Contemporary Classical

Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Music Events, New York, Twentieth Century Composer

Urban Playground Gives New York Premiere of Florence Price Violin Concerto No. 2 (Concert Preview)

On Wednesday May 8th, Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra presents the New York premiere of Florence Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2, music by Harry T. Burleigh,  and a rarely heard oratorio, And They Lynched Him on a Tree, by William Grant Still. The program, titled From Song Came Symphony. fits the ensemble’s mandate to prioritize the performance of composers who are women and people of color. It focuses on the legacy of Burleigh. I recently caught up with UPCO’s conductor Thomas Cunningham, who told me more about the concert.

 

Cunningham says, ”I found programmatic inspiration in Jay-Z lyrics: Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther could walk / Martin Luther walked so Barack Obama could run / Barack Obama ran so all the children could fly.”

“Burleigh wrote art songs so that the following generation – William Grant Still, William Dawson, and Florence Price – could write symphonies and concert works. Burleigh’s incorporation of African American music into Western art music, and his advocacy for this new American music genre through his work at Ricordi, had a vast influence on remarkable composers of color in America.”

 

Florence Price’s work has recently been receiving significant attention. Cunningham feels that Violin Concerto No. 2 will be a highlight of the concert. “Price’s second violin concerto is wonderfully idiosyncratic. The concerto is in so many places defined by its subtle and yet robust brass writing, atypical especially for a concerto for string instrument. All the while, this work demonstrates a novel voice, both aware and in touch with various traditions, but carving out singular nuance and identity.”

 

UNC-Chapel Hill Ph.D. candidate Kori Hill will deliver a pre-concert lecture at the event. Of Price’s work, she says, “This concerto, completed just one year before Price’s untimely death in 1953, is a fascinating example of her applications of African American vernacular and Western classical principles. It is an important component to understanding and fully appreciating her contributions to American classical music. We hope Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2 becomes a staple of the violin repertory in the years to come.”

 

In addition to the aforementioned works, the program also includes a movement from Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony. Cunningham says that the included excerpt is connected to multiple pieces on the program. “Incorporating the Largo from Dvorak 9 serves a dual purpose: first, to demonstrate the tangible connection between the spirituals sung by Burleigh to Dvorak, and second, to mirror the premiere of Still’s And They Lynched Him on a Tree, which also included the movement.”

This is the fifth year that UPCO has been active. Their advocacy is laudable, and the group has musicianship to match its ambition. Cunningham and company are persuasive performers of both standard-era repertoire and more recent music. May 8th’s concert should be a memorable one.

 

Event Info

Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra and Harry T. Burleigh Society present

 

From Song Came Symphony

Wednesday May 8th at 7:30 PM

Langston Hughes Auditorium

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

515 Malcolm X Blvd.

New York, New York 10037

 

Tickets

 

by Christian Carey
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Improv, Los Angeles

Mitchell and Lough in Santa Monica

The latest installment of the Soundwaves Concert Series was heard in the Martin Luther King, Jr. auditorium at the main branch of the public library in Santa Monica on Wednesday, April 17, 2019. Flutist Nicole Mitchell, a regular winner of the Downbeat Critic’s Poll, and sound artist Alex Lough were on hand for an evening of improvisation featuring several flutes and an impressive array of electronic circuitry.

Ms. Mitchell came equipped with two flutes, a piccolo and a microphone with some distortion and looping capabilities. Across the stage, Lough presided over two tables covered with circuit boards, control panels, patch boards and assorted boxes and cables. Although this looked formidable, the electronic gear was purposefully designed to be both simple and understated – there were no computers or large amplifiers. The output of all this emanated from a single six-inch speaker, specifically under-powered so that it would not overwhelm the acoustical sounds of the flutes and voicing of Ms. Mitchell. In fact, the entire setup can run on batteries and has been used in remote locations.

During an intimate concert that unwound into an avant-garde improvisation, the renowned flutist Ms. Mitchell held the audience in rapt attention with her melodic flute sequences. It wasn’t long before the serenity of her performance elegantly intertwined with the more contemporary soundscapes provided by the electronic accompaniment. This harmonious duality resonated deeply with my friend, an audio engineer at an established 안전 슬롯사이트, who often muses about the meticulous craftsmanship required to create a secure and engaging online entertainment environment. The concert’s improvisation mirrored the dynamic interplay he cultivates daily—balancing intricate electronic data streams with the user’s seamless experience. The electronic tones, which never dominated but danced alongside the flute, reminded him of how technology, when well-integrated, can enhance and not detract from the human element, a philosophy he applies to his work with the precision and creativity of a maestro.

As the session proceeded, the improv took on various characteristics and colors. In one stretch there was a rushing sound from the processed voice that evoked a windswept and remote feeling as the electronics added a deeply profound string tone. Later, an exotic, Asian feeling in the flute was complimented by sustained tones in the electronics. The vocals by Ms. Mitchell added a welcome human element in contrast to Lough, who could conjure a wide range of alien sounds. At one point Lough was producing 60 Hz buzzing noises from pressing his finger on the end of an open cable. Another time he was seen squeezing and shaking a small cassette tape player so as to bend its audio output. As the improved finished, a catchy tune that could have come from an old video game was heard with a pleasant, pulsing groove and smooth flute accompaniment that gently brought the audience back to the familiar. As the final notes faded away, there was sustained applause from an appreciative crowd.

Most combinations of acoustic instruments and electronics in new music involve a prerecorded track or computer processing of the acoustic sounds in roughly real time through the stage sound system. In this concert, however, the intention was to make the electronics an equal partner, played by a Lough in the same sense as Ms. Mitchell played the flutes and sang. As the two musicians improvised and traded phrases, there was a real sense of a dialog based on an equal partnership. The electronic sounds were naturally very different, but the interaction of the players was perfectly conventional and centered in historical musical practice. This Soundwaves concert by Lough and Mitchell explored the combination of electronic technology and acoustic music in an intentionally different and creative way.

by Paul Muller
CD Review, CDs, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Caroline Shaw – Orange (CD Review)

Caroline Shaw – Orange

Attaca Quartet

Nonesuch/New Amsterdam CD

Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 2013, Caroline Shaw has been a busy musician in the years following, performing as a vocalist with Roomful of Teeth (which recorded her prizewinning work Partita), violinist with ACME, and recording with Kanye West (yes, that Kanye West!). Shaw’s versatility and abundant creativity has kept her in demand for new commissions. Despite all this, Orange is the first portrait CD of her music. It is the first recording in a new partnership between Nonesuch and New Amsterdam Records. Given her own string instrument background, it seems especially appropriate that the CD contains chamber works performed by the estimable Attacca Quartet.  

Shaw frequently evokes the work of earlier composers in her own music, with snippets reminiscent of Beethoven and Bach in Punctum, Dowland’s consort music in Entr’acte, and Purcell in Ritornello 2.sq.2.j.a. But this channeling of the past never feels like pastiche or ironic critique. The composer’s juxtapositions instead seem celebratory in character. The adroit deployment of a plethora of styles, from earlier models to the postminimalism, totalism, and postmodern aesthetics of more recent music accumulate into a singular voice; one buoyed by keen knowledge of the repertoire and flawless technique in writing for strings.

The latter quality is amply displayed in Valencia, in which pizzicato, sliding fiddle tunes, and high-lying arpeggios combine to create a fascinating, multifaceted texture. Entr’acte uses a lament motive as its ostinato, building from a simple descending chord progression to rich verticals and, later, plucked passages redolent in supple harmonies. Punctum builds rich chords to contrast repeated notes and undulating repetitions.

Plan and Elevation is a multi-movement work that celebrates gardens, “the herbaceous border” that outlines them, trees, and the fruit that they bear. These pastoral images inspire some of the most beautiful and expansive music on the CD. Once again, a descending minor key ground is a significant part of the piece’s organization, appearing in multiple movements.

The album’s closer, Limestone and Felt, is a one-movement miniature for viola and cello, combining pizzicato, percussive thumps on the bodies of the instruments, and several canons. It serves as an excellent encapsulation of the simultaneous joy and rigor that embodies so much of Caroline Shaw’s music.

  • Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concert review, Concerts, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, Seattle

Boulez and Berio highlight Morlot’s farewell [untitled] concert at Seattle Symphony

Seattle Symphony’s [untitled] series was inaugurated in 2012 by its then-new Music Director, Ludovic Morlot. Three Fridays a year, small groupings of Symphony and visiting musicians set up in the Grand Lobby outside the orchestra’s main Benaroya Hall venue for a late night of contemporary music. This year’s series has been devoted to the European avant-garde, starting with Hans Abrahamsen’s Schnee in October and continuing this past March 22 with two landmarks of Darmstadt serialism: Berio’s Circles and Boulez’s sur Incises. The latter performance, which featured Morlot conducting the work’s regional premiere, offered an opportunity to contemplate the legacies of both the late composer and Morlot himself, who departs at the end of the season after an enormously impactful eight-year run.

Morlot conducting sur Incises (photos by James Holt/Seattle Symphony except as noted)

That the program would center on plucked and struck instruments was obvious from the seating arrangement, which snaked around the extensive percussion setups required for both pieces, not to mention a total of three pianos and four harps. Indeed, the only true sustaining voice among the deployed forces was the soprano in Circles. Dating from 1960, this work’s title is generally held to refer to its unusual structure: five settings of E. E. Cummings, of which the first and last use the same poem, as do the second and fourth. The evening’s performance emphasized the work’s continuity as a single 20-minute span, beginning and ending with ametric but strictly notated music, while reaching peak spontaneity in the middle section where Berio employs the proportional notation developed by Cage in Music of Changes, along with “improvisation frames” where the percussionists are given latitude within a set of specified pitches and instruments:

Seeing the work live, with the instruments positioned in accordance with Berio’s meticulous instructions, reveals an additional meaning to the title: the two percussionists (in this case Symphony members Matt Decker and Michael Werner) are frequently obliged to pirouette to execute their parts.

Rounding out the quartet was Seattle Symphony harpist Valerie Muzzolini and Maria Männistö, the Symphony’s “go to” soprano both for Finnish language works and for modern compositions with extraordinary demands, including Circles’ array of whispered, intoned and conventionally sung sounds originally designed for Cathy Berberian. Berio also frequently directs the singer to cue the three instrumentalists behind her (the score explicitly states that there should be no conductor). Not surprisingly it was Männistö (the English pronunciation rhymes with banister), who gave the last performance of Circles in the Northwest (with Seattle Modern Orchestra in 2011).

Critics usually position Circles within the heyday of post-WW2 musical pointillism. But I also see it as a primary source for George Crumb’s mature style. Its instrumentation—with piano/celesta substituting for harp—is duplicated in Night Music I (1963), the earliest Crumb piece that sounds like Crumb. And the ambiance of Circle’s middle movement, as well as Berio’s concept of extended staging, can be seen as starting points for Crumb’s own textural sparseness and emphasis on ritualized instrumental performance.

Michael Werner and Maria Männistö in Circles

With sur Incises (1996–98) Seattle at last received an entrée-sized portion of Morlot-conducted Boulez. Other than the brief and relatively mellow Notations I–IV (whose recording was one of my 2018 picks), Boulez’s music has been strangely absent from Symphony programming, even under the Directorship of his compatriot and mentee, so the showcasing of this formidable 40-minute piece felt particularly momentous.

Like most of Boulez’s music from the 1970s onward, sur Incises includes several passages that feature a steady beat and rapidly repeated notes. A good example is the Messiaenesque gamelan heard halfway through the first of its two “moments”, which coupled with the work’s unique instrumentation (three trios of piano, harp and mallet-centric percussion) gives the impression of a post-serial Reich (though Robin Maconie claims Stockhausen’s Mantra as a precedent). Another remarkable passage is the Nancarrow-like tutti about five minutes before the end. At other times, dazzling flurries are juxtaposed with calmer passages (the above links are to Boulez’s own performance with Ensemble intercontemporain, available in the 13-CD Deutsche Grammophon set of his complete works, which I review here).

The dominant motive in the piece, though, is a short-long rhythmic gesture akin to what drummers call a flam. It’s audible in the first piano right at the beginning, and recurs throughout the work, often with the short note in a different instrument than the subsequent clang. To pull off such highly coordinated music, the performers must not only know their parts cold, but must also coalesce into an incredibly tight ensemble. Only then does the ultimate interpretive goal become attainable: articulating the composite lines that traverse the three trios, and emphasizing the multilevel climaxes, anticipations and resolutions that drive this unceasingly complex music forward. As guest pianist Jacob Greenberg put it, “every phrase in the piece has a goal”. Not only was the band up to the task, but, in contrast with the introverted, austere sound world of Schnee, whose October performance benefitted from a measure of Dausgaardian reticence, tonight’s sur Incises profited from Morlot’s ever-present exuberance. Wouldn’t a future guest engagement with him conducting Rituel (in memoriam Bruno Maderna) be a treat?

The stereotype of Boulez as the ultimate cerebral composer is belied by his extraordinary command of instrumental color, something that always gave his music an edge over the legions of academic composers with a similar bent. Morlot and company’s rendering of this score reinforced Boulez’s proper place within the long line of French composers—from Berlioz, Debussy, Ravel and Messiaen onward to the spectralists—who have been infatuated with color and organic, self-generating form.

Ligeti: Poème Symphonique at the first [untitled], October 2012 with Ludovic Morlot in the background (photo: Michael Schell)
Boulez’s death in 2016 marked, if not the end of an era, the passing of its last undisputed superstar. And as Morlot took the microphone after the performance to acknowledge the [untitled] audience for the last time (the season’s final [untitled] event will have a guest conductor), a similar sense of poignant conclusion fell over the house. Though Seattle and its Symphony shared a longstanding, if erratic, history of support for contemporary music prior to Morlot’s arrival, there’s little doubt about the reinvigorating effect of a tenure that has brought forth not only the [untitled] concept, but also the Symphony’s new Octave 9 space (dedicated primarily to small-scale new music events) and an impressive series of regional and world premieres on the mainstage. One local musician prominent in new music circles told me “I was about ready to give up on Seattle before Morlot came”. And the feat of turning out a large and enthusiastic crowd for two thorny exemplars of Darmstadt dissonance in this most outlying of Lower 48 metropolises speaks for itself.

As a concluding round of hoots and applause died down, one could observe more than a few lumpy throats and damp eyes among the assembled Seattleites who left Benaroya Hall contemplating the departure of an exceptionally charismatic and personable conductor who has succeeded beyond all expectations at winning the hearts and minds of the city.

by Michael Schell
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Los Angeles, Premieres

Transient Canvas in Los Angeles

On March 27, 2019, People Inside Electronics presented Wired Wednesday, a concert featuring a set by Amy Advocat and Matt Sharrock, the Transient Canvas duo – as well as a sound installation premiere and a new piece for augmented trumpet. All of this was at Live Arts LA, a dance studio whose spacious performance floor was ideal for the occasion.

According to my friend, who’s blogged for a list of online poker sites that range from unknown to the biggest ones – the first piece on the concert program was the world premiere of bzbowls (2019), a sound installation by Stephanie Cheng Smith. This consisted of some 15 plastic bowls suspended between fine wires, and each bowl fitted with a tiny vibration motor – like the one that vibrates your cell phone when you get a call. These were wired into a control panel so that the speed and intensity of the vibrations could be varied. As the motors were activated, Ms. Smith added various objects to the bowls, changing the pitch and timbre of the sound. Ping pong balls tended to lower the pitch and raise the volume. Small beads and bells generally resulted in a higher pitch and created a more musical sound. Adding a few tiny clothespins to a bowl produced a distinctive growl. Plastic cups were occasionally placed over the contents of the bowls and this tended to muffle the vibrations, but at times also seemed to amplify the sounds. An overhead projector gave the audience a view of what was being placed into, or removed from each bowl.

The 15 motors and the items inside the bowls produced an active overall sound, and it was a bit like being inside a small machine. There was a distinct sense of motion, but not necessarily of movement. The objects in the bowls were removed and replaced gradually so that the character of the sound was continuously changing between a low roar and a high ringing jangle. The motor controller had a pulse mode, so that the vibration motors cycled on and off for a second or two, and this had the effect of further exaggerating the sense of motion. Although generally percussive in nature, the sound seemed to gradually shift and change almost as a living organism. The ingenuity applied by Ms. Smith to a collection of simple materials made bzbowls an intriguing, miniature sound world based on artfully controlled vibration.

Next was The Sameness of Earlier and Later Times and Nows (2019), by Sarah Belle Reid, and this was also a world premiere and this was scored for augmented trumpet, laptop and modular synthesizer. The augmented trumpet is an impressive extension of the standard instrument and according to the concert notes “…uses sensor technology to capture gestural data such as valve displacement, hand tension and instrument position which is then converted into control information to interact with other instruments and systems.” Ms. Reid performed with great poise as she played the trumpet into a microphone where the sounds were processed by the synthesizer and PC before re-emerging through the speaker system. Maybe a third of what was heard during the course of this piece could be described as standard trumpet sounds, and even here the confident intonation by Ms. Reid left nothing to be desired. The tone from the horn was smoothly elegant, and the looped delay and processing only added to the intrigue. The feeling of the piece was both innovative and comfortably familiar. The sensors on the trumpet added greatly to the variety, including a new subset of percussive effects. Clicks, thumps and pops from the valves and triggers on the horn entered the mix, as well as the roar of breathy sounds in the absence of tones. As The Sameness of Earlier and Later Times and Nows amply demonstrated, Ms. Reid has greatly extended the possibilities of the humble trumpet into new territory by the application of innovative sensing technology and sound processing.

(more…)

by Paul Muller
CD Review, CDs, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, Percussion, Piano

Album Review – Nightflower

Elliot Cole – Nightflower

On January 25, 2019, Long Echo Records released composer Elliot Cole’s debut solo album, Nightflower. This album occupies the vague space between the generated and constructed, and lives up to its own claim in “defying the notion of computer music as inherently sterile or mechanical.” At the root of all these works, written entirely for human performers, are materials that were generated by a computer program of Cole’s design. The album opens with the kinetic, lyric, and mesmerizing Bloom, a trio for guitar, cello, and clarinet. Performances by Cabezas, Chernyshev, and Dodson are at times aggressive and urgent, tender and longing, and still when need buoyant and playful. These compositions are certainly not inherently sterile or mechanical, but the performers contribution to the human element in the music throughout this album is undeniable. After such a powerful opening to the album, Night (Corners) and Night (Flowers) disappoint in comparison. Billed as surreal, sprawling, and evoking Romantic piano nocturnes, the work instead scans as plodding despite Andrea Lodge’s carefully considered, introspective performance.

 

Flowerpot Music won me back over almost immediately, and is what I would consider to be the heart of this album. Cole is known for his percussion music, and the uninitiated will understand why after this five minute piece. The unique timbres of the flowerpots and the cathedral-like reverberation provide an immediate intrigue that gives space for Cole to play with pitch, duration, pulse, and repetition to great effect. The album closes with Facets, for solo piano. Like the “Night” pieces, Facets is also meditative and introspective, but a broader range of textures, dynamics, and tempi work to make a more engaging piece by comparison. Hanick’s performance expertly contextualizes these elements into a singular, cohesive arc, and is a fitting conclusion to this album.

 

Bloom

Gabriel Cabezas, cello

Stanislav Chernyshev, clarinet

Jordan Dodson, guitar

 

Night (Corners) & Night (Flowers)

Andrea Violet Lodge, piano

 

Flowerpot Music

Jacob Harpster, percussion

Matt Penland, percussion

 

Facets

Conor Hanick, piano

by Cortlandt Matthews
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Just Intonation, Los Angeles, Strings

Music of Ben Johnston in Pasadena

On Friday, March 15, 2019 the Lyris Quartet and the Kepler Viol Quartet joined forces at the Boston Court Performing Arts Center for an evening of the music of Ben Johnston. The concert was produced by Microfest and featured two of Johnston’s well known string quartets, as well as two rarely performed works. The Kepler Viol Quartet was on hand for the pre-concert talk to demonstrate the bass, tenor and treble viola da gambas used in Fugue for Viols, one of the concert pieces. The intricacies of viol construction, tuning, vibrato, intonation and bowing were explained to a surprisingly knowledgeable and engaged audience. The viola da gamba in the history of tuning was discussed and details of how Johnston re-purposed the fretting for just intonation were also covered. Ben Johnston, who studied with Darius Milhaud, Harry Partch and John Cage, was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Letters last year. At 93 years of age, Johnston may be one of our most influential but least familiar composers. His birthday falls on March 15, making this concert the perfect occasion to celebrate his music.

The first piece on the concert program was String Quartet #4, “Amazing Grace” (1973), performed by the Lyris Quartet. This is probably Johnston’s best known work and consists of a series of seven variations on the familiar hymn, all in different forms of just intonation. The opening section is the cantus firmus, in magnificent full harmony, with a rich and textured feel. Other variations featured expressive counterpoint, wistful introspection, and at times a certain stridency. The hymn tune appears just often enough to keep the audience fully connected. The ensemble playing by the Lyris Quartet was strong throughout, and also included striking solos from the violin and viola. The final variations combined complex passages with a pleasingly dense texture that was abetted by the unconventional harmony. Amazing Grace is perhaps the most over-exposed hymn of our time yet String Quartet #4 brings a vibrant new freshness to this old standard.

Duo for Two Violins (1978) was next, performed by Alyssa Park and Shalini Vijayan of the Lyris Quartet. John Schneider’s helpful program notes describe this piece as fulfilling “…one of the composer’s hidden agendas: to explore what would have happened to the traditional forms and language of Western music if the pure intervals of the Renaissance had not been abandoned.” Accordingly, Duo for Two Violins consists three movements – a fugue, an aria and toccata – lifted directly from Baroque sensibility. “Fuga”, the first movement, was anchored in the familiar formal structure, but the harmonies gave this a refreshingly modern feel. The second movement, “Aria” opened with a soft scratching sound in one violin and a quietly mournful melody underneath. The interplay between parts and the harmony produced by this combination was very alluring and the delicate playing only added to the overall charm. “Toccata” finished out the piece, and the busy opening of this movement was a nice contrast, providing an appealing bit of complexity and bounce in an uptempo finale. Duo for Two Violins is an elegant re-imagining of historical forms and tuning practice that gives new insight into the music history that might have been.

The Kepler Viol Quartet took the stage for Fugue for Viols (1991) and began the lengthy tuning protocol for the bass, treble and two tenor viola da gambas that make up the ensemble. According to the program notes “…Fugue for Viols has only ever been performed at a few early music concerts in the Midwest in the years that followed its composition…” Originally written for George Hunter, an early music colleague of Johnston’s at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, the structure of the piece is squarely in the traditional fugal format. The subject begins in the bass and proceeds to the treble and tenors in the usual way. The audience could hear immediately that the viola da gamba quartet is a smaller and more intimate musical experience. The dark coloring in the bass added a sense of the ancient while the just intonation harmonies were warm and woody to the ear. The timbre of the viols and the unusual chords were at the same time an old curiosity and a new experience. The playing was clean, and the Kepler Quartet brought new life to the old instruments in a most satisfactory way. Fugue for Viols is an intriguing update to the rarely heard viola da gamba quartet, at once familiar and innovative.

The final work on the program was String Quartet #9 (1988), whose four movements further explored Johnson’s interest in recreating classical forms set free from equal temperament. “Strong, calm, slow”, the opening movement, is just that, with sturdy chords rising upward with a solid and settled optimism. The tutti playing was rich and full, adding to the lovely harmony. The second movement, “Fast, elated”, featured rapid phrases in the violins and viola with an appealing counter melody running through the cello. The strong, purposeful feel was supplied by a fine tutti ensemble. Always in motion, there were moments of stridency, especially with the pizzicato phrases in the cello. “Slow, expressive”, the third movement, was full of warm four-part harmony with a deep bass line adding to the sense of calm and comfort. A handsome violin solo was heard, accompanied by moving lines in the second violin and viola along with pizzicato phrasing in the cello. The playing here was precise and elegantly expressive. “Vigorous and defiant”. the final movement, opened with a strong, declarative statement that mixed in a bit of tension. Fast moving phrases in the upper strings crested to a defiant statement, then began again with a strong pulse and rapid tutti ensemble. The playing was exquisitely tight, with the quartet on a solid footing despite the fast tempo and unconventional pitches scattered through the passages. All of this built up to a big finish that was received with extended applause from an appreciative audience. String Quartet #9 is a masterful construction based on old forms while using new musical materials, brilliantly performed by the Lyris Quartet.

by Paul Muller
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Piano, Seattle

Piano Drop at Seattle’s Jack Straw

Destruction and reclamation, gimmick and avant-garde

One of the odder fads bequeathed to us by the 1960s is the ritual destruction of musical instruments. It’s a custom most famously associated with the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townshend. But what bursts out in popular culture often has precedents in the avant-garde, and the origins of this particular brand of onstage iconoclasm can be traced to the Fluxus movement, specifically its founder George Maciunas. In a nod to classical tradition Maciunas chose the piano, rather than the upstart electric guitar, as the foil for his aggression, directing performers of his 1962 Piano Piece #13 to nail down the keys of the chosen target (Sonic Youth famously performed the piece in 1999). Maciunas’s legacy was continued by fellow haute culture exponents Raphael Montañez Ortiz and Annea Lockwood, the former using an ax, the latter using an array of execution methods that included burning, burying and drowning.

The instrument (photo: Jack Straw)

It was Ortiz that provided the inspiration for the Pacific Northwest’s most famous entry in the klavierzerstörungen tradition. To help gin up publicity for a 1968 outdoor concert benefitting two local arts organizations (including the now defunct KRAB-FM radio), promoters arranged for a secondhand upright piano (purchased for $25) to be dropped from a helicopter. The stunt succeeded in its goal, with a few thousand young attendees journeying to a rural farm in Duvall (25 miles outside Seattle) for a day of folk, rock and choreographed demolition. In the event, safety concerns limited the plummet to a modest 50 feet, producing more of a dull thud than a thunderous clang. But it was still enough to obliterate the case, keyboard, hammers and dampers, leaving only the frame, soundboard and the top five octaves of strings.

The addled contraption lay half-buried in its grade-level tomb for 50 years before being exhumed by Jack Straw Cultural Center, the successor organization to KRAB-FM and a Northwest counterpart to New York’s Harvestworks and Roulette. The carcass was deposited on an exhibition table in Jack Straw’s New Media Gallery, where it was made available for the explorations of several West Coast musicians. The missing bass strings precluded performances of “under the lid” standards by such early masters as Cowell and Crumb, and the missing keyboard ruled out what could have been an intriguing variation on Lachenmann’s Guero. So the invited artists set out to create new works for this unique instrument, working under few restrictions other than an appeal to accept its deformed intonation and to limit the duration to a Cagean 4’33”.

Amy Denio (L) and friends (photo: Levi Fuller, Jack Straw)

Thus it happened that on February 23, 2019 a standing audience assembled around the beleaguered corpse to watch 16 composers and ensembles strike, stroke and probe its innards. The acts included a folk band and an oral history reminiscence (both evoking the hippie spirit of the 1968 event), but most of the new works were composed miniatures in the American experimental tradition. Many of them emphasized standard Cowell/Crumb on-string playing techniques, occasionally aided by digital effects or EBows. But Music for a Dropped Piano by Seattle’s ubiquitous multi-instrumentalist Amy Denio stood out in its use of bowed piano technique. And Aaron Keyt’s Piano Gusting saw four performers directing their breath through straws at clip-on contact microphones attached to the strings, the signal thence fed into small handheld loudspeakers, creating a chorus of metallic piano-like tones modulated by breath rhythms—one of the evening’s most remarkable sound experiences.

Two other composers found unexpected points of reference. Luke Fitzpatrick, a violinist by trade who recently resuscitated Partch’s Adapted Viola from decades of case-bound oblivion, levered his experience salvaging moribund instruments with his piece 3144. Attacking the Duvall piano with finger taps on the soundboard and plucks and strums on the strings, Fitzpatrick directly evoked the sound world of Partch’s plectrum instruments. Simultaneously he intoned the piano manufacturer’s stamp and serial number (“Ivers and Pond Piano Company No. 5, 3144”) using the same delivery he has developed for his performances of Partch’s Li Po Songs.

Hendrix immolating his guitar (photo: Ed Caraeff 1967)

Dave Knott also found an external reference, gently laying a small guitar (that had itself been dropped and detuned) on top of the piano’s remains like a vicarious empath, conjuring up images of saplings rising from the decaying nurse logs common in the nearby forests. While Knott strummed the baby guitar, his fellow Eye Music members David Stanford and Susie Kozawa played the doomed piano like a huge prepared autoharp.

The vaunted instrument destroyers of the 1960s tended to enlist their actions as anti-war agitations, or as demonstrations of the fragility of life and culture. But the performers showcased at Jack Straw embraced a different, more redemptive tradition, one closely associated with the Pacific Coast: that of reclamation. Whether it’s Cage, Harrison and Partch making percussion instruments from junk, or Edward and Nancy Kienholz building sculptures and installations from society’s discards, the tradition is one that regards art as a regenerative act that reminds us of the essential musicality and expressiveness in the tiredest and poorest things around us.

Piano Drop featured works by Jeffrey Bowen, James Borchers, Bradley Hawkins, Ski, Gust Burns, Austin Larkin, Brandon Lincoln Snyder, Bruce Greeley, Home Before Dark, Jay Hamilton, Count Constantin and Stanley Shikuma in addition to those mentioned in the review.

by Michael Schell
CD Review, CDs, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, jazz, Twentieth Century Composer

Anna Webber: Clockwise

Anna Webber

Clockwise

Pi Recordings (2019)

Saxophonist/flutist/composerAnna Webber, a thirty-five-year-old who has already won a Guggenheim Fellowship and numerous other plaudits, makes her Pi Recordings debut with Clockwise.Joined by an estimable group of avant-jazz musicians – pianist Matt Mitchell, Jeremy Viner playing tenor saxophone and clarinet, trombonist Jacob Garchik, cellist Christopher Hoffman, bassist Chris Tordini, and percussionist Ches Smith-Webber plays tenor saxophone and flute on the CD. Her compositions are mostly extrapolations of pieces for percussion by twentieth century classical composers Morton Feldman(King of Denmark), Iannis Xenakis(Persephassa), Edgard Varése(Ionisation), Karlheinz Stockhausen(Zyklus), Milton Babbitt(Homily), and John Cage (Third Construction). Employing percussion music to organize musical structures yields fascinating and fertile hybridized compositions.

Array, based on Babbitt’s Homily, a solo piece for snare drum, uses the score’s serialized dynamics and attack points to craft a welter of overlapping arpeggiations inhabited by the entire group. King of Denmark is visited in three different incarnations on Clockwise, the first lifting off with a bracing hail of noise-inspired multiphonics before moving into an undulating groove that positions the rhythm section front and center. The second features an introduction in which Smith plays glissandos on timpani alongside chiming interjections. This is succeeded by a sultry main section, pitting walking lines from Tordini against microtonal winds. King of Denmark III is the briefest trope on Feldman, juxtaposing a roiling arco solo from Tordini against saxophones overblown.

The title track takes the modularity of Stockhausen’s original as a cue for its own set of disparate, time-linked sections. Cage’s Third Constructionis channeled on Hologram Best, which features angular saxophone and brass lines in ebulliently spinning motion. Idiom II is the sole track on the disc to be composed with Webber’s own material. Near unison saxes, just slightly out of sync, create a loping tune that is punctuated by thrumming percussion and bass notes. Gradually, the rhythm section exerts a more intrusive presence that rivals the saxophone ostinato. Ultimately, the head is banished in favor of a saxophone-piano duet, in which Mitchell plays from an attractive palette of complex harmonies. Inexorably, the saxophones push back. Now no longer in near-unison, deployed in counterpoint, they take a break of their own that is only gradually infiltrated by the rhythm section. The final section of the piece features ostinatos again, this time with blocks of reeds, harmonizing the original tune, taking the front line in the proceedings while the rhythm sections positively roars its propulsive support. A brief reappearance of the head ensues, and then the door slams shut on the most compelling music of the recording.

Varése and Xenakis inspire the works Kore I and Kore II. The latter opens the disc with undulating pizzicato strings that are eventually joined successively by flute, piano, and the rest of the ensemble in an off-kilter, post-tonal dance. Kore I closes the recording with another pileup of material, starting from pianissimo feints from the rhythm section and eventually building to a portentous moto perpetuo in which solos from Tordini, Webber, and Garchik are finally subsumed into a furious tutti coda.

Whether Webber is exploring avant-garde classical masters or paving her own pathways, she proves to be a compelling creator. Her collaborators, to a person, are stellar. Clockwise is heartily recommended.

 

 

 

by Christian Carey
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Los Angeles

Southland Ensemble in Chinatown

On Saturday, February 9, 2019 the Southland Ensemble presented New Experimental Works at Automata in downtown Los Angeles. This concert was the result of Southland’s inaugural Call for Scores issued last year. With more than 200 responses, seven pieces utilizing graphic and text scores were ultimately chosen for this performance. Automata was completely filled while outside the Chinese New Year celebrations were in full swing with lanterns, firecrackers and enthusiastic crowds.

The concert opened with all are above us (2017), by Nomi Epstein the noted Chicago-based composer and educator. The program notes state that “Her music centers around her interest in sonic fragility where structure arises out of textural subtleties.” This piece opened with several performers sitting in a tight circle. All was silent at first, but breathy sounds, a soft harmonica note and a fragment of a vocal chant eventually drifted out to the audience. The sounds were only musical in the broadest sense and almost always fragmentary. There were often stretches of silence, and it was reminiscent of a quiet conversation around the campfire in some remote setting. The ambient crowd noise outside Automata in Chung King Court occasionally intruded on the “sonic fragility”, but the understated primal feel remained intact. The sparse character of all are above us invites concentration and focus, while artfully enlisting the listener’s imagination to fill in the spaces between the sounds.

Diálogos: Consecuente (2017) by Jorge Delgado Leyva followed, and this featured a group of performers in a semi-circle with a variety of sound sources constructed from found objects. Soft percussive sounds, a bell tone and then some sharp tones from a stringed instrument fashioned from a large paper cup and a length of wire were heard, all more or less continuously, as if in conversation. This continued apace, with new sounds – a short passage on a toy xylophone and the rattling of some dishes – joining the proceedings. It was like hearing some strange process that was not quite musical and not quite mechanical. The tempo and volume increased towards the finish so that a low grade chaos prevailed at the end. Diálogos: Consecuente is an inventive work that creates an engaging sequence of sounds and textures that encourage the listener to supply the context.

Next was Neither /N/Nor/N (2016), by Ben Zucker. For this piece, six performers were stationed along the walls and in the corners of Automata, designed with a minimalist architecture home styles that complemented the simplicity of the performance. All performers were equipped with small plastic megaphones, and soon a series of soft breathy sounds and the rushing of air filled the space. This gave a windswept and lonely feel that extended over the entire piece; there were no musical tones or sounds of percussion. Such a delicate piece called for concentration, and at about the midway point, the sounds of footfall from above served to activate the imagination of the listeners. This was unplanned—there are apartments above Automata, and the occupants were simply walking about—but it added a chilling element to a piece that was otherwise rural and remote in character. Neither /N/Nor/N is simple in both materials and structure, yet it proved to be the perfect canvas upon which sonic illusions could be released by the imagination.

Book of Hours by Nicole DeMaio followed with four performers sitting on the floor in a tight circle. A single player began by clearly reciting a paragraph of text that was an explanation of some complicated element of grammar. As this was repeated, a second player joined in, speaking the same text, but not in unison, and in a lower voice that was only partly intelligible. The remaining players then spoke the same text, but into closed cardboard tubes so that only muffled sounds were heard. The result was a complete jumble of sound, only partly comprehensible, forcing the listener to struggle for meaning even as the overall volume increased. A few notes from toy harmonica were heard, and a new recitation started – again by a single player speaking clearly, followed by the others as before. Several such cycles were heard, each time with more distraction. Sometimes this took the form of putting strong emphasis on every other spoken word, and at other times by the intrusive sounds of found objects. In a moment of Chinatown serendipity, a group of wandering New Year’s drummers arrived outside in Chung King Court and could be heard adding to the chaos of words and sounds in the performance space. This added the perfect sense of urgency to the need for comprehension. With so many ideas and voices coming at us in alternating layers of clarity and ambiguity, Book of Hours is an impressive metaphor for the state of communication in this age of social media and fake news.

After a short intermission AT A STEADY CONSISTENT RATE (2017), by Christine Burke, began with a lovely tutti chord from the assembled strings and woodwinds. The most musical of all the pieces in the concert, a series of long sustained chords were heard filling the performance space with a pleasing calm and serene sensibility. The players would sometimes enter at slightly different times, but this only added to the relaxed feeling. As the piece proceeded, however, the smooth sounds began to slowly dissemble. There was a scratchy sound in the cello, a flutter in the flute and a tightening in the violins. The pleasant chords of the beginning were decomposing into tension and uncertainty at a “steady and consistent rate.” Towards the finish the sounds became disconnected, ragged and strained, as one by one the players went silent. AT A STEADY CONSISTENT RATE is a brilliant  musical illustration of the oppressive nature of stress in our busy 21st century lives.

Saint-Girons (2018), by Erika Bell was next and this opened with a recording of indistinct voices and the sound of a bus pulling out into traffic. The cello sounded a long tremolo tone as the other strings made a smooth entrance. As the piece proceeded, more distinctly industrial sounds came from the speakers, and the acoustic instruments followed, crossing the line between the musical and the mechanical. Breathy sounds were heard from the flute, and the strings became tautly stressed. The effect of this transition was for the listener to continue to process the total sound as music, even as the more industrial components dominated. This unexpected search for context proved illuminating, the more so when the process reversed, with musical tones eventually prevailing. Towards the finish, there was a lush tutti chord that was almost symphonic in its grandeur. Saint-Girons is an intriguing exploration of the boundary between music and noise, inviting each listener to continually recalculate the coordinates of personal perception.

The concert concluded with Something about my Punctuation (2014 rev. 2018), by John Eagle. A performer was stationed at each of four chalk boards that were attached to the walls and began writing an extended paragraph. When the the chalk boards were about half filled with text, violinist Eric K.M. Clark sounded a sustained tone as he silently read the sentences. When a period was encountered, the tone ceased, another sentence was chosen and another tone initiated. The other performers, busy with their chalk writing, hummed a tone or struck a small bowl as they worked. The effect of four writers intently working on their texts along with the sounding of mystical tones and chant was surprisingly enthralling. It was as if we were observing the work of medieval monks laboring away in their scriptorium. There was a sense of the sacred that enveloped this activity, even though the words were not readable by the audience and the music was spare and softly played. Something about my Punctuation is an extraordinary work precisely because it manages to extract the essence of the liturgical from the simplest of musical materials and the most mundane of human activities.

New Experimental Works was a welcome and helpful overview of the breadth and intensity of the contemporary experimental pieces being created today. The call for scores and subsequent curation by the Southland Ensemble succeeded in bringing forward seven outstanding examples of what is being done by those working at the outer boundaries of music, text and sound.

The next Southland Ensemble concert will be at Automata on Saturday, April 6 at 8:00 PM and will feature the music of pioneering American composer Johanna Magdalena Beyer.

The Southland Ensemble is:

Casey Anderson, Jennifer Bewerse, Eric KM Clark, Orin Sie Hildestad, James Klopfleisch, Jonathan Stehney, Cassia Streb, Christine Tavolacci

by Paul Muller