Tieton Summer Solstice -- 'Facade'

The musical entertainment during Saturday's benefit for Artist Trust and the Yakima Symphony Orchestra will be a chamber music concert, with oration, of "Façade."

Somewhat jokingly dubbed by the YSO as "early 20th century rap," the piece features music by British composer William Walton and poems by Dame Edith Sitwell.

"It's something I've wanted to do for a long time," says YSO conductor Brooke Creswell.

"I just thought it was a natural," he says. "The theme of the whole weekend is books unbound. These are poems put to music."

First publicly performed in the early 1920s during a time of artistic and literary revolt, the piece was revised numerous times over the next several decades.

And while it does have some affinities to rap -- the rhythmic delivery, clever word play -- Sitwell's poems stop far short from delivering any kind of message. Instead, says Creswell, the piece is simply a delight in language and instrumental color.

Performing "Façade" on Saturday will be a six-piece chamber orchestra along with mezzo-soprano Sarah Mattox and tenor Noah Baetge, both former Seattle Opera Young Artists.

"So they're used to spitting out words," says Creswell.

Which is good, because they'll have to articulate, as one classical music writer put it, "tongue-twisting lines of inconsequence."

Here's an example:

"MARINER MAN"

What are you staring at, mariner man

Wrinkled as sea-sand and old as the sea?

Those trains will run over their tails, if they can,

Snorting and sporting like porpoises. Flee

The burly, the whirligig wheels of the train,

As round as the world and as large again,

Running half the way over to Babylon, down

Through fields of clover to gay Troy town --

A-puffing their smoke as gray as the curl

On my forehead as wrinkled as sands of the sea! --

But what can that matter to you, my girl?

(And what can that matter to me?)