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Urban Affair
2000

piano trio

duration 33'�

commissioned by FleetBoston Celebrity Series�
first performance:�
The Boston Trio�
Jordan Hall, Boston / April 2001

RECORDING

digital   compact disc

SCORE
Eye Contact
Conversation
Private Thought
Heart Skip
Anticipation
In Deep
Second Guessing
Hollow
Glad Day


PROGRAM NOTE
Urban Affair describes the course of an amorous involvement in nine short related movements. The mood of the piece is changeable, rising with elation and falling with sudden gloom, feelings familiar to anyone who has been thrown about by infatuation and new love. The work is constructed palendromically around In Deep, the fiery heart of the work.

The nine movements are:
Eye Contact: uncoiling into bright, dizzy, spinning sound a first flirtatious encounter becomes bolder.
Conversation: two types of music are played in sequence and then superimposed a little exchange
between yin (a tentative, gentle waltz) and yang (robust, irregular sixteenth-notes).
Private Thought: slow, interior, jazz-inflected piano chords introduce a quiet interlude taking stock
and hazily entertaining warm thoughts of a rosy future.
Heart Skip: jaunty, crisp, perambulatory walking in sunlight full of plain, clear-sighted pleasure in
another's existence.
Anticipation: excited rippling music (the lovers will see each other soon) closes with a tender violin
solo; the heart speaking.
In Deep is an expansion of Anticipation; the opening rippling music is remade, and the violin's solo is mirrored by the cello's.
Second Guessing (relates to Private Thought): brooding piano chords turn into thick, angular
descending figures dark fears about a surely doomed future.
Hollow (relates to Conversation): stark repeated fifths with tiny syncopations something
low-energy and bleak nagging in the back of the mind.
Glad Day (relates to Eye Contact): drowsy music slowly unfurls and becomes crisp and airy the
return of optimism and of delight. The closing gesture is open-ended; who knows what's next?


REVIEW
Andy Vores has a ways to go in order to catch up to Haydn, but he's on his way. Haydn wrote 46 piano trios, Vores has just heard the first performance of his second, a year after the premiere of his first.

This unusual circumstance is owing to the presence of two firstrate piano trios in town, Triple Helix and The Boston Trio, and to Vores's relationship with the Fleet Boston Celebrity Series he has written works for Dominique Labelle, Kendra Colton, and the Borromeo Quartet to sing or play on the series, as well as the two piano trios.

Urban Affair, which The Boston Ttio introduced yesterday, provides a charming contrast to last year's Dark Mother, which was intense and dramatic. Urban Affair is lighter, more transparent, even jazzy in spots as it chronicles the progress of a modern romance from Eye Contact, the first movement, to Glad Day, which returns to "optimism and delight." It is unclear, however, whether our friends have gotten back together or are simply relieved to be rid of cach other and eager for tlie next adventure.

There are 10 short movements tn the piece, interconnected in a palindromic thematic and emotional design Eye Contact and Glad Day are related, as are Conversation, the second movement, andHollow, the next to last. Paired at the center are Anticipation and In Deep, in which the breezy, lightly cynical mood gives way to "the heart speaking."

It's quite a trick to use three instruments to tell the story of two people, but Vores carries it off: three, for once, is not a crowd. Each member of the trio gets important solos, but there is also a real ensemble character. At 30 minutes, the piece may have been aerated by the composer into dimensions more than the elastic of the material can bear, but the balloon doesn’t burst, or at least it didn't in the ebullient and heartfelt performance by The Boston Trio.
Richard Dyer • The Boston Globe