Jake Heggie is one busy composer. He’s been in serious demand since his epic opera “Dead Man Walking” opened in 2000 at San Francisco Opera and propelled him not just to operatic popularity, but into the mainstream of popular culture.
It made new opera cool again.
Then, last year, he premiered “Moby-Dick” at Dallas Opera to raves, securing his place as one of America’s pre-eminent opera composers.
He’s not as well known for orchestral works, which he does less often, because they’re out of his comfort zone, he says. But when he met flutist Carol Wincenc, she inspired him to take the leap.
“I’m so oriented to the structure of story and words that to write something abstract and purely instrumental is a big challenge,” he says. “She made me very excited to take it on.”
Heggie spoke from Houston, where last week he premiered “9/11 Pieces,” a song cycle for the Houston Grand Opera, based on interviews with Houstonians who responded to terror attacks in New York.
Heggie and Wincenc will help kick off the Boise Philharmonic’s 50th anniversary season with the world premiere of Heggie’s “Fury of Light,” a concerto for flute and orchestra. Wincenc will perform both nights. Heggie will not be in Boise until Sept. 17 and will appear at the Casual Classics concert at 11 a.m., and the concert at the Morrison Center.
Having a composer and performer of Heggie’s and Wincenc’s stature in Boise is an amazing way for the orchestra to kick things off, says music director Robert Franz.
Getting them here was somewhat serendipitous. Violinist Rachel Barton Pine, a longtime audience favorite, was supposed to open the Phil’s season. Then she found out she was pregnant and had to cancel. (She will be back and bring her new baby with her, Franz says.)
Franz had just worked with Wincenc at the Fairbanks Arts Festival in Alaska, so he asked her. She was available, “but she said she would only do it if she could premiere this new piece and if Jake could come,” Franz says. “I was like, ‘Are you kidding? Of course.’”
Heggie and Wincenc met while performing Heggie’s song cycle “Deepest Desire” at a benefit with Classical Action four years ago. The vocalist got sick, canceled and the two of them were thrown together to adapt one of the songs for flute.
“I fell in love with her wonderful, generous spirit, humor, warmth, everything and of course her wonderful sound. I find it terribly inspiring and it sounds very vocal to me, very human,” he says.
In 2009, to mark her 40th anniversary as a performer, Wincenc commissioned several new pieces and approached Heggie.
“We clicked immediately,” Wincenc wrote in an email from Warsaw, Poland, where she performed last week. “I was struck by his down-to-earthness and sincerity and sense of humor. In music, it matters to me to connect on the inner matters, and this I could do with JH.”
Their friendship and shared passion for music fed Heggie’s creative process in writing “Fury of Light,” he says.
The title comes from the line in Mary Oliver’s poem “Sunrise.” He used the poem as a narrative for the piece, creating character and a story arc for himself.
One of the lines reminded Heggie of Wincenc:
What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us?
“It’s such a powerful image, and it reflected a lot of what Carol does,” he says. “Every breath that she gives is a gift. We all draw the same breath, but when a vocalist or wind player breathes out, something remarkable happens that can touch and transform our lives,” he says.
For Wincenc, the message of the poem and Heggie’s interpretation of it fire her performance, she says.
“The most intense parts of ‘Fury of Light’ come alive, especially for the flute, where such extremes of coloration are essential,” she says. “Otherwise the flute sound can be a very boring timbre. I chose to highly inflect and color my sonority — go outside the box.”
