Laura Falzon’s performance of Alvin Singleton‘s Argoru III in Los Angeles, California this Fall featured in Schott Music’s EAM news.
“Internationally acclaimed flutist Laura Falzon performs Alvin Singleton’s Argoru III for solo flute on October 22 at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music as part of the third annual Africa Meets North America International Symposium and Festival. The symposium includes scholarly panels and discussion sessions with composers and performers and the festival features interactive workshops, original compositions, and live concerts demonstrating intercultural relations between Africa and North America. Laura Falzon, who chose to name the program after Singleton’s piece, Argoru: Variations on an African Theme, comments:
Argoru is a word found in the Twi language of Ghana meaning “to play,” and Argoru III sets out to do just what it implies in that it provides the performer with thematic material within a framework that allows plenty of freedom for the performer to “play” around with interpreting the work. In fact, Singleton himself explains that for him the score is like “a blueprint or map designed by a composer or arranger to be developed by the musician during performance.”
Being very much influenced by the Italian flute school (my first flute professor was a student of Severino Gazzelloni), I am so pleased that I have discovered the music of Alvin Singleton. As Singleton studied with Goffredo Petrassi in Rome, it is perhaps this Italian connection that is at the heart of the affinity I feel to Singleton’s work.”
(Excerpt from Schott Music’s EAM news)