What You’ll Hear at Wei Phi | Jennifer Jolley (1981)

Flight 710 to Cabo San Lucas

Background

Composer and conductor Jennifer Jolley has been composing notable works since she was in her twenties. She studied at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and at the University of Southern California. Much of Jolley’s recent music is intentionally provocative, dealing with environmental and social justice issues, as in her 2018 Blue Glacier Decoy, for chamber ensemble and electronics, a work reacting to the disastrous disappearance of glaciers throughout the Pacific Northwest. In 2022, she joined the faculty of Lehman College in the Bronx, New York City. In 2023, Jolley completed her first opera, Spacewalk, which deals with the first all-female spacewalk (in October 2019) by Christina Koch and Jessica Meir, American astronauts on the International Space Station. Regarding her Flight 710 to Cabo San Lucas, Jolley writes:

“This is the piece I wanted to write for the last eight years but was never cool enough to write it. Around this time, I had a friend who introduced me to some songs by The Meters and a song by Ernie and the Top Notes, Inc. called Dap Walk. In fact, I wanted to name a future piece of mine I Know the Ghetto Has Got You Down, a line taken from the song itself. When I was asked to write a piece for Pethrus Gardborn, Nicholas Photinos, and Johanna Ballou (for the MusicX festival), I thought this would be the perfect time to write this piece. To prep, I only listened to music by James Brown for a couple of weeks. Some of the rhythmic motives of this piece were taken from the motives found in some of James Brown’s hits. The title is taken from the first few lines of the Quentin Tarantino film Jackie Brown.”

What You’ll Hear

The piece begins very much like one of James Brown’s shows: with the kind of sonic assault that announced the Godfather of Soul! After this opening, the music is much more delicate, as woodwinds and strings play little 16th-note bursts based on tight horn lines from Brown’s band and the brass respond. The opening texture returns briefly, and the music evolves through several slightly funky textures. The piece closes with one final return of the opening rhythm.

Jennifer Jolley (b. 1981)

Visit Jennifer’s Website

Jolley composed this work in 2010, as a trio for flute, cello, and piano, and subsequently created the orchestra version heard here. Duration 9:00.

This enormously successful work expresses a crystalline vision of a grand cathedral placed in the sky.

photo by Liz Glenn

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