Beneath the Seams
For Baritone, Trombone, and Bass Trombone
2024 National Finalist for The American Prize in Vocal Chamber Music Composition
Recorded live in concert at the International Trombone Festival on July 13, 2022.
Beneath the Seams is part of "Two Trombones and...,” a recital of new music presented by Dr. Russ Zokaites and Dr. Nathan Siler at the 2022 International Trombone Festival Conference at the University of Central Arkansas.
Dr. Eric Brown - Baritone
Dr. Nathan Siler - Trombone
Dr. Russ Zokaites - Bass Trombone
PROGRAM NOTES
Beneath the Seams explores societal inequity through the experiences of Gilded-Age coal miners, evoking the brutal realities which built our economy and sustain it today.
Woven together from a series of first-hand accounts, the text of Beneath the Seams sets the timeless, austere words of men and children who toiled beneath the earth in the Appalachian region of the United States and in the United Kingdom at the turn of the 20th century. These accounts detail the dangers and dismal conditions miners face, and the emotional impact of losing their comrades, while working long hours miles below the surface.
Beneath the Seams renders the grim lives of miners with the unique combination of solo baritone voice and trombone duet. Lyrical solos and somber melodies intertwine in a mournful exchange, contrasting dark with light, capitalizing on the natural shifts in timbral color throughout the range of these instruments to reveal their emotive potential.
Beneath the Seams was composed for bass trombonist Russ Zokaites, a native of the Appalachian region, and his colleagues Eric Brown, baritone, and Nathan Siler, tenor trombone.
9 minutes | Baritone, Trombone, and Bass Trombone | 2022
Libretto by Martin Hebel.
Language: English
Libretto
I’ve been many years below.
I hew the coal and draw it to the pit.
A man must have strong nerves who descends the deep shaft.
To a child ‘tis often cruelly frightful,
A labyrinth of black passages choked with dust and grit.
We walk miles to the mouth of the shaft.
We enter the darkened chambers, on all sides rock and earth.
From the seams, water trickles down into the gangways.
If not water, it is the gas which howls alight as it seals us in.
There were five of us boys, all born in the shadow of the mountain.
One lies in the ground now, fifty tons of rock above him.
He was my brother, now charred and gilded in anthracite.
There was an explosion, and all grew dim.
He was hurled downward, covered in a rush of rock and coal.
We found him burned and broken, his friends dead at his side.
By years I’m only thirty-five, but to see me you’d think me much older.
I am one of hundreds you see on the street every day.
You need not wonder why.
Gray hairs on my head, my brow deep with lines of worriment chiseled as stone.
The luxuries of the rich we do not ask,
Just the chance to work and carry ourselves home.
To my comrades buried ‘neath the seams, I ask you:
Hold him close and remember him well.
He was my brother.
Martin Hebel
Written 2022