ETHEL performs music of Hafez Modirzadeh
By Cornelius Dufallo
Also published on Urban Modes

Hafez Modirzadeh, a visionary saxophonist, theorist and composer, has been developing his own style of inter-cultural improvisation for three decades. His mentors and collaborators have included Ornette Coleman, some of the founding members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, and the great Iranian violinist, Mahmoud Zoufonoun.  ETHEL first encountered Modirzadeh in 2007, and the two parties felt an immediate artistic sympathy.

Since that time, Modirzadeh has created a body of work for saxophone, flutes, karna, string quartet, trumpet, santur, tombak, daf, and voice. On July 23, 2011 nine musicians came together to perform this music at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA. The lineup included ETHEL, Mili Bermejo (Mexican Argentinian jazz vocalist), Amir ElSaffar (Iraqi – American trumpeter), Faraz Minooei (Iranian santur player), Amir Abbas Etemadzadeh (Iranian percussionist), and the composer himself on saxophone and Karna. The unforgettable event, which Modirzadeh entitled In Convergence Liberation, was met with enthusiasm from a large audience, and all nine artists spent the following two days together at Open Path Studios in San Jose, recording the music for a forthcoming CD.

Modirzadeh’s work combines fascinating musical and philosophical concepts. “Composting” (a specific type of improvisational dialogue based on pre-existing written material), “matching-spirit” (a process of group improvisation using shared interval structures), “intoning” (a technique of improvising within a unison, playing with the higher partials of the overtone series), “tetramodes” (a carefully calibrated microtonal system based on a synthesis of ancient and modern approaches to intervallic relationships), and  “Makam X”  (an overarching and inter-cultural musical system of various partials of the harmonic series) were some of the techniques that the nine musicians shared and practiced together. Rhythmic meters of 17/4 (5+5+7) –inspired by Persian poetry — were the foundation for improvisations that defied cultural boundaries. Persian modal systems, Iraqi maqam, Andalusian musical traditions, aspects of Indonesian gamelan, and references to western classical composers from the past three centuries were all called upon in this collaboration.

In 2009 Modirzadeh described his musical aesthetic this way: “It begins with a few ideas sounded together, each one in an incomplete fashion, as if light were peering through traditions’ tattered curtains.”  More recently he has started to speak of a “Convergence Liberation Principle,” which is directly inspired by the gathering at Tahrir Square, which he considers “the most concrete and brilliant example”  of Convergence Liberation. Musically speaking, the concept is connected to a dual approach of honing individual style, while also transcending all cultural distinctions. The strategies that we used to translate these concepts into sound were mostly intuitive. We each drew from our own years of discipline in our respective traditions, but we also abandoned that discipline to make ourselves totally vulnerable. The process was mysterious, but we could all clearly feel a deep connection to our nature as social animals. For a few days we rejected the concepts of right and wrong; instead, we created a group dynamic based entirely on trust.
Members of the Convergence Liberation Band
(From left: Cornelius Dufallo, Amir Abbas Etemadzadeh, Mary Rowell, Dorothy Lawson, Ralph Farris,  Amir ElSaffar, Hafez Modirzadeh)

San Francisco Community Music Center, July 20 – 23, 2011 

The first sound of the festival’s Wednesday night show was, perhaps appropriately, nothing. Theresa Wong started offstage, down front, with just a microphone. She circled it in front of her face, no sound coming out of her pursed lips. Fluid looping gestures, but no vocal to be heard for perhaps two minutes. Then, a “Woo.” Silence, the mic passing back and forth. “Hoo,” silence, then another and another. Hoots and cuckoos, then a low-flutter “Wo – wo – wo – wo” for thirty seconds, then putting the mic to ear and droning (can throat sounds pass out the ear canal?), long high tones splintering off whistling multiphonics, static noise, razzes, gulps, and hums, more microphone manipulation for Doppler effects, then an episode of something close to song-singing, ending on a slow tremolo submerging into underwater warbles.

Theresa Wong stands at a deeply resonating node where a number of Bay Area new music waves converge, and is thus an emblematic artist for the Outsound Summit.  Wednesday night’s all-vocal concert was titled “Face Music,” and the audience was faced with four singular solo approaches to the first instrument. Wong’s approach comes from a deep human connection to music and a direct, unaffected performance mode. When she took up her ‘cello for the second piece, even the most “abstract” sound worlds somehow evoked song-based territories. The instrument itself, when bowed, seemed to sound directly as her voice.

Aurora Josephson went even deeper during a short, ritualistic reading of John Cage’s Experiences No. 2. All in black, kneeling among candles on the floor in front of the stage, she conjured a dark and mournful atmosphere. She allowed herself long pauses between phrases, giving the listener time to savor her exquisitely precise enunciation and powerful delivery which, unamplified, rocked the room.

Joseph Rosenzweig, whose set closed the first half, delivered a choppy, harsh live sample-driven piece, a Hiss Concerto as it were, all glitchy and jarringly loud much of the time, causing the audience to jump in their seats when he’d suddenly pop a scream. His digital manipulations would seek out the hidden harmonic artifacts within his scratchy drones and, at one point, he pulled out the always useful “reverse glottal fry.”

Raising “Face Music” to its multimedia apex for the evening, bran(…)pos, aka Jake Rodriguez, erected a makeshift projection screen out of an umbrella and some diaphanous cloth, and placed it between his rig and the audience, Wizard of Oz-like.  All paid attention to this Man Behind The Curtain, for his face filled the screen while wet vocal pops and kisses danced around the room from loudspeaker to loudspeaker. Cheap electronics are one of his main soundwells, and, even though the materials and visuals suggest mass violence, escalation, and propaganda, it’s all somehow delivered in a cheerfully demented style that comes off as no more threatening than a swarm of angry pixies. Eventually, after a well-crafted arc of electronic disaster movie re-enactments, bran(…)pos’s face melted from the screen (replaced by a butterfly), and Jake stepped out from behind to take his bows.

On Friday night, local composer/performer Polly Moller curated “The Art of Composition,” featuring works by Krystina Bobrowski, Andrew Raffo Dewar, Kanoko Nishi, and Gino Robair. Showcasing the huge range and robustly idiosyncratic heuristics of the Bay Area new music scene is not an easy job, but Moller’s selection cut a deep slice, if not the widest possible range (although the latter could fairly be claimed for the festival as a whole).

Mr. Robair demonstrated his centrality to many of the sub-scenes that populate the worldwide out-sound landscape, being on stage for three of the four groups and performing diverse roles with nonchalant virtuosity throughout. First, he assisted composer and instrument inventor Krystina Bobrowski in “Lift, Loft and Lull,” which employed amplified balloons as resonators for thick steel plates and long tubular bells. The first part was a slow underwater procession, with the composer blowing a mournful kelp horn while Robair did the balloonatics; the second part, with the pair playing the long tubes, gradually expanded its phrasing and language into a kaleidoscope of bongs, scrapes, rubs and singing gong-like tones. The second piece had Bobrowski moving to the Gliss Glass and Robair applying his wet fingers to a set of wine glasses.

The Gliss Glass is Bobrowski’s most complex and compelling instrument: three open-topped vessels partly filled with water, suspended on height-adjustable tripods and connected with valved tubing. Using the principle of water seeking its own level, the glasses can be struck or finger-bowed then moved up or down, causing the tones to change as the water travels among the different vessels. The resulting sounds are guaranteed to haunt the ears for days afterward, and the set provided a bang-up opening to the night.

Andrew Raffo Dewar, formerly a Bay Area stalwart (now based at the University of Alabama), is a saxophonist and composer whose Interactions Quartet has performed in San Francisco before. Robair, again on percussion, was joined by Dewar on soprano saxophone, Kyle Bruckmann on oboe and English horn, and John Shiurba on nylon-string guitar. Typically for Dewar, every new composition for the group is miles away from its predecessors in sound and form. “Strata” sounded as if impressions of Dewar’s recent jaunt to far-off Ghana had rubbed off, the slow opening moments hovering between pointillism and hocketing, all in simple pentatonic harmonies. As it gathered speed, dissonance and density — settling into a sort of pulse for the middle section (Robair and Shiurba stomping feet, ankles wrapped in bell shakers), then moving beyond a simple pulse into polymetric, panchromatic complexity — the piece stayed suspended, timeless, as if one were swimming in adjacent dimensions of streaming gossamers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Gino Robair led his own Ensemble Aguascalientes to finish the Friday concert through a suite “based on the politically charged engravings of … Jose Guadalupe Posada.” As with many of his compositions, Robair’s conducting [see the video above, from Robair's I, Norton workshop and concert footage @ the CAID (Detroit) and The Heaven Gallery (Chicago)] using hand cues and relying on the players’ spontaneous responses to the cues and the score, ensures that no two performances sound as kin. Shiurba was back on guitar, along with Scott Walton on bass, Joel Davel and Jim Kassis percussion, and Ms. Moller on bass flute, flute headjoint, and two sizes of ocarina. The choice of ocarina is a pivotal one in realizing Robair’s conception. “I definitely want to get away from standard tuning in this piece,” he says. “It’s all a bit unstable, pitch-wise. Which I happen to like.” The ocarina’s fragile tone and nomadic pitch —negatives in the European tradition — might be said to represent a “village” or even “revolutionary” approach (in the anti-imperialist sense), to music-making. If improvisation posits a direct-democracy alternative to the imperial composer/conductor/ensemble hierarchy, then the ocarina fires a sonic shot across the equal-temperament bow. Forgive the tortured analogies — such are the deep thoughts that Outsound concerts regularly evoke. (Besides, it’s Bulwer Lytton season.)

Kanonko Nishi’s piece (some explanation of her aims and methods may be found here), a graphic score realized by bassist Tony Dryer and guitarist IOIOI, seemed to be all about punishment of the ears, aided and abetted by a sound engineer who blasted the audience not once but four times with feedback before the thing even got started, then pegged the levels of Dryer’s droning bass-feedback section at stadium-rock levels — maybe fifteen minutes’ worth, although it went by like hours. IOIOI followed Dryer, dropping stuff on her electric guitar and banging on it occasionally, which was a little softer but more piercing and unpredictable. At least their racket drowned out the party carrying on next door. Somebody must’ve liked it — from my bunker I heard applause after it was over.

Saturday night of the Outsound Summit was dedicated to instrument makers. Co-curated by Outsound founder/quarterback Rent Romus and Edward Shocker, of the Thingamajigs group, the evening proved the maxim that the inventor is not always the most winning exponent of his or her invention. (Another point, demo’d by Walter Funk: It may not be the best idea to put a lasagna pan full of water onto a stage bustling with electric wires, computers and effects boxes, etc.) Among the presenters were new-instrument stalwarts Bart Hopkin and Terry Berlier (Her instruments are often quite beautiful sculptures). David Michalak played them in place of Ms. Berlier; unfortunately, the most impressive-looking one, a wooden dodecahedron riddled with sound-tubes and slapped with spatulas, was a sonic dud), Tom Nunn with Michalak and Stephen Baker, Brenda Hutchinson and Bob Marsh, Sasha Leitman and Walter Funk, and Sung Kim with Dan Ake. Ms. Hutchinson manipulated and sang into her long tube, enhanced by electronics and field recordings while Mr. Marsh, having donned a full-body suit covered in sliced-up water bottles, performed a pantomime to Ms. Hutchinson’s sounds that suggested Godzilla waking up to find he’s been genetically spliced with a jellyfish. It worked.

The highlight performance of the evening belonged to Tom Nunn, supported by Michalak and Baker. Mr. Nunn has been doing what he does for a very long time; he may be fairly said to be one of the granddaddies on the sonic sculpture family tree. His instruments are always a treat to look at and a delight to the ear. He favors nonharmonic, complex resonances such as are generated by metal rods and plates. His Skatchboxes generate insect and electronic sounds from mundane materials like combs, screws, and washers. Nunn debuted a new instrument on this night, a 3’ by 3’ stainless steel plate suspended by balloons in buckets and vibrated by cardboard tubes. Somehow the varying lengths of the tubes make different tones possible when rubbed along the steel. Mr. Nunn’s performing style is deeply rooted in his long, lanky body, never showing any doubt that he knows exactly what sound he wants and how to get it. The groaning sounds coming from the plate plunged the room under a mile-deep glacier, where blue echoes lightly glanced off the icy, inching walls.

Outsound.org’s New Music Summit has been around ten years, and granters like SF Friends of Chamber Music and The Zellerbach Family Foundation are just now beginning to pay attention. The programming that Outsound practices is vital in supplying fresh ideas and energy into the Bay Area’s music culture. Emerging and difficult-to-classify artists are given a forum. The value of these services cannot be overstated. Here’s to ten more years of Outsound.

Kanoko is classically trained on piano and received a BA in music performance from Mills College in 2006.  Her recent interest has primarily been in performing 20th century and contemporary music on piano and koto, and free improvisation in a variety of contexts. SF Bay Area contrabassist Tony Dryer and guitarist IOIOI, visiting from Italy, will perform Kanoko’s graphic scores as a duo.

S21: How has your classical piano training prepared you – or not prepared you – for improvisation and composition?

I think that one very important element that is particular to musical improvisation as opposed to improvisation in other fields is the role of the musical instruments one performs and interacts with, and classical training for me was just a very deep way of building a relationship with my instruments. What has been helpful is not so much the technique, vocabulary or repertoire, but the time, energy and thoughts spent in the process of acquiring these more concrete skills and knowledge. For me, every improvisation I do is like a battle with the instrument I’m playing, in my case, either the piano or koto, and though I cannot really practice improvising by its definition, it’s only by practicing regularly that I feel I can enrich myself as a person, build my stamina and confidence enough to be a suitable match for my instrument to bring out its full potential.

S21: Despite its disappearance from Western classical music training, sometimes improvisation tries to “burst through” all of a player’s mechanisms of control. What do you see as the meaning and inspiration around that?

I’m not so sure that improvisation has disappeared from Western classical music training.  It’s certainly not the focus because of many reasons, but any classical musician, whether a composer or a performer, probably also knows and feels that when the actual music happens there is always an element of improvisation, of ideas that are completely beyond one’s conception coming spontaneously, completely out of the blue, which is the ultimate goal for any technical training that one can get. Perhaps to be able to do that is the only meaning in making music at all.

S21: What directions are embedded in your own graphic scores?  You’ve shared with me that they go beyond telling the performers to generate sounds.

The score itself indicates nothing about the sounds, so if I am directing the performers with the scores at all, I am working with their mental state more than the sound. The sound will be more of just a byproduct. But I don’t know if I can really say comfortably that I am giving any directions.  I want the performers to see what they are getting from me as just something to keep in mind as they determine their own direction.

S21: Does the player then need a lot of background and coaching from you to deliver the realization you’re looking for?

I’m really not looking for any realization in particular, so I cannot coach them but the background I have with each of the performers is important for me so that I trust their musical choices whatever they might be. My choice of the performers, based on my personal experience with them, being familiar with their aesthetics and thought processes, is perhaps my biggest compositional contribution to the pieces.  I did give them this one text by William Morris to consider:

“I…ask you to extend the word art, beyond those matters which are consciously works of art, to take in not only painting and sculpture, and architecture, but the shapes and colours of all household goods, nay, even the arrangement of the fields or tillage and pasture, the management of towns and of our highways of all kinds; in a word, to extend it to the aspect of all the externals of our life.”

S21: When you originally joined the Summit lineup your pieces were to be dedicated to your friend, the Italian guitarist IOIOI, far away and unable to attend.  Now she’s able not only to attend the concert, but to join Tony Dryer onstage in the performance!  How has this changed your compositions?

It hasn’t changed them yet, but I am sure it will once she is on stage playing the music!  There is no way for me to know how it will change, but I am very very excited.

Krys is a sound artist, composer and musician living in Oakland, California. In addition to French horn she plays acoustic and electronic instruments of her own design. Her collection of original instruments includes prepared amplified rocking chairs, bull kelp horns, Leaf Speakers, Gliss Glass (pictured at left) and the Harmonic Slide.  Krys received her M.F.A. in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College and her B.A. in Computers and Music from Dartmouth College.  In addition to performing her own work, Bobrowski plays with the Bay Area-based improvisation ensemble Vorticella.

Her new work, Lift, Loft, Lull, is a series of short pieces exploring the sonic properties of metal pipes and plates and the use of balloons as resonators, performed by the composer and Gino Robair. The compositions have their origins in Bobrowski’s recent instrument prototyping work for the Exploratorium.

S21: Do your pipes, metal plates, and balloons come with any sound-generating history? Is there any “tradition” behind their use in music?

During my artist residency at the Exploratorium, I began experimenting with alternative resonators for musical instruments. I wanted to create an experience that would allow the listener to hear the ‘sonic bloom,’ the moment a resonator comes in tune and couples to a vibrating object.

As part of this project I started researching resonators in traditional and experimental instruments. I came across an interesting photo from the 1950s of someone playing an instrument made of glass rods attached to a series of inflated plastic cushions. The cushions were acting as the resonators for the glass. Later, I learned that the Baschet brothers, Francois and Bernard Baschet, invented this instrument along with dozens of other beautiful sound sculptures, including an inflatable guitar!

This started my exploration of using balloons as resonators, mostly for instruments made out of various kinds of metal: plates, pipes, bars, odd-shaped scraps. I also came across references to Tom Nunn’s and Prent Rodgers’ work with balloons and balloon resonators in a book by Bart Hopkin, ‘Musical Instrument Design.’ This led me to make a version of the ‘balloon gong’ instrument shown in the book.

The results of my sonic explorations and the ‘balloon gong’ will be featured in my composition, Lift Loft Lull.

S21:  Do invented instruments and found objects, with their newness, make different demands on the composer than orchestral instruments, whose capabilities are already well known?

Whether I’m composing for traditional instruments, invented instruments, found objects or any combination of the above, I’m organizing elements of sound. The only difference is what I’m organizing. A lot of my found objects and invented instruments can’t ‘carry a tune’ so I’m not going to use lots of melodic and harmonic structures. Instead I’m going to organize the sounds and the variations of sounds that the instruments can make. This requires some exploration, and, for me, it’s the really fun part: playing and experimenting with the sonic abilities and limitations of each instrument and object. It’s definitely a continuous process; I’m still finding new and interesting sounds to make with my kelp horn–and I’ve been blowing into kelp for over twenty years!

S21:  In writing for these sound-generating items, how do you get beyond just showing what the instrument can do, to its next level of musicality?

I design and build my own instruments because I want to expand the sonic palette in my compositions, improvisations and installations; not simply for the sake of making a new instrument. I’ve had the opportunity to demonstrate my instruments at pre and post concert talks, at the Maker Faire and the Exploratorium. People are always curious. ‘How does it work?’ ‘What does it sound like?’ These events are very enjoyable, and I try to show everything the instrument can do. However, there is a big difference between demonstration and composition.

My main goal in designing instruments is creating interesting music and I always have a musical concept behind the instruments I build. These concepts may be concrete or abstract. With the Gliss Glass it was a bit of both. I was looking for an acoustic system where I could create very long slow glissandos. At the same time I was interested in the social and musical interaction of the performers. A system where the performers depended on each other to change pitches – if no one raised or lowered their part of the instrument the pitches would never change.

S21: Do invented instruments and found objects lend themselves, more than familiar Western instruments, to improvisation than composed music?

In the improvised music ensemble, Vorticella, I play French horn, funnel horn, kelp horn, Gliss Glass and other found and invented instruments. I like having the whole range of sound worlds to draw from. I find that the traditional and experimental instruments in the group often meet in an ambiguous auditory middle ground where it is hard to tell by listening which instrument is which.

With the French horn I can use traditional techniques, even blow the occasional horn call; but, I can also sing into the horn, modify the instrument by pulling out slides, use a pie plate as a mute, etc. The resulting sounds and textures bring the instrument closer to found objects and invented instruments played by other members of the group. At the same time, while I can’t play a major scale on the kelp or Gliss Glass, I can find and hold certain pitches and often try to match a note on the cello or a harmonic emanating from one of the gongs.

S21:  You’ve recruited Gino Robair to be your duo partner in the Summit performance. (He’s also premiering a piece on the same concert.) How did you come to choose him in particular?

I’ve always admired Gino’s abilities as a percussionist and his musicality in any genre. Since meeting at Mills College in 1989, we’ve collaborated on a number of projects over the years including his opera ‘I Norton,’ my ‘Gliss Glass’ ensemble pieces, and many improvisation duo performances in the Bay Area and Europe.

Gino and I first performed together in the Mills gamelan ensemble directed by Jody Diamond. The group played both traditional and experimental pieces on the wonderful American gamelan built by Lou Harrison and Bill Colvig. Shortly after Mills, in the early 90s, Gino asked me to write a piece for him and one of my favorite gamelan instruments, the slenthem. I ended up writing a duo work, “Yellow Flower Burial”. The composition is a set of three ‘game’ pieces loosely drawing on elements found in traditional gamelan music. We’ve performed this piece together on a number of occasions including the premiere at the University of Redlands.

When Gino agreed to perform with me at the Outsound Summit, I took the opportunity to revisit some of the same compositional ideas from over fifteen years ago. Lift Loft Lull picks up on both the ‘game’ theme and some of the gamelan concepts, including abstractions of kotekan (fast, interlocking parts) and balungan (core melody). There is also plenty of room for structured improvisation. I’m excited to be premiering this work with Gino.

Andrew Raffo Dewar (b.1975 Rosario, Argentina) is an Assistant Professor in New College at the University of Alabama.  He’s a composer, improviser, soprano saxophonist and ethnomusicologist. He’s studied and/or performed with Steve Lacy, Anthony Braxton, Bill Dixon, Alvin Lucier, and Milo Fine. He has also had a long involvement with Indonesian traditional and experimental music. His work has been performed by the Flux Quartet, the Koto Phase ensemble and Sekar Anu. As an improviser and performer Andrew has shared the stage with a plethora of musicians worldwide, both the celebrated and the little-known.

As a member of his own Interactions Quartet, Andrew will premiere “Strata” (2011), dedicated to Eduardo Serón and inspired by the Argentine artist’s 2008 series of paintings, “La Libertad Es Redonda” (“Freedom is Round”).  His description tells us that “Through a combination of improvisation and notation, performers negotiate several “layers” of written material, mixing and matching components that are eventually assembled into nested counterpoint.”

S21:  You’re traveling quite a distance to premiere your piece at the Outsound Summit but it’s certainly not the first time you’ve been here.  How did you become associated with the San Francisco Bay Area new music community?

I lived in Oakland for roughly two years (2000-2002) before heading off to graduate school at Wesleyan University in Connecticut to study with people like Anthony Braxton and Alvin Lucier. My first exposure to the Bay Area community was, if I remember correctly, a two-day workshop with legendary bassist/composer Alan Silva organized by Damon Smith at pianist Scott Looney’s performance space in West Oakland in 2000, which was an excellent experience.  After that, I worked regularly — I think it was weekly — in a “guided improvisation” workshop ensemble at Looney’s organized by clarinetist Jacob Lindsay and guitarist Ernesto Diaz-Infante, and separate improvisation sessions with violist/composer Jorge Boehringer, which were both situations where I had the opportunity to play with many great Bay Area folks, like trumpeter Liz Albee and many others, which was wonderful. Around that time I was walking by guitarist/composer John Shiurba’s house with my horn, and he happened to be outside watering his garden. He asked me what kind of music I played, and I think the combination of the perplexed look on my face and my inability to answer his question easily is why we connected that day — he invited me in to chat, and when I saw a framed photo of Anthony Braxton on his mantle (whose work I’ve appreciated since my late teens, and who I’ve had the great opportunity to study and perform with) I knew I was “home.”

S21:  What is it about our community, and the Bay Area members of your Interactions Quartet, which keeps you coming back?

For me, some of the most interesting and truly experimental music being made today is happening in the Bay Area, and I think it’s because there are so many artists doing their own thing, who don’t feel particularly bound to specific scenes, idioms, historical baggage, etc. I think Tim Perkis’s documentary, “Noisy People,” highlights that quirky and eclectic — but deep — community. Of course there is Mills College, which has been a magnet for decades, but there are also many inventor-types out there that are not only creating new instruments and technologies, but new ways of putting sounds together. I dont know, maybe it’s the open skies of that Old West “pioneer spirit” floating over the hills (or the haze of “manifest destiny”).

As far as this particular quartet of musicians I’ve assembled twice now, which includes percussionist/composer Gino Robair, guitarist/composer John Shiurba, and oboist/composer Kyle Bruckmann, we’re talking about young masters — who wouldn’t want to work with them?! Beyond my enjoyment in the strange and interesting timbral combinations possible with this group, each of those artists are singular in their approach to their instruments, and their mastery of music-making encourages me to work harder.  As one of my other mentors, the great soprano saxophonist/composer Steve Lacy told me, the best way to continue to learn and grow is to work with people who are stronger musicians than you are, and that push you into new areas of exploration. This quartet has allowed me to take aesthetic chances, which is where I want to be.

S21: You’re going to be playing in your own ensemble.  When you write your own part, does its future playability, by somebody other than you, become a consideration?

To be honest, 90% of my compositions at this point are only performed once, and those are usually the works I play on, so it’s not an issue. The other 10% that have been performed more than once are “future-proof,” written for anyone to play, typically in through-composed standard notation. I think I communicate a lot in rehearsals that isn’t on the page, and in the more graphically-oriented works I have “performance instruction” pages, so things are fairly clearly documented should anyone in the future want to work with the material — but I definitely compose for “now” and not “then.”

S21: I have been to hear your pieces before and looking over the players’ shoulders, I’ve always found some curious graphic on the music stand.  And I know there is a visual art inspiration for your new work.  How will you incorporate this element this time around?

I do have a fair number of pieces that use alternative or invented notation in different ways, sometimes on its own, sometimes in combination with traditional notation. I’ve also used photographs as structural devices a couple times. In my 2007-08 piece, “Six Lines of Transformation,” I used the visual idea of a palimpsest to create a compositional structure that is layered, erased, and transformed, but which has echoes of the previously sounded materials, and in 2004′s “Music for Eight Bamboo Flutes,” which was recorded in Bali, I used the imagery of dissonant crashing waves on Lake Maninjau in West Sumatra as the conceptual departure point to compose the piece — so there is something for me, I guess, in the use of visual/aural combinations for inspiration.

In this new work, entitled “Strata,” inspired by Argentine painter Eduardo Serón’s series of paintings “Libertad es Redonda” (“freedom is round”), I don’t use any graphic notation or images, it’s all standard notation, but I use his painting (number six in the series) as the organizing structure and inspiration for the piece, though not the image itself. The painting is a piece of concrete art that looks like an off-center, oblong bullseye with four rings, all using wonderful color composition. So, in a somewhat obvious act of translation, I’ve composed a series of 32 “loops” (4×2=8, 8×4=32) divided into four “layers” the four performers choose from, with each layer’s materials being introduced one at a time, until all four layers are in play simultaneously. Because of the bold, clear, and deceptively “simple” materials used in Serón’s painting, I’ve also decided to use “simple” elements — a diatonic scale, consonant harmonies, a somewhat consistent and regular rhythmic pulse, etc.

S21:  I’m intrigued by the thought of “nested counterpoint” created from improvisation with written material.  What system have you created to make the music resolve into that texture?

The neologic term (I think it is, anyway) I’m using here — “nested counterpoint” — is the way I’m conceptualizing the interactions between the four “layers” of composed material, beginning from a “center” layer and moving outward. You might also call it “indeterminate” or “stochastic” counterpoint, but in this piece, I think “nested” makes the most sense. Because the final form will be different each time it is performed, the structure is what Stockhausen called a “polyvalent” form — Earle Brown’s “Available Forms” being another example in this same tradition. Conceived of as four concentric circles like Seron’s painting, each layer encompasses materials from the previous layers, and all the loops have a formal relationship to one another. So, beginning with the smallest circle in the center, as you move outward, the lines become longer, and the earlier layers’ materials are “nested” within them.

Outsound acquired a Board of Directors and incorporated its bad self in 2009.  Now with a 501(c)(3) IRS determination in hand, it’s a stalwart provider of experimental music, sound art, found sounds, improvisation, noise, musique concrete, minimalism, and any other kind of sound that is too weird for a mainstream gig in the Bay Area.

The upcoming 2011 Outsound New Music Summit is the 10th annual, running from July 17-23, 2011. All events will take place at the San Francisco Community Music Center, 344 Capp Street, San Francisco. Eager listeners can purchase advance tickets online.

Sunday July 17: Touch the Gear Exposition
Outsound’s free opening event allows the public to roam among the Summit’s musicians and sound artists and their sonic inventions, asking questions, making noise and learning how these darn things work.

Monday July 18: Discussion Panel: Elements of non-idiomatic compositional strategies
Another free public event in which composers Krys Bobrowski, Andrew Raffo Dewar, Kanoko Nishi and Gino Robair will discuss the joys and pains of creating new works some of which to be premiered in The Art of Composition.  The public is invited to participate in a Q&A session.

Wednesday July 20: FACE MUSIC
This concert is devoted to the voice, the world’s oldest instrument, and artists who expand its horizons: Theresa Wong, Joseph Rosenzweig, Aurora Josephson, and Bran…(POS).

Thursday July 21: The Freedom of Sound
A night of operatic free expression, and power of spontaneous sound from Tri-Cornered Tent Show featuring guest vocalist Dina Emerson, Oluyemi and Ijeoma Thomas’ Positive Knowledge, and Tom Djll’s “lowercase big band”, Grosse Abfahrt with special guest Alfred Harth (A23H).

Friday July 22: The Art of Composition
Gino Robair premieres his Aguascalientes suite based on scenes captured by Jose Guadalupe Posada, Andrew Raffo Dewar’s Interactions Quartet performs Strata (2011) dedicated to Eduardo Serón, Kanoko Nishi premieres her graphic scores along with bassist Tony Dryer, and Krys Bobrowski offers Lift, Loft and Lull, a series of short pieces exploring the sonic properties of metal pipes and plates and the use of balloons as resonators.

Saturday July 23: Sonic Foundry Too!
In a sequel to the first Sonic Foundry performance in 2006, 10 musical instrument inventors are paired up in 5 collaborations: Tom Nunn, Steven Baker, Bob Marsh, Dan Ake, Sung Kim, Walter Funk, Brenda Hutchinson, Sasha Leitman, Bart Hopkins, and Terry Berlier.

One of the most exciting areas for new music in recent years has been in the field of choral music. In the next two weeks, two choirs devoted to new music—one a veteran organization, the other an exciting, young rookie—will be presenting important programs of new choral works in both coasts.

The rookie is Baltimore’s Anima Nova Chamber Choir, which will present a concert of works by Eric Whitacre, Tarik O’Regan, Michael Rickelston, Sean Doyle, and Anima Nova founder and director, Jake Runestad. The concert, at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 8 at St. Ignatius Church, 740 North Calvert Street in Baltimore, will benefit the Peabody Preparatory’s “Jr. Bach” scholarship, which provides opportunities for underprivileged students to attend the Peabody Prep.

The veteran ensemble is San Francisco’s Volti, which for the past 32 years has been at the vanguard of new choral music in the United States under the direction of its founder, Robert Geary. Their season finale will be presented three times (Friday, May 13 at 8:00 p.m. at the Berkley City Club; Saturday, May 14 at 8:00 p.m. at First Lutheran Church in Palo Alto; and Sunday, May 15 at 4:00 p.m. at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco’s Presidio) and features works commissioned by Volti, two of which, Matthew Barnson’s Genesis and Elliot Gyger’s voice (and nothing more), are world premieres.

Barnson composed his Genesis, a re-interpretation of the biblical story of creation through poetry, at Volti’s Choral Arts Laboratory, its annual commissioning and residency program where composers under 35 work with Volti’s singers, Artistic Director Robert Geary and Composer in Residence Mark Winges to create a new work for choir in a workshop setting, culminating in its premiere at the end of a given season. Barnson describes Genesis as “three tableaux that are independent of one another but dependent upon the Book of Genesis to give them meaning. Each is a subversive exegesis upon the original story of creation and posits a slight, but vital alternative in the narrative, affecting the outcome of the myth in ways that are sometimes insignificant (but poignant) and sometimes darkly different. Each of the poets whose work I set refracted my original intentions. For instance, the outer movements of the triptych actually retell stories from the book of Genesis. In the second, middle movement I set Richard Siken, a poet whose ecstatic and anxious book, Crush is replete with Biblical images. Beyond the images of apples (knowledge but death) is the feature that the last two poems share: death deferred.”

Elliot Gyger’s voice (and nothing more) reflects the composer’s interest in “language and communication in their own right.” The original germ for what would become voice (and nothing more) was planted ten years ago, when Gyger was a graduate student at Harvard University, where he heard a lecture by musicologist Mauro Calcagno. “Occasionally as a composer,” one encounters by chance a piece of text (or other extra-musical stimulus) for which one may have no immediate use, but which makes such a strong impact that one files it away for future reference. Among the many fascinating sources which Calcagno discussed was a passionate diatribe on the transience of the voice from Emanuele Tesauro’s La metafisica del niente (The Metaphysics of Nothing).

“When Bob approached me to write a piece for Volti’s 2010-2011 season, I decided that the time was ripe for Tesauro’s words, which demanded a similarly flamboyant treatment. I considered a setting in two or even more languages, but decided that the original Italian was powerful and direct enough on its own – as well as being far more naturally vocal than any English rendering could be. The piece is, however, elaborately layered in purely musical terms. The voices are divided into three
groups: a solo quartet is flanked by two SATB choirs, allowing for subtle variations in weight and emphasis, as well as antiphonal and spatial effects.

“At least on face value, Tesauro’s polemic is vehemently anti-voice -nothing is more worthless, more vile, more imperfect. I originally thought that I needed to pair it with something else that saw the voice in a more positive light. However, I eventually realized that this was unnecessary: one of the delightful paradoxes about the text is the way it exploits so powerfully that which it claims to despise, i.e. the power of the voice. Tesauro’s rhetoric is not merely literary, but demands to be spoken aloud, with its compelling use of imagery, alliteration, and above all rhythm (repetition and acceleration).

“The title is similarly ambiguous. The phrase is a rough translation of the Latin saying “Vox praetereaque nihil”, which is normally used to mean “all style and no substance” – but it can also be read as an expression of amazement at the ability of a great orator (or indeed a great choir!) to achieve so much with voice (and nothing more).”

With such a lively local pool of talent, it’s natural that it has its own festival – Music for People and Thingamajigs — celebrating its 14th year from September 22nd to 25th, 2011. Edward Schocker and Dylan Bolles started it at Mills College in 1997, and it’s grown up to include a non-profit parent organization, Thingamajigs, and a profusion of programs including performances and arts education.

The festival Call for Proposals just went out this week.  Artists and composers working with invented instruments and/or alternate tuning systems, and performing ensembles featuring either one or both, are invited to submit proposals.  The deadline is June 15, 2011, although proposals which come in on or before May 15, 2011 will be included in festival grant proposals “and will have a greater chance of receiving outside funding,” says founder Schocker.

Proposals should include a bio of the artist/performer/composer(s), a specific description of the work or performance to be considered, and documentation of the submitted work (CD or link to a website).  Thingamajigs prefers electronically submitted proposals, sent to people@thingamajigs.org, but will accept hard copies at  Thingamajigs.org, 5000 MarcArthur Blvd PMB 9826, Oakland, CA, 94613, USA.

This year’s festival features up-and-coming indie band Birds & Batteries, fresh off a national tour including SxSW, and Causing a Tiger, an all-star trio featuring Carla Kihlstedt (Tin Hat, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), Matthias Bossi (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), and Shahzad Ismaily (Secret Chiefs 3). Leading up to these sets will be a dizzying array of eclectic performances, including Gojogo, Telepathy, The Genie, Loren Chasse, Erik Jekabson & the Bay Area Composers Big Band, and Wiener Kids. Among these will be sets of new music by composers William Brittelle, Ryan Brown, Dan Becker, and a world premiere by Jonathan Russell, all of which push at the edges of modern music and are as voracious in their influences as the festival itself.

More information on the artists, including sound clips and photos, can be found on Switchboard’s website and follow the Festival on Facebook by Sunday for a chance to get a free download by headliners Birds & Batteries.

But wait, there’s more… if you don’t live in San Francisco you can still check-out the show – they’ll be streaming it live from their website on Sunday!

Other Minds 16
Jewish Community Center, San Francisco
Concert Two, Friday, March 4, 2011

There’s a shard of spotlight on my shoulder. A music stand hovers off the sphere of peripheral vision; under it, the shadow of fingers curl like the violin scroll toward which they crawl, spiderish. The fingers belong to a violinist of the Del Sol String Quartet; on both sides of the audience the quartet and the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble are arrayed up the steps toward the back of the hall. In forward vision is percussionist Andrew Schloss, standing behind a computer and percussion-controller on a table. Over these hover his wired drumsticks, sometimes striking the controller yet often just floating, stirring the atoms above it, sending flocks of musical messages to various slave percussives onstage, offstage, and hung from the ceiling above. The composer is David A. Jaffe, protegé of Henry Brant; the percussion-controller builder, German-born, Seattle-based Trimpin, master of MIDI and commander of solenoid soldiers.

The Space Between Us might be called a “cubistic” composition. The subject is suggested by the title, or “what can be communicated and what remains unsaid,” in the composer’s words, as, with sticks held aloft in a gentle but dramatic gesture, percussionist-conductor Schloss signals yet another beginning, another foray into the problem of separation and identity. Somewhat reminiscent of Ives’ The Unanswered Question, each new attempt answers nothing but only brings more questions to the surface, adding facets to the cubist puzzle in the hearer’s mind. Strings quiver in mournful, canonic dirges in one phase; other times they signal impatience in brusque, un-pretty gestures. Later on, massed plucking is attempted, to better match the percussive chatter. Desperate glissandi from the computer-driven piano onstage are gobbled and hurled back by cello and viola, all to no avail. The space remains and separation seems unbridgeable, yet the sonic discussion has pushed the gloom back for at least a few moments of transcendent, clouds-clearing beauty. The conversation is aptly dedicated to Henry Brant, an Other Minds spiritual father.

Next up was I Wayan Balawan, guitarist/composer of Bali. OM 16 marked the first appearance in the West of this gifted young man of Olympian technique and globe-trotting musical mind. He also possesses an awareness of stagecraft and audience engagement, reflected not only in his pleasing hybrid music but also humorous asides which broke the performer-audience barrier, and a precise approach to costuming. Onstage with him were, from left, Balinese compatriots I Nyoman Suwida and I Nyman Suarsana on gamelan instruments. They were clothed in traditional Balinese musician dress: Nehru-ish jackets, beaked fezzes, sari-like sashes and bare feet. Balawan himself kept the hat but otherwise he and the added rhythm section (Scott Amendola and Dylan Johnson on drums and bass) decked themselves casually. Sort of a stylistic continuum, with Balawan as the mid-point.

All the brilliance of Balinese music was in evidence as the trio launched into the first of three numbers (Amendola and Johnson laid out at first), with Balawan leading on double-neck electric guitar and voice, and xylophone doubling and drum accompanying. Balawan has all the chops and effects of any guitar god you can name, and his lightning-fast melodies were as often hammered out on the fretboards with one or both hands as they were plucked traditionally. Another electric guitar stood ready on a stand; both instruments were routed through various samplers and synths and footpedals. The tunes shone the happy sunlit sound of dissonance-free scales and world-pop beats. Balawan opened the final number with a demonstration of the hocketing melody as laid out by the Balinese players on each side of a metallophone; part by part, slowly, then briskly together, then doubling with guitar at warp speed in the tune’s performance, and the audience slurped it up like Singapore noodles. This kid is going places.

Agata Zubel of Poland opened night two’s second set with Parlando, voice + electronics in a rigorous yet easy-to-digest demonstration of vocal/computer self-accompaniment of the non-looping kind. One might have expected more integration of the hairier side of contemporary vocal extension (Diamanda Galas, Phil Minton, Shelley Hirsch), but Zubel’s range of techniques was focused, precise, and mostly omitted noises in favor of dramatic gestures. The sounds and ambiences immediately brought to mind Cathy Berberian (more on her, later), but then an outbreak of avant-beatboxing shocked one back to this century. Then, after just eight minutes, it was over. (Zubel was given more of a presence on Thursday night.)

Friday night’s ultimate act was the duo of Han Bennink (drums, Holland) and Fred Frith (guitar, devices, Oakland, by way of England). About esteemed Dutch drummer, improviser, and provocateur Han Bennink’s stage presence, one’s first impression is of a pair of malformed albino salami – wait, those are his legs? – revealed via Bennink’s now-patented stage getup of beachcomber’s shorts, teeshirt and headband. All that was missing was the metal detector, although had there been one available there’s no doubt Bennink would have beat some music out of it. As it was, everything within the man-child’s reach was fair game. That reach extended beyond the stage at times – backstage, an unguarded piano was hijacked for a short joyride; then he turned his back to us and set his bum on the drum and wailed away on the wooden stool; later, Bennink took to rattling his sticks on the railings flanking the audience, giving a fair approximation of gamelan, no doubt an intentional nod to the Balinese set that came before. And for a long while, Bennink simply sat spread-legged on the floor and ecstatically pounded it with his palms, generating an insistent beat in nearly every performing permutation. He also had a snare drum onstage for a few demonstrations of his peerless brush technique.

Bennink is one of the few improvisers around who can make Fred Frith look like the conservative guy onstage. Frith surely knew what he was in for, and kept his part well under control and always gorgeously musical. He even drew some laughs of his own, strumming the strings of his lap-held guitar with paint brushes. I’ve seen him drop rice grains on his strings a few times before, and this time the stunt made its beautiful, random plinks fit Bennink’s manic-percussive thrash just right, somehow. These two together, who can turn practically any liminal sound-construction into compelling music without ever suggesting a tune or idiom, could lay claim to being the world’s greatest bad buskers.

Concert Three, Saturday, March 5, 2011

The final program of Other Minds 16 had its first half given over to the Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, a big catch for the festival. With Mr. Andriessen, one expects the unexpected, and the ensuing three compositions did not disappoint, in instrumentation, structure, or performance. Monica Germino performed Xenia for voice and violin, informing us that it had something to do with chickens and that Charles Amirkhanian, OM’s Artistic Director, had offered a prize to anyone who could find the reference. As it happened, glissandi and telegraphic triplets were more in evidence. Germino’s work was characterized by grace, understatement and deliberate pacing. For Passeggiata in Tram in America e ritorno, she was joined by Eric Zivian on piano and Cristina Zavalloni, voice. The setting of the mad poet Dino Campana’s words was composed for Zavalloni, and she owned it completely. In fact she rather took over the stage from that point on, the high point following with Letter from Cathy. ‘Cathy’ being Berberian, wife of Andriessen’s teacher Luciano Berio and one of the great new music vocal interpreters of the previous century. A harp, contrabass, and percussion were added for this dynamic and humorous run-through. Andriessen’s setting followed the light, chatty tone of the letter, emphasizing the idiomatic passages “working like a beaver,” “cut my legs short,” and “Not bad, huh!” – this last declaimed by Zavalloni, her raptor’s eyes staring down the room, daring us to giggle.

Andriessen clearly has a soft spot for Zavalloni – “the first singer I’ve met since Cathy Berberian who has the same musicality and flexibility,” he says in the program notes – and the two of them cavorted their way through an improvisation for piano and voice that showed Andriessen’s skill at grafting diverse styles together on the fly. Having experienced such a rare treat – a major composer creating new music in real-time – one forgave the somewhat overextended length of the result.

Kyle Gann’s Time Does Not Exist, for piano, was a straightforward composition of music for which one needed no reference to its programmatic underpinnings to enjoy (it’s about the spiralling, looping journey of psychological therapy). Pianist Sarah Cahill, well-known to Bay Area and OM audiences, gave it a fine, graceful touch and flawless execution. The little pearls of sound that floated from the keyboard were atonal and non-resolving in a Feldmanesque way. That’s fitting, as Feldman’s late music was all about erasing the perception of time. One could have sat, bathed in these exquisite sounds all night. (Gann had more music presented in the Thursday night program.)

The final set of OM 16 brought us to the problem of Jazz, a genre and culture that’s today locked in the incubation ward of its past. Jazz struggles not just with the contortions of an ingrown musical language and assaults on its identity, but the cloud of vernacular speech that surrounds it, packages it, mocks it, and delivers it to Starbucks loudspeakers. Hence, Jason Moran’s Slang. Moran, a certified genius (MacArthur) and composer of studied eclecticism, as well as a fleet and well-versed pianist who refers to Cecil Taylor like candied ginger refers to the blood-stirring bite of the primal root, gave us a study in Jazz culture/practice that drew a line from every book in the canon. Words, words, words, somebody or other once quipped. That’s where Moran’s Slang starts and ends, with the jam-session argot of cool cats. Boldly declaimed (by Alicia Hall Moran) or playfully babbled by children (on tape), we were presented this litany of jive in numerous incantations and incarnations that wove in and out of the sounds from the assembled quintet of piano, guitar, voice, bass, and percussion. Actually, it started with clapping music, as the five players made their way to their stations from backstage, smacking hands in syncopation, while canned instructional recordings of extremely White Male voices provided an ironic frame. Interestingly, another Steve Reich reference came out later on, when the recorded voices were electronically clipped to just their sibilant sounds, building via phasing loops into a freight-train rhythm, thereafter segueing into a drum solo by Nasheet Waits. Subsequently, Moran proved he’s checked out Anthony Braxton, as a multilayered stack of ‘pulse tracks’ clicked into place before Tarus Mateen gave us a lively update on Slam Stewart’s bass/vocal doubling routine. Mary Halvorson (a mainstay of recent Braxton groupings), applied a wobbly effect to her guitar, sounding like an anti-autotune feature, which lent her contributions an endearingly goofy quality. Probably the strongest quality of this music, aside from the high caliber of performance, was its revelry in a complexity-generating multiplicity – of voices, styles, rhythms, textures, and cultural commentary – offering not just a lot to listen to at one time but generating a conversational chorus, as befitting the subject: Many voices pursuing many agendas, providing a raucous update of the old psalm, “Make a joyous noise unto the Lord.”

After sixteen years, the Other Minds Festival occupies a comfortable place in the San Francisco cultural landscape, with expanding programs dedicated to young composers, fostering new works, and, now, travel (a trip to Iceland is planned for next October – see otherminds.org for more info). We congratulate the OM staff and artists for a job well done and look forward to next year’s concerts.

– Tom Djll  [all photos: Michaelz1 at Flickr]