Michael Daugherty is a native of Cedar Rapids, growing up on the SE side in a musical home. His father was a jazz and country/western drummer, and his mother was an amateur singer. All four of his younger brothers are professional musicians. Michael taught himself piano on the family’s player piano at an early age. In high school, Michael led a rock band, and was the accompanist for some of the choirs at Washington High School. Daugherty attended the University of North Texas College of Music, studying composition and jazz. He received his doctorate from the Yale School of Music in composition. Since 1991 he has taught composition at the University of Michigan.
Composed in 2014 on a commission, “Dreamachine” explores the relationships between nature, humanity, and human inventions. It is divided into four movements, each featuring a different solo percussion instrument. In the composer’s words:
The flying machines of Leonardo DaVinci are the inspiration for the first movement, “DaVinci’s Wings.” To imagine different ways for man to fly, the great inventor of the Italian Renaissance, DaVinci (1452-1519), made many drawing of wings patterned after birds and bats, and then built with wooden frames. Playing the marimba, also made of wood, the percussion soloist performs music that I have created to hover, flutter, and rise in the imagination.
The second movement is named after Rube Goldberg (1883-1970), the American cartoonist, engineer, and inventor. Syndicated in newspapers across America, his cartoons featured witty contraptions such as pulleys, pipes, wires, gears, handles, cups, fingers, feathers, birds, dogs, and even monkeys that perform simple tasks in complicated ways. In “Rube Goldgerg’s Variations,” I have composed music for the soloist to play a series of small handheld instruments, creating a chain reaction like one of Goldberg’s carefully designed machines.
“Electric Eel” is the third movement, inspired by Fritz Kahn’s eerie drawing of an incandescent light bulg plugged into an electric eel. The German artist and scientist, Kahn (1888-1968), invented a unique graphic style to illustrate the relations of man, machine, and nature through brilliant visual analogies. Featuring the vibraphone, I have composed music to suggest an eel slithering through murky waters. The first section incorporates impressionist harmonies to create a spectrum of light that becomes brighter as the music progresses. The next section is a voltaic burst of energy in syncopated rhythms and atonal sound clusters. After reaching a white heat, the musical glow gradually fades back into silent darkness.
The final movement, “Vulcan’s Forge,” refers to the Roman god of fire and to Mr. Spock, the half-human, half-vulcan science officer aboard the starship Enterprise in the 1960’s television show, Star Trek. Vulcan invented weapons and other marvels for gods and heroes, such as self-propelling robots, the shield of Achilles, Apollo’s chariot, and the thunderbolt of Jupiter. Featuring the snare drum, I have created striking, fiery rhythms to imagine the god creating his inventions at the forge. The concerto ends with music that blasts us from our seats, like a bolt of lightning.
-Program Notes by Kevin Lodge