Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Once--in-a-lifetime concert opportunity

Pop music has J-Lo. Classical music has JLA: John Luther Adams.

J-Lo has a great behind. JLA has a great mind.

My own mind is still spinning from Tuesday evening's performance of JLA's Strange and Sacred Noise. red fish blue fish, the percussion ensemble at University of California, San Diego, performed this hour-plus-long percussion quartet at Mandeville Auditorium, and during the concert I came to the following conclusions:

1. Strange and Sacred Noise is a masterpiece, not just for percussion music, but for contemporary classical/experimental/avant-garde/whatever-you-want-to-call-it music.

2. Out of the many eligible composers of his generation, John Luther Adams is the greatest proponent of the American experimental tradition, a lineage that includes Ives, Cowell, Varese, Partch, Nancarrow, Cage, and Tenney.

I heard the CD recording of Strange and Sacred Noise, and it just doesn't do the piece justice. The performance is excellent, but it's nigh impossible to differentiate the parts (at least on my mid-fi system), and that's crucial to experiencing the piece, as I discovered on Tuesday evening.
Strange and Sacred Noise, on the surface, is simple and to the point. Anyone, regardless of their musical experience, can appreciate it. You don't need to be able to follow all the convolutions of a twelve-tone row, or know the last 300 years of classical music history to get all the references, or be able to hear and remember complex, dissonant chords. All you need to enjoy it is to leave all your biases behind about what music has to be: e.g., have a melody, have regular rhythm, have harmony. If you can put all these things aside and just let the piece take up an hour-plus of your time on its own terms, you can enjoy it. It is utterly transparent in both intent and delivery, and yet, paradoxically, this very simplicity raises profound philosophical issues about how we perceive music. It is, like nature, something very much larger than ourselves, and the closest experience I can come up with to compare a live performance to is the state of mind you are in watching a sunset by yourself, going for a walk along the shore and hearing the waves, hiking in a forest on your own and sitting down for an hour and just letting the forest be itself all around you, or going out to a remote section of the desert, where there are no traces of people.

And this brings me to the purpose of this post. UCSD grad student Robert Esler (pictured above) has worked his butt off to bring JLA to San Diego. In a project he calls "The Confluence of Art, Music, Science and Environment," there will be performances of both Strange and Sacred Noise and The Mathematics of Resonant Bodies on Sunday, Feb. 26, at 4 pm and noon, respectively, in remote locations of Anza-Borrego National Park, with JLA present. On Monday and Tuesday, there will be daylong workshops and seminars at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography involving JLA.

In order to find out the precise locations of these performances (there's a different location for each piece), you will need to email Robert Esler at resler@ucsd.edu for the specifics, and I suggest you do it today.

If you email me at chertzog [at symbol] ucsd.edu, I can send you the details as well, as late as early Sunday morning. The location details are mysterious because the park administration won't let him advertise due to permit regulations. (Don't worry, you won't be breaking any regulations by attending, so long as you park your vehicale appropriately as described on his website).

This is an easy excursion into the desert, but you will need to take all the usual precautions any venture into the desert requires. For suggestions on how to have a safe desert experience, please visit http://www.desertusa.com/Thingstodo/du_safetytips.html and http://www.desertusa.com/anza_borrego/du-abpmain.html. Of course, you'll need to bring plenty of water, food, sunscreen, appropriate dress, and there won't be any toilets at either location.

Southern California is blessed with an extraordinary and diverse amount of beautiful scenery--you name it, we have it: ocean, lakes, forests, mountains, desert. For my money, Anza-Borrego (the largest desert in SoCal) is at the top of the list. If you've never been there before, this concert is a perfect excuse to visit.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a chance to hear a composition which invokes nature in the setting of nature.

Speaking of nature, my cat just marched into my house proudly carrying a lizard. Gotta go and kick him outside (but give him the praise he craves).

posted by Christian Hertzog 2/25/2006

I Prefer the Memory to the Photograph

Our friend Marvin Rosen's ASCAP award-winning radio program Classical Discoveries is doubling the length this year of its annual "In Praise of Women" series to 25 hours. All together, during the course of the month, Rosen will present the works of more 100 women composers with about 80% of the air time devoted to works of the 20th and 21st centuries. Katherine Hoover will be his guest on Wednesday, March 15, beginning at 8:30 A.M.

The series begins on Wednesday morning, March 1st and can be heard every Wednesday morning from 6:00 to 11:00 (eastern standard time) thru the month of March. The program is broadcast on WPRB 103.3 FM in Princeton, NJ, and on line at www.wprb.com each Wednesdays from 6:00 to 11:00 A.M. For more information you can email Marvin at clasdis@cs.com.

Don't miss Corey Dargel's polemic on art song at NewMusicBox.

The Golijovathon continues just down the page; Galen Brown has a great discussion going in the Composers Forum and Jeffrey Biegel discovers that practicing in different locations is a great aid to memorization.

Now Playing: Ben Johnston: String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 4 & 9 (New World) Richard Friedman is writing a proper review for us but this is the first of my top ten new releases for the year and likely to remain so. I had never heard of Johnston before this disk but for those of us who like our microtonality and just intonation laced with a healthy dollop of neoclassicism, this is the winning recipe. Call it user-friendly Harry Partch.

posted by Jerry Bowles 2/25/2006

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Two and a Half Cheers for Golijov

David Salvage's less than totally reverential review of Osvaldo Golijov's La Pasi�n seg�n San Marcos has touched off a terrific discussion in the comments thread just below it. Some of it is the usual I-didn't-see-it-but-I-told-you-he-wasn't-all-that-great stuff but there are some extremely valuable insights into the work itself and the nature of Golijov's contribution to new music. Whatever it is that Golijov does--maybe, auteur would be a good word to describe his role--it is clearly exciting and crowd-pleasing and blazes one particular trail toward a wider acceptance of new, formal music. That cannot possibly be anything but positive. see Steve Smith's positive review.

By the way, Golijov took a beating with a different program in London recently. Tim Rutherford-Johnson links to several disasterous reviews in the big papers.

In the blogs today, Tom Myron's debt to painter Will Barnet is explained...Anthony Cornicello is in Minneapolis for the Spark Festival...Jack Reilly writes about the underrated Hall Overton...and Blackdogred takes on the Arctic Monkeys. My favorite pop albums right now are Richard Julian's Slow New York and Teddy Thompson's(son of Richard and Linda) Separate Ways.

posted by Jerry Bowles 2/23/2006

La Pasi�n seg�n San Marcos at Lincoln Center

Among my acquaintances Osvaldo Golijov is a controversial figure. His fans hail him as an apostle of multi-culturalism � a composer who listens to sounds made around the world, and who delivers them to us in stirring, powerful music. His critics consider him little more than a plantation owner with the clout and resources to import musical �slaves� from other countries to do his work for him. Last Monday night�s performance of La Pasi�n seg�n San Marcos (The Passion According to St. Mark) was my first prolonged encounter with Golijov�s music. I�m happy to report that, as far as I�m concerned, both sides of the Golijov controversy are wrong.

Based on this piece, it�s hard for me to acknowledge Golijov as being a great composer. The work is simply too much of a patchwork, and the notated orchestral passages often sit uncomfortably with the improvisatory passages for the Venezuelan musicians. And, despite his ability to create effervescent textures, Golijov�s ostinati almost invariably overstay their welcome: in numerous places the music grows tedious.

But the overall architecture of the composition is satisfying. Golijov�s tried-and-true fast-slow-fast organization does the job. The Pasi�n�s slow central passages and interjections of austere material go a long way toward keeping the more exuberant passages alive. There may be dead spots, but the music never dies.

Even though many significant aspects of the Pasi�n are unnotated and realized more by individual musicians trained in a native style than by Golijov�s imagination and technique, and even though Golijov is listed on the program as the �composer,� to label Golijov a fraud is unfair. Golijov�s achievement is best situated somewhere between the categories of �producer� and �composer,� and we really have no title for what it is he does. He�s treated as if he were a composer in the Western mold only because that�s the most convenient category at hand. In fact, Golijov really is what he intends to be: a hybrid figure whose methods combine aspects of popular and classical music-making. Once one comes to terms with the fact that the Pasi�n is as much �assembled� as it is �composed,� once one stops trying to make Golijov into a modern-day Bartok or Jan�cek, one understands Golijov better and becomes more at peace with his reputation.

P.S. I admonish the production team in the �comments� section.

posted by David Salvage 2/23/2006

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Last Night in L.A. - Ad�s, Kurt�g, Castiglioni

Thomas Ad�s completed his residency with the Los Angeles Philharmonic with a Green Umbrella concert Tuesday night, a concert showing Ad�s as composer, as conductor, and as pianist. As composer, the concert gave us a survey of three works showing his development from Opus 2 in 1990 (at age 19) to Opus 20 in 2001. Indeed, as originally programmed the concert was to have begun with a fourth work, his Opus 1 from 1989, Five Eliot Landscapes for soprano and piano; that work, however, had to be cancelled because the singer was ill.

The Chamber Symphony, Op. 2 showed Ad�s as a talented, confident, rather showy composer displaying his virtuosity in writing for 15 instruments and taking Webern-like modernism (without Webern�s simplicity) and applying the techniques to the forms of the classic symphony. The work has a little bit of everything, including a central part for the basset clarinet and a supporting role for the accordion. It�s sort of a �Look, Ma, no hands!� kind of piece. In its American premiere, Opus 13, The Origin of the Harp (1994) shows the then 23-year old Ad�s working with much more thought and control, working much harder to communicate musical ideas to an audience. The title was taken from a painting showing the transformation of a water nymph into a Celtic harp and is written for three clarinets, three violas and three cellos; a compositional challenge was to suggest a harp at the end of the work.

The Piano Quintet, Op. 20 is a mature work, and it is impressive. The Arditti Quartet, who gave the premiere with Ades at the piano, has recorded the work, pairing it with the Schubert Trout. The Ades quintet holds its own. You can listen to clips of the quintet here. The quintet is firmly based on classical forms; from that foundation, however, it plays with tempo and meter in unconventional, idiosynchratic ways. The four strings from the Phil did an excellent job, and the composer/pianist presented himself as sensitive, responsive member of a team, not using the piano (and his own playing skills) to take over and direct.

For the program, Ad�s supplemented his music with works for soprano and chamber players by Gy�rgy Kurt�g and Niccol� Castiglioni. While the particular works might have been initially chosen because the Eliot Landscapes used a soprano, Ad�s seemed to be commenting on his own works as well: all three composers represented in the program brought contemporary, modern sensibilities to traditional forms, working to link the past to the present. The first half of the program closed with Kurt�g�s Scenes from a Novel, Op. 19 (1982) for soprano, violin, bass, and cimbalom. Kurt�g used 15 short poems by Rimma Dalos, some as short and compressed as haikus, to present a spectrum of feelings and colors in a typical Kurt�g range or musical pictures, some with humor but with an overall feeling of loss and regret.

Castiglioni�s Part 1 of Cantus Planus (1990) uses the �plain song� approaches of medieval and northern renaissance music with a 12-tone musical vocabulary. The work is for two sopranos and chamber septet (flute, clarinet, piano, violin, cello, percussion --- and harp); it presents twelve rhymed couplets by Silesius, a poet-priest of the 1600s. This was also the first U.S. performance of the work; a recording on Stradivarius is shown on Amazon as being no longer available. Elizabeth Keusch, a young soprano from Boston, flew in as a rapid replacement for the ill soprano; she had previously sung both the Kurtag and the Castiglioni works. This was her third appearance at a Green Umbrella concert; she has a lovely, strong voice, good technique, and excellent pitch (supported in the Castiglioni by discreet use of the tuning fork, since the first soprano role in that work is challenging and tremendously exposed).

posted by Jerry Zinser 2/22/2006

How Not to Sell New Music

If Alarm Will Sound's Zankel Hall concert was a textbook case of how to present new music in a way that grabs the listener around the throat and doesn't let go, the Lincoln Center production of Osvaldo Golijov's magnificent La Pasi�n Seg�n San Marcos is a case study in how to diminish the effects of a enchanting piece of music by not providing listeners--at least, non-Spanish speaking ones--with enough visual and written clues to help them fully appreciate what is happening on stage. I had planned to write more about this but Anthony Tommasini beat me to it in today's New York Times:

Given the importance Mr. Golijov places on reaching and moving his listeners, it was inexplicable that Lincoln Center provided the audience with neither a translation of the texts nor projected surtitles at the first night's performance. Yes, this works tells one of the most familiar of all stories. But the text draws not just from the Gospel of St. Mark but also the Lamentations of Jeremiah, selected psalms and poetry.

For example, at last night's performance, after the crucifixion of Jesus was enacted by a dancer, Reynaldo Gonz�les Fern�ndez, while the chorus shouted and the ferocious percussion erupted, the music grew still and the affecting Brazilian vocalist Luciana Souza sang an elegiac melody accompanied by sublimely mournful modal harmonies in the orchestras. How many in the audience did not know that this was a setting of the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead?

This lapse marred the performance. Otherwise, Lincoln Center deserves praise for presenting this comprehensive look at Mr. Golijov's work.

Anastasia Tsioulcas at Cafe Aman also noted the comprehension gap:

Puzzlingly and quite frustratingly, there was no libretto or supertitles provided this time around. That's a real shame, especially since the soloists and chorus singers alike keep shifting character and perspective in the narrative, which to me is one of the most intriguing and moving elements of Golijov's re-envisioning of the traditional Passion structure. I don't speak Spanish, but I know the piece fairly well by now, and even so I found myself missing that component. It's really a shame that people just experiencing the piece for the first time would miss that whole element. ETA: I've been informed today by Lincoln Center that there was no libretto available yesterday due to "an error on Lincoln Center's part," but that they WILL have libretti on hand this evening. How regrettable nonetheless.

Apropos of our earlier discussion on presentation, don't miss Carmen-Helena Tellez's comments at the end of the Alarm Will Sound thread. I would pay serious money (okay Broadway level prices) to see Carmen stage and direct La Pasi�n Seg�n San Marcos.

Now Playing: Imani Winds (Koch) The talented wind quintet seems to have abandoned the "pimp and hoes" marketing approach of their first album in favor of something a little more traditional but the solid musicianship is still there in a program of charming, if lightweight, pieces that range from Ravel to Piazolla and Mongo Santamaria. Most promising of all, flutist Valerie Coleman and french hornist Jeff Scott display real talent as composers.

posted by Jerry Bowles 2/22/2006

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

He's looking for a few good guitarists

If you're an electric guitarist or bassist in the Los Angeles area, Glenn Branca is looking for performers for his Symphony no. 13 (Hallucination City) to be performed on March 29 as part of the Minimalism Jukebox.

It's great that Branca is coming to L.A., but what sucks about this is that there's no pay. Now I suppose that's nothing new for rock musicians, but geez Louise, the L.A. Philharmonic is behind this festival--you'd think there would be money for the performers. I wonder what AFM Local 47 will have to say about this?

Here's the pitch:

�Legendary maximum minimalist� composer / guitarist Glenn Branca still needs guitar players for his show at the Disney concert hall downtown. Interested parties should contact him at glenn [at] glennbranca [dot] com

This would be for the upcoming performance of �Symphony No.13 (Hallucination City)� for 80 guitars, 20 basses and drums. The original version premiered at the former WTC on June 13, 2001. The revised version, in four movements, premiered at the Kasser Theater at Montclair
State University, NJ on February 4, 2006.

The venue will be Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles. The show is part of Minimalist Jukebox, a series being programed by John Adams and sponsored by the LA Philharmonic. For more info go to: http://wdch.laphil.com/minimalism/

The dates are March 27th and 28th, with the performance on the 29th. The rehearsals will be the 27th and 28th, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on both days. They are tentatively scheduled at Center Staging in Burbank, 3407 Winona Avenue. Musicians will be reimbursed for parking. On the day of the concert at Disney Hall the rehearsal/sound check will be 3-6:30 p.m. with the performance at 8 p.m.. Food and drink will be provided on all days. Each musician will need to know his / her part (but you don�t need to memorize it). You�ll need to bring a guitar and amp (a medium sized amp would be best). It will also be necessary to restring your guitar for the tuning. Basses will not need to be restrung OR retuned. I will have a serious quantity of replacement strings on hand.

�The parts are in staff notation and the ability to follow a part measure by measure is essential. The playing technique includes plenty of double-strumming and downstroke chording. Complete detailed instructions will come with the parts which will be sent before the end of February. I will answer any questions you have about the parts when you get them. The show will be conducted by John Myers. If you want to do the gig you must e-mail your postal mailing address and telephone number (please note whether you play BASS or GUITAR).

It is not possible to pay this number of people. So, you�ll have to do the gig for free.
Thank You, Glenn Branca�

posted by Christian Hertzog 2/21/2006

Who Killed Classical Music? Forget it, Jake. It's Uptown.

For those of you who can't get too much dish on the great New York Uptown/Downtown music divide (and judging from the more or less constant comments left here, that includes most of S21 readers), hie yourself to the nearest bookstore and get a copy of Music Downtown - Writings from the Village Voice by Kyle Gann (California; 2006). No other critic has covered the downtown scene more completely, faithfully or entertainingly than Gann, who began his career at the Voice in 1986 by accusing the New York Times of faking a Xenakis performance--a bold move for a new kid on the block from Chicago. All of the important figures of downtown new music are here--from Ashley to Zorn--and Gann captures the spirit of their music as well as their personalities. Filled with wit and insights that have lived long beyond their original deadlines, this is the definitive insider look at one of New York's most enduring culture wars and a must-read for any serious student of new music. You can quote me.

posted by Jerry Bowles 2/21/2006

Monday, February 20, 2006

One Two Three Four Five....

I watched Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (good movie if you haven't seen it) last night with the Missus. One of the crooks, Lou Pai, had a serious stripper addiction, so the film shows footage of topless women working poles and shoving businessmen's faces into their crotches. I started laughing hysterically at this, but my wife wasn't privy to the joke, so I had to explain. You see, the music accompanying this scene was the most unlikely stripper music you could imagine: one of the counting songs from Einstein on the Beach.

Brings new meaning to the phrase "Glass booths!"

posted by Christian Hertzog 2/20/2006

How Does Music Mean?

Ryan Maelhorn applies John Ciardi's famous question about poetry to music in a new thread in the Composers Forum...Elodie Lauten praises some famous women composers you may never have heard of and recommends Tai Chi for orchestral relaxation...Blackdogred praises, faintly, the new Beth Orton (I'm still in the jury room on it, too) and brings William Gaddis back to the party...Jack Reilly praises Lennie Tristano...Rusty Banks has some thoughts about how to make performances more compelling...and Lawrence Dillon quotes John F. Kennedy praising Robert Frost, a man who certainly knew how to make a poem mean. I found the passage sad because it suggests just how much we've lost as a country over the past 50 years.

posted by Jerry Bowles 2/20/2006

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Alarm Will Sound: A Lesson in How to Sell New Music

"Exciting" and "fun" are not words that are frequently used to describe new music concerts but Thursday night's Alarm Will Sound concert at Zankel Hall proved that clever programming and hard work can overcome even the teensy-weensy attention spans of the multi-tasking, podcasting, club hopping, instant messaging, iPod generation.

We have had lengthy discussions in the Composers Forum about the importance of venue in attracting audiences for postclassic music, especially the relative merits of clubs versus concert halls, but neither is exactly perfect. Most young people find the notion of going to sit quietly for two hours in a darkened room with a bunch of strangers staring at people in black outfits blowing into horns and hacking away at fiddles to be not only some kind of archaic ritual, but downright punitive. This is SERIOUS MUSIC, children. Pay attention.

Clubs offer a freer, more interactive environment but they have their downsides. Drinkers, talkers, noisy waitresses, bad acoustics, no payment for musicians, much less composers. And, of course, there is always the 25 percent of the audience that is waiting for you to stop horsing around and play "Stairway to Heaven."

What Alan Pierson and his talented Alarm Will Sound crew proved on Thursday was that it is possible to reach a concert hall audience on both a visceral as well as intellectual level and to tap into some of the strengths of both worlds. In the process, they offered some valuable insights into how to stage a compelling new music concert.

Build the program around a "coherent narrative:" Modern homo sapiens crave connections and they respond to stories that tie loose pieces of information together. Doesn't have to be a complicated story or make an earthshaking point. Thursday's concert was "about" musical odd couples--composers that most audience members wouldn't necessarily think of as being related. Frank Zappa and Edgard Var�se. John Cage and John Cale. Wolfgang Rihm and John Adams. Ghanaian composer Bernard Woma, master of the gyil and composer, clarinetist and band leader Derek Bermel, who years ago traveled to Ghana to apprentice with him and in 1994, created an orchestral composition, Dust Dances, inspired by traditional Ghanaian gyil melodies. It didn't really matter that the Bermel piece that AWS actually played--Three Rivers--had virtually no traditional African influence or that the link between Rihm's splattershot European expressionism and Adams' cool West Coast post-minimalism couldn't be more tenuous.

Our buddy and frequent contributor Frank J. Oteri did a terrific job of tying the pieces together in the program notes, although relating Cage to Cale required a triple axle to Tokyo, Yoko Ono, Fluxus, and La Monte Young before landing tentatively in the East Village.

Keep them doggies rolling: Just because the audience is sitting still doesn't mean the performers have to. At virtually no point in the evening were all 22 members of the group on stage at the same time. Pierson had musicians roving throughout the hall constantly which not only produced some innovative sounds but added a touch of engaging theater. Audience members never knew if the person next to them was going to suddenly whip out a trumpet and blow them away. So dispersed were the musical legions that Pierson conducted Var�se's Int�grales from the middle row of seats on the orchestra level. As a consequence of being a band in motion, Pierson's mobile work force performed much of the concert without sheet music, which is the musical equivalent of working the high wire without a net. The risk was high; the reward exhilarating.

The band cleverly used highly choreographed peformances of Cage's 0�00� (4�33� No. 2) and Variations III as a cover for resetting the stage between the Zappa and Woma and Var�se and Cale pieces, giving the whole program a seamless feel and no doubt confusing the hell out of the stagehands union.

Give 'em some visuals: Purists may object but giving the audience something to do while listening besides staring blankly at a stage immediately makes for a more memorable performance. Even the Rolling Stones realize you have to give them some lights, camera, action show biz. By using photos, short quotes about the works being played, and simple charts to show connections, AWS managed to tell its story in an engaging way without seeming pompous or verbose.

There were a number of other factors that contributed to the success of the evening, but this is a blog so I'll wrap it up. Everybody loves great performers and AWS has a number of standout "stars" in the making. Pierson has been on a fast track since he took up music seriously at Eastman a few years back. Caleb Burhans is an astonishing violinist and guitarist and Courtney Orlando was ubiquitous--at various points in the evening playing violin, keyboard, a strange whoopee cushion like drum, and singing Dennis DeSantis' arrangement of a selection of John Cale's music for the Andy Warhol movie "Kiss." Courtney is also as cute as a speckled pup on a red fire engine, an observation I get to make since I am old and harmless and from the pre-sensitive cave man generation. And, anyway, I've never heard of a performer who lost points for being too attractive.

Darcy James Argue has a great critical review here and Allan Kozinn has a decent review here.

posted by Jerry Bowles 2/19/2006