THE MAURY YESTON COLLECTION

Tom Sawyer: A Ballet in Three Acts was composed by Maury Yeston. Choreographed by William Whitener it premiered at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri on October 14, 2011. It was orchestrated by Brad Dechter, with additional orchestrations by Peter Boyer, Andrew Kinney and Hummie Mann.

A NOTE FROM THE COMPOSER: Every project…a song, play, novel, film, poem, dance…begins as somebody’s dream…and if one is very lucky, hardworking, and patient, only sometimes can that dream become a reality. This is one of those sometimes. A number of years ago I asked myself as a composer, and musicologist, and lover of the Ballet, if I could identify the title of America’s most prominent three-act, full-length ballet – one specifically written by an American composer, based on an American literary masterpiece and premiered by an American choreographer and company. I could not answer my own question. In an instant, I thought “well, why don’t I write Tom Sawyer?” The music flew from my fingers almost as soon as I had the thought, and my intuition about the subject matter became increasingly validated as I noted that Twain’s masterpiece, like a good ballet, was episodic…Tom’s tricking his friends into whitewashing the fence – lost in the cave with Becky Thatcher – witnessing a murder with Huck in the graveyard – getting lost on the Mississippi and returning to secretly observe his own funeral! And I wanted the score to feel visual, and to reflect the great heritage of our American music, and to be accessible (like Twain’s novel) to people of all ages. Years later, most thrilling of all for me after the premiere of the work as choreographed by the brilliant William Whitener and presented by the Kansas Ballet to initiate the Kauffman Center in Kansas City, Alistaire Macauley in the New York Times confirmed what I had suspected at the start – “It’s quite likely that this is the first all-new, entirely American three-act ballet: it is based on an American literary classic, has an original score by an American composer, and was given its premiere by an American choreographer and company.” As if this were not enough, the ballet and music world took notice, and the invitation from the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra to record the entire three-act 85-minute work at George Lucas’ Skywalker Sound with a full complement of forty strings under the baton of Martin West was my genuine dream come true.From the moment I began to write Tom Sawyer as if a bolt of lightning illuminated an entire landscape for a split second, I saw in my mind the entire scenario and began to see the mythic and central role of the great Mississippi as the core and heart of the piece, the open landscape of the Great Plains, the “westering” nature of our American yearning for an endless frontier, and the profound connection whereby Twain preserved for all time not only the eternal youth of boyhood but also, metaphorically, an eternal portrait of the youth of America, the era of the America in which he lived. And then I stopped. And I realized if I continued to compose, I would end up with a concert piece. But the Broadway dramatist within me knew instinctively that the event had to reside in the dance onstage, and not merely in the orchestra pit, and therefore I could only proceed in collaboration with a great choreographer. Though I never stopped developing and refining my own ideas, I kept waiting until fate and providence brought me and the remarkable William Whitener into the same room and from that point on we were off to the races. What has fulfilled me most about the collaborative process has been the discoveries made along the way – particularly how the narrative elements (a murder, a trial, Tom’s exculpatory testimony) could be counterbalanced by the buoyancy of pure imagination. Is it summer evening, in Missouri? There would be Fireflies! Boys in a cemetery at midnight? They would imagine Ghosts and Goblins! With the brilliance of William Whitener, our wonderful company of dancers, designers, orchestrators, Brad Dechter, Martin West, Adam Abeshouse, Tommy Krasker, and the generosity of Julia Kauffman, my dream of long ago miraculously has become actual, the great characters and creations of Mark Twain can now dance on stage as they have danced for over a century in our minds, and a complete recording of the heartfelt love I have poured into this musical storytelling can be preserved for all time.

The conductor score is available in both transposed and concert formats, in two size formats. There is also a Piano Score for the whole ballet, for use in rehearsals, dance classes or even a concert performance.

INSTRUMENTATION: 3(3rd=Picc),3(3=EH),3,2 / 4,3,3(3=BsTbn),1 / Timp, Perc:[Marimba, Triangle, Timp, Sus.Cym, MarkTree, Glock, Xylo, Piatti, VibraSlap, GranCassa] / Celeste,Harp / Strings

“It’s quite likely that this is the first all-new, entirely American three-act ballet: it is based on an American literary classic, has an original score by an American composer and was given its premiere by an American choreographer and company. The musical score is energetic, robust, warm, deliberately naïve (both ornery and innocent), in ways right for Twain. Mr. Yeston’s tuneful music with sonorities and harmonies that recall Copland, Barber and Prokofiev (Romeo and Juliet) ranges easily from comic to sinister, from Muff Potter’s drunkenness to a rich celebration of the Mississippi River.” – Alastair Macaulay, Dance Critic for The New York Times “Wow! William Whitener’s and Maury Yeston’s Tom Sawyer: A Ballet in Three Acts is an unequivocal delight – bold and varied and bursting with youthful energy, and featuring the widest array of choreography by Whitener and a musical score of great ingenuity by the Tony Award-winning Yeston. Yeston’s musical style is deeply rooted in the classic Broadway tradition, with strikingly singable themes for each character, mood or emotion – soaring melodies for the love-couple, bouncy ditties for the comic moments of Act 1, sinister themes for the bad guys. It features several quite memorable tunes that will ensure this piece a long life on the stage. I especially liked the music for the Stone Angel sequence, and the Coplandesque opening of Act 3, whose expansive sound suggested the wide-open American West. But there’s plenty more in the mix, from folk-like round dances to quirky Appalachian Spring hops and leaps, with suggestions of hyperactive, Tharp-like looseness. The “variations” in Act 2 featured an unfolding of the most appealing array of dance, accompanied by waltzes, marches, rags… at one point there was a pas de trois of dancing gravestones, in a beautiful melding of musical edginess and comically angular dance. A dulcet, invisible youth chorus lent a haunting Nutcracker moment to the proceedings.”  – Paul Horsely KC Independent “Yeston’s score is a gorgeous piece of music saturated with Americana. Certain passages bring to mind Aaron Copland and other American composers we associate with folk-based symphonic music. He knows a thing or two about writing music to fit a dramatic narrative. He won Tony Awards for his Broadway shows, Nine and Titanic. For Tom Sawyer, he leads us along with swelling highs and nuanced lows, mixing drama with lyricism in a score that flows sensuously (and) captures the rhythms of the mighty Mississippi — Twain’s version of the river that has galvanized the imaginations of generations of writers and musicians.”  – Robert Trussle, Kansas City Star “Set to an original score by Tony-winning composer Maury Yeston, the emotionally affecting music is full of alluring melodies, dancey tunes, and bright energy that fuels the proceedings.”  – Lisa Jo Sagolla, Kansas City Star “The music by composer Maury Yeston is Americana to the point where you almost expect George Gershwin to be nodding along in approval.”  – Angie Fiedler Sutton, Kansas City Infozine

The Ballet was recorded by PS Classics (see below for purchasing information) at George Lucas’s Skywalker Sound in March of 2013. Martin West conducted the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, with a full complement of 40 strings! Each act can be rented individually. Any (one or more) of the 37 individual Dances are available in Piano or Orchestra Versions. (See “The Complete Recording—Track by Track” below.)

The recording, issued by PS Classics, can be purchased at Amazon.

Arranged by the composer, The Tom Sawyer Suite is a 14-minute orchestral concert work telling this story in music: “In The Great South,” young “Tom Comes to Town” (playful as ever), “Tom and Becky” eye each other lovingly, “Huck Finn” shows up, he and Tom cavort, and then run down “To The Mississippi,” where they launch their raft onward, as “The Great Mississippi” gains in breadth and power and sails them into Legend.

INSTRUMENTATION: 3(3rd=Picc), 3(3=EH), 3, 2 / 4,3,3(3=BsTbn),1 /Timp, Perc:[Marimba, Triangle, Sus.Cym, MarkTree, Glock, Xylo, Piatti, VibraSlap, GranCassa] / Celeste, Harp / Strings

The Tom Sawyer ballet can be rented in a variety of configurations. The whole work, as either piano accompaniment for a production of the ballet or as a symphonic piece. The individual scenes can be rented individually as piano accompaniment to ballet classes and recitals or as symphonic concert bon-bons. In addition, the composer arranged six of the scenes into a Suite (see above).

ACT ONE

1. Overturette; The Fence

2. Way Down South

3. Tom and the Town

4. Lazy Day

5. Off to School

6. In the Classroom

7. Tom and Becky

8. Huck Finn

9. Looking West

10. Games and Competitions

11. To the Mississippi

12. Pirates

13. Storm

14. Funeral and Salvation / Coda

ACT TWO

15. Muff Potter—Duet for Man and Flask

16. A Conspiracy

17. Dance of the Fireflies

18. March of the Goblins

19. Ghosts

20. The Sprite’s Circus

21. The Stone Angel

22. A Murder

23. A Death

24. Requiem for Doc

ACT THREE

25. Overture to Act 3; Looking West

26. The Missouri Main Street Parade

27. The Prosecution

28. Tom’s Testimony

29. Praise and Thanks

30. Pinwheels

31. The Picnic

32. Lost in the Cave

33. Dance of True Love

34. Pinwheels (reprise)

35. Saved

36. To the Mississippi (reprise)

37. The Great Mississippi

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