Party-Ta: A Suite for the Sweet Premiere Concert!
Sunday March 21, 4:00 PM: at Fivesparks, 7 Ayer Rd in Harvard, MA. Dave McLellan gives the formal world premiere of Party-Ta: A Suite for the Sweet by Boston composer Francine Trester.
All proceeds from tickets go to the benefit of Fivesparks, a leading cultural collaborative group in the region.
Visit here for all information for the concert
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3:30 Pre-concert talk by musicologist Dr. Eric Hollander on the Baroque period dance suite form, and the Cello Suite #1 BWV 1007. Dr. Francine Trester will also talk about the concept of Party-Ta, and how it relates to the Baroque suite/partita form.
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4:00 Concert:
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Three short pieces from 16th century
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Cello Suite #1 by J.S. Bach BWV 1007
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Short break
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Party-Ta: A Suite for the Sweet by Francine Trester
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a lullaby to go home with in your ear
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About Party-Ta
Party-Ta is a combination of ideas for a large work for guitar that Dave McLellan suggested to me in 2022. One concept was a suite of dances like a Baroque partita except that the dances were to be 20th popular dance styles – Swim, Watusi, Twist, for example. The other suggestion was a work for voice and guitar with words from a popular children’s book about Boston.
I used those suggestions by combining them into the work you are hearing today – a kind of parody of the Baroque partita where each movement is slightly misnamed. The poems are to be read before each movement is played, almost as if to explain what the listener will hear, and the pictures sustain the mood while hearing each movement.
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Preclude replaces the traditional Prelude
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Allemande A la Mode replaces the traditional Allemande, a dance in duple meter which contains a “double-knocking” upbeat of two, sometimes three sixteenths.
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Corrente Events, replacing the fast Courante (French for “running”) expresses the stress of taking in the daily news, where the fast-running notes mimic the news ticker tape displayed at the bottom of a TV screen
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Sara’s Band - taking the place of the Sarabande, a slow dance in triple meter with stress on the 2nd beat - shows Sara, who can’t join the marching band because she plays guitar, and makes up her own band.
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Odette 1 and 2, representing typically paired movements like two Minuets or two Bourrées.
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The Gig laments a musician misunderstanding the word Gigue for a paid job.
Francine Trester, 2026
Poems and Drawings.
You can see here Francine's poems and drawings to go with the movements Preclude, Corrente Events, and Gig.
Reprinted with permission.
I. PRECLUDE
An ounce of prevention
Can stifle invention
A well-worn road
Paved with good intention
Makes mountains of yesterday's
Strutting on the stage
Gets in the way
Raises a maze
Of questions
And queries
Hesitating
Theories
Putting into practice
Perturbing the fainthearted
In the end, the hardest part:
The getting started ...
III. CORRENTE EVENTS
Running running running
There's a drumming
Drumming drumming
And a fearful dumbing
Dumbing down
Of thought, opposing views
Reduced to bites
Of sound, a ticking tocking
Meant for shocking
The remedy's in stopping
Tune it out -
Turn off the news
VII. GIG
They asked him,
"Can you play a Gigue?
But he heard,
"Can you play the gig?"
He asked,
"What day? What would it pay?"
And they,
Continuing, explained this way:
" ... a lively piece
In compound* -"
"Time? What time?" he asked,
And dumfound,
Scratched his head
(It wasn't big ... )
He should have
Jagged
Instead, he zigged
And so
He never played the Gigue -
Or gig
About Dr. Francine Trester
Praised as “compelling” and “thought-provoking” by the Boston Musical Intelligencer, Francine Trester’s A Walk In Her Shoes was premiered by Boston Landmarks Orchestra at the Hatch Memorial Shell and most recently In Her Element was premiered at Sanders Theater by the Kendall Square Orchestra. Trester’s libretto and score to the chamber opera Florence Comes Home, about composer Florence Price, was commissioned by Shelter Music Boston and described by the Intelligencer as “meaningful…wide and comprehensive.” She was commissioned by Kenneth Radnofsky to write Street Views for the Amram Ensemble; World-Wide Concurrent Premieres commissioned her Reminiscence: 3 Meditations on Friendship, which was also premiered by Radnofsky.
Trester is a Professor of Composition at Berklee College of Music and a 2023 Berklee Faculty Fellowship recipient. Awarded a sabbatical by Berklee for the 2025 spring academic semester, Trester completed The Hour of Clarice, a commission for the Aurea Ensemble. A cycle of 14 songs setting the words of Clarice Lispector, the work will receive its premiere March 7, 2026 at Brown University. Spring 2025 also saw the completion of a commission from guitarist Dave McLellan and an additional work for pianist Eileen Huang and flutist Sara Kornfeld-Sylla (to be premiered at M.I.T. on February 21, 2026).
Trester earned her undergraduate and doctoral degrees at Yale, where she studied composition with Jacob Druckman and Martin Bresnick, and violin with Syoko Aki; she was also a violin student of Louise Behrend at the Juilliard School. In addition to composing, Trester remains an active violinist, performing with the Eleuthera Piano Trio (Julie Reimann, cello and Lois Shapiro, piano). Trester’s music is recorded on Affetto/Naxos, Albany, Crystal and Stone Records labels and is available through the American Composers Alliance. www.francinetrester.com
About Dr. Eric Hollander
Eric Holldner, PdD, is a violist, musicologist, writer, and community music facilitator. He has a bachelor’s degree in viola performance from The Boston Conservatory, an MA in writing and publishing from DePaul University, a PhD in musicology from Brandeis University, and is currently pursuing a master’s in clinical mental health counseling and music therapy at Lesley University. Eric has a special passion for making music in and as community. From his earliest memories, Eric has noticed music’s capacity to brighten the darkness and has constantly sought to be part of that process: from music ministry and outreach performance as a young fiddle-player in Chicago; to experimental poetry/music collaborations in Boston as a college student; to music education and performance projects for social change and critical thought in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia and around the world as a young adult; to illuminating – through writing, public speaking, publication, and performance – collaborative music making as a means of justice and enlightenment a continuing student of music theory and therapy. Music is amazing.