At a dinner party in the Hamptons attended by your correspondent many years ago, the late and legendary editor Willie Morris averred–this was at a point in the evening when his beverage had been refreshed several times–that “things would have been a lot different if the South had won the war.”  I assumed he was being ironic but the notion came back to me other night during the first of two concerts organized by the Library of Congress in tribute to Dina Koston, a prominent force in DC classical music for many years who died last year and– along with her husband– left the Library an endowment called the Dina Koston and Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music.  The thought  I had:   So,  this is where new music might have gone if there had never been a Terry Riley or Steve Reich or Philip Glass,  if there had been no Internet or cheap recording technologies to allow almost anyone to circumvent the musical “establishment,” if a few of the trains to Princeton had not been diverted to New Haven (to mangle Wallace Stevens), if “high modernism” had prevailed in the marketplace of music ideas the way it did in academia.

Before you academy types pounce, let me be clear that I’m not making a value judgement about “quality” (whatever that is but I know it when I hear it).  The concert, which featured the superb Cygnus Ensemble  playing Dina Koston’s final composition—paired with the short play called Ohio Impromptu by Samuel Beckett that inspired it–a premiere of the endowment’s first commission and several other new pieces, was brilliantly staged and performed and thoroughly entertaining.  (Charles T. Downey has his usual bang-up review here. )

Nor am I suggesting that the living composers whose work was performed at the concert are old-fogeys who never crawled down from Uncle Milton’s knee.  But, several of them were bounced there a few times and their journey into heresy is one of the things that distinguishes their later work. From what little I know about Dina Koston, I’m fairly sure she would have hated Frank Brickle’s Farai un vers (which he calls Neo-Medieval Psychedelia) and David Claman’s Gone for Foreign, both of which are warm, witty and thoroughly non-dogmatic.  Harder to understand was the selection of Mario Davidovsky as the winner of the Koston-Shapiro fund’s first commission.  His Ladino Songs were solid and elegant but the seventy-something winner of the 1971 Pulitzer Prize and many other honors is hardly in need of additional recognition.  (They could have given the award to George Crumb, whose Ancient Voices of Children should have won the 1971 Pulitzer.)

For New Yorkers, the good news is that an extension of the Library of Congress/Cygnus Quartet  program, called Sounding Beckett, will performed here at the Classic Stage Co. on two weekends in the Fall–(Fri-Sun): September 14-16 and 21-23.  Three Beckett pieces will be staged–Ohio Impromptu, Footfalls and Catastrophe–and each will have two new works composed in response to it  commissioned for this occasion by The Dina Koston and Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music.

But, enough music politics.  What surprised me most pleasantly about the visit was what a lively and ambitious concert program the Library of Congress maintains.  Most concerts are staged in the LOC’s Coolidge Auditorium, a comfortable mid-sized venue, that was filled both nights I was there.  Anne McLean, who runs the concert series (with only a couple of people to help), is a warm and generous woman with an empathy for composers. musicians and other lost souls.  She  spotted me alone leaning against a pillar slurping my noodles at the reception, and pegged me for the Sequenza21 publisher and a man who needs a lot of hugs these days.  I really like this woman.

Life is competitive and composers are as competitive as anyone else–sometimes even more so. This thought came forcibly to mind when I heard two of the three composers–Stefan Cwik and Neil Rolnick (the third, Philip Glass, wasn’t even mentioned)–discussing their pieces with New Music Ensemble artistic director and conductor Nicole Paiment minutes before she and her musicians played three of their pieces as the concluding event of the BluePrint Transcending Senses Series at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. When it comes to cattiness, composers often make the Beverly Hills Housewives look like fluffy little kittens.

Which is not to say that the music that followed didn’t have its charms. The opener Eight Miniatures for Chamber Ensemble (Hommage a Stravinsky) by Stefan Cwik (1987- ) was one of the winning works in the 2010 Bassoon Chamber Music Composition Competition, performed here by bassoonist Paula Brusky–who served as a midwife in its realization–Michael Williams, flute, Stephanie Bibbo, violin, and the always super Keisuke Nakagoshi, made a strong case for Cwik’s collage of Stravinsky pieces. These included bits from L’ Histoire du Soldat (1918), with Bibbo’s lean, mean, superbly dry fiddling — the Suite Italienne (from Pulcinella) (1932 ), with a kind of running commentary of stamping chords from Le Sacre (1911-13) beneath. The quartet’s playing of Cwik’s “appropriations ” from Stravinsky were elegant, witty, even touching.  Stravinsky used to say that life, meaning manners, is artificial , and of course was famous for writing pieces from behind the mask of his own persona. What that means is anyone’s guess, though Cwik’s pieces, judged from a cursory look at his site, seems to look–and sound better–when he hides.

Neil Rolnick (1947 – ) came off as charming and extroverted while Cwik seemed academic and reserved–he wore a black suit while Rolnick wore a “work shirt” and blue jeans. His equally arming and transparently scored Ansomia for full forces was a big–over 30 minutes–well-constructed and well-performed piece which exploits the “congnitive dissonances” between the senses–in this case smell–to witty, though far from profound effects. Oliver Sacks and Michael Nyman have, of course, made mini-careers from their supposedly deep– i.e easily marketable “findings”–from the disjunction between “seen,” “remembered”, and “heard.” Rolnick’s effort was amiable–he manned his MAC stage right which interacted with the orchestra, orchestral soloists, and singers–Maya Kherani, soprano, Carrie Zhang, alto, and Daniel Cilli–baritone–in real time–though a planned 160 minute version with orchestra, singers, plus projections, sounds like a long, and not necessarily more enlightening adventure.

The New Music Ensemble’s reading of Glass’ Concerto for Harpsichord (2002) should have been the highlight of the program, but harpsichordist Christopher D. Lewis’s reading lacked spirit and it didn’t help that Paiment’s obviously under-rehearsed band was clumped from middle to stage right. The first 2 of the piece’s 3 movements are in a reflective but never static–E minor, and C minor and its G major final movement should go off like a Mannheim Rocket and bring down the house. But Paiment’s ministrations failed to differentiate and bring out Glass’ charming , gracious and imaginative humors–he knows his Baroque from the outside in. The ensemble’s timid “projection,” if that’s the word–made Glass’ changes sound arbitrary, so that his quotes from Rodrigo’s Concierto de Arjanjuez and Bach’s D minor Fantasia–a steal from Muslim Spain–went up in smoke. It doesn’t matter whether Glass’ concerto is a “worthy successor” to the De Falla or Poulenc, or a competitor to the Gorecki, or Nyman. But you don’t treat the work of any composer, and especially one of Glass’ importance, like a side dish.

Dina Koston was a unique figure in the Washington music scene.  A composer and pianist, she was the Iron Lady behind the Theater Chamber Players, a pioneering ensemble that tackled an eclectic blend of old and new chamber music in DC from 1968 to 2004–well before the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center came along.   Her friend and collaborator, pianist Leon Fleisher described her as “complicated, compulsive, wacky and wacked out,” (sounds  like my kind of woman).  The Library of Congress is staging two events this week to honor her life and legacy.  On Wednesday night  Joy Zinoman directs a production of Samuel Beckett’s ephemeral short play Ohio Impromptu as a prelude to Koston’s last composition, Distant Intervals, and other new works from the Cygnus Ensemble. On Thursday night,  Fleisher, Koston’s longtime artistic partner and friend, performs and conducts an evening of Ligeti, Koston, and Brahms, featuring the Liebeslieder Waltzes.

“Dina Koston had the most acute musical ear of any musician I have ever known.”

Leon Fleisher, pianist, conductor and co-founder of Theater Chamber Players with Dina Koston

“Many of us on the staff at the Library of Congress knew Dina Koston in many contexts for a number of years. We admired her as a pianist and were inspired by her thoughtful programming and her integrity in her work for the Theater Chamber Players, whose concerts made a hugely important contribution to Washington music lovers. We knew her as a fine composer who was commissioned by the Library’s McKim Fund, and also as a serious researcher we often saw in our Performing Arts Reading Room. She was both a performer on our Coolidge Auditorium stage–and a superbly knowledgeable concertgoer here, for several decades. We are immensely grateful to Dina not only for her unexpected and extremely generous bequest, but for her confidence in the Library. We will work hard to earn it in the future programs and projects made possible by her gift to us.”

Anne McLean, Senior Producer for Concerts and Special Projects, Library of Congress Music Division

“While Dina could be difficult to work with, the end results in our performances were always worth it. I still use her insights in my own teachings of the songs of Wolf and Webern, to name a very few. Her programming of the new and the old remain unmatched in chamber music programs of today.”

Phyllis Bryn-Julson, soprano

“Dina Koston was a model for all of us. She seemed to embrace effortlessly a quality that is essential for authentic composing: she believed completely in, was on intimate terms with, her own muse.”

Frank Brickle, composer

“Working with Dina Koston was a true learning experience.  Dina was demanding of herself as well as those around her, expecting us to rise up to our very best.  Her knowledge of music and the connection between composers and works was astounding. As a result, her concerts were at a different level in the programming and performance.  She had a definite idea of what she wanted to hear, how a particular work should sound.  She loved new music, and she was dedicated to Bach.  But just to hear Dina play her warm-up, to Chopin, was breathtaking.”  

Sherry Goodman, former Manager of Theater Chamber Players & publicist to Dina Koston

“I played 10 seasons with the Theater Chamber Players, and then after TCP’s final concert, I continued to perform Dina’s music–solo, and with Cygnus. I am also pleased to have brokered the NYNME commissioning of Dina’s Quintet With Claves. I am greatly enriched through my exposure to Dina’s extraordinary musical sensibility. She did not hesitate to say everything that was on her mind in rehearsals, and I learned a great deal.

Dina was exposed to music that she would never have heard if not for her work with Cygnus. She was smitten by Dylan Lardelli’s oboe and guitar duo. She rediscovered Wuorinen through the Sonata for Guitar and Piano, which she began programming in Washington, bringing me and Joan Forsyth to Washington and Baltimore to perform that Sonata. I am grateful for her willingness to forgive Cygnus for our interest in certain latter-day musical movements. There were certain things that she simply could not abide.

Dina’s music was conceived entirely in her head. She could hear it better than a computer. No one had better training than Dina, who studied with Boulanger, Berio, attended the Darmstadt festival, and studied piano with Leon Fleisher.

Dina had a Chemex coffee maker. (I grew up with one of those.) On her coffee table she had a facsimile of Ezra Pound’s comments penned into an early version of The Wasteland. She loved Beckett, and wrote her last work for the Cygnus group + 3, entitled *Distant Intervals*, which is a musical reflection of Beckett’s Ohio Impromptu. These were points of connection for us. Moreover, we both devoted most of our lives to running ensembles–curating. We both put our composing second.

For the moment musical modernism is being portrayed by name brand critics as an outmoded relic of the cold war. I am ok with the characterization, and I am not concerned because such characterizations are always transitory. In 18th C. Opera, the witch sang in a quasi-baroque style, employing the power of the *quality of being out of fashion* to paint a character musically. (Remember the violin playing in Mel Brooks’ *Young Frankenstein*.) Mozart and Mendelssohn would rediscover Bach; and the Baroque eventually becomes bathed in nostalgia (slow movement of Brahms, op. 88!). I have come to embrace and celebrate the music that has seized the center, for the moment. Dina, on the other hand, was not in a position to embrace things like minimalism. Dina could be difficult–a modernist witch! Some find her music difficult. Why not? It is about 85 years out of fashion! She would not care. While Varese can come to mind as an aural predecessor, I love the moments of musical recession, following her scary, Varese-like tuttis, the intimate, quiet moments of insight that happen in the shadows of those brutal blocks of sound–I find in such moments her authentic and personal voice, while the concrete walls of sound seem to be a necessary frame for those personal moments.

I defend the ethos of artistic authenticity and high ambition that characterized cold war aesthetic values. I add, moreover, that despite government support for the RCA synthesizer and the Darmstadt festival (points that are coming to light at the moment, causing quite a stir) artistic values are always *psychologically overdetermined*.

Dina’s music is ambitious, authentic, yet in no way doctrinaire. She wrote what she heard, and it is very difficult to say what governs the development of her compositions. She was truly an improvisor.”

William Anderson, founder of Cygnus Ensemble

People love tragedy, at least, in the literary sense, and Mozart and Schubert’s early deaths were certainly tragic. The death of the talented gay and black composer Julius Eastman (1940-1990) has many of the same elements of classic tragedy. With Eastman, who was also apparently self destructive in both his professional and private life, those elements included crack addiction homelessness, and dying alone in a Buffalo New York hospital of cardiac arrest.  It is certainly a juicy story. But none of this would matter if his work didn’t speak to people, and Eastman’s music, which was performed by Italian composer and pianist Luciano Chessa, Sarah Cahill and four other pianists, and two singers recently at the Berkeley Art Musician, spoke loud and clear.

Eastman’s case was certainly aided and abetted by the unique acoustics of Mario Ciampi’s concrete Art Brut structure which served Steve Reich and Musicians equally well when they performed and recorded his Four Organs and Phase Patterns there in 1970 for a long defunct Shandar LP. Eastman’s focus on the materiality of sound itself seemed to be both text and subtext of his music here. Two a capella pieces exploited this materiality in its most basic form. “Our Father” (1989), sung by tenor Kevin Baum and bass Richard Mix was a powerful evocation of the contrast between the eternal present–the open fifths they landed on–and the fleeting present of its shifting chromatic writing. The solo “Prelude to the Holy Presence of Joan D’Arc ” (c. 1981) (the succeeding “Holy Presence,”  for ten cellos, is on www.youtube.com paired with Dreyer’s silent masterpiece) sounded like a starkly reiterative “De Profundis” with shades of the Stein/Thomson opera Four Saints in Three Acts (1927-1934) in some of its intervals, mood, and text –“St Margaret … ” and Mix’s voice was so powerful that it seemed to be coming out of the floor, and not just because I was seated two yards away.

The two large scale pieces for six pianos which rounded out the program were equally powerful, though their political agendas were hard to discern. All music lives or dies according to its sound, and Evil Nigger and Gay Guerilla (both 1979) were stunningly communicative without clearly discernible agendas, and they were subtle, vigorous, and highly imaginative throughout. The piano band–which also included Regina Schaffer, Chris Brown, Joseph M. Colombo, and Dominique Leone–were also kept in time by the cells on their arranged-in-a-closed circle Yamaha uprights which gave them parameters–say “1:10- 1: 30 seconds “–and the performative aspect of “new” or any other kind of music is what draws people in. The beating patterns here were regular and non-regular; the timbres opposed, unified, diffused, dissolved. Time present, time elastic moving in and out of focus–prominence–in time. And it was a pleasure to see Leone’s reiterated G naturals up close, and Chessa having lots of fun with his part. The music steady, ritualistic–the returning seven note cadence figure in Evil Nigger–fresh, and always surprising .

And the sound? The pianos, separately miked from the back brought one this side of heaven.

As many of you know, the composer Mary Jane Leach has been instrumental in getting  Eastman work into the public eye.