About José Evangelista's Compositions

                   This short work in four contrasting movements reproduces, in miniature, the form of a symphony.

                   The music is mostly nervous and light, and the tempo rapid. The piece is, thus, in contrast to the majority of symphonies in the repertoire - which is predominated by works of grand proportions in duration, instrumentation, and powerful expression.

                   The first movement, Envol, is built around a very rapid theme suggesting the flight of a bird. The second, Mélopée, features a melismatic melody of an improvisational character, climbing in register and intensity. Combat is a very rhythmic piece interspersed with short rests. And, finally, Presto chromatique is made up of lines rapidly ascending and descending.

                   Note written by José Evangelista

                   Esprit performance: Sunday, May 2, 2004 - Radio Waves Matinee - Glenn Gould Studio, as part of CBC/Radio Netherlands Dutch Music Week

                   O Java (1993)

                   Since I discovered the gamelan (the Indonesian orchestra) in my student years, I fell in love with the gamelans of Java and Bali. For the past 20 years, I have collected many recordings, travelled to Indonesia several times and founded the Balinese Gamelan Workshop at the University of Montreal in 1987, where I played for five years.

                   I have conceived O Java as a tribute to Javanese gamelan music. This type of gamelan includes mostly percussion instruments (metallophones, suspended gongs, gong chimes, drums, etc.) but also a flute, a fiddle and a zither. In my piece, the symphony orchestra is the gamelan, but the proportion of percussion and non-percussion instruments is the opposite of that of the Javanese orchestra. As in gamelan music, the piece is exclusively based on a melody which is simultaneously played by all instruments with slight variations. As a consequence, the musical texture does not resort as usual to harmony and counterpoint, but becomes rather a kind of 'super melody', paradoxically reuniting the feeling of melodic direction and the complexity of polyphony. That central melody is treated cyclically throughout the four contrasting sections of the piece, although a placid and meditative character predominates.

                   Programme note by José Evangelista

                   Alex Pauk conducted Esprit performing Evangelista's O Java on Friday, April 25, 2003, at the Jane Mallett Theatre, St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts in Toronto, Ontario.