the sequence and nature of musical events. This transformed the structure into a musical Kuleshov montage; much like the cinematic effect where the same face takes on new meaning when cut against different images, these four cells shifted their emotional weight depending on their neighbors. A chorale following a jagged groove felt like a prayer; the same chorale following the sixteenth-note skein felt like a mechanical breakdown. This aleatoric procedure pushed the music into unexpected, often surreal territories, creating a “source code” that would eventually underpin my opera, Vera of Las Vegas.

The resulting music occupies two demimondes at once, high on atmosphere and thick with sensory memory. It is the sound of a ragtag circus band in late-80s Berlin, vamping beneath the big top as a mortal trapeze artist in crudely fashioned angel wings is adored from the bleachers by a true angel; the music hangs in the air alongside the heavy, honest smell of roasted peanuts and horse manure. Suddenly, through the “cut” of the montage, the scene shifts to an East Village club in the early 90s — smoky, sloppy, and redolent of stale beer and expensive cologne. Here, a house combo improvises for a room of middle-aged regulars while a drag artist idly studies the music, looking for a way in.

Following its 1992 premiere by the brass section of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in Bryant Park, the piece found a new life in 1995. At the request of Kevin Stalheim, Artistic Director of the Milwaukee-based ensemble Present Music, I revised the quintet for a large mixed ensemble of fourteen players. While the instrumental palette expanded to provide richer, more kaleidoscopic colors, the work maintained its strict, obsessive adherence to the original four musical cells. This expanded version, retitled An Overture to Vera, was premiered on September 7, 1995, by the Present Music ensemble, conducted by Donna Hagen.

Reviews:

“An Overture to Vera goes for broke. Like the composer's orchestral variations Heliotrope, it is a truly original piece, one that either you hate to love or you love to hate — there is no middle-ground. By turns desperate to amuse (itself? or the listener?), plangent, emotion-free, innig, elegant, vulgar, and bewilderingly over the top, Hagen's postmodern, post-pastiche stance is provocatively sincere, and ultimately subversive in its gleeful / woeful mashup of styles. It's like a walk through New York's east village in the late 80s, both high and low at the same time, and leaves one feeling vaguely uncomfortable, certainly dazed, and definitely overexposed." 

—Staten Island Review, November 1995

“[An Overture to Vera] 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