Program note:
Soccer is arguably the most popular sport in the world. Hundreds of millions play it and billions watch the World Cup every four years. It’s been a passion of mine since I started playing as a child. Even now as an adult, I still play a couple times a week in the leagues here in NYC and probably will continue to as long as my body holds out. The passion it excites at all levels is hard to comprehend if you are not involved with it. People go nuts for the professional game when national or civic pride is at issue, but I have also seen heated arguments and even fights break out during weeknight amateur games where literally nothing is at stake. Whether this is something to recommend the sport is open for debate, but it does show the passion it arouses. When I read Eduardo Galeano’s book, Soccer in Sun and Shadow, I felt that his essays captured that obsession as well as words can. I wrote Goooooooooal!!! as a kind of tribute to those who live and die by soccer, whether they are the professional playing for their country or just an amateur playing the occasional pickup game in the park or anyone in between. I hope my piece captures the freedom and possibility that the game represents to so many. Many, many thanks to Eduardo Galeano and his publishers for allowing me to use his texts with my music.
The texts are ©1998, 2003 by Eduardo Galeano. From Soccer in Sun and Shadow, published by Verso Books. Translation ©1998, 2003 by Mark Fried. By permission of Susan Bergholz Literary Services, New York. All rights reserved.
About the composer:
Peter Flint was born in Delaware in 1969 and resides in New York City where he is the director of the new music group, The Avian Orchestra. He received his B.A./B.Mus. in History and Electronic Music from Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music where he studied with Conrad Cummings, and his M.Mus. from New England Conservatory where he studied with Michael Gandolfi, Lee Hyla, and Scott Wheeler. Recent works include The International Lover for two singers and chamber ensemble, Migratory Routes for mixed chamber ensemble, Dance Dance Dance, a string quartet which won the New England Conservatory Honors Quartet Composition Prize 2001 and will be played in 2004 in Weill Recital Hall in New York by the Serafin Quartet; as well as a short orchestra piece, entitled Eroding the Helix, which was premiered by the Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble in New York in February 2003.
In the past he has written music for numerous theatrical productions in New York City and the mid-Atlantic region. Notable among them are Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Macbeth, A Moon for the Misbegotten, and The Skin of our Teeth at such venues as the 78th Street Theater Lab, the Jean Cocteau Repertory Theater, the Juilliard School Drama Division, and the Delaware and Philadelphia Theatre Companies. In addition he worked with Hyperspace Cowgirls, a now-defunct multimedia company, creating edutainment software for children. Notable projects with them included Magic Wardrobe and Paint N’Play Pony, which were published by IBM/Crayola and received numerous accolades.
He recently formed the Avian Orchestra whose goal is to provide opportunities for emerging composers side by side with more established composers in a series of themed concerts. The Avian Orchestra has given successful performances in New York City to positive reviews, including a concert of bird-themed music and a Valentine’s day show that featured songs of love, lust, sex, and jealousy as well as burlesque dancer Dirty Martini. Upcoming projects include taking part in a series of workshops for composers and singers, sponsored by American Opera Projects, that will culminate in the writing of an new opera scene to be presented in the fall of 2004 in NYC. A recording of his work, Migratory Routes, is now available for purchase. Look for more details here.
