Simon & Garfunkel & the Prophets of Rage

This is a hostile merger between two songs: a sweet, pretty Simon & Garfunkel ballad, and an angry, in-your-face Public Enemy rap number. All players share the strong, choked, bitten-off notes reminiscent of the samples used in rap; their slowing-down structure is transparent. Simultaneously, the piano plays a simple, wistful tune filtered randomly from 159 slightly different nine-note chords derived from the bass line of the ballad.

The piece is an allergic reaction to the drugs peddled by Simon & Garfunkel and other pop balladeers, which were happily swallowed whole by the composer at an impressionable age (29). The anger of Public Enemy illuminates the individual's fear, loneliness, isolation and powerlessness inherent in our competitive, capitalist society, which the hazy amnesia of sweet, seductive, corporately-produced-and-distributed ballads tries not to cure, but to obscure.

Simon & Garfunkel & The Prophets of Rage was commissioned by Continuum Contemporary Music, with the assistance of The Ontario Arts Council.

Toronto composer James Rolfe (b. Ottawa, 1961) writes for chamber ensemble, orchestra, and choir. He has been commissioned and performed by ensembles in Canada, the USA, Europe, and New Zealand. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000, the K. M. Hunter Music Award in 2003, the 2005 Louis Applebaum Composers Award, and the 2006 Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music for raW.

Mr. Rolfe is also known as of Canada’s leading opera composers. His opera Beatrice Chancy was produced between 1998 and 2001 in Toronto, Dartmouth, and Edmonton by The Queen of Puddings Music Theatre Company. In February 2009 the same company premiered Inês, which was nominated for a Dora Award. The children’s opera Elijah’s Kite was premiered in New York in 2006 by Tapestry New Opera Works with the Manhattan School of Music, and later presented at Rideau Hall in Ottawa before the Governor-General. His masques Orpheus and Eurydice and Aeneas and Dido (with words by André Alexis) were premiered by The Toronto Masque Theatre in 2004 and 2007. Swoon was premiered in December 2006 by the Canadian Opera Company, which has since commissioned a new opera. Other upcoming premieres include Norway’s Trio Mediaeval and the band of North Toronto Collegiate Institute.

For more information about James Rolfe, click here.