Oh, Lois! from Metropolis Symphony

Description

I began composing my ''Metropolis Symphony" in 1988, inspired by the celebration in Cleveland of the fiftieth anniversary of Superman's first appearance in the comics. When I completed the score in 1993, I dedicated it to the conductor David Zinman, who had encouraged me to compose the work, and to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. . The "Metropolis Symphony" evokes an American mythology that I discovered as an avid reader of comic books in the fifties and sixties. Each movement of the symphony—which may be performed separately—is a musical response to the myth of Superman. I have used Superman as a compositional metaphor in order to create an independent musical world that appeals to the imagination. The symphony is a rigorously structured, non-programmatic work, expressing the energies, ambiguities, paradoxes, and wit of American popular culture. Like Charles Ives, whose music recalls small-town America early in our century, I draw on my eclectic musical background to reflect on late-twentieth-century urban America. Through complex orchestration, timbral exploration, and rhythmic polyphony, I combine the idioms of jazz, rock, and funk with symphonic and avant-garde composition.. IV. "Oh, Lois!" invokes Lois Lane, news reporter at the Daily Planet alongside Clark Kent (alias Superman). Marked with the tempo “faster than a speeding bullet,” this five-minute concerto for the orchestra uses flexatone and whip to provide a lively polyrhythmic counterpoint that suggests a cartoon history of mishaps, screams, dialogue, crashes, and disasters, all in rapid motion. (1989)Since its premiere by the Baltimore Symphony in 1994 at Carnegie Hall, the GRAMMY®-winning Metropolis Symphony has entered the orchestral repertoire and been performed by orchestras all over the world.Metropolis Symphony is a five-movement musical response to the world of Superman, and Oh, Lois! invokes Lois Lane, news reporter at the Daily Planet alongside Clark Kent (alias Superman). Marked with the tempo "faster than a speeding bullet," this five-minute movement is a lively polyrhythmic counterpoint that suggests a cartoon history of mishaps, screams, dialogue, crashes, and disasters, all in rapid motion. Duration - ca. 5:00