Ferlinghetti
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Score title
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Ferlinghetti
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Composer
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Libby Larsen
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Program note
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When I first read Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind, I was in high school in the mid-1960’s, and like all my friends, I was looking for connection with the world. Ferlinghetti was that connection. Here was a poet who used common words to create layered, nuanced poems that were urban truth and seemed to sing off the page. And he did this using American English in an idiom that flowed as music flows.
Ferlinghetti, is an interaction with his poetry. It’s a collection of short pieces, each one a response to a fragment of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poetry. You might think of each piece as a riff on an image suggested in the fragment. You may find your ears making connections to music you think you know but that is only vaguely there – except in “…a man with a mirror for a head…” where several fragments from works you know are presented backwards for you to discover.
I am grateful to the members of this commissioning consortium and both humbled by and honored by our friendship. Thank you for your trust and talent.
Libby Larsen