Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Last Night in LA--Percussion!

We�ve had a nice little mini-festival of percussion at Disney Hall. The L.A. Philharmonic gave us Tan Dun�s paper percussion last week, then Evelyn Glennie this week, and last night it was Glennie and Steven Schick supported by his UCSD percussion group �red fish blue fish� in an ear-opening evening of music for solo and small group percussions. The concert, offered by the Phil�s Green Umbrella series for new music, focused on the music, the pitch not just the rhythm, of percussion.

New Yorkers will probably recognize Schick most for the ten years he spent with the �Bang on a Can All-Stars�; last night�s concert gave some of that �downtown� music, but it also presented some �uptown� and international music. In a pre-concert talk, Schick commented that he had turned 50 last year and was forced to realize that he was older than the oldest work in his repertoire; both Schick and Glennie commented on how good it was to be able to contact the composers of works they were learning, often by email, to discuss compositional intent or to work out interpretations. Five of the six composers of the evening are still alive; even better, they�re still composing.

The concert opened with Glennie and Schick playing Steve Reich�s �Nagoya Marimbas� (1994). The work blends some of Reich�s earlier interests in phasing and patterns with his later melodic developments. The work requires two virtuoso performers, which we certainly heard. After this great start, Evelyn Glennie joined Schick�s �red fish blue fish� percussion ensemble for Bob Becker�s �Mudra� (1990) which uses motives and styles from classical Indian music as performed with and shaped by contemporary tuned and untuned percussion. The work isn�t a re-creation of Indian music; rather it�s a borrowing of ideas. In particular, in this work Becker made extensive use of a five-pitch scale, amplifying the pitch-line with harmony, often from overtones in the reverberation of the sound.

Glennie then gave two solo performances using works she uses in her solo concerts by composers she champions. The first was �Fluctus� (1988) for solo marimba by Nebojsa Jovan Zivkovic. Zivkovic�s web site is worth the visit for the percussion fanfare which opens the site. An extract of the work is here. This work by a Serb living in Germany was followed by a work by an Icelandic composer, Askell Masson. Glennie discovered Masson when she was in Reykjavik for a concert and was utilizing some downtime to review music manuscripts at the library; she discovered a concerto for snare drum and decided that this was a composer she wanted to know. �Prim� (1984) was written to amplify some of the ideas from that snare drum concerto; its title stems from the work�s use of the prime numbers through 43 to determine the number of beats in a rhythmic pattern.

In her pre-concert comments, Glennie stated that the absence of other instruments should allow us to hear the pitches coming from the extended snare drum hits, and this was certainly the case in the Disney Hall acoustics. An excerpt of the work, played by Glennie is here; unfortunately the sound clip doesn�t include the virtuoso close of the work. Schick closed the first half of the concert with a solo performance of �Rebonds� (1988) by Iannis Xenakis. The work is written for a set of skin drums supplemented by five wood blocks which provided pitched interludes. This was spectacular drumming.

After the intermission Schick and his red fish blue fish players performed �The So-Called Laws of Nature� (2002) by David Lang, a work for four percussionists. The work is in three parts, with each part using a different set of improvised percussion instruments (starting with wooden blocks and ending with flower pots and rice bowls). I found the performance too long for the work�s musical ideas. Perhaps my difficulty was with the performance, however. The first two parts/movements seemed to be performed at a constant forte, with an occasional fortissimo accent, and this consistent volume seemed to merely emphasize the repetitive nature of the patterns. But perhaps I still don�t understand Lang�s language. Tonight is Shostakovich and three string quartets.

posted by Jerry Zinser 5/10/2005