Horvitz: Joe Hill: 16 Actions for Orchestra, Voices & Soloists

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Release Date: 16th Jun 2008
Catalogue No: NW80672
Label: New World
Length: 77 minutes

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Horvitz: Action 1: Power in the Union

Work length6:16

$1.00

$1.40

Danny Barnes, Rinde Eckert, Bill Frisell, Robin Holcomb
Northwest Sinfonia
Christian Knapp

Horvitz: Action 2: One Day - One Hour

Work length7:04

$1.50

$2.10

Robin Holcomb, Bill Frisell, Danny Barnes, Rinde Eckert
Northwest Sinfonia
Christian Knapp

Horvitz: Action 3: Worthy of his Food

Work length7:41

$1.50

$2.10

Robin Holcomb, Rinde Eckert, Danny Barnes, Bill Frisell
Northwest Sinfonia
Christian Knapp

Horvitz: Action 4: Jerusalem, Jerusalem

Work length1:38

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$1.40

Bill Frisell, Robin Holcomb, Danny Barnes, Rinde Eckert
Northwest Sinfonia
Christian Knapp

Horvitz: Action 5: It's a Lie

Work length5:31

$1.00

$1.40

Rinde Eckert, Bill Frisell, Danny Barnes, Robin Holcomb
Northwest Sinfonia
Christian Knapp

Horvitz: Action 6: On Another Shore

Work length4:33

$1.00

$1.40

Rinde Eckert, Danny Barnes, Bill Frisell, Robin Holcomb
Northwest Sinfonia
Christian Knapp

Horvitz: Action 7: Spike Driver's Blues

Work length7:17

$1.50

$2.10

Rinde Eckert, Robin Holcomb, Bill Frisell, Danny Barnes
Northwest Sinfonia
Christian Knapp

Horvitz: Action 8: The Land as a Stranger

Work length3:48

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$1.40

Rinde Eckert, Danny Barnes, Bill Frisell, Robin Holcomb
Northwest Sinfonia
Christian Knapp

Horvitz: Action 9: Lumberjack's Prayer

Work length4:53

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$1.40

Robin Holcomb, Bill Frisell, Rinde Eckert, Danny Barnes
Northwest Sinfonia
Christian Knapp

Horvitz: Action 10: To Have This Hour

Work length2:15

$1.00

$1.40

Robin Holcomb, Rinde Eckert, Danny Barnes, Bill Frisell
Northwest Sinfonia
Christian Knapp

Horvitz: Action 11: Hard Time in the Country

Work length4:08

$1.00

$1.40

Danny Barnes, Rinde Eckert, Bill Frisell, Robin Holcomb
Northwest Sinfonia
Christian Knapp

Horvitz: Action 12: I Never Died

Work length1:57

$1.00

$1.40

Bill Frisell, Robin Holcomb, Danny Barnes, Rinde Eckert
Northwest Sinfonia
Christian Knapp

Horvitz: Action 13: Nameless, Faceless

Work length6:17

$1.00

$1.40

Danny Barnes, Bill Frisell, Robin Holcomb, Rinde Eckert
Northwest Sinfonia
Christian Knapp

Horvitz: Action 14: Bound to Wake Up

Work length3:55

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$1.40

Rinde Eckert, Robin Holcomb, Bill Frisell, Danny Barnes
Northwest Sinfonia
Christian Knapp

Horvitz: Action 15: How to Die

Work length5:52

$1.00

$1.40

Bill Frisell, Rinde Eckert, Robin Holcomb, Danny Barnes
Northwest Sinfonia
Christian Knapp

Horvitz: Action 16: Where Flowers Grow

Work length4:29

$1.00

$1.40

Bill Frisell, Robin Holcomb, Danny Barnes, Rinde Eckert
Northwest Sinfonia
Christian Knapp

About
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About

Perhaps the best way to characterize Wayne Horvitz’s (b. 1955) Joe Hill: 16 Actions for Orchestra, Voices, and Soloist (2004)—based on the life and times of the legendary labor activist and organizer—is as a radio play that tells the story of a man’s life in words, instrumental music and songs. Like a song cycle, Joe Hill incorporates much previously-written material (nearly all of it re-harmonized).

There are songs by Hill himself, such as “The Rebel Girl” and “There is Power in the Union,” but also by others, including the folk poem “The Lumberjack’s Prayer,” Mississippi John Hurt’s “Spike Driver’s Blues,” and an old English street cry, “Chairs to Mend.” It also employs spoken word, including Joe Hill’s famous “Last Will and Testament,” plus words used as narration and dramatic dialogue.

But “song cycles” don’t usually include ravishingly beautiful stretches of chamber music, much less a completely open line in the score for an improvising guitarist—in this case, the most influential one of our time, Bill Frisell. This Rubik’s cube of jazz, folk, classical and popular music is strikingly elegiac and autumnal in tone, more requiem and lament than celebration or call to “action.” This is appropriate to its theme of martyrdom, though there are also many exhilarating, jaunty, and humorous sections. Apart from classical music and the blues its other major influences are what has come to be called “Americana”—to be more specific, Appalachian music’s nasal vocals, affection for open fifths, ambiguity between major and minor thirds, and the jazzy Broadway writing of Leonard Bernstein, particularly his penchant for rapid timesignature changes. Horvitz has chosen to tell Hill’s story in music that is both complex and direct, ironic and sentimental, dissonant and gorgeous, popular and artful, and that relishes a well-wrought song as much as long-form development.

Horvitz: Joe Hill: 16 Actions for Orchestra, Voices & Soloists

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