Charles Shere: Two Pieces for ’Celli		1965
two cellos		back to list of works
score: one page, whereabouts unknown		back to homepage

As I wrote in Ear, vol. 3 no. 2, May 1975:

The Third Annual Festival of the Avant Garde took place at 321 Divisadero St., San Francisco, in April 1965, sponsored by KPFA and run by myself, Peter Winkler and Robert Moran. Looking back on it I don't know how we had the guts: later endeavors have since convinced me of the enormity of such an undertaking. But we did, and it worked for the most part.

It was a sort of celebration of having the hall at all: KPFA and Ann Halprin joined the Tape Music Center in renting it. (Ann is still there.) We put on three concerts in the Festival, which was of course the first Third Annual. (There was a second one the following year, of which the less said the better.)…

There were three concerts. The second, a “soft concert” which began at 11 pm, included these two tiny pieces written for two superb cellists, co-principals of the Oakland Symphony Orchestra, Sally Kell and Ellen Dessler. They were both versatile musicians; Sally went on to become a conductor; Ellen played viola da gamba nearly as much as ’cello. They were very helpful to me with this piece, rehearsing far more carefully than the score deserved.

Altogether there's hardly a minute of music: the influence is Webern, of course. The first piece is a sort of romance; the second opens violently but immediately subsides and fades away. Re-hearing them at a distance of forty-five years I like them more than I remembered, and perhaps more than Moran (or was it Douglas Leedy?), who, when I rashly asked how he liked the pieces, said, “Well, at least they’re short.” I’m not sure where the score is; you can hear the music here.

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rev. 2/9/2010