Andalusian Love Songs
Instrumentation: countertenor and piano
Duration: 16 minutes
Commissioner: Brian Asawa, countertenor
Premiere: Brian Asawa, countertenor; Mark Salters, piano. Long Beach, CA
Program Notes: I wrote my song set Four Andalusian Love Songs for Brian Asawa’s voice, which was a complete thrill. I was renting an idyllic 1890’s refurbished farmhouse just a short walk from the bustling Napa downtown. He had gone through some difficult personal issues of his own and was making a comeback. We would rehearse in the living room on my sturdy upright Kawaii piano. On one occasion as I was helping him sight read my music, I sang a few notes (badly) to help him out, only to stop short after realizing he’d sung at Paris Opera while I was an undergraduate college choir dropout.
We met at the San Francisco recital of a woman I would later marry (soprano Heidi Moss Erickson). A few months earlier they shared a stage in a performance of Daron Hagen’s Vera of Las Vegas. At the recital he eyed me up and down and asked Heidi if I was single, a very on-brand move for Brian.
I’m not sure I’ve ever witnessed a performer show such care and dedication to my work, yet playfulness and humor were always at the ready. Stealing a few lines from the poetry I set, I’d call him Duck and he’d call me Rooster - somehow it made sense.
I can’t think of Split My Heart without thinking of Brian. His idea to go big at the repeated declamations of the word ‘split’ worked perfectly and moves me in a way I still can’t quite articulate to this day. After his passing, Heidi and I performed the song at his memorial service hosted by LA Opera and it seemed a fitting tribute.
Four Andalusian Love Songs
$20.00
“The devices captured the spirit of the poems and established a lineage of emotional tone-painting that Erickson has inherited from the songs of Franz Schubert.”
“The songs seemed tailor-made for the drama that is one of Asawa’s fortes. Most striking were the ridiculously sly and silly accompaniment to “The Rooster,” a song into which Asawa injected apt hilarity by exaggerating his rolled “r”s; ”
Commissioned by acclaimed countertenor Brian Asawa. Video performances are the LAST performances we have from this incredible singer
The Rooster // Al-As’ad Ibrāhīm ibn Billītah (11th Century Toldeo)
Split My Heart // Ibn Hazm (994-1063) (Córdoba)
Slave Boy // Yūsuf ibn Hārūn al-Ramādī (d. 1022) (Córdoba)
Absence // Abu Bakr al-Turtushi (1059-1126 Eastern Andalusia)