Azica Releases New Jerod Tate Album

courtesy of Naxos of America

In 2008 Azica Records released an album of two compositions by Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, “Tracing Mississippi,” a four-movement concerto for flute and orchestra and “Iholba’,” a two-movement piece for solo flute, orchestra, and chorus. These works were performed by the San Francisco Symphony led by Edwin Outwater. Christine Bailey Davis was the flute soloist for “Tracing Mississippi;” and the flutist for “Iholba’” was Thomas Robertello. The San Francisco Symphony Chorus was prepared by its Director Ragnar Bohlin.

Yesterday Azica released its second Tate album. The title of the album is Winter Moons, which is also the title of the first selection, the score for a ballet choreographed by the composer’s mother, Patricia Tate. This is followed by the five-movement suite Spirit Chief Names the Animal People. Between these two releases, Tate prepared “Chokfi’” for one of the CURRENTS programs streamed by SFSymphony+ during the pandemic. One Found Sound then created a “LIVE film experience” for its performance of “Chokfi’” in October of 2021, and Volti performed his “Visions of a Child” in their first post-pandemic performance before an audience this past June.

In the midst of all this attention that Tate has received in San Francisco, I am a bit embarrassed to confess that Winter Moons was my “first contact” with his music. The ensemble performing both selections on the album is the Winter Moons Orchestra, suggesting that the group was assembled explicitly for recording the works on the album. The conductor is Frank J. Toth. Patricia Tate provided the booklet with a synopsis of the “Winter Moons” tales that inspired her choreography, each of which is associated with a different American Indian tribe. (The Tates seem to prefer that terminology. even if others find it controversial.) The four movements of the score account for the choreographed tales as follows:

1. “Winter Moon” (Osage); “Puberty Blessing Songs” (Lakota)
2. “The Indian Spirit at Mesa Falls” (Shoshone)
3. “Red Plume and the Medicine Wheel” (Crow); “The Origin of Bitterroot” (Bitterroot Salish - Pend d’Oreilles)
4. “She Runs With the Wind” (poem by Scot Shuman); “Finale”

Given my personal interest in both classical ballet and modern dance, I tend to find it difficult to account for “narrative” music without being able to see how the narrative has been staged. As a result, I found myself more partial to Spirit Chief Names the Animal People, whose narrative resides strictly in the music, rather than the partnership of music with choreography. It would be easy to try to compare this music to the representation of the animals in Sergei Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf;” but that would be a mistake.

The title of Tate’s composition is also the title of an Okanagan tale, which involves the relationship between the Spirit Chief and the selfish Coyote. Those familiar with Coyote tales will probably appreciate Tate’s prankish use of the bassoon to represent that character, while the Spirit Chief is represented by the full ensemble. As might be guessed, Coyote’s bassoon returns at the very end of the musical representation of this narrative.