Rafael Antonio Nazario / Raf Nazario: CDs, Scores, Music

• MP3 play whole song, hi-fi (broadband)

I was born in a "Harbour City" (San Juan, Puerto Rico), and San Jose and Salzburg aside, have lived all of my life in harbor or port cities, (Portland, Miami, Santa Monica, NY, Tokyo, Puerto Vallarta and now Sydney).My goal with this work is to capture the ebb and flow and multitude of sounds and influences one hears and encounters on Sydney's urban waters (wind, sails, the darting of seagulls, the churning of marine engines) and in doing so, speak directly to a city by the sea that has had an uncommon amount of "global" influences upon it.

I would like to incorporate references to other world musical idioms, with which to allude to the multitude of cultural influences that arrive through our ports.

Harbour City is unabashedly melodic. My desire is to compose something lyrical, for the sea is nothing if not lyrical. I have for the most part eschewed the post-Schoenberg and Stravinsky musical vocabulary which for so long has been the dominant language—de rigeur, even—in “contemporary” concert hall music. In the process, concert hall music has become the realm of the culturally elite. I would like my work to appeal to as many people as possible, The music on this clip represents the first two movements (in "draft" form) of Harbour City. I expect the completed work to be some 20-30 minutes in duration.

Harbour City is a work in progress.

A second movement with Indian and Asian motifs is in initial stages.

A third movement will follow...

 

this posted on July 1st, 2009.