Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Last Night in LA--California EAR Unit

Every city should have at least one organization like California EAR Unit. The Los Angeles based new music ensemble is dedicated to the performance, promotion and creation of new music, not simply music of composers who are still alive. For 18 years the County Museum�s Monday Evening Concerts have provided the group with its major local venue. Last night�s concert was a typical EAR Unit evening: two local premieres and one world premiere.

David Lang is well-known to Sequenza21 readers, especially for his music with the Bang on a Can organization. His work �Child� is a group of five pieces, separately composed between 1999 and 2003, originally for separate groups, each with slightly different instrumentation, and now collected into a whole. I wish Lang had edited the first piece, a Glass-like quiet evolution which seemed half-again as long as it needed to be and then unraveled. And I would like to hear the five pieces in a different sequence so that the work didn�t end on the minimalism of a series of long cello notes. The second piece was particularly engaging, with an almost Cuban rhythm that got me moving in my seat.

After intermission the group played Erkki-Sven T��r; you�re wrong --- he�s an Estonian not a Finn. The selection was Architectonics VII (1992), a lovely work for piano, flute and bass clarinet. The piano provided washes of color as well as foundation for the flute. This work will be valuable for flute players wanting to organize a chamber performance.

The final work was the first performance of a work by Stephen Mosko composed for California EAR and its players with whom he shares a CalArts connection. This is poles apart from the simplicity of Lang�s music; there may not be more notes, but they have much wider variety and sound and technique.

Mosko describes the work, �J� (journal), as evolving from thoughts of the Druid alphabet with each letter named after a tree or shrub of which it is the initial. He thought about the association of the letter, of its tree, with each member of the EAR Unit. The work has 9 parts, differing in texture and style. One of the parts had five of the musicians making music at--and with--the piano leaving only the cellist unchanged in position. Mosko�s work does not communicate in its first hearing, at least not to me, but I was interested and wished I could have taken a recording away to try to understand better what he was saying in his music.

posted by Jerry Zinser 2/08/2005