Interview With Composer Osvaldo Golijov
All Classical Portland President & CEO Suzanne Nance sat down with Argentinian-American composer Osvaldo Golijov, violinist Johnny Gandelsman, and the Reser’s Executive Director Chris Ayzoukian. They discussed Golijov’s exquisite and nuanced interpretation of David Grossman’s Falling Out of Time. Part play, part poem, part fable, the book narrates a journey “out of time” as parents grieve the death of their child, a quest to comprehend a loss with no name.
Watch Suzanne’s full interview below or on All Classical Portland’s YouTube channel.
Revisit All Classical Portland Program Director John Pitman‘s 2021 review of Falling Out of Time on our Arts Blog.
ABOUT
Golijov’s musical interpretation will receive its Northwest premiere on November 1, 2022, at 7:30 PM PT at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts. Commissioned by Silkroad and featuring members of the wide-ranging Silkroad Ensemble, the evocative score weaves a tapestry of sound that draws on Chinese, European, and Middle Eastern musical traditions—and includes contemporary synthesizer and electric guitar.
Drawing on Grossman’s powerful text, Osvaldo has conceived this song cycle for 13 artists of the Silkroad Ensemble, the collective whose delicacy of musical expression he describes as like “a harp of a thousand hairs.” The piece is scored for three voices, electronics, string quintet, kemanche, percussion, pipa, sheng, and trumpet.
Learn more at silkroad.org.
The Reser: Osvaldo Golijov
November 1, 2022, 7:30 PM: This special concert presents composer Osvaldo Golijov’s Falling Out of Time, composed for a multicultural, multi-stylistic instrumental ensemble, and presented in a semi-staged performance.
Based on the eponymous book by Israeli author David Grossman, Falling Out of Time is a gripping song cycle that explores parents’ sorrow as they mourn the loss of a child. Golijov’s eclectic music draws on Delta blues and Central Asian ballads to tell a tale of grief and a journey to acceptance.
The Reser presents Osvaldo Golijov: Falling Out of Time
November 1, 2022; 7:30 PM PT
Learn more and buy tickets at thereser.org
Osvaldo Golijov’s works include the St Mark Passion; the opera Ainadamar; Azul, a cello concerto; The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind; for clarinet and string quartet; the song cycles Ayre and Falling Out of Time; and the soundtracks for Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro and Youth Without Youth. His two most recent works are Um Dia Bom, premiered by Brooklyn Rider, and Ever Yours, premiered by the St Lawrence String Quartet and the Telegraph Quartet.
Upcoming projects include a violin concerto for Johnny Gandelsman and The Knights, and the film soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis. He was born in La Plata, Argentina, in 1960, and lived in Jerusalem before immigrating to the US in 1986. He is the Composer-in-Residence at The College of the Holy Cross.
Learn more at osvaldogolijov.com.
