Preludes for Silence and Darkness

Collection Contents

#		Title	Length
1		Waltz No 10 C minor Chopin Allusion	1:53	Play
2		Melody 7 in C major	2:08	Play
3		Pensive No 1 in C minor	2:07	Play
4		Edgon Heath in D Dorian mode	3:32	Play
5		Oblique No 4 in C minor	3:38	Play
6		Deja Vu Poulenc Part One in C major	2:54	Play
7		Deja Vu Satie Gnossienne in D minor	3:42	Play
8		Barcarolle No 1 in A major	2:43	Play
9		Deja Vu Faure in E minor	3:46	Play
10		Siesta No 3 in F major	4:54	Play
11		Waltz No 4 in C minor	2:56	Play
12		Melody 8 in G major	2:37	Play
13		Barcarolle No 5 in F major	4:08	Play
14		Oblique No 5 in C minor	3:21	Play
15		Deja Vu Poulenc Part Two in C minor	2:07	Play
16		Lullaby 2 in F major	5:49	Play
17		Edgon Heath in D Dorian mode	4:16	Play

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Description

Solo Piano Compositions by Dana Carlile
Performed by Pianist Susan DeWitt Smith

What is below?

1) Free PDF sheet music offer with CD purchase.

2) Musical biography of Susan DeWitt Smith.

3) A Musical Biography of Dana's grandfather Ferdinand Sorenson.

4) A little bit about Dana and production credits.


SHEET MUSIC OFFER

After you have listened to your copy of the CD you may request a few of your favorite pieces in sheet music form. I will send them to you in a PDF file via e-mail.


SUSAN DeWITT SMITH'S MUSICAL BIOGRAPHY

Pianist Susan DeWitt Smith earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Dartmouth College and her Master of Music degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Eastman School of Music, where she studied with Nelita True.
Her many musical accolades include a second prize in the Young Keyboard Artists' International Competition, semi-finalist standing at the International Stravinsky Awards Competition, several performance awards from Dartmouth College and a performer's certificate and teaching award from Eastman.

Smith has performed throughout the United States and New Zealand. An avid chamber musician, she has played at the Hot Springs Music Festival, the Grand Teton Music Festival, the Nelson Music Festival and the Olympic Music Festival.
Her professional recordings include several works for Radio New Zealand. She has recorded for the Manu label and appears on a disc of works by New Zealand composers. KOCH International Classics recordings include Bloch's Concerto Grosso No. 1 with the San Diego Chamber Orchestra, three recordings with flutist Alexa Still and a recording of works by Roy Harris with the Third Angle New Music Ensemble.

Smith has appeared as a soloist with the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Chamber Orchestra, Palomar Symphony, San Diego Symphony and Oregon Symphony. She is a member of the Oregon-based Third Angle New Music Ensemble and lives in Portland, where she teaches at Reed College and Marylhurst University. She maintains an active performing schedule.

THE MUSICAL LIFE & FAMILY OF FERDINAND SORENSON

Ferdinand Sorenson first arrived in Portland, Oregon about 1909 to play in the Portland Symphony at the recommendation and with the assistance of his friend, mentor, and fellow musician Mose Christensen. Originally from Grenaa, Denmark where he was born in 1882, Ferdinand came to the United States as an infant with his sister Rasmines (Minnie), and his parents: Lars and Matilda. Eight other brothers and sisters had already immigrated to Little Denmark in southern Utah before them.

Ferdinand's music education began with his father, Lars, when he was 5 years old. By 8 he was playing in public with his father. Lars had been a lamplighter and wood shoe maker in Denmark but in Elsinore, Utah he was remembered for his fiddling. John Johnson the organist that played with Lars at the community dances remembers asking Lars what key to he should be playing in and Lars' reply was : "Oh, just keep playing, never mind the key." At an early age Ferdinand not only played the violin but also brass instruments to join in family and community orchestras. They would put a band together and go, as he said, "barnstorming around the countryside." In 1896 one of those bands he and his brother Antone played in welcomed the arrival of first passenger train of the Denver & Rio Grande railroad.

Ferdinand continued to study the violin with Willard Weihe when he went to Salt Lake City in 1899. Weihe had been a pupil of Ole Bull, Vieuxtemps and Joachim and was a founder of the Salt Lake City Opera (1897) and the Bohemian Club. It was in Salt Lake Ferdinand met his friend and mentor in music and dancing, Mose Christensen. Mose was 12 years older than Ferdinand and also a violinist. Mose had studied with Henry Schradieck on the east coast. After Mose and his wife Carrie had moved to Boise, Idaho in 1901, they found, by accident, Ferdinand, traveling like a hobo, sleeping in a building under their construction wrapped in a US flag. The timing was opportune because a cellist was needed in Boise for a string quartet and Ferdinand was willing to take up playing the cello as well as the violin and brass instruments.

Mose Christensen and his group of musicians in Idaho thought Ferdinand so talented that they helped him in 1905 collect enough money to travel to Europe to study. Ferdinand headed east intending to study the cello with Klengel in Leipzig, Germany but the train was delayed (reputedly by a tornado) and he missed the boat to Europe. He stayed in New York and studied cello with Cornelius Van Vliet, first cellist of the New York Philharmonic, and with the Frenchman, William Ebann, at the New York College of Music. The teachers taught out of studios above Carnegie Hall at that time. Ferdinand earned his living in theater and restaurant orchestras. He played cello in the orchestras of Walter Damrosch and in shows starring David Warfield and silent film star Nazimova. Because his teacher wanted him playing only open strings on the cello for many weeks to improve his tone, Ferdinand had to keep his orchestra jobs a secret from his teacher.

On returning to the West, Ferdinand played briefly in the Boise Philharmonic (1908) under Mose Christensen's direction and was briefly principal cellist in the Portland Symphony under David Rosebrook (1909). In 1911, Mose and his musical friends Bob Millard, flutist and astronomer; among others met in the Christensen Dance Hall to organize, on a permanent basis, a symphony for Portland. Ferdinand was not there because he had moved to Spokane the year before. He settled there for 14 years after marrying May Jensen and started his musical family with his three sons Hubert, Richard and Mayo. In Spokane, Ferdinand taught music, dancing and conducted a theater orchestra. Besides playing in the Spokane Symphony he also played in the Gesner-Sorenson String Quartet, the Gottfried Herbst String Quartet and the Chuck Whitehead Orchestra. It was in Chuck's Whitehead Dancing Palace that Ferdinand started his dancing school after having graduated from Mose's dance academy in Portland.

After his last children, Dorothy and Quinten (Pete), were born, Ferdinand moved back to Portland in 1924 where he spent the rest of his life when he wasn't traveling around the country visiting family and former students. In Portland Ferdinand began playing in the Portland Symphony again as well as the Ashly Cook Band, the McDougal Band, the Ted Bacon String Orchestra, the Gershkovitch Symphony Orchestra and the Kelly's Restaurant Orchestra. He also played in the KGW, KOIN and other radio orchestras over the years. His friend Chuck Whitehead also moved to Portland about the same time so he and his sons continued playing with Whitehead's Orchestra at times as well. He conducted the Sorenson Concert Orchestra and the Inter-Community Orchestra in Longview, Washington.

In 1929 the 50 some theaters in Portland, Oregon employed well over 2,000 musicians. Theaters such as the Heilig, Rivoli, Majestic, Orhpeum and Hippodrome employed orchestra, with up to 40 pieces sometimes, six days a week. Talking pictures, canned music and the Great Depression brought down the Curtin on this world of vaudeville and cinema orchestras and Ferdinand had to make a living more from of teaching than playing music. Only his son Hubert was able to make a living in music without resorting to teaching and he had to hustle to do it. It was a good thing in Hubert's case because he hated teaching. Ferdinand lamented the decline of live music performance as a living not on only for himself but his four sons. He had hoped music would be a good career for them all. May, his wife, thought he would have made more money if had kept to teaching dancing like Mose Christensen.


While Ferdinand played in many symphony orchestras it was not something he liked to do: "I don't care to play in orchestras. It's noisy. Playing in a section, there is no individuality with many people all playing the same part, I enjoy string quartets. It's the highest form of music." Thursday evenings was the night that he would get together with his friends and students in his studio at the Selling-Hirsh building to play his beloved string quartets. When, in 1947, the Portland Symphony started again after an eight year hiatus, Werner Janssen, the new conductor, required old symphony members to re-audition and Ferdinand was one of the old-timers that refused to do so. And apparently without regret. Playing popular music had a price as well. An orchestra leader wanted younger looking musicians and Ferdinand had to brace himself for being teased by his family when he came home one night with his hair died to hide his gray hair.

Ferdinand's sons all started as his students. Teaching them to play strings as well as wind instruments enabled him to have his own family string quartet. Hubert started playing professionally at age 12 with the Spokane Symphony Orchestra. His sister Dorothy remembered it well because getting full length trouser at age 12 was a big deal. Hubert and Richard both played in the Portland Junior Symphony and briefly with the Portland Symphony Orchestra, frequently at the same time. And they played together in the Sorenson-Howard Trio with their sister Dorothy's piano teacher, Randolph Howard.

Hubert played violin in the Portland Symphony String Quartet before he joined Susie Pipes, Alexander Vdovin and Michel Penha in the Neah-Kah-Nie Quartet. Latter, when he moved to California, he joined Abraham Weiss, Karl Rossner and Nathan Abas in the Abas Quartet, premiering works of Arnold Schonberg on the West Coast. There he worked in both classical and popular music playing violin, clarinet, saxophone, and then the viola in the San Francisco Symphony, Opera and Ballet Orchestras. He had to give up the trumpet from his Chuck Whitehead Orchestra days and the flute because he said he just did not have the time to keep up practicing so many instruments.

After leaving Portland and the Sorenson-Howard Trio, Richard Sorenson worked out of San Francisco playing violin, cello, sax and clarinet in the orchestras of the ships such as the SS President Van Buren, SS Monterey (with his brother Hubert on occasion) until World War II started. It was hardly a living though. Ferdinand and his older brother Hubert sent him money, sometimes on the other side of the world. It was rare to double on sax and cello so he had to resist an offer to jump ship in New York for a job: competing in a city with 15,000 other musicians (many of them unemployed) seemed risky in the middle of the Great Depression. After playing in Army Bands during World War II Richard played in the Monte Brooks Band that traveled around the West Coast.

Mayo Sorenson played in the Jefferson High School Band and then attended and taught music at the University of Oregon. While at the University of Oregon he played at the Eugene Hotel and with the university orchestra: as a soloist on several occasions. He also took up the baton, like his father, directing high
school bands and university ensembles. Besides flute and violin he played two instruments disdained by his father: the saxophone, and the piano (because of it's equal temperament and Ferdinand being a string player with perfect pitch). Back in Portland he played in the KGW and KOIN radio orchestras and in bands at Joe Amato's Jantzen Beach Ballroom, the Uptown Dance Hall and the Capitol Theater.

Quinten (Pete) Sorenson played in the Jefferson High School Band like his brother Mayo and then with Chuck Whitehead like his father and brother Hubert. Pete was happy to leave Chuck and join the Woody Hite Band when it started in early 1940. During World War II he played in US Army dance, concert and marching bands at Fort Lawton.

With Ferdinand's numerous string and brass students and extensive teaching experience he was able to assist Mary Dodge, Jacques Gershkovitch and others develop the Portland Junior Symphony. Besides his private string and brass students Ferdinand taught, over the years, at Portland University, Lewis and Clark College, University of Oregon, Pacific University and Portland State College. He conducted the student orchestra at Marylhurst College for Women and the student band at Pacific University. In the late 50's when Raphael Spiro, arrived from Chicago, and started a string quartet the three other players he asked to join him, Leonard Stehn, Sammy Piazza and Pat Miller, were all Ferdinand's students.

Before and after Mose Christensen's death in 1920 at 49, Ferdinand continued his association with the Christensen family, traveling around the West to join them when they had their dance conferences and events. Ferdinand conducted his own Sorenson Concert Orchestra for Clement Crouse when Crouse presented a ballet by Mose' nephew William Christensen with Natalie Lauterstein. Ferdinand provided his family's musical services at some of Bill Christensen's ballet events in exchange for his daughter Dorothy's ballet lessons with Bill. Bill, in turn, would come and dance with his students at Ferdinand's events presenting his musical compositions. In Bill's presentation of the Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours" for the Rose Festival Queen in 1933, Ferd's daughter Dorothy was one of the evening nymphs. When William Christensen left Portland to found the San Francisco Ballet with his bother Lew Christensen, Dorothy settled for ballroom dance instruction from Mose' son Victor Christensen.

June, 1960, at 78, Ferdinand took a six week bus trip around the US to see what he had missed and what had changed over 60 years as well as to visit family, old students and friends. He took his violin to play chamber music on the way. In the journal of his trip he made a number of observations. Disneyland: "The landscaping and buildings are remarkable but the entertainment is for children. " New Orleans: "The price of the rooms, such as they are, is very modern. They see you coming and they don't expect to see you again. They probably won't. The night clubs we visited were really something . . . To stay away from. I have never seen such moving and quivering female muscles." The Smokey Mountains: "They are entirely covered in trees, and I saw the first clear water since leaving the West." (Something a lover of swimming would notice.) The Boston Symphony: "It was superb. It was almost worth coming here to hear that orchestra. The fiddlers played together like one man." Tanglewood: "Rain! Rain! Rain! Oregon has a dry climate."

In latter years, until he lost his drivers license, Ferdinand would take his violin and a concerto to practice as he drove his Nash automobile around the west. When he wasn't staying with family and former students he would camp in parks or stay in the "Ambassador Suite of the Nash Hotel." He would take his violin out in places like Bryce National Park to play for himself and the mountains, reliving his days as a shepherd serenading his flock when he was a youth in Utah.

Ferdinand was still teaching privately and at Portland State College when he had a stroke and died a few months latter in December 1966 at the age of 84. Only his son Hubert and his daughter Dorothy had survived him.

Sources

Interviews with and reminisces of Dorothy Sorenson Carlile, Peter Sorenson, Marion Fouse, Glenn Reeves, Patricia Miller, Willimine Berky Bostwick, Robert Findley, Leonard Stehn and Herman Jobleman.

Photographs, programs, letters and clippings in Dorothy Sorenson Carlile's collection.

Additional technical and research assistance from Dorothy Sorenson Carlile, Galen Carlile, Blaine Covert, Carol Schults, Tim DeZwaan, Ken Shirk at the American Federation of Musicians Local 99, Ingraid Arnett of the Portland Youth Philharmonic, Catherine Ronconi, Jim Carmin, Amy Wiegand at the Multnomah County Library, Alex Toth, Lea Creighton at Pacific University and Carolyn Bowler at the Idaho State Historical Society.

The Christensen Brothers, An American dance epic Debra Sowells, author
Memories of Little Denmark Gwendolyn Jacobson, editor
Thru the Years, A History of Sevier County Irvin Warnock, editor
Nearly 70 Years of Orchestral Music Frederick Goodrich, author


A BIT ABOUT DANA

Composer Dana Carlile is an amateur pianist who had several years of piano instruction as a child from his mother Dorothy. He took up the piano again on his own after hearing Istvan Nadas play the complete keyboard works of J. S. Bach at Reed College in 1979. "Preludes for Silence and Darkness" is a selection from the 70 pieces in his collection "Songs Without Words".

Preludes for Silence and Darkness
was Recorded at Heavywood Studios
on a Steinway D Grand Piano
Lake Oswego, Oregon

Randy Porter,
Recording Engineer

Audio Editing, Mastering
and Graphic Layout (including misspelling) by
Dana Carlile

Dedicated to Dana's uncle
Mayo Sorenson

Many thanks to
Duane Rodakowski, Mary Louise Griffith
and the Multnomah County Library
Portland, Oregon