Pliaggi Duo Performance

Biography

Pliaggi Duo was founded in 2005 and is committed to pleasing audiences with contemporary repertoire. They have performed concerts throughout the United States and Europe. Dr. Shawn Teichmer is the Professor of Saxophone at the University of Evansville in Indiana. Jaime Teichmer is an active concert pianist and runs a private studio.

More information

“The piece is a programmatic piece following the Apostle John’s relationship with Christ. Each movement represents an event or aspect of the relationship by displaying different musical ideas whilst maintaining certain themes or motifs throughout. Methods included are: modal tonalities, octotonicism, pantonality, secondal and quartal harmonies, as well as sound walls/clusters. My hope is to use these techniques in a way that will keep the music accessible while still sounding new.” Benjamin Crockett (composer)

“Johannine” is a term naming the whole of the Apostle John’s writings; but in this context, it refers to his close relationship to Christ. John teaches just as much about his savior through their simple, honest relationship, as his intellection documentation. Each movement captures a different important event in their relationship and expresses John’s feelings thereof.
1. Refitting Their Nets
John and his brother James began as fishermen working with their father. When Christ first comes into John’s life, they are refitting their nets in their boat on the shore. Christ gives a single command, and the brothers drop their feverish, futile task to accept a new lifestyle and follow a ministry of simplicity and love.
2. Following the Ministry, Pre- and Post- Transfiguration.
John makes it clear that only a few miracles he recorded, signs that Jesus is the true Christ. He states that the world could not contain enough books to hold exhaustive accounts of all of the miracles Jesus performed. This must have been an exciting, triumphant time to have lived and followed. And then, in the midst of a storm of unbelievable miracles, John witnesses the transfiguration of Jesus into the true Christ.
3. The Last Supper
The last supper was a long event, full of heavy words and foretelling of darkness in the coming days. Here he explains who will betray him, how he must die, and how everything will change. In the midst of this weight and unbelievable stress, John takes the time to write that he, the one Jesus loved, was reclining next to him.
4. Here is Your Son
This instance in John’s story shows us the intimacy and the specificity of Christ’s love throughout and in spite of major, painful events. While Christ is dying a horrific death, he takes precious breath to officially join his mother (a soon-to-be lone woman in a fiercely patriarchal society) and the disciple he loved into Mother and Son anew, that they may support and comfort each other through this loss and the ensuing hardship.
5. In the Garden
As John did not yet understand the prophecy, he must have mourned openly for Jesus’ death. It was not until he saw the empty tomb and the linen wraps lying there that he understood and believed what had truly taken place. Later, John got to see Christ again before he ascended. What was this parting like?