In recent years, Deutsche-Grammophon has been releasing crossover albums incorporating the work of pop/electronic artists, particularly those who sit in the post-rock and ambient pockets. Balmorhea, the band name for the trio Rob Lowe, Michael A. Muller, and Aisha Burns are an ideal grouping for this type of project. Their work has long been influenced by classical music and their arrangements are well wrought. In 2021, their first recording for DG, The Wind, made a strong impression. If anything, their latest for the imprint, Pendant World, is even stronger.
Guests artists from the A-list of contemporary classical music join them, including cellist Clarice Jensen, percussionist Jason Treuting, vocalist Lisa Morgenstern, and guitarist Sam Gendel. Lower and Muller handle keyboard duties, and Burns contributes violin. Many of the songs are aphoristic, but even the smallest slices of music yield atmospheric moments. “Nonplussed,” Pendant World’s opener, clocks in at a mere forty-one seconds, but Treuting’s chimes and gradually accelerating drums give it a striking resemblance to a locomotive gearing up to leave the station. “Range” is a showcase for Gendel’s arpeggiated guitar, with supple strings in the background and a brief piano bridge between the guitar solos. Less than two minutes, it would make an excellent cut for a film score. “Fire Song” too, is short yet memorable. It features Gendel, this time taking on a more melodic role with plaintive harmonies behind him.
Pendant World doesn’t just contain morsel-sized pieces. “Step, Step, Step” is a showcase for the band and all of their guests. Solos ricochet between them, with Burns a particular standout and Treuting providing an ardent motor. The arrangement is well-conceived: the concert music analog to a post-rock anthem. Similarly, “Oscuros” is for the ensemble, with a repeated note piano riff girding the verses and strings taking up a variation of the tune in a subdued middle section. At the end of the piece, the piano takes the foreground again with a harmonically tweaked, more fully realized version of the tune.
The final piece,”Depth Serenade” features Balmorhea with Burns and Jensen handling string duties. The violin and cello melodies are beautiful, set against ambient keyboards. The overall effect has echoes of Gavin Bryars’s Sinking of the Titanic and Harold Budd’s work, but the sound world of Balmorhea commingles with them, and doesn’t merely co opt past sounds. It ends with repeated shimmering piano chords and soaring strings..
Pendant World makes a strong case for the vitality of crossover in a contemporary classical context. One hopes Balmorhea will continue in this vein.
Many people’s first exposure to the world of Studio Ghibli and its star director, Hayao Miyazaki, was My Neighbor Totoro. For me, it was Laputa: Castle in the Sky. I will never forget my reaction to the opening sequence, during which Sheeta, the sole living heiress of the eponymous all-but-forgotten realm, falls from an airship. As she hurtles toward the earth below, eyes closed as if resigned to this tragic fate, her crystal necklace begins to glow, imbuing enough power in its slender cord to bring her to the softest of landings into the arms of protagonist Pazu.
Nothing prepared me, however, for the music of Joe Hisaishi. Such emotional circuits are part and parcel of his scoring at its most glorious: building a free fall of anticipation before settling into the inner lives of Miyazaki’s timeless characters. And surely, this conspectus from Deutsche Grammophon provides a long-overdue account of Hisaishi’s melodic gifts. A Symphonic Celebration reminds us of one key reason why Miyazaki’s oeuvre owns so much valuable real estate in the hearts of children and adults alike. Each image has a song.
While Michael Beek’s liner notes rightly place Miyazaki/Hisaishi among the ranks of Spielberg/Williams, Zemeckis/Silvestri, Burton/Elfman, and Fellini/Rota, I might also add Lynch/Badalamenti, especially since the latter dream team closely mirrors the creative process of Hisaishi, who has often composed music for a Miyazaki picture based only on sketches and ideas before a single frame is drawn. Beek goes on to characterize the album’s program as “Joe Hisaishi’s musical vision freed from the bounds of film, but this time given even more space and, if it’s at all possible, even more heart and soul.” This is at once to the album’s credit and detriment.
But first, the music, which begins where it must: with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), their inaugural collaboration. As the first of ten reimagined suites, it packs a punch of tympani and orchestral splendor that resolves into the clarion strains of what may be Hisaishi’s most timeless theme. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra artfully brushes in the details under the composer’s baton. The addition of choir adds a surreal sense of humanity to music for a film that still feels quite distant from who we are now, yet so familiar, while the children’s singing is a haunting remnant of carefree abundance. This sets a tone that can be difficult to read because the suites often shift so quickly from one motif to the other that one’s memories of certain scenes and characters get interrupted. Still, there are some stunning passages to savor, especially in the finale, that recapture some of the magic.
Just as Nausicaä finds its groove toward the end, Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) is refined from note one, as the wide-eyed wonder of the titular witch setting off for the adventure of independent living blossoms across the foreground. The percussive touches and fervent string playing give way to a creamy center, while the solo violin of Stephen Morris carries a rich emotional cargo. An especially successful arrangement.
Princess Mononoke (1997) tills martial ground, cultivating the soprano of Grace Davidson, who does a splendid job with the Japanese intonation, as also in Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea(2008), while The Wind Rises (2013) introduces the mandolin of Avi Avital for a more cobblestoned sound. The latter points to Miyazaki’s fascination with flight and air travel, as played out further in Castle in the Sky (1986), which is smart for opening with Pazu’s bugled morning call but less so for taking up the theme with choir when the piano was so crucial to the original soundtrack. Moreover, the concluding melodrama feels rather out of character with the film’s tender heart. Thankfully, we get plenty of Hisaishi at the keyboard in Porco Rosso (1992), which evokes its quirky mélange with tasteful subtlety, taken up by clarinet and strings.
The biggest disappointment is Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), which has so much grace and poise in the original, yet here, despite being the longest of the program, seems rushed. That said, it does contain some of Hisaishi’s most masterful work, especially “Merry-Go-Round of Life,” which gloriously consummates a flirtatious appearance early on.
Spirited Away (2001) gives us more of Hisaishi’s distinctive pianism (again, this connects him to Badalamenti, whose keyboard playing was always so grounded in the soul), paired with the breathy vocals of Hisaishi’s daughter, Mai Fujisawa (who also sang the original Nausicäa theme). Her voice is auto-tuned, which is rather odd in a classical album, even as it plays creatively with the fringes of a genre that has grown with the times. If anything, this pop sensibility gives it an interesting appeal.
And so, we return to My Neighbor Totoro (1988), a story seared into my memory after seeing the film literally hundreds of times when it was the only one my three-going-on-four-year-old would watch at the time. Miyazaki himself once characterized Totoro as the embodiment of Japan in its transition into modernism, as evidenced by his parallels with Alice in Wonderland and Mary Poppins, and I have grown to appreciate its depths far more as an adult. Originally shown as the B picture of a double feature after Grave of the Fireflies (directed by studio mate Isao Takahata), it contrasted the reality of a war-torn Japan with the fantasy of a rural imaginary in anticipation of a hopeful future. Hisaishi adds to such inversions, beginning his suite under cover of night, whereas the film opens in the brightness of day.
Perhaps the ultimate question regarding A Symphonic Celebration is whether this music would survive without its cinematic associations. While my bias as someone in whose fibers frames of Miyazaki’s films are deeply embedded leads me toward a “no,” time will tell how it reads to new listeners as a standalone experience. Given that the arrangements are so far from home, I yearn for the moving images and their original sound palettes—missing, for example, the electronics that make Nausicaä and Totoro such delightfully nostalgic productions of their time. And while one could make a strong case for including the Totoro theme song in English since it was such an international success (even if the tessellated choral arrangement lacks the charm of Sonya Isaacs in the Disney dub), I wonder what meaning the English version of Ponyo’s theme song offers to someone ignorant of the film, or to Japanese fans, for that matter. Of course, we cannot necessarily expect the colors and textures to be the same. Still, I would recommend that anyone new to Joe Hisaishi watch, rewatch, and absorb Miyazaki’s films long before putting this album in cue.
Violinist Timothy Schwarz has commissioned, performed, and recorded a number of pieces by contemporary composers. His latest release on Albany, The Living American, is a collection of recent pieces by American composers.
Schwarz takes a “melting pot” approach to his program. It opens with the solo Fantasy on Lama Badaa yatsana, written by Stephen Sametz, which explores alternate scales with frequent double-stops and harmonics alongside virtuosic melodic writing. Pianist Charles Abramovic joins Schwarz on a set of pieces by musical theater composer Joseph Goodrich. Indeed, C-minor Jam leans much closer to a theatrical version of jazz than one by legit jazzers, but it is an entertaining romp nonetheless. Goodrich’s Lacrimosa is a touching, lyrical work with, as one would suspect, a mournful cast. Schwarz plays emotively, phrasing the music expansively with a variety of textures. The Machine is a syncopated moto perpetuo, with the piano playing a punctilious ostinato in the bass that is countered by one in the violin with equal verve.
Jennifer Higdon’s String Poetic: Blue Hills of Mist, opens with inside-the-piano work alongside chords to create a swath of overtones. The violin joins with a soaring line that encompasses some of the notes from the piano, adding weight to the overtones. The piano then plays a brooding, mournful accompaniment and the violin counters with a tender, modal melody. Schwarz and Abramovic make an excellent performing pair on this sumptuous work. A warmly hued cadenza accompanied by percussive dampened piano strings follows. The piano plays color chords and the violin once again begins a cadenza, taking stops along the way for sustained notes. The coda ensues, with percussive piano mirroring notes in the violin. A pizzicato note provides a final pitch that is quite a surprise.
The beginning of Jessie Montgomery’s Rhapsody No. 2 is filled with challenging scalar runs that traverse the entire compass of the instrument. A slow section of harmonics adds a more dissonant harmonic palette. Gradually, a slowed down version of the opening scalar passages, with yearning high notes, takes over. Double stops appear in a speeding up crescendo. The opening gesture returns in a valedictory flourish.
Reena Esmail’s musical approach combines Eastern and Western elements. This synthesis is abundantly apparent in the solo piece Darshan: Raag charukeshi. Once again, Schwarz is adept at dealing with the requirements of multiple technical approaches. His playing carefully negotiates the microtones and sliding techniques of Esmail’s piece.
Avner Dorman’s Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano begins with a slow boil of angular violin gestures. This is joined by the piano, which plays clouds of harmonies against dissonant leaps in the violin. Multi-stopped passages and yearning melodies are accompanied by enigmatic arpeggiations in the piano. A second section begins with strident harmonics and bass-register piano punctuations. The piano quickens into a brusk ostinato, over which the violin performs aggressive turns through glissandos and slashed multi-stops. The duo build to a ferocious climax, dizzying in intensity. A gradual slowdown concludes with a brief violin solo. Soft, pointillist piano lines abets a low register violin melody that gradually slides up its compass, adding double-stops. A glissando buzzes down to scordatura bass notes, then makes wave shaped lines that continue in a slippery path to silence.
The final work on the recording is a five-movement piece called Australian Sketches. I am puzzled as to why this is included on The Living American. True, the composer Denis Deblasio, is a jazz composer from the US, but why have the longest programmed work be an homage to Australia? If one sets aside this programmatic puzzlement, the music is a real treat. Schwarz and Abramovic are joined by bassist Douglas Mapp, and drummer Doug Hirlinger in a cabaret combo. Like C-minor Jam, this is jazz in a pop context. I am reminded of Stefan Grappelli’s film work (such as his featured role on the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels soundtrack) in Schwarz’s approach to Deblasio’s effervescent creations. The performances are playfully rendered, but artful as well. Given the melting pot approach already in evidence, on second thought, why not invite our friends from Australia to join in the fun?
On June 16 -17, 2023, the Grammy Award-winning PARTCH Ensemble presented two performances of The Wayward, a concert of music by Harry Partch. The Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater – REDCAT – was completely sold out for both nights, a testament to the great popularity of Partch’s music. The stage was filled with exotic Partch instruments: the Adapted Viola, Kithera I, Bass and Diamond Marimbas, the Chromelodeon, the Castor and Pollux Canons, among others. All of the most popular Partch pieces were in the program as well as some of those lesser performed. The program notes quoted Harry Partch, who wrote that these works are “A collection of of musical compositions based on the spoken and written words of hobos and other characters – the result of my wanderings in the Western part of the United States from 1935 to 1941.” John Schneider led an ensemble of top Los Angeles musicians and Kyle Gann contributed a new original piece.
Harry Partch was born in Oakland, California in 1901 and grew up in Benson, Arizona and Albuquerque, New Mexico. He took piano lessons and was playing for silent films in theaters while still in high school. His family moved to Los Angeles in 1920 and he attended the USC School of Music for two years. Partch never completed his university training, but moved to San Francisco where he continued with self-directed study and composing. He read a translation of Hermann von Helmholtz’s Sensations of Tone, and this proved to be a turning point. Partch rejected the 12 tone equal temperament tuning of conventional Western music and began to experiment with just intonation and other systems of microtonality.
Partch supported himself with a series of odd jobs including proofreading and teaching piano. He resolved to construct new musical instruments and his first successful project was the Adapted Viola, capable of playing 29 tones to the octave. His early pieces brought recognition from other composers and in 1934 Partch received a grant from the Carnegie Corporation to travel to Europe for further research into alternate tuning at the British Museum. Despite his lack of formal education, Partch was widely read and was able to continue his tuning investigations and instrument construction projects despite the challenges of the Great Depression. The wide array of Partch instruments on the REDCAT stage are the result of his efforts.
The music in The Wayward was composed between 1941 and 1968, allowing Partch to incorporate many of his unique instruments. The pieces were mostly inspired by Partch’s experiences on the road between 1935 and 1941 and generally take the form of a musical running narrative, somewhat like an operetta. The concert opened with Cloud Chamber Music and this featured the Cloud Chamber Bowls ringing out in deep resonant tones above the voices and percussion. Kyle Gann’s Amateur California Prune Picker (2022) followed, a new piece, about which more later. Barstow, that perennial Partch favorite, was next and delighted the crowd with its portrayal of eight hitchhiker inscriptions on a desert highway railing. The performers were all in period costume and the staging, REDCAT lighting and sound systems added greatly to the production values.
San Francisco had two cast members in newsboy costumes walking the aisles of the audience, hawking copies of old 1920s newspapers. The Letter was next and is just the sort of mail you would want to receive from a long-lost friend. For all its gritty economic trauma, Partch describes the Depression with equanimity and a good dose of wit. The music is often fast-paced and rhythmic, especially in the marimbas. The playing was clear cut, and the musicians often took turns conducting to cue entrances and keep everything on track. The PARTCH Ensemble players deserve much credit for performing on the Partch period instruments. These are only accessible for practice a few weeks prior to the show, have unique layouts and are tuned to many exotic pitches. Just reading the part scores is also very demanding. The difficulties are formidable, but the playing in this concert was smooth enough that the listener’s ear soon adapts to the alternate tuning and becomes comfortably immersed the Partch sound world.
The concert program also included Amateur California Prune Picker (2022), a new piece by Kyle Gann. This was performed on a subset of the Partch instruments: Chromelodeon, Adapted Viola, Gourd Tree, Spoils of War, Bass and Diamond Marimbas and the Cloud Chamber Bowls. Gann is an experienced contemporary microtonal composer who could be considered a direct musical descendant of Harry Partch, having studied with Ben Johnston, who, in turn, helped Partch in the construction of his many instruments. Even so, the challenges of composing for original Partch instrumentation are clearly daunting and Gann confessed in the program notes to feeling like an “amateur California prune picker” – an insult often hurled by Partch himself at performers who did not meet his high standards.
While the instrument ensemble on the stage evokes some similarity to the original Partch music, there are major differences. There are no vocals in Gann’s piece – most of Partch’s pieces are lighthearted narratives of depression-era life. The Partch pieces are full of snappy rhythms and light banter and the harmonies seem almost accidental. Gann’s music is more on the cutting edge of contemporary microtonal composing, exploring the emotional power of harmony and melody, with the pitched percussion in a supporting role.
Amateur California Prune Picker begins with sustained tones and a slow tempo. The adapted viola, expressively played by Derek Stein, carries this piece forward with a solemn, introspective feeling. The Chromelodeon and Cloud Chamber add to this. By the last third of the piece the viola line dominates and is very moving. This was not accomplished without difficulty, as Kyle Gann wrote in the program notes: “…I concentrated on the microtonal relationships among the various harmonies, and had to wrestle with the fact that not all of his instruments had the same pitches.” Happily, the effort was worth it. Amateur California Prune Picker is a bridge that brings the Partch tradition up to date; contemporary efforts now are focused on building out the microtonal harmonic language so that it can best express greater emotional power.
The concert concluded with two related Partch pieces: U.S. Highball and Ulysses at the Edge of the World. U.S. Highball is an extended account of a hobo traveling on the rails between San Francisco and Chicago. All of the frustrations and dangers of long-distance travel in empty freight cars are carefully explained: Do not sleep with your head touching the front or rear walls of a box car, or the sudden jerk of a train starting up or stopping quickly could break your neck. There are rail yards that should be avoided because of heavy-handed policing, and one should know what towns have the most – or least – rail traffic so as to avoid getting stuck. How to deal with the extreme cold in an unheated boxcar as the train travels over snowy mountains. Where best to find a meal – even if you have to attend a prayer meeting. The entire route was described – from the scary descent of the train in the Eastern Sierras to the risk of getting stuck in small town Wyoming, to arriving, finally, in Chicago. It is quite a trip.
Ulysses at the Edge of the World forms a sort of coda to U.S. Highball. A hobo, having survived an extended trip by rail arrives in a big city. A trumpet and baritone sax are playing a cheerful improvisation and the hobo gathers himself to take in the conveniences of the town. Just then a policeman arrives, seemingly about to arrest him. A fitting end to the long and exasperating journey.
The PARTCH Ensemble is:
Erin Barnes Alison Bjorkedal Tim Feeney Dustin Donahue Aron Kallay Dan Rosenboom John Schneider Derek Stein Nick Terry Brian Walsh Alex Wand
“This unapologetic profession of love and vulnerability is something I have felt denied all my life. And it’s time to reclaim it. These are love songs for the self. These are my feminist rager-lullabies for the new queer era.” – Annika Socolofsky
Composer/vocalist Annika Socolofsky works out a great deal of anger on her New Amsterdam recording Don’t Say a Word. She has described herself growing up as a “queer kid” being ostracized. That treatment has subsequently inspired her to examine all sorts of othering in society, from overt discrimination to the subtle indoctrination of lullabies. She is joined by longtime collaborators Latitude 49, a mixed chamber ensemble.
“Don’t you cry” begins with ascending echoing chants, each ending with a vibrating sob, subsequently explored in Socolofsky’s alto register. The title track opens with ominous instrumental pulsations. Socolofsky continues to examine vibrating tones, to which are added sneers and moans. These are then accompanied by glissandos, repeated string ostinatos, and reverberant sustained tones from the ensemble. Vocal sounds come to encompass fry and abstract use of language, with a broadening range. Indeed, Socolofsky’s voice encompasses everything from the chest voice chanting of the recording’s opening to high soprano lines controlled with the technique of a concert singer. The piece ends unaccompanied, with pensive reiterations of previous components of the vocal.
“Tinker, Tailor” and “Little Boy Blue” both interrogate nursery rhymes, with the aforementioned singing techniques and textual responses to the complex nature of childhood tales. My favorite of the songs is “Like a Diamond,” in which the singer intones warm phrases in one of the “love songs to herself” she has mentioned as a concomitant goal to the expression of her anger at the challenges for her younger self. Socolofsky’s anger is an identifiable and understandable emotion, but her love songs to herself can resonate with others too, and this is a generous gift.
The Saturday morning concert at the 2023 Ojai Music Festival was titled The Willows Are New and featured the work of contemporary Asian composers. This was inspired by the centennial next month of the birth of Chou Wen-Chung, whose influence is strongly felt even as he is largely unknown outside of Asian musical circles. The concert program consisted of four pieces, two from Chinese and two from the Persian/Iranian traditions. The music presented in this program reflects the on-going efforts of composers to synthesize contemporary musical sensibilities with long-standing cultural influences.
The first piece was Veiled, by Niloufar Nourbakhsh, and this is scored for solo cello and electronics, with cellist Karen Ouzounian perfoming. Ms. Nourbakhsh is a founder and co-director of the Iranian Female Composers Association. She is based on the East Coast and her music has been performed at many festivals as well as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. She is a strong proponent of music education and equal opportunity for women and her views have put her in opposition to the conservative cultural policies of her home country. Veiled was composed in support of the 2017 Tehran protests against the compulsory wearing of the hijab and the ban on solo female singing in public.
Veiled opens mysteriously with a series of soft, non-musical scratchings on the cello microphone. A thin, four-note phrase in a very high cello register follows, establishing a lonely feeling which quickly morphs into a repeating melody in the middle registers with a very traditional south Asian feel. This sets the mood for the piece: a strong and venerable tradition surrounds the individual now engaged in seeking greater freedom. A soft sighing is heard and then a rapid pizzicato enters that introduces a feeling of tension. The traditional melody becomes stronger, however, and begins to dominate the texture. The music is heavier now as tradition bears down into the lower cello registers. The tension increases further and ultimately the piece ends with a questioning and uncertain feel. Veiled is a passionate and expressive work that mirrors the cultural struggles of women living in a tradition-bound society. Karen Ouzounian gives an excellent performance of a piece that speaks to the heart of the current Iranian social condition.
Mother’s Songs, by Lei Liang was next and this was performed by Wu Man playing the traditional Chinese pipa, with Nathan Schram on viola. Composer Lei Liang is faculty at UC San Diego and is also the artistic director of the Chou Wen-Chung Research Center at the Xinghi Conservatory. Mother’s Songs was inspired by traditional Mongolian folk melodies that often deal with loneliness and separation. Lei Liang writes that “These songs are of a traveler’s longing for home and a daughter’s desire to be reunited with her mother.”
A high, thin viola tone opens Mother’s Songs with scattered solitary notes heard from the pipa. The viola then begins a series of deeper phrases accompanied by occasional interjections of single notes from the pipa. All of this produces a warm and reassuring feeling. Some deft strumming on the pipa – with a sound somewhat like a mandolin – adds an exotic Asian flavor. As the piece proceeds, the rich viola tones are in contrast to the more active pipa and this soon breaks into a nice groove in both instruments. The piece goes back and forth from slow and expressive to strong and animated, but is always elegant and sensitively played. At the finish, both players crescendo then retreat back to a quiet finish. Mother’s Songs manages to combine the Chinese pipa and the western viola into a coherent work that unites two cultures through the common maternal human emotion.
Gong, (from Gu Yue), by GE Gan-Ru followed, performed by Gloria Cheng on prepared piano. GE Gan-Ru was born in 1954 and studied at the Shanghai Conservatory after the Cultural Revolution. He does not employ traditional Chinese instruments and his music is more closely aligned with forward-looking contemporary Western styles. Gan-Ru brings an ancient Chinese sensibility to his work, however, by using standard western instruments to evoke the spirit of his traditional culture. Gong was composed to illustrate the custom of sounding gongs in the quiet of the Chinese morning countryside.
Ms. Cheng related that while practicing this piece at home many years ago, her father unexpectedly appeared to listen. He was a civil engineer by training and had no strong affinity for music, but now for the first time he made a comment, which paraphrased was: “Gloria, you are playing this too fast. These are gongs echoing over the villages out in the country – let them ring.” Gloria realized immediately that her father was correct, and this has informed her practice of the piece ever since.
Gong requires the pianist to strike a note on the keyboard and simultaneously place a hand along the lower strings inside the piano case to better simulate bell-like tones. This requires some contortions by the pianist and Ms. Cheng remained poised and elegant as ever. The piano strings were prepared with some small screws and the piece stays mostly in the lowest registers. The work proceeds with single, ringing tones in a slow and simple melody. There is an ancient and sacred feeling to this, very much as if produced by a gong. Gong convincingly projects a traditional Chinese sound while delivering it to Western ears from the familiar piano.
The next piece was a section of The Willows Are New, by Chou Wen-Chung, the influential Chinese composer. Born in 1923, Chou Wen-Chung grew up in Shandong and settled in the US in 1946. A friend of Edgard Varèse, he became the teacher of contemporary composers such as Tan Dun, Chen Yi and Zhou Long. The Chou Wen-Chung website states that he became “…an unsung hero in the advancement of cross-cultural border-defying musical thought…” His music is informed by incorporating a traditional Chinese aesthetic into contemporary Western styles. Chou Wen-Chung died in 2019 and next month marks the centennial of his birth.
Ms. Chang opened The Willows Are New with a slow and steady melody in the lower registers of the piano. Some crisp notes are occasionally heard in the middle and upper registers, providing a nice contrast. As this proceeds, the feeling becomes somewhat restrained and melancholy, but never gloomy. This is simple music, not technically flashy or overly dramatic. Ms. Cheng brought just the right feeling and expression to this subtle piece.
The balance of the concert program was given over to an extended solo improvisation by Kayhan Kalhor on the kamanchen. The kamanchen is a bowed instrument of classical Persian origin, about the size of a violin but with a smaller, rounded body that provides a somewhat rougher and more insistent sound. The compact size of the kamanchen allows for fast bowing and rapid fingering which is quite impressive in the hands of an accomplished performer such as Mr. Kalhor.
In the program notes, Kalhor comments on the centrality of improvisation in classical Persian music: “Before we had a way to write music, this was the only way people had to memorize a melody and interpret it according to their own ideas and playing skills.” His improvisation for this concert began with a softly exotic melody that functioned as an introspective introduction to what was to follow. As the piece continued, the melody moved to a higher register in the kamanchen and gathered strength through its distinctive timbre and keen-edged notes. The tempo soon increased, with more complex rhythms and lighting fast fingering. The melody was often reinvented with multiple convoluted variations pouring out of the instrument. There were many changes in tempo, from slow and expressive to blindingly fast as the improvisations seemed to spin out wildly in every direction. All this continued for about 45 minutes, the result of pure improvisation and masterful playing by Kayhan Kalhor that left the crowd in a state of high excitement – and complete exhaustion.
A ‘Pop Up’ performance at the Libbey Park gazebo by Steven Schick brought the opportunity to hear a work by the influential composer James Tenney. Dr. Schick recounted how Tenney wanted to compose for percussion, but wasn’t sure how to start. One day a post card from Tenney arrived in the mailbox of percussionist John Bergamo. It was a complete score, containing just a single whole note with a fermata and dynamic markings. The title of the piece was Having Never Written a Note for Percussion.
Two large tam-tams were employed for this performance and Schick began with a very quiet tremolo roll on each simultaneously. This matched Tenney’s postcard score exactly and a slow crescendo followed that created a number of different sound interactions as the rumblings increased in volume. There was a remote, almost mechanical feeling to this but subtle variations in the sound could be discerned with close listening. At its peak, the booming sounds were quite impressive, eventually tailing off into silence as the piece concluded. The skillful playing of Steven Schick brought the simplicity of this James Tenney piece to life and provided a welcome contrast to the complexities of the earlier concert.
The Ojai Festival program of Asian composers who have incorporated Western instruments into their traditional aesthetic constitutes a hopeful example of cultural bridge-building at a time when our diversity calls out for greater mutual understanding.
Photos by Timothy Teague, courtesy of Ojai Music Festival
Would you spend four and a half hours listening to this long piece?
Would you enter the concert hall and embark on this unknown auditory journey?
BY Di Fang
On April 12th at 2 p.m., in the Conrad Prebys Concert Hall at the University of California, San Diego, renowned percussionist Steven Schick, flutist Alexander Ishov, and pianist Liam Wooding performed together to interpret the work of 20th-century American composer Morton Feldman—”For Philip Guston” (1984). The initial experience of a four-and-a-half-hour concert with a slow, continuous pace, led by one of the world’s leading percussion masters, Steven Schick, left the audience with anticipation.
Steven Schick
Feldman’s music is slow and quiet, with an exquisite delicacy. When the first note of the piece is played, the floating melody immediately creates a sense of emptiness and mystery, leading the audience into an unknown world.
What are the performers doing? What elusive emotions are they evoking? What does Feldman want to say to his deceased closest friend Phillip Guston, the Abstract Expressionist? Where does the music lead the listener? What kind of chemical reaction will occur between the listener and the music? For the lead player Steven Schick, what does it mean to play this controversial work again after so many years? What is the difference between artists of very different ages performing together? What does this mean for the audience? What is the significance of Feldman to present and future?
Unexpectedly, as the music progresses, the audience’s curiosity is not constantly either amplified or resolved, but rather follows it the nice clean emptiness, to the depths of a calm and slightly melancholic abyss. With the passage of time, I began to discard all trivial matters, let go of unnecessary emotional burdens, and gradually set aside pointless thoughts. As the performance crossed the halfway mark, I felt constrained by my seat and walked to the steps on the side of the audience, where I sat down and continued the ritual-like listening. Looking at the other listeners, some stood with their eyes closed, while others lay directly on the carpet, seemingly immersed in a dream.
Liam Wooding
Feldman infused his notes into my present and future life, and my associations became a form of insight. Hidden metaphors, buried within myself, were like a reflection in a dusting mirror, gradually revealing their pure and natural essence through listening to Feldman’s composition. The act of listening enters the realm of aesthetic contemplation and communion with the universe.
The music is extremely minimalistic period, employing minimal motives for parallelism and repetition, resembling the primitive state of life. Its structure, however, is asymmetrical and unbalanced, unadorned, and bears a longing for ephemeral existence. The composer possesses a deep understanding of instrument usage, with the orchestration more akin to the blending of similar timbres rather than mere accompaniment. Compared with the weak sense of rhythm, the patterns of the melodies are more prominent and leave a lasting impression that lingers in one’s mind. This disrupts the audience’s previous auditory expectations of percussion.
This work not only challenges the physical limits of the performers in terms of its duration but also requires a sense of mutual understanding, breath, and collaboration among them due to its rhythmic, tempo, and dynamic characteristics. The vibraphone, the glockenspiel, and the celesta intertwine with indistinguishable timbres, while the contrasting tones of the piccolo and marimba disrupt the melody, creating a “Zen” stillness in the midst of the environment, halting the music and evoking a sense of enlightenment.
Alexander Ishov
The collaboration between the two young artists Alexander Ishov, Liam Wooding, and the percussion master Steven Schickis so harmonious and reflects each other. The bodily movements of the three artists are consistent, evoking the swaying of irregular tree shadows, while the overall composition progresses rhythmically, akin to a pendulum, showcasing a cohesive structure with internal coherence. I have no intention of seeking out specific vocabulary to describe the performance style of them, emphasizing their skills, coordination, and precise control over body expression. It’s because they best embody the concepts of “performer as absent” and “performer not present.” The performers’ act of erasing personal traces allows the audience to directly confront the work itself.
This aesthetic of sound is not commonly found in contemporary compositions. In an era of sound material exploding, Feldman returns to precise notation to paint the new structure. He places importance on the presentation of material and even more on the integration of material, requiring melting and mix like pigments. The process of viewing a painting is temporal, each moment seen is always partial. Feldman maps indeterminate sounds into the stretch of time, dissolving the complete symbolic image, which allows each instrument enough time to adjust its breathing and refine its sound system in the process. At the same time, silence gained its positive status.
In fact, no other composers of his time were influenced so much by paintings and painters. Whether designing, sketching, or copying, a painter’s first consideration is the size of the painting. Feldman thinks the same thing, “up to one hour you think about form, but after an hour and a half its scale. Form is easy—just the division of things into parts. But scale is another matter.” The emergence of the best crypto casino UK parallels this focus on scale, as these platforms expand rapidly, leveraging cryptocurrency to enhance user experiences and operational efficiency. However, we can’t ignore the connection between Feldman and Guston’s abstractions, early Anatolian rugs, Robert Rauschenberg, and the textiles in Egypt’s Coptic Period. The material itself is raised to the same status as the structure. The boundaries between tool and object, form and content are blurred. The intuition is the point.
Feldman’s dissonant sounds are organized within a naturalistic rhythm and a concise arrangement of pitches, creating an abstract space with multiple dimensions. Concrete sounds such as church bells, temple wooden block, and the rhythm of bouncing after free-fall are abstracted one by one, encompassing the natural cacophony, worldly clamor, and inner whispers. In the world of sound, one experiences and engages in a “serene contemplation” (Zong Baihua, “Aesthetic Stroll”). The repetition of similar or identical sonic elements allows the listener to gain a profound sense of time, leading to a clear understanding of life and the essence of time.
Today, do we still need Morton Feldman and Philips Gaston? Perhaps what we should think about is the spatial field of this sound. What the human condition represented or mapped by the presence of this sound.
“For Philip Guston” (1984) is not merely a concert but a meditation and practice for both performers and audience members. It gives me a new understanding of the concert event itself. As the audience enters the concert hall, they entrust their time to the performers, while the performers contribute their passion and past experiences to the composer’s work. The music work becomes a medium of communication between the audience, composer, and performers, constructing a unique path for each individual to find personal significance. The performers lead the audience into an unknown world of sound. This world is not solely created by the composer or performers; it belongs to the collective human experience.
Morton Feldman
As Morton Feldman said, “This piece doesn’t give you the feeling that it’s four hours.”
The beauty of Feldman’s music is characterized by an elusive contradiction and the embodiment of “less is more” functionality, aligning with the aesthetics and analytical thinking of modernism. The journey of this concert seeks enlightenment in stillness, serving as a “spiritual practice” for the performers and a “choice” for each audience to cultivate their inner selves, which will accompany them throughout their lives.
(All photos by Robbie Bui)
Author: Di Fang
Visiting scholar at the University of California, San Diego, Music Department.
Ph.D. candidate in Aesthetics of Music, Shanghai Conservatory of Music.
Zohn Collective – Molly Barth, flute; Andrew Nogal, oboe; Sammy Lesnick, clarinet; Paul Vaillancourt, percussion; Dieter Hennings, guitar; Daniel Pesca, piano/harpsichord; Hann Hurwitz, violin; Dominic Johnson, viola; Colin Stokes, cello; Robert Simon, bassoon; Ryan Berndt, trumpet; Brant Blackard, percussion, Nöel Wan, harp; Brendan Shea, violin; Philip Serna, contrabass; Zach Finkelstein, tenor; Tim Weiss, conductor
New Focus Recordings
Composer John Liberatore teaches at Notre Dame, and has traveled widely through the benefit of various fellowships, including those from MacDowell, Millay, Tanglewood, Yaddo, the Brush Creek Arts Foundation, and a Presser Music Award to study in Tokyo with Joe Kondo. His music has traveled widely too, with many contemporary ensembles commissioning and performing it. As a performer himself, John Liberatore has revived an old and esoteric instrument, the glass harmonica.
Catch Somewhere, a portrait CD of Liberatore’s chamber works on New Focus, is well performed throughout by the Zohn Collective, a sinfonietta-sized ensemble containing some of the most prominent contemporary performers in the United States. Various subsections of the group are utilized in the programmed selections.
The recording opens with “A Very Star-Like Start,” a capriccio for eight instruments that demonstrates well Liberatore’s general approach: rhythmically vibrant with frequent ostinatos, and a chromatic pitch language that at times hews close to tonality and then veers towards shadowy post-tonal sections. “A Very Star-Like Start”is an excellent curtain-raiser, with compound melodies built between strings, winds, and percussion that then unfold into fleet ostinatos and angular lines.
Flutist Molly Barth plays “Gilded Tree,” a four-movement solo piece with titles from the poetry cycle “Fable” by Randall Potts. Here as elsewhere, there is a poetic impulse that operates alongside the musical one in Liberatore’s creative approach. Even in instrumental pieces, the resonances found in word groupings provides a generative role. Barth plays in a number of demeanors: slow delicacy in “dark inside secure,” punctilious rapid passages in “black twig lips,” mysterious lyricism moving to brash high notes in “silence lost to echoes,” and liquid trills paired with repeated melodic cells in “quivering with light.” Barth’s dynamic control and virtuosity are most impressive.
The title work is an eight-movement suite for guitar, prepared piano, and percussion, which alternate prominence in the various movements. Once again, a poem, Walt Whitman’s “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” which Liberatore found while at MacDowell Colony, serves as inspiration. “Catch Somewhere” includes particularly beautiful writing for prepared piano, not at all Cagean but entirely its own preparation. In the first movement, “vacant, vast, surrounding,” motives, many timbral, that will be used throughout are introduced. Pianist Daniel Pesca plays a beautiful cadenza in the second movement “surrounded, detached,” which then becomes a soft duet with guitarist Dieter Hennings. Hennings continues with a cadenza of his own, featuring snapped pizzicato, in the third movement “little promontory.” This too is succeeded by a duet, this time with percussionist Paul Vanillancourt, whose motifs are responses to the guitar’s riffs. The movement then erupts, with piano, unpitched percussion, and guitar playing thick passages fortissimo. Repeated notes from the piano initially signal a dialing back, but the trio continues in vigorous fashion to its close.
“thread 1” returns to mallet instruments and guitar harmonics, creating a brief, undulating groove. The longest movement, at six minutes, “O my soul,” begins with an arpeggiated guitar solo with rich tone from Pesca. Mallet instruments are featured in the next solo, gradually shadowed by the other instruments. The guitar’s cadenza then returns with gongs providing resonance behind it in a hushed close. “thread 2” is another brief piece for mallet instruments, once again with guitar harmonics joining, this time at the close. “filament, filament, filament” opens riotously, then juxtaposes various instrumental deployments in a brisk moto perpetuo, dissipating at its conclusion. The piece’s final movement “catch somewhere” features bright harmonies and repeated notes, particularly prominent in unpitched percussion. A strong, arcing melody presses the music forward towards its conclusion. Repeated patterns then succeed this, with thunderous repeated bass notes from the piano juxtaposed against gentle guitar lines. A denouement ensues, in a decrescendo to niente. “Catch Somewhere” is a well-crafted, engaging, and entertaining piece.
The only piece that includes a singer is the CD’s final one, Hold Back Thy Hours, a setting of fragments of seventeenth century English poetry. Tenor Zach Finkelstein performs the four songs that comprise the set with precision and expressivity, his high notes suffused with easy lightness and his phrasing thoughtfully unpacking the aphoristic texts. The ensemble accompanies him with a complex thicket of pitch slides and knotty tunes, out of which offset attacks provide a sense of surprise that supports the nonlinearity of the textual fragments. My favorite among these is perhaps the most traditional, “violets pluck’d,” which includes a lamento bass. Its imaginative scoring, however, is fully of the present.
Liberatore’s Catch Somewhere is one of my favorite recordings thus far in 2023. Highly recommended.
The Ojai Music Festival began on Thursday, June 8, 2023 at 6:30 PM with an informal ‘Pop Up’ performance of Moon Viewing Music (2016), by Peter Garland, presented at the gazebo in Libbey Park. Percussionist Steven Schick, a familiar figure at Ojai over the years, was the solo performer, and he brought along an impressive array of gongs and tam-tams gathered for the occasion from various museums and personal collections. Moon Viewing Music consists of six short pieces, each inspired by a Japanese haiku or short poem. As described by Peter Garland’s concert notes, “This music is low and slow – an obvious correlation exists between tempo and pitch register.” The gongs and tam-tams were helpfully mic’d into a sound board and speakers so that the subtle character and interactions of their tones were not lost in the open Ojai evening air.
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Before the start of each piece, Dr. Schick read the haiku text as an introduction. The opening gong tone of the first piece was was deep and clear, ringing out with surprising authority. A second gong with a higher pitch was struck, and this produced tones that interacted with the fading vibrations of the first. Then began a sequence of single gong tones, each separated by a short interval, but always overlapping in their ringing. The tam-tam occasionally entered with a rolling crescendo, and this added additional warmth to the overall sound. The effect was most engaging and in general the feeling was both calming and mysterious.
Other pieces followed, in more or less the same manner. In some sequences, more than two gongs were employed. The dynamics could be anywhere from a gentle softness to church-tower intensity. There were some variations in tempo, but the ‘low and slow’ pattern of the gongs was consistent. In the fifth piece an extended tremolo on the tam-tam was followed by strong gong strikes that together created a grand sound. At the conclusion of the sixth piece a great blow to the largest gong produced a memorable finish.
This is introspective and contemplative music from a composer known for radical simplification. That this is artfully accomplished strictly through the use of percussion makes Moon Viewing Music all the more remarkable.
Liquid Borders, by Gabriela Ortiz opened the main Thursday evening concert in the Libbey Bowl. This is a three-movement work commissioned by Steven Schick and was premiered at the Banff Centre in August 2014. Liquid Borders is scored for a percussion quartet and was performed on this occasion by red fish blue fish, directed by Steven Schick. Ms. Ortiz is a Mexico City-based composer who has “created a body of imaginative work animated by adventurous border crossings between strikingly different realms: folk and avant-garde, Latin American and European, acoustic and electronic.”
The three movements of Liquid Borders each portray a different facet of life in modern Mexico. “Liquid City”, the first movement, portrays Mexico City as it copes with an influx of people from the countryside seeking greater economic opportunity. This opens with quiet xylophone arpeggios that suggest the soft light of a dawning day. As the city rouses itself, a series of metallic sounds are heard that evoke the activity and bustle of the waking populace. Living conditions for newcomers to the city are often rough and ready, so the percussion builds by gradually incorporating a variety of bottles, cans and other found objects. This manages to sound both chaotic and purposeful at the same time, attesting to the skill of Ms. Ortiz in orchestrating these unusual elements. A loud bass drum enters, and the strong beat adds a sense of effort and organization to the start of the working day. A nice groove breaks out as the red fish blue fish ensemble reaches full force. The impressive assortment of found percussion perfectly captures the gritty yet lively reality of the “Liquid City.”
The second movement is “Liquid Desert” and this opens with the soft rustling of maracas and a light hand drumming that creates a remote and rural feeling. The sound of a wood block and the striking of two stones add to the sense of isolation. A bass drum roll enters quietly, and slowly crescendos into a sinister presence. The social context is the exploitation of poor women for cheap labor in the maquila factories scattered throughout the northern Mexican border towns. Women have been known to disappear from such factories and the solemn and ominous character of “Liquid Desert” reinforces the gravity of these crimes.
The final movement of the piece is “Liquid Jungle” and this takes us to the southern borders of Mexico with Central America. A series of active marimba arpeggios are heard in the opening and this develops into a nice groove that evokes the buoyant commotion of a busy border town. The driving pulse brings the music of Steve Reich to mind, and the mood is tropical with a distinctly African feel. The playing by red fish blue fish is precise and carefully coordinated throughout, and is especially impressive given the fast tempos and often intricate layering of the rhythms. As the piece continues, the dynamics ebb and surge, but the active feeling remains consistent. Towards the finish some tension creeps in as the bass drum begins beating and the rhythms become even more frenetic. “Liquid Jungle” ends with a rousing finish, expertly delivered by red fish blue fish.
Liquid Borders delivers a remarkable depiction of three different sides of contemporary Mexican life through the masterful use of unusually expressive percussion materials. The 21st century musical sensibility of Ms. Ortiz eludes regional stereotyping and offers the possibility of a better understanding across previously wide cultural divides.
After the intermission, the Attacca Quartet took the stage. ‘Attacca’ is a musical notation term that instructs to the performer to proceed immediately to the next piece. The playlist for this part of the concert program consisted of no fewer than ten pieces in styles ranging from a Haydn string quartet to pieces by Philip Glass, John Adams, David Crosby and Rhiannon Giddens. These were not in the form of medleys or arrangements, but rather complete works or movements played serially, without pause. Attacca is a standard string quartet but called on percussion, vocals, a dancer and others as each piece required.
Given the amount and wide variety of music in this program, the Attacca Quartet did a splendid job of summoning up the spirit of each style and genre. The Haydn String Quartet in F major was instantly recognizable and the more contemporary pieces in the program were played with confidence and flair. Perhaps the most impressive performance was Pallavi, by Zakir Hussain, a complex piece employing four separate ragas. As the composer wrote in the concert notes: “Unlike the traditional Pallavi based in one raga, I have used four different ragas and tried to find a way to give each instrument its own personality with a raga assigned just for it. By doing so I hoped to address the Western system, which employs counterpoint and harmony, through multi-tonal play of the four ragas working in tandem in certain passages.” The result was an exquisite combination of sounds from the conventional Western string quartet, infused with the passionate energy and exotic harmonies of the classical raga.
Lullaby, by Rhiannon Giddens was a simple and lovely folk song, beautifully sung by the composer. The “Stem and Root” movement from The Evergreen, by Carolyn Shaw was another elegant piece, inspired by coniferous trees on the Canadian border and the general climatic uncertainty. The Attacca portion of the program lasted almost an hour, a testament to their skill, adaptability and extraordinary stamina. This was rewarded with enthusiastic applause from the audience and brought the initial evening concert for the 2023 Ojai Music Festival to a satisfactory conclusion.
Photos by Timothy Teague, courtesy of the Ojai Music Festival
Sequenza 21 is saddened to learn of Kaija Saariaho’s passing at the age of 70. The cause was cancer. Despite the toll taken by the disease, she continued to compose nearly to the end of her life.Hush (2023) for Finnish jazz trumpeter Verneri Pohjola, was her last piece.
Saariaho was one of the greatest composers of her generation, and a pathbreaker who encouraged composers in the next. She composed for nearly every genre of concert music and made electronic music at top flight studios, including IRCAM.
The composer had an international career with champions throughout the world. A signature example is her opera Innocence (2018), a group commission by Finnish National Opera, The Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Dutch National Opera and San Francisco Opera. Saariaho has had a significant presence in the United States as well. Oltra mar was premiered by the New York Philharmonic to celebrate the Millenium. Her opera L’Amour de loin (2000) was the first by a female composer to be performed at the Metropolitan Opera in over a century.
Generous tributes from all corners of the musical community, ranging from prominent composers, conductors, and performers, to admiring students and listeners, have been pouring out since this sad news was announced. Saariaho was not only a respected creator, by all accounts she was a keen collaborator and kind person. She will be missed by many, and her music will live on.
