'Red Violin' composer turns to Tennessee Williams for Tucson premiere

When composer John Corigliano accepted the Best Original Score Academy Award for “The Red Violin” in 2000, he thanked all the usual suspects, from the director and producer to the record label that put out the soundtrack from the 1999 film.

But his highest praise came for violinist Joshua Bell, who played on the soundtrack.

“... You can write all the notes you want, but if someone doesn’t play them like a god, they’ll never sound that way. And Joshua Bell, the great violinist, played them like a god,” he said.

The last time the pair collaborated was in 2003 for “The Red Violin” Concerto, yet when Corigliano was offered the chance to reunite with Bell one last time ... he hesitated.

“That’s my usual go-to mode,” the 87-year-old composer said of initially turning down a commission from the Tucson Desert Song Festival to write a song for Bell and his soprano wife Larisa Martínez. “Composing is very hard for me. And really, I go through hell composing, and I tend to turn down things most of the time. So that’s very likely what happened.”

Initially, Corigliano was a maybe when George Hanson, the song festival’s former festival coordinator, pitched the idea in 2022. But after he suffered a hand injury, Corigliano’s maybe was sounding more like a no.

A chance meeting between Bell and Corigliano a few weeks later led to the final yes.

“There’s not a composer I would more desire a song cycle from,” Bell said.

Corigliano will be in the University of Arizona’s Crowder Hall audience on Wednesday, April 2, when Bell, Martínez and their accompanist, Peter Dugan, perform the world premiere of his song cycle, “Tennessee Songs.” co-commissioned by Arizona Friends of Chamber Music and Jeannette Segel.  The concert is sold out, but streaming tickets are still available.

At the suggestion of his spouse, fellow composer Mark Adamo, Corigliano set the texts from Tennessee Williams’ poems “My Little One,” “Carousel Tune,” “Across the Space,” “The Beanstalk Country,” “Life Story” and “Towns Become Jewels” to songs.

“They are just wonderful,” he said. “He’s a wonderful writer, and he’s funny and wicked and angry and mad, and he’s got so many moods in his poetry that I right away said, yes, I could do this.”

Corigliano, whose resume includes five Grammys and a Pulitzer Prize for his 2001 Symphony No. 2 for String Orchestra, created music that fit the mood of the texts.

“Some are slow, some are fast. Some are kind of jazzy in a certain way,” he said, adding that while he’s not a jazz composer, there is a bit of jazz in the song for “Life Story,” about a sexual encounter between two strangers who save their formal introductions until the lights come back on.

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“They tell each other their life story and the very end of it, (Williams) says, ‘Well, one of you falls asleep, then the other one does likewise with a lighted cigarette in his mouth, and that’s how people burn to death in hotel rooms,’” he said, quoting the poem. “That’s a little jazzy, well kind of bluesy I would call it, because it’s a very lazy setting of these people who are just lying in bed and talking.”

Bell said he thought Corigliano was writing a single song for him and Martínez.

“He came up with a cycle of six songs that last about 20 minutes long, and they’re treasures,” Bell gushed. “I think they’re going to be appreciated for many, many, many years to come. So I we couldn’t be more pleased with the music.”

During a phone interview days before she and Bell were set to rehearse the songs with Corigliano, Martínez recalled her and Bell’s first meeting with the composer.

“I didn’t realize then, but it felt a little bit like an audition,” she said.

“I think he listened to your voice and really tailored these pieces for your voice,” Bell interjected.

Bell has been a catalyst for a number of new works, including commissioning Edgar Meyer, Jake Heggie, Jennifer Higdon, Jessie Montgomery and Kevin Puts to write “The Elements” in 2023. But he admits he’s spoiled playing “the music of all the great masters.”

“When you’re commissioning a new piece, you want it to be on the same level as Beethoven and Brahms, and with John, I always feel that it is,” said Bell, 57, who has been a regular on Tucson stages since he made his Tucson Symphony Orchestra debut as a teen under conductor Bill McLaughlin. “It’s just that attention to detail and every note meaning something. There’s no sense of gimmick or, you know, throwing ink at the page and seeing where it lands. ... Every note has a place, just as it does in Beethoven and ... he picked six jewels of Tennessee Williams poetry. Every one of them is completely different, special, profound.”

“It’s music that every time we do it, it just keeps giving us more. We keep finding more to it, the poems and the music,” added the Puerto Rican-born Martínez. “So it’s really been a deep experience for me, personally, working on it, and getting a little bit inside John’s mind as well. You know, through them, I feel a deep connection with this man right now, and it’s just a big honor.”

Wednesday’s concert will incorporate works for violin and solo voice that Bell and Martínez perform in their “Voice and the Violin” recital series, including songs from Mendelssohn and Mozart, a couple of violin showpieces and songs from Martínez’s native Puerto Rico.

The concert at Crowder, 1017 N. Olive Road on the UA campus, begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets for the livestream are $75 through Arizona Friends of Chamber Music (arizonachambermusic.org).

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