Selected Reviews:

The Brooklyn Philharmonic, conducted by Lukas Foss, premiered Heliotrope at the Cooper Union. Hagen's Heliotrope, premiered just four months ago by the Brooklyn Philharmonic [performed tonight by the Oakland-East Bay Symphony conducted by Michael Morgan] provides further evidence of his distinctive American voice, the wide-open intervals of the opening section evoking Aaron Copland's America of dreams and stern pioneer morality. But Hagen's vision is more complex than that. Before it's through, Heliotrope has engorged itself with the sounds of a smoky jazz club, complete with walking bass, and the cool sophistication of contemporary minimalism with repeated figures in the xylophone.

— David Gere, The Oakland Tribune, 3/3/90

Heliotrope is a brightly-colored spunky piece built largely out of one little jazz snatch, taking it through several adventures, clearly Copland to start, boldly Bernstein later on, and ending on a nice tag. It's a natural for a ballet, and fun.

— Robert Commanday, The San Francisco Chronicle, 3/3/90

The influence of Leonard Bernstein's theater style could be heard in the brief motto that Hagen used as the basis of his  Heliotrope [performed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic conducted by Lukas Foss], a set of variations in an array of orchestral, theater and jazz styles that showed how far a composer can run with a simple theme, given the right combination of imagination and skill.

— Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, 10/29/89

This be the kind of cool and ugly stuff that you can even not like and still say simply: awesome. Is there life after learning the ropes, learning the notes? After imprinting the whole program and its techniques? Maybe. The public is awaiting Day-ron's answer. No less a victim of compulsive performativity fostered by the market system than anyone else. No less overtones of someting once called "class collaboration." Still maybe this white dude carry dem seed of hope to shatter da forms that support this cultural shackling of so many ears. Go catch the mon next time he pass thru town. Day-ron Hag-on. Right on.

— Ras Arthur, Le Journal des Intellectuels Caribbean, 12/8/89

Program Note:

Living in the east village on Saint Mark’s Place and pretty deeply down the rabbit hole of psychoanalysis during the late 80s, I had a vivid dream one night that I was at a wild, chronologically-crazy cocktail party, engaged in boozy, breezy banter with several generations of composers — some quick, some not.

I had brought with me a bouquet of heliotropes. We chatted about how heliotropic plants lean toward sources of light the way that young artists do; made shop-talk about how far one could go with only a string of fourths; sang the praises of the great Scott Joplin, the composer whose Heliotrope Bouquet is one of the pieces that inspired me to become a composer.

Burt Bacharach and Kurt Weill were there, and George Gershwin, Carlos Chàvez, Schifrin and Mancini, Joplin and Ellington, Quincy Jones and Andre Previn, Milhaud and Scriabin, Schwantner and Williams, Copland and Blitzstein, and as they do at a good party, more composers kept arriving at the moveable musical mashup until the music ran out.

Heliotrope is a musical transcription of that dream. Each of the 75 super-short variations celebrate a different composer’s voice or musical style. Though Morton Gould (who used to greet me in the hallway when I’d run into him on the occasional visit to visit ASCAP in New York City by whistling Heliotrope’s theme) was the first composer to predict that I’d take a lot of flack for having written it, he was not the last.

Composed at MacDowell during summer 1989, I submitted the score to ASCAP, which had commissioned it in honor of the organization’s 75th anniversary, and used the money to flee to Europe. A dedicated expat,  if ASCAP’s Vice President for Serious Concert Music Frances Richard had not commanded me to return to attend the premiere, I might have remained in Italy or France for the rest of my life.

Together, Fran and I attended the performance in the Great Hall of the Cooper Union by Lukas Foss and the Brooklyn Philharmonic. What a scene! And how irritated so many of the older composers were by what I had written! Fran couldn’t have been more thrilled. “That’ll shake things up a little bit,” she laughed.

Forty years on, all the aesthetic skirmishes are over; what remains is a young composer’s delight. Heliotrope has tickled me by being performed somewhere every couple of seasons — on pops concerts, or celebrations of Americana, or for the Fourth of July (really!) and I’m reminded gently of how Quincy Jones — or was it Ellington, or maybe Bernstein? — noted, “There is only good music and the other kind.”

As W.H. Auden wrote, “In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.”

If I were a dog, in this piece I’d definitely be wagging mine.

—Daron Hagen