Description

MATT ULERY – IDA
(commissioned by Axiom Brass)

for 2 trumpets, French horn, trombone, tuba

1) Into the World There Came a Soul – segue – 2) Vanity Fair – segue – 3) The Fleeting Nature of Time (and Beauty)
4) I Give My Back to the Dark
5) Wicker Party
6) The Passage of Time can be Relentless and Unforgiving
7) I Have Such a Clown Face

IDA is a brand new work in seven movements for brass quintet by Chicago bassist/composer, Matt Ulery. The first three scenes segue without pause.

This new work is inspired by the early masterpiece of aging and decay by Chicago artist/painter, Ivan Albright, in 1929-1930, titled Into the World There Came a Soul Called Ida. While this modern vanitas portrait, much like Albright’s other works, is painstakingly detailed and grotesque, IDA is more of a dramatic musical score to the painting.

“Having seen this painting many times throughout the years at the Art Institute of Chicago while growing up, I became interested in Albright’s central theme and lifelong fascination of life and death and decay’s inevitability and how it can be expressed in art. Rather than trying to match the detail of the painting, I wanted to explore some of the different themes on an abstract emotional level with drama in real time. What’s more dramatic than brass wind and silence?”