Missouri Classical Music News and Notes

Danielpour's inspiration for "Pastime" came from the poem "Blackjack," about Jackie Robinson. At the artist colony Yaddo, Danielpour asked poet Michael Harper to write other baseball poems so he could set them to music.

"He didn't really react too much," Danielpour said. "Then after another week, I tossed him a baseball and said, 'See if this will help.' I said, 'Consider it the grain of sand that gets into your shell.'"

Within a week or so, Harper wrote nine, of which Danielpour used five.

"Pastime" was commissioned by the Pittsburgh and Atlanta symphonies and the Brooklyn Philharmonic to honor the three baseball legends who played in those cities. The Pittsburgh premiere was on the 60th anniversary of Gibson's death; it will be performed in Brooklyn in July 2008.

Written in the style of Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess," the piece starts with a swaggering introduction, complete with percussive strikes that conjure images of a pitch slamming into the catcher's mitt. The epilogue has a gentle, sentimental theme that is sidetracked by arrogant motifs, including a grotesquely distorted reference to "The Star-Spangled Banner" that suggests a lamentation for baseball's loss of innocence.