ICE/Jack Quartet: Darmstadt Sendoff Concert
Tuesday July 29, 2010
Le Poisson Rouge, New York City
The International Contemporary Ensemble and Jack String Quartet both participated in the Darmstadt Festival this summer. In preparation for the concerts they gave there, the groups shared a bill at Le Poisson Rouge on June 29, presenting four works from their Darmstadt programs.
ICE opened the event with a captivating performance of Earle Brown’s quasi-improvisatory Tracking Pierrot (1992). In it, the musicians each in turn take the role of conductor, eliciting different manners of playing from various fractals of the ensemble. Thus, the piece becomes less about the individual soloists and more about collaborative interplay: a demeanor epitomized by ICE.
Composed for the Jack Quartet, Caleb Burhans’ Contritus (2010) is an unabashed display of slowly moving diatonic verticals. Although its uniformity of rhythmic profile might have been cloying in lesser hands, and sections occasionally overstayed their welcome, Burhans seasoned the pot with unexpected harmonic twists and turns. Thus, while the surface presented as something you might hear in the lush environs of a cinematic soundtrack, the music still managed to render surprises aplenty.
ICE returned with Jason Eckhardt’s 16 (2003), which was as entirely different from the Burhans piece as one could imagine. Jauntily aggressive, and led by Claire Chase’s mouth noise laden flutings, 16 set up a fulsome groove despite being rife with dissonance. Here again one was taken with ICE’s commitment to ensemble interaction. Their rapt attention to one another translated to corresponding attention to their exertions from the audience, full bar and clinking beer bottles notwithstanding.
The Jack Quartet closed the concert with Yoshiaki Onishi’s Cul-de-sac (en passacaille) (2009). Once again, the stylistic demeanor shifted radically; this time to the world of sound effects. Onishi presented a catalogue of extended playing techniques – scratchings, scordatura, glissandi, and stacks of harmonics. The latter technique won the day in the piece’s flautando coda; executing a gradual rear guard action in a diminuendo al niente. With the last note, someone at the bar dropped their beer glass; punctuating an evening of the avant-garde with the sound of glass shattering.
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