Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

National Insecurity

I've just started reading Elizabeth Crist's (so far anyway--no reason to think it'll get any different) excellent book on Copland in the Depression and the War--World War II, that is, which is concerned very much with his politics and where that got him. I was reading yesterday about the Composers' Collective (about which Crist says many intelligent things). It was a good thing to be thinking about before going to the Boston installment of the Free Speech Zone 2005 Tour, which is the serious politico-musical expression of Judd Greenstein, David T. Little, and Missy Mazzoli, aligned in this case with a similar project of Boston-based Curtis K. Hughes, National Insecurity. This all appeared yesterday at Killian Hall at MIT in Cambridge. It was really more like a mini-festival consisting of three fairly short concerts compressed into one rather mammoth occasion, which went on for three hours and was still going strong, although in its final lap, when I had to leave to go to a rehearsal, thereby missing a performance of Coming Together by Rzewski. The first set was by Non Zero a saxophone and percussion duo consisting of the very very excellent Brian Scawa (sometimes of these parts) and Timothy Feeney. They played Two-Faced by Hughes, Still Life with Karl: An American Psalm by Sophocles Papavasilopoulos, Patriot Act (for saxophone along) by Dennis DeSantis, Red Scare Sketchbook by David T. Little, and Corporeal by Vinko Globokar, in which Feeney was both the performer and the instrument; it was probably more theater than music, but the performance was..., well, harrowing, in its intensity.

The second show was by Newspeak (Daisy Press, soprano, Eileen Mack, clarinets, Jordan Shapiro, electric guitar, Rebecca Cherry, violin, Mike Block, 'cello, James Johnson, piano, Yuri Yamashita, percussion, and Eric Poland, drumset--David T. Little, director). It consisted of Electric Proletariat by David T. Little, In Spite of All This by Missy Mazzoli, and a song by (from?) Black Sabbath.

The third part was by the NOW Ensemble (Patrick Burke, Mark Dancigers, Judd Greenstein, Michael Mizrahi, Sara Phillips, Peter Rosenfeld, Alexandra Sopp, and guest Bo Cheng). They did Apology to Younger Americans by John Halle and Free Speech Zone by Judd Greenstein. The final segment, which I missed, was the Rzewski, performed by Newspeak and the NOW ensemble in, as it were, concert.

Of all that music, what I remember most strongly are the Hughes, the Red Scare Sketchbook, the DeSantis, and the Mazzoli, but all of it was serious, full of substance, and powerfully realized as composition. The quibbles I would have are with Electric Proletariat, which although full of wonderful bits of music, seemed a little on the shapeless side as a piece, and the Greenstein, which was undetermined rather than enhanced by the video by by Alice Lovejoy and Jeff Reichert which was added to the already existing music. The video was full of words (a story about a man who was arrested for trying to go to a Bush appearance carrying a critical sign, and a Bush speech) and I found that the concentration needed to read them really caused me to reduce the music not to just accompaniment, but to ambient stuff going on simultaneously with my reading. After a while I made a conscious effort to try not to watch, so I could listen. When I was focused on the music every one of the bits I heard was terrific, but I have no impression of it as a whole piece.

I think it was a good sign about all the music that when I had to leave--and I would have been quite happy to stay--I didn't feel tired or oppressed under the weight of all the listening involved. Good music usually energizes, I guess. As to the performances, to say that they were completely masterly (and, in some cases masterful) technically and wonderfully powerful and expressive would be to slander them by using faint praise. It was the kind of playing which was so concentrated and focused that it could melt through steel.

posted by Rodney Lister 11/14/2005