Chamber Music Corner—Tiffany Johns’ Vignettes from a Village, Op. 27 (2023)
by Layne Anspach
Hello musicians!
This month, CMC will focus on American composer Tiffany Johns’ Vignettes from a Village, Op. 27, scored for flute, clarinet, bassoon, horn, and piano. Johns’ is a composer and brass multi-instrumentalist based in Los Angeles, California. She performs in a variety of ensembles and styles, including funk, jazz, opera, and even the Disneyland Band. Johns has performed and recorded with several world-renowned artists, including Bernard Purdie, Bootsy Collins, and Jason Derulo, to name a few. Heard on many recording projects, she has performed on two Grammy-nominated albums, Intercambio by the Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Quintet, and Canto América by La Orquesta Sinfonietta. An active arranger and composer, her works can be heard across the US and abroad.
Vignettes from a Village, Op. 27 (2023) is a work that I commissioned for a concert series in the summer of 2023. It is a three-movement work in which each movement’s descriptive title places the audience in a different scene. “At Dawn” opens with the winds only as the flute presents the melody. After an emphatic scale set by the winds, the piano enters with the second theme, supported softly by clarinet and bassoon. This melody is passed among the winds prior to a short cadenza for the horn. The movement then ends with a return to the opening material, but now as a stronger statement.
“A Shepherd’s Mind Wanders” begins with solo piano in a tender adagio. The melody is repeated but with the winds adding additional support. The clarinet plays a short solo before the bassoon takes over the melody. The opening returns with flute, horn, and piano presenting the melody, but in a new key and with the full ensemble. The movement closes with the soft fragments of the theme in the winds.
The horn and bassoon begin “Under Siege” with a unison melody over a timbral trill effect between the flute and clarinet. The texture continues to build until the section climaxes with repeated sixteenth notes in winds and piano and a horn call. The opening theme returns, set softly in the piano, followed by fragments in the rest of the ensemble. The clarinet then proceeds alone to open a fugue. A calmer moderato follows this with reduced volume and activity. Prior to the return of the opening material, we hear the horn call again but in a suppressed manner. The A section returns almost identically to how it began, but instead of another fugue, a flute solo emerges, paving the way for an energetic conclusion.
The reference recording is by Ivory Winds at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. Anyone interested in purchasing this music may contact the composer directly at her website.
