Program NotesProgram Notes"Seven Ghosts is a part of my personal search for heroes. For the Plymouth Music Series' Witness concert, I wanted to create a work that witnesses the extraordinary words and actions of seven people whose lives contributed to changing the heart of our culture. The notion struck me that each time we read a poem, a letter, a book or a speech, the author is essentially a ghost speaking to us through the printed words. In this piece I wanted to let each hero speak in her or his own words. And so the title Seven Ghosts attached itself to this composition.
"The research for the piece was enormously interesting. Walking past a used bookstore in New York, I found a biography of the soprano Jenny Lind. I discovered that during her P.T. Barnum tour of the United States, Jenny Lind developed a deep interest in abolition and an abiding respect for Harriet Beecher Stowe. This led me to the Minneapolis Public Library, where resides a letter from Lind to Stowe praising Uncle Tom's Cabin. The letter became part of Seven Ghosts.
"In another bookstore in Portland, Ore., I discovered Louis Armstrong's autobiography. For me, Louis Armstrong is as important to our musical culture as Mozart was to his. Yet it was not until after Armstrong toured Europe in 1932 that he was successful in the United States.
"Phillis Wheatley is a name I had always known but a life I had not yet discovered. Her poem to George Washington entreating him to lead the army of the revolution became the first section of Seven Ghosts.
"Philip Brunelle suggested I look into the astronomer Clyde Thombaugh. In Thombaugh, I found a young man with a passion for astronomy and an ability for tedious work. At the age of 23, Thombaugh discovered the planet Pluto, making him the only American ever to have discovered a planet. Doing so lent enormous credibility to the United States as a center for space, the final frontier.
"Finally, Charles Lindbergh's passion for flight resulted in a piece which quotes his childhood memory, 'I used to imagine myself with wings.' And Eleanor Roosevelt's nine words, 'What one has to do usually can be done,' have become not only part of Seven Ghosts but have also found their way onto my drawing board in my studio."
