Fictive Music

Program notes:

In 1952, Harlan and Anna Hubbard settled on a tract of land, on the shores of the Ohio River in Kentucky — a holler — they would name Payne Hollow. It would become their life’s work: building a home by hand, “living deliberately” with what they could grow, fish, butcher, barter, pick, and forage. They lived simply, but it wasn’t an easy life. There was no electricity or plumbing or other conveniences. 

There was music and art. Harlan and Anna played chamber music (violin, cello, piano) from a robust collection of scores and sheet music that included classical sonatas, chorales transcribed, new music, and anything else given to them by friends and visitors. Harlan was a trained painter, and worked prolifically with materials at his disposal, sometimes reusing a shelf drawer or a scrap piece of wood. His watercolors (along with a more sporadic journal) cataloged their days, their seasons, at Payne Hollow. 

This piano trio is an attempt at a musical portrait — four portraits — of the Hubbards’ life at Payne Hollow, from winter through autumn. It begins and ends with the same two notes, and in between music expressing ease, comfort, process, routine, memory, repetition, and hardship. 

“winterloops” takes some of the recorded material from the first movement of the trio, and reshapes it to fashion a soundscape built on loops, phasing, compressing and stretching phrases, notes, and gestures. Every sound in “winterloops” comes from the original recording. 

With commission support from:
Robert R. Canida
Payne Hollow on the Ohio, Inc.
Anonymous
Kathryn Voorhees & John Whitehead
John and Kay Begley
John and June Fettig
Edith Bingham
Joe Wolek
Leah Tenney