“The album closes with Brahms’ Clarinet Trio in A minor, which Schultz and his collaborators play with admirable warmth, but also an uncommon sensitivity and precision of expression. Their blend and balance is commendable throughout this bittersweet work, with the second movement being a special highlight and the ending quite convincing. The larger question, though, is of programming. The piece is an outlier on this album otherwise made up of contemporary works, but within this context, Brahms undergoes a sort of “re-ethnicization” – through it, we are invited to understand the trio as not simply being ‘music’ devoid of a marked category, as work by and for the dominant cultural group so often is.” (I Care If You Listen)
Released October 4, 2024 on Navona Records
Eric Schultz’s masterful clarinet playing speaks in new and known tongues on POLYGLOT, a concept album celebrating music as a language of cultural identity and the self. A strong advocate of living composers, Schultz opens with an engrossing performance of Iván Enrique Rodríguez’s Sonata Santera, exploring the development and evolution of three Caribbean Santeria rituals. Schultz captures the enchanting, mystical nature of the rituals between the rhythmic, driving movements, occasionally accompanied by percussive elements.
Schultz follows with Críptico no. 9: DAVЯTHAN, an interpretive piece that centralizes language and text-setting at the core of its composition. Shortly followed is Johnny Navarro’s romantic Danzón, a nostalgic work punctuated by fleeting moments of sensuality. The same intimacy is carried into Chiayu Hsu’s Summer Night in a Deep Valley, showcasing meditative episodes on the natural beauty expressed in Guo Xi’s Chinese landscape paintings. Likewise, Gabriel Bouche Caro’s Escenas explores a meditation on self-identity and its existence as a product of culture, the clarinet never languishing in melancholic passages, but always remaining reflective and curious.
POLYGLOT culminates with the Brahms Trio, Op. 114, a composition inspired by the clarinet playing of friend Richard Mühlfeld, an inspiration so strong it served to pull the composer from retirement. To Schultz, a quarterfinalist for the 2025 GRAMMY® Music Educator of the Year, music is a hallmark of metamorphosis that drives cultural change across history, the performer and composer working in tandem to create something inspired and new — speaking each other’s language, you might say.
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Behind the Scenes
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Iván Enrique Rodríguez: Sonata Santera: I. Despojo - Cleanse (Eric Schultz, clarinet; Han Chen, piano) - 7:31
Iván Enrique Rodríguez: Sonata Santera: II. Ofrenda - Offering (Eric Schultz, clarinet; Han Chen, piano) - 5:49
Iván Enrique Rodríguez: Sonata Santera: III. Bembe - Summoning of the Orichas (Eric Schultz, clarinet; Han Chen, piano) - 6:14
Iván Enrique Rodríguez: Criptico no. 9: DAVЯTHAN (Eric Schultz, clarinet) - 2:51
Johanny Navarro: Danzón (Eric Schultz, clarinet; Han Chen, piano) - 6:30
Chia-Yu Hsu: Summer Night in a Deep Valley (Eric Schultz, clarinet) - 4:30
Gabriel Bouche Caro: Escenas (Eric Schultz, clarinet; Clare Monfredo, cello) - 8:44
Johannes Brahms: Trio in A minor, Op. 114: I. Allegro (Eric Schultz, clarinet; Clare Monfredo, cello; Han Chen, piano) - 8:06
Johannes Brahms: Trio in A minor, Op. 114: II. Adagio (Eric Schultz, clarinet; Clare Monfredo, cello; Han Chen, piano) - 7:44
Johannes Brahms: Trio in A minor, Op. 114: III. Andantino grazioso (Eric Schultz, clarinet; Clare Monfredo, cello; Han Chen, piano) - 4:17
Johannes Brahms: Trio in A minor, Op. 114: IV. Allegro (Eric Schultz, clarinet; Clare Monfredo, cello; Han Chen, piano) - 4:54
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Sonata Santera
Puerto Rico, as part of the Caribbean, was victim of colonization, genocide of the Taino natives, and slavery. When Spain reached the shores of Puerto Rico it brought with it Catholicism. By establishing itself as the power of authority and government, it forced its religion on all its inhabitants including African slaves. The African population, victims of the Atlantic slave trade, brought with them their Yoruba religion. To avoid being killed by their owners, practitioners of the Yoruba religion syncretized their beliefs with the Catholic religion. The product of this syncretism was Caribbean Santería.
Santería practices different important rituals and in Sonata Santera I present three of them. The first movement is based on the Despojo, a ritual where the santere granting the cleanse baptizes the recipient with tobacco smoke, rum, and orange blossom water while hitting him with different weeds and flowers. The movement is built on the Holandé rhythm from the Puerto Rican Bomba. The second movement focuses on the act of offering, Ofrenda. In this ritual the saints (Yoruba deities with names of Catholic saints) are presented with different offerings on their dedicated altars. These are intended to ask something of the saint, or simply as an act of gratitude. Offerings may include fruits, sweets, tobacco, woods, incense, and rum, among other things. In this movement I present a tender and calm atmosphere to later reveal that within all the musical activity the rhythm of Orunmila or Saint Francis of Assisi has been hidden. Orunmila is one of the most important saints of the religion. The third movement presents the mystical celebration where the saints are invoked. This celebration or ritual is known as Bembé. The importance of this ritual is such that it carries with it its own dedicated rhythm; the rhythm of Bembé, in which this movement is built on. The celebration of Bembé is full of energy, mysticism, and intensity embodied in the great virtuosity that this culminating movement presents.
– Iván Enrique Rodríguez
Críptico no. 9: DAVЯTHAN
The Críptico is a compositional methodology created by Iván Enrique Rodríguez consisting of transforming texts—either quotations or original—into short musical pieces typically for a solo instrument. The metamorphic stage from text to music is fundamental to the work. Each and every one of the text letters becomes a musical note within a particular scale or an assortment of notes put together by the composer. This creates a “cell” in which each Críptico is based. Curiously, as part of the composition process, the composer destroys the text after musically creating the cell. This allows a free interpretation of the work, but it could also incite the performer to decode the cryptic message. This could inspire a different, and perhaps more intimate, interpretation.
– Iván Enrique Rodríguez
Danzón
Danzón para clarinete y piano evokes a sentiment of nostalgia and melancholy. These sentiments provided the idea of the title and, subsequently, the form. As the name implies, danzón translates as dance. This particular and unique dance was created in Cuba around the 19th century. The danzón was the expression that resulted from the combination of Spanish and Afro-Cuban aesthetics. This rich and elegant amalgam of textures gave birth to a genre that has impacted El Caribe and the rest of the world. As the traditional intention of danzón, the dancers have to wander into closer embraces as the piece evolves. This magical moment is the main idea for all melodic themes that travel from one instrument to another in a constant but subtle manner. The architectural structure of the piece is based on the traditional form of danzón. Every melody imitates a dance movement, similar to when the dancers get closer and move together as one and when they separate from each other and move independently, creating provocative, sensual movements as they look at each other from afar. Danzón para clarinete y piano paints and depicts the relationship between music and dance, dancers and movement, and colors and rhythms.
– Johanny Navarro
Summer Night in a Deep Valley
Summer Night in A Deep Valley is inspired by the Chinese landscape paintings by Guo Xi (c. 1020 – c. 1090). The piece tries to capture the magnificent scenes presented in different layers in the paintings by using various timbres to create a sound world that includes imitations of insect and animal sounds, rumbling of water, dropping leaves, and blowing breezes. Sometimes the music is meditative to reflect the broad landscape and sometimes it moves swiftly to depict the active night lives in the valley.
– Chia-Yu Hsu
Escenas
Escenas is the result of an active introspection on the topic of identity. With this piece, I do not attempt to clearly depict or make obvious any specific image, nor do I desire to present segmented sections tied to a specific idea, but rather a mix of elements that surfaced as answers to the very difficult question of how to represent my own identity musically. These answers or “scenes,” as the title of the piece suggests, blend together aspects of my own individual identity with the cultural and group identities that combine to create the “me” that only I can see, know and hopefully understand.
In Escenas, the active and chaotic musical material draws from feelings of excitement, happiness, rage, and uncertainty all at the same time, while maintaining a high level of energy and activity that serves as an adaptation of the heavily constant and rhythmic character of the sounds that have been essential to my development. The softer, longer, and sometimes more traditionally “beautiful” sounds, are reflections upon feelings of longing and sadness that do not wallow in these states but are felt in combination with the love and beauty that I feel towards, and comes from, those important to me, my culture, my community, and the natural beauty of the place which I’m lucky to call my homeland.
Such as our memories sometimes distort as time passes, this piece represents my own “distorted” interpretation of the aforementioned elements without attempting to provide an obvious equivalent to any aspect that plays an important role in my life and culture.
– Gabriel Bouche Caro
Clarinet Trio in A minor, Op. 114
For me, the Brahms Trio, Op. 114 is one of the greatest pieces of chamber music ever written. Before writing the trio, Brahms was considering retirement from composition. However, he was so fascinated by the playing of his friend, clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, he continued to compose and wrote many works for the relatively young instrument. Moving forward, this piece serves as my model for a new repertoire for the instrument, where composers and performers inspire each other to create.
– Eric Schultz
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Recorded March 2022 in the Edwards College Recital Hall at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, SC
Session Producer & Engineer Mckinley Devilbiss
Mixing, Editing & Mastering Antonio OliartExecutive Producer Bob Lord
VP of A&R Brandon MacNeil
A&R Jeff LeRoyVP of Production Jan Košulič
Audio Director Lucas PaquetteVP, Design & Marketing Brett Picknell
Art Director Ryan Harrison
Design Edward A. Fleming
Publicity Chelsea Kornago
Digital Marketing Manager Brett Iannucci