Vernonia's voice., September 15, 2022, Image 5

Community
September 15
2022
5
The Wisdom of Columbia County continued from front page
instrumental in securing the Carnegie Hall performance in
2024.
Trenchard-Smith is a historian who has published nu-
merous scholarly works and writes poetry, who also sings
with the Columbia Chorale. She began talking to people
with deep roots in the area, like her neighbors Cindy and
Ollie Ede, while researching the story of Columbia Coun-
ty. “We really got a lot of insight into what happened in
the development in this part of the country,” says Boyer.
Trenchard-Smith continued to accumulate material and
then, in one memorable afternoon, five of the characters
and poems poured out onto paper; she later wrote the final
two poems that make up the seven movements of Wisdom.
“And then Kevin put it to music and brought those words to
life,” says Boyer. “It’s so elegant and is right up there with
any other major compositions.”
“Kevin really got with the spirit of the project and
conveyed it musically,” says Brian Trenchard-Smith, who
stepped in to commission the musical score. “I thought it
could be quite something and maybe travel to other counties
that feel as proud of themselves as Columbia County.”
Brian Trenchard-Smith is an Australian/British/Irish
film director and producer with over 150 credits in movies,
documentaries, trailers, and television to his name. He will
help with the images that will be projected behind the choir
to support the music and help tell the story.
Participating in a musical celebration will be a bit of a
departure for Brian, who is known for his unconventional
and sometimes bizarre large-scale action films, done with
a quirky sense of humor on a small budget; that Quentin
Tarantino once called Trenchard-Smith one of his favorite
obscure directors might tell you all you need to know.
“Margaret and Alice and Kevin are doing all the hard
work on this project, but I’ll be around and help with its
visualization,” said Brian. “I thought this would be a
worthwhile work that could delight rural communities, Co-
lumbia County obviously being preeminent, and celebrate
everything that rural communities have to celebrate from
the inception of America. I thought it might be a community
unifying project, possibly, and chorales are a great way to
get people feeling like they are on the same plane.”
The Wisdom of Columbia County will be told in seven
movements, each representing a significant historical period
in the life of this place, each introduced by a brief narration
followed by a song:
1 The Mother and Child (Spring)
2 The Sea Captain, 1792
3 The Frontiersman, 1827
4 The Pioneer and Settler, 1852
5 The Logger, 1918
6 The Stewards, 1955
7 The Newcomer (Autumn)
Here is a sample of Trenchard-Smith’s lyrics, telling
the story of the Logger:
NARRATOR
The Portland and Southwestern Railroad once operated
from Scappoose Bay to the Nehalem River near Pittsburg.
Over the years, the tracks of the railway were stripped and
its path converted to a logging road, the logging road later
given over to the people as a hiking trail. I think of the
loggers every time I walk it:
SONG
Riding the rails of the logging train
From Scappoose to the Nehalem in the chilling rain,
He chucked an apple core to the side of the tracks.
He thought:
“I love the damn’ firs I’m takin’ to the ground
(Though I must admit their crashin’ is my fav’rite sound).
I s’pose fruit trees’ll rise where the giants have fallen.”
NARRATOR
His wisdom was limited. Fruit trees did rise throughout
Columbia County. Yet giants still survive.
As it happened, an apple tree would spring from the core
that he threw from the train. Its wild descendants flourish
alongside the Crown Z Trail.
Of course this project wouldn’t exist without the magi-
cal score of accomplished composer Kevin Bryant Lay. Lay
received his formal instruction in composition from violin-
ist Roger Zahab at the University of Akron. He has served
as a musical instructor and director, written arrangements
for and performed as a guitarist, written and performed on
several soundtracks, and, as a composer, has set to music the
poetry of Shakespeare, Yeats, Elliot, e. e. cummings, Tolk-
ien, Goethe, Joyce, Frost, Hesse, and others. The project’s
originators feel fortunate to have secured the talents of this
accomplished composer, arranger, poet, and performer.
Lay was originally commissioned to compose a limited
score which he wrote for piano, drum, and voice. With the
recent development of a performance at Carnegie Hall, he
will receive an additional commission to write music for an
entire orchestral production.
Lay says when he first started working on the project
he fell back on an early influence of his, Charles Ives,
an American modernist composer, often regarded for
his experimentation in art music who often incorporated
Americana melodies into his work. “The opening song
of Wisdom is based on a Charles Ives piece called The
Unanswered Question, probably one of Charles Ives’ most
famous, and most timeless pieces of music,” says Lay. He
says he has reached out to the
Chinook Nation in the hopes
of having them collaborate
with drumming or dance
or in some other way; the
first movement is about the
Indigenous people who lived
in this region. “When you’re
trying to draw a picture of
this kind of a timescale, it
really needs to include the
local Native Americans… it’s
a very delicate issue.”
When he started work-
ing on the second move-
ment about the Sea Captain,
he referred to the history of
the first Europeans to sail up
and down the Pacific coast-
line, firing their cannons to
scare and intimidate the local
Natives. “I wanted to wake
people up out of the trance of
the timelessness of the first
movement and I heard this
bass drum go boom! And that
would start the second move-
ment when the Sea Captains
arrived with such violence.
So I put in the bass drum – a
really big concert bass drum,
a 40 inch drum that sounds
like thunder when you hit it.
And I found the bass drum
quite useful throughout the
composition.”
“When you’re writing
something this big, it needs
to cook for a long time for
me,” explains Lay about his
composing process. “It’s like
cultivating the soil. You need to keep thinking about ideas
and trying them out. It was probably about a year before I
set any music down, trying to figure out what I was going to
do. The way I write is, I hear it in my head first, then I set
it down. Then I listen to it and that suggests other things.
And then it just unravels itself, like a ball of yarn. I just start
pulling it and it all comes out and I just follow it.”
Lay says when he is given lyrics to work with, as was
the case with this Wisdom project, they help inspire him.
“The words will suggest their own music, and that was defi-
nitely the case with Margaret’s lyrics,” he says. “The thing
about Margaret’s lyrics are that they are very formal, in the
way they have the same structure in all of them. They are
almost like haikus, repeated in a row. And there is always
a ‘he thought’ or ‘she thought’ that separate the verses, and
a similar number of syllables or the line lengths are similar.
So it was already suggesting a form and structure for the
music.”
In the above movement about the Logger, Lay has
recreated the sounds of the train hauling the logs out of
the woods. “Everybody likes The Logger and I had great
fun writing The Logger,” says Lay, “because it’s upbeat,
it’s energetic, and it’s going to be fun for the choir to sing
it. Half the people will be making the whistle sounds, and
they’ll be clapping their hands. It starts slow, like a train,
and then builds up speed and it’s just really great fun. I love
that piece!”
Now it’s Boyer’s job, who took over as Columbia Cho-
continued on page 11
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