Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Last Night in LA--Honoring Dorrance Stalvey

For 33 years, Dorrance Stalvey has directed the music programs at the Los Angeles County Musem. He assumed responsibility of the Monday Evening Concerts, which had been directed by the iconic Lawrence Morton who brought the series to the museum, becoming �curator� of music. Stalvey has kept the program going through changes in the museum and in the city, through shifts in budget. He established an active, vital jazz program on Friday evenings, and the enclosed plaza at LACMA is a delightful place to be, along with a few hundred others, listening to a jazz group on a balmy evening. Stalvey focused the Monday Evening programs on contemporary music, changing from programs that would introduce a new work while also playing established music. Thirty-three years of programs of contemporary music; it would be nice to be able to review the list of composers and the list of premieres. Last year he received an ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the sixth such award for the Museum and for Stalvey. That is nice, but �adventurous� does not fully describe the values of the programming he has done.

This year is Stalvey�s 75th birthday. In his honor, several of the programs in this year�s Monday Evening series have included performances of Stalvey�s own compositions. But nothing seems to have been done by the museum, or by the Los Angeles Times, to recognize the contributions to Los Angeles life, and to the music world, by Stalvey. Last night�s program by Xtet included program notes by Xtet which gave recognition to Stalvey and his contributions. Since LACMA is used to providing retrospectives, it would certainly seem appropriate for them to offer a retrospective of Stalvey, even if only on paper.

The high point of last night�s concert was Stalvey�s �Pound Songs� (1985), a setting of five poems by Ezra Pound to music for soprano and a �pierrot� group-plus-percussion (flute, clarinet, piano, violin, cello, percussion). The soprano was the excellent Daisietta Kim (performer of the best �Pierrot Lunaire� in Los Angeles). This was a good performance of good music. Stalvey�s atonal music is lightly presented, compatible with and amplifying the images of Pound�s words.

�Visual Abstract� (2002) by Pierre Jalbert [] opened the concert. This work is included in the CD of five Jalbert works recorded on Gasparo by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble who gave the premiere. This work, also for �Pierrot plus percussion� is in three movements and the titles of each movement give the images evoked by the music: the tolling of bells, the dome of a church, the movements of dancers. Jalbert is currently the Composer-in-Residence with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; his musical training was at Oberlin Conservatory with his doctorate from Pennsylvania. His web site at Rice gives three short excerpts from his work for a brief taste of his interesting, accessible music.

After intermission, the concert included Edmund Campion�s �A Complete Wealth of Time� (1990). This is a work for two pianos, performed last night by two of LA�s best, Vicki Ray and Gloria Cheng, who have had so much new music written for them. Several of Campion�s works are available for mp3 download; not this one, however. Ray and Cheng have performed the work several times, and they handle all of the variations of time and synchronicity which Campion presents with great skill and communicate the fun of the work.

The evening ended with the premiere of �Windup� (2005) by Daisietta Kim, a narration in music, dance and image of her artistic life. Supplemented by visual images, an off-stage speaker, and a dancer, Kim used extracts from established composers to present her feelings as a singer and a pianist and a dancer. The speaker frequently represented the nay-sayers of the established musical world.

posted by Jerry Zinser 4/05/2005