James Dickenson

Date: Summer 2006
Composer: Andrew Waggoner
Genre: String Quartet
Performers: Degas Quartet

Overview
"My Penelope was composed in the spring and summer of 2006 for the Degas Quartet. The title is a personal take on the Odyssey of Homer; during the fall of 05 and the winter of 06 I saw New Orleans- my first love and the seat of my soul-bereft, ravaged, surrounded by suitors, buying time with her weaving, while binding the wounds inflicted by both natural disaster and human incompetence. I came to see that, while my own anguish as limited to the empathetic and nostalgic, all of us who either came from or to New Orleans the separation from our city, and longing for its return. Thus My Penelope; Our Penelope. For what other city would this mythic reference have as much resonance" composer Andrew Waggoner.
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Date: Summer 2008
Composer: Jeffrey Mumford
Genre: Violin solo
Performers: James Dickenson

An expanding distance of multiple voices was written for Linda Bahn of the Corigliano Quartet. To quote Jeffrey "The title for me suggests a layered space suspended and vast, in which many sources and gradations of light radiate from continually shifting pockets of its interior."
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Premiere: Hunter College
Date: September 2010
Composer: Shafer Mahoney
Genre: Violin Solo
Performer: James Dickenson
Future performances:

Overview Shafer Mahoney has been commissioned by the Jerome Foundation to write a new solo violin piece for me. Further info is at http://www.composersforum.org/objects/News/NovDec04SB.pdf  Hear an excerpt.

Premiere: Hickory North Carolina
Date: 14th November 2004
Composer: Jeffrey Mumford
Genre: Rhapsody for violin and orchestra
Performer: James Dickenson

Overview
A distance of unfolding light, commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation, is a rhapsody for violin and orchestra in which the soloist (concertmaster) embarks on a journey to be free of rest of the orchestra. Through continually varying means, at times engaged and cooperative, at times capricious and eventually undaunted, the soloist(often with the help of the principal viola and cello) defines and then creates a separate world as the rest of the orchestra resigns itself.

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Premiere: Science and Arts Center Hickory North Carolina
Date: 4th March 2006
Composer: Armand Bayolo
Genre: Double String Quartet
Performers: Euclid Quartet/Degas Quartet

Overview
It was our feeling that the string octet is a relatively unexplored genre. Of the few in existence some are named octet, some double quartet and the distinction between the two seems rather vague. It was apparent that there were some interesting possibilities in juxtaposing the idea of a double quartet with that of a string octet. Both I and Jameson Cooper, knew Armando and his work, notably his first string quartet, August Dramas. Talking with Armando it became clear that we could do some interesting things visually as well as musically to create the sense of two separate quartets in a double quartet coming together to form a truly cohesive octet.
Non-traditional placement of the players throughout the performing and seating area as a part of the piece. The seating is arranged differently, the two quartets oppose each other, but still form a semi circle. Consequently, the two cellos are next to each other, they become a central part of this piece.
In essence this piece Ludi, is as it says about games. In particular the different types of games humans play with each other, physical, verging on violent in the first movement, interestingly named Mosh pit. And end game the third movement, which evokes more playful games, and allegorical cadenzas.
The second movement, Mating ritual is the turning point, where the cellos bring the group together.
The last movement, Benediction: All Men are Brothers, is a pray, in hope that peace will prevail and that we can avoid the types of violent, physcological games that mankind engages in.
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Premiere: Science and Arts Center Hickory North Carolina
Date: 30th April 2005
Composer: Laura Kaminksy
Genre: String Quartet
Performers: Degas Quartet

Overview
"These highly expressive, free, and semi-abstract works are not the typical Degas images that we know so well. There is an immediacy and an impulsiveness about them that is not found in the familiar ballet dancers, bathers, and horses, yet these prints exhibit the same masterful craft of his other works. These monotypes are all nominally landscapes, but are, in many ways, as abstract as the works of the Color Field and Abstract Expressionist painters who made their work a half-century later. This thrilled me and sparked many musical ideas in response. My intention is to create a set of pictures for the listener, using sound in lieu of color to create mood; musical texture to evoke the density of paint; and time, rather than a canvas, to determine the form."
 Hear an excerpt.