I’ve been included on Cygnus’s upcoming tribute to composer and erstwhile mentor Martin Boykan. Marty was married to my flute teacher, Connie Boykan, when I took up the instrument at age 12. My mom drove me to their house on a quiet street in Waltham, MA. Every week she would read a book in a room off their kitchen, Marty would play endlessly and inscrutably in the garret above, and Connie and I would play Baroque duets—because I never practiced.
I met Marty again as a Masters student in Composition at Columbia, when he visited for a semester away from Brandeis. I felt awkward in the austere and pristine atmosphere of Marty’s seminar, as the only female and the only rock musician. Every week Marty would critique my paltry notes proffered—”too many structural downbeats” (silently I reacted: of course there are downbeats, I play at CBGB’s!)—and every week I would rewrite from scratch. Nothing I did was right.
And here I am on a concert with him! With a pop song! How can this be?
Marty was dear, thoughtful and kind, if puritanical. His work is crystalline, of another world to me now, a world that believed perfection was possible. I’m no longer sure that the world can ever be perfect but I am moved and inspired by that modernist hope.
Calvin Wiersma, violin, Susannah Chapman, cello, William Anderson, guitar, Oren Fader, guitar, James Austin Smith, oboe, Tara Helen O’Connor, flute.
Cygnus @ LOFT393
Martin Boykan Tribute with Sharon Harms and Jessica Bowers
Tuesday, October 24th, 7pm
LOFT393
393 Broadway, 2nd floor
New York, NY
Program includes:
Martin Boykan: Diptych (quintet for Cygnus) and Sea Gardens, featuring Sharon Harms, soprano and Joan Forsyth, piano
Kitty Brazelton: El Beso (Grimké)
Richard Festinger: Hidden Spring
Carman Moore: A Village Triptych for guitars, mandolins and soprano (setttings of poems by Gamel Woolsey, Djuna Barnes and Lennox Raphael)
My pop song
From a rehearsal in fall 2022. The two on the left—Sharon Harms, soprano, and Bill Anderson, guitar, play this 2023 version with members of Cygnus. Weld Grimké’s poem “El Beso” is a Lesbian love song, unrequited.
vs.
Marty’s
Deep faith in the transcendent purity of shared thought. The ideal can prevail. I’m now listening to a long-beloved dream from the ramparts of Noah’s ark and the ark is sinking with the weight of what has happened since then.
Martin Boykan, 1931-2021
