A Sleeper’s Notebook (2003)

IN THE COMPOSER’S OWN WORDS

“During my serious musical studies, I followed the pianist Rebecca Penneys from Wisconsin to the Eastman School of Music. Always in her playing and teaching she connected how she moved to what she felt as a musician. This resonated deeply for me, building on a life-long study in dance and theater. Penneys had been a ballet dancer and this experience informs how she thinks about breath, pacing and phrasing. In time such lessons created the basis not only for my playing but for my composing as well. In A Sleeper’s Notebook I planned for these connections between sound and how one creates it physically at the piano, to be an integral and observable part of the experience. I choreographed all of my motions. Each of the six movements in this piece may be performed individually and indeed without the choreography. But it is conceived as an evening-length work with movement as an element that both unifies and deepens the experience.

I had begun composing one movement of the composition in the summer of 1999, committed to intertwining the arts of music and dance but without any sense of the program or reference. This first part was alone when I arrived at The MacDowell Colony in the Fall the following year and I presented it to colleagues there. An essayist friend said it reminded her of a dream. Meant innocently enough, this comment struck a chord with me, and soon after I structured the work as a cycle based on kinds of sleep, both rapid eye movement and dream states.”

–Eleonor Sandresky, 2003 

Details

A Sleeper’s Notebook
(2003) 60 min
for choreographic pianist

Music and movement by Eleonor Sandresky

World Premiere: February 15, 2003 | Eleonor Sandresky | Kitchen Keyboard Summit 2003, New York, NY.

Commissioned in part by Composer Collaborative, Inc in 2002 for the Summit. Additional support from The LivingRoom Fund for New Music

Score available upon request.

Publishing & Licensing Information

To perform A Sleeper’s Notebook, please contact varsa@sandresky.com.

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