Eisenhower Farewell Address: World Premiere Oct 5, 2008

I can't really blog my own premiere.  

Here's what Paul Hertelendy wrote on artssf.com:

MEANWHILE, ACROSS THE BAY--- Very few community orchestras essay world premieres. Undaunted, the Castro Valley (CA) Adult School Chamber Orchestra performed Jack Curtis Dubowsky’s half-hour-long “Eisenhower Farewell Address,” setting to music and narration that president’s earnest-but-not-lyrical swan song delivered in 1961, with surprising parallels to today, decrying the “military-industrial complex,” and lamenting the elusiveness of peace as well as the hefty spending required by both. It was just as though President Eisenhower had a crystal ball to peer a half-century into the future.
All such musico-political efforts will inevitably be measured against the benchmark of Copland’s “A Lincoln Portrait,” in which the latter had manipulated the presidential texts to provide effective refrains (which Dubowsky, a 43-year-old San Franciscan, did not). Furthermore the new work collapsed into fragments, like an orange, without a true narration-to-music binding agent. Dubowsky however built a neat opening brass chorale on the president’s initial (D.D.E.), and later portrayed forcefully the busy machinery of military technology that Eisenhower had warned against.
The piece narrated on Oct. 5 by Scott Budman and led by Joshua Cohen should get another hearing, and more evaluation in depth, performed by some more experienced ensemble than this fearless, but not flawless, adult-school community orchestra.

Here's Scott Budman and I at the reception after the performance:

Scott did a terrific job.  He has quite the voice.

Lunettes par Alain Mikli.