Maurice Weddington - When the Sun Set (1972)

Broadcast recording by the Dutch Radio Chamber Orchestra. (The piece does not call for a conductor, but was given under the direction of the composer) Recorded in the studio of the socialist VARA radio station in Hilversum, 1973. The recording took place in the wake of Weddington’s first-prize win at the Gaudeamus Music Week, and is taken from Charles Amirkhanian’s radio show ‘Ode To Gravity’. (The full recording, complete with interview with Weddington, is available at Archive.org: archive.org/details/OTG_1973_...)
Chicago-born and Europe-based, Maurice Weddington’s music has been widely performed but little recorded. As far as I can determine, the only commercially available recording is of his piece for solo flute, ‘Deovolente’ on Laura Chislett’s ‘The Flute in Orbit’, where it features alongside works by Carter, Finnissy, Zimmermann, etc (www.prestomusic.com/classical...) Given this, I include further information below. See also ‘Composer Maurice Weddington: A Conversation with Bruce Duffie’ (1995): www.bruceduffie.com/weddington....
“Maurice Weddington was born in Chicago, where he received his formal education at college and music conservatory. He began playing wind instruments at the age of nine, has lived in many different countries, worked as a film actor in Denmark, represented Denmark at two International Society for Contemporary Music festivals: Graz, Austria 1972, Bonn, West Germany 1977, was awarded the Danish National Art Grant 1976, '77, '78 and taught flute and English in Germany. Since 1992, Weddington has also been directing, producing and composing the music for films of ancient Chinese paintings, primarily horizontal scrolls, from the collections of various prominent international museums. To date: Maurice Weddington has composed more than 60 compositions, directed and produced three films and divides his time between the USA and Europe with periodic travels to the Far East.”
(Biography taken from Maurice Weddington’s website: maurice-weddington.com/frames....)
“Maurice Weddington heard classical music for the first time in the late 50s, when he was attending Dunbar Vocational High School. “A very weird schoolmate introduced me to Stravinsky by playing a recording of Le sacre du printemps. It did impress me deeply. In fact, it changed my life. It showed me how serious music could be put together. So I signed up for a theory course.” He already knew how to play the trumpet, flute, and bassoon, and jazz was a passion. “I was of course in love with Monk, Miles, and Coltrane. Jazz gave me scope. Yet I’m still amazed that I didn’t think twice about becoming a classical composer. I knew at 16 this was the only way I could express myself.”
At Wilson Junior College he took all the music courses he could, then took composition classes at the American Conservatory of Music and the University of Chicago. “I spent a lot of time at the public library going through their record collection. That was where I came across the Russians-Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Rachmaninoff. The Hungarians too. Bartok was absolutely my hero.”
But Weddington graduated in 1962, at a time when only a handful of blacks had managed to make a career as classical composers. “Given the institutional racism in this country, I wouldn’t have survived here back then. I felt Europe was my destiny and destination. There I could immerse myself in classical music. So I decided on Paris. What the heck! I wanted to study with Olivier Messiaen, who, I was told, would take in promising students regardless of their background. I bought a ticket on Pan Am.
“When I got to Paris I found out that Messiaen was on sabbatical that year,” he says, chuckling. “I didn’t know anyone there. I had no money. Some Algerians took me in. Their butts got kicked by the French a lot. So was mine. I stayed alive by the will of God and what little money was sent from home. I bummed around and hustled. I never hung out with artists or musicians, but I made sure that I composed every morning.”
[...] He spent the next year hitchhiking around Europe and writing music, and finally wound up in Copenhagen [...] He got to know Denmark’s tiny composer community, which was wowed by a quintet he’d written. And he kept on writing. “One afternoon I looked out my window and saw the sun quickly setting. I started to hear this music and wrote it down after I came out of my reverie. The music became the basis for ‘When the Sun Set’. Later I used some of the materials for my orchestral piece ‘Midnigh’t, set to a provocative text by Martin Luther King.”
In 1971 ‘When the Sun Set’ won the coveted Gaudeamus Prize, an award Weddington also won in 1972 and ’73.”
(Ted Shen, ‘Return of a Native’, Chicago Reader, October 5, 1995: chicagoreader.com/news-politi...)