Author: Paul Muller

Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Ojai

At the 2018 Ojai Music Festival

June 7, the opening day of the 2018 Ojai Music Festival, featured the usual welcome variety of lectures, interviews and pop-up concerts as well as performances of music by two notable mid-20th century Italian experimentalists. The first day of the festival was picture perfect and a large crowd milled about the outdoor venues, meeting and greeting. There was little evidence of the disastrous Thomas Fire of five months prior, and spirits were as sunny as the weather.

At 6:00 PM, Luciano Berio’s challenging Sequenza IXa for Clarinet, played by Vincente Alberola, was heard from the Libbey Park gazebo, to good effect. The amplification and the open spaces were nicely matched and Alberola’s precise articulations and dynamic nuances were clearly heard throughout the scattered crowd. This sensitive and virtuosic performance was received with enthusiastic applause.

At 7:30 PM somewhat larger crowd gathered for La lontanaza nostalgica utopica futura by Luigi Nono featuring Festival Music Director Patricia Kopatchinskaja on violin and Los Angeles-based composer Scott Worthington at the controls of the electronics. The program notes proclaimed: “A dynamic duet between solo violin and spatial amplified sound transforms the Libbey Park into an all-encompassing and immersive aural environment.” A seemingly tall order, but the array of large speakers positioned around the space and the formidable sound system panel looked promising. La lontanaza nostalgica utopica futura consists of 8 recorded tracks and a solo violin, and these were seamlessly integrated into the speaker system so that good hearing in the open spaces of the park was not an issue.

The piece began with the speakers filling the space with the soft sounds of what seemed to be string players warming up or tuning. A few odd words were heard, then some thumps and squeaks before a series of rapidly complex runs in the violin established an air of suspense and uncertainty. The recorded sounds often came from single speakers in opposite corners of the space, and this added spatial perception to the overall experience. The crisp precision of the live violin phrases was helpfully distinct from the recording. There is little form or structure evident in this work – at times the sounds were fast and intense while at other times slower and softly atmospheric. The violinist moved randomly about to a series of music stands located throughout the area, and this served to increase the sense of mystery. The crowd followed Ms Kopatchinskaja in a great mass, cell cameras in hand, but this did not disturb the performer whose furtive movements added to the drama of the moment.

This is complex, nuanced music, with stretches of quiet tension mixed with sharply phrased passages brimming with anxiety. I first heard La lontanaza performed indoors, in a converted warehouse and the atmosphere there gave the piece a sense of tension that was distinctly urban. Outdoors in Libbey Park the music lost none of its power, but rather emerged as more rustic and primal. In Ojai, even the ambient noise from the streets and some quiet talking among the crowd fit right in with the recordings, and actually added to the performance. As the afternoon light faded, Ms Kopatchinskaja became a spirit-like presence moving among the darkened trees. A long, looped final violin note signaled the conclusion of the piece and the crowd slowly dissipated, as if released from a magical spell.

The Ojai Music Festival runs through Sunday, June 10.

Photos courtesy of Bonnie Wright. Used with permission.

by Paul Muller
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Events, Los Angeles

Southland Ensemble at Automata

The 14th annual Dog Star Orchestra concert series kicked off on Saturday, June 2, 2018 at Automata in Chinatown. A new music tradition, the Dog Star series this year will present nine concerts over two weeks at various venues around Los Angeles. This occasion was a performance by the Southland Ensemble of Byzantine Rites, a new work by Laura Steenberge. A standing room-only crowd wedged itself into the cozy spaces of Automata to experience a remarkable exploration of medieval chant, contemporary music and a wide variety of engaging visual manifestations.

Byzantine Rites is the result of research by the composer into seventeen settings of the medieval Byzantine chant Cherubic Hymn. Byzantine Rites is, in fact, Byzantine in its very structure: there are five separate movements – having five different embedded sections within – all performed serially without pause. Different combinations of instruments were used including woodwinds, strings, percussion and horns fashioned from PVC pipe. A number of physical objects were employed as well, lights, wide rolls of aluminum foil, several large bags of plastic straws and a suspended microphone lowered into a large cardboard tube.

As Ms. Steenberge wrote in the program notes: “The Byzantine aesthetic seeks never-ending, constantly unfolding symbolism, layering image, sound, light, space, smell, movement and text. Each action has both a pragmatic and a symbolic function.” Accordingly, the space at Automata was fully exploited for this aesthetic incorporating instruments, voices and various physical objects, At the rear of the stage was a high balcony, accessed by stairs behind a wall, and this allowed the performers to occupy different places and levels for different actions.

Byzantine Rites begins with a simple chant melody on a bass flute that instantly establishes a strong sense of the mystical. The humming of notes into the instrument while it was played and the solemn ringing of chimes added an exotic feel. As this was proceeding, plastic straws were dropped from the raised balcony down to the stage, impinging on a microphone. The amplified patter provided an intriguing percussive element to the texture as well as a dramatic visual component to the scene. The rain of straws increased, and soon great clumps were sent falling downward from above. The overall pattern for Byzantine Rites was immediately established to include musical, physical and visual elements throughout.

Another section of the piece featured more flute melody and the hoisting of a length of PVC pipe up to the balcony using a long rope. The pipe was cut into roughly one foot pieces and sent back down to the stage where they were played like an old rams horn trumpet. These sounds were looped and then mixed together with a live bassoon and saxophone. The long, sustained tones created some interesting harmonic patterns and included an effective dissonance that supplied a more contemporary feel.

In a later section, strings and voices refocused to the original medieval sensibility with drones and a warm harmony, while large rolls aluminum foil were unfurled from the balcony down the back wall to the stage. Two electric lights suspended from long cords were then lowered along the foil. In the darkened spaces these looked very much like candles shining out in some dim cathedral interior. The solemn music, the staging on different levels, the physical and the visual components of Byzantine Rites all contributed to the impression that a sort of liturgy was occurring.

Towards the finish a large cardboard tube was hung from the balcony and a microphone lowered within to create various tweets and sounds from feedback. This was accompanied by the strings, continuing with the quietly calm melody, while the woodwinds played long, slow tones that hinted at anxiety as they fell in and out of dissonance. It was as if the old, comfortable world of the Byzantine medieval was giving way to an apprehensive present. The music ceased and the lights along the foil dimmed to complete darkness at the end. Byzantine Rites is an extraordinary combination of the old, the new, the musical and the visual, all artfully combined to create an experience that engages the senses, the emotions and the memory.

The Southland Ensemble is:

Casey Anderson
Jennifer Bewerse
Eric KM Clark
Orin Sie Hildestad
Jonathan Stehney
Cassia Streb
Christine Tavolacchi

with special guest Cody Putman

The Dog Star Orchestra concert series continues through June 16 at various locations around Los Angeles.

 

by Paul Muller
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Just Intonation, Los Angeles

The Cantata at REDCAT

The much anticipated work The Cantata or, You are the star in God’s eye, by Wolfgang von Schweinitz was performed May 23, 2018 at the REDCAT venue in Disney Hall. A joint production of wasteLAnd and Microfest, the evening featured the wasteLAnd collective musicians conducted by Nicholas Deyoe and the recorded voice of Friederike Mayröcker’s original text with the English translation projected on a large screen. A fine crowd filled REDCAT to hear this extraordinary piece as it explored the intersection of Austrian avant-garde literature and 21st century music written in just intonation.

The Cantata has its origins in the prose of Friederike Mayröcker, considered one of the most important figures in post-war Austrian letters. Her poetry and radio plays have been a part of contemporary European literature since 1946, and the libretto for The Cantata was written as a remembrance of her long-time partner, the Viennese poet Ernst Jandl. This was produced by Bavarian Radio in 2003 with original music scored by Wolfgang von Schweinitz. Mayröcker once described her artistic process in Heimspiel (the Journal of the Austrian public radio station) as “I live in pictures. I see everything in pictures, my complete past, memories are pictures. I transform pictures into language by climbing into the picture. I walk into it until it becomes language.” Accordingly, the text of The Cantata is filled with all sorts of vivid imagery: organic, concrete, abstract and spiritual. Written shortly after the passing of Ernst Jandl, the text includes a number of arias that are especially moving –  even religious – inspired by the cantatas of JS Bach.

For this performance, the music for The Cantata was completely revised between 2016 and 2017 for the wasteLAnd collective. As von Schweinitz wrote in the program notes: “When I rewrote the score for the wasteLAnd collective, I left the temporal and harmonic structure of the composition in its original form, as well as most of the soprano part, with just a few minor modifications for Stephanie Aston’s voice, but two of the ensemble parts are entirely new, and I’ve drastically changed the other four parts, adding a lot of new melodic and harmonic details in the attempt to improve the elegance and efficiency of my counterpoint – with the aim of trying to optimize the chances for the musicians to accomplish all of their tuning and performance tasks with greatest success and pleasure.”

The Cantata opens with the recorded text of Friederike Mayröcker’s libretto, spoken by the poet in German. The English translation by Donna Stonecipher was projected on a large screen behind the musicians. The music began with a warm, nostalgic feel and a beguiling sweetness that perfectly captured the forest and flowers described in this initial part of the text. The work proceeded with continuously spoken words accompanied by long stretches of instrumental and vocal music. Sometimes the feeling was wistfully regretful while at other times more forceful and dramatic, but always driven by the imagery of the prose. The arias were most particularly powerful when they dealt with the sacred and the metaphysical, the music soaring like a luminous chorale tune in a solemn Passion. Ms. Aston, coping with an almost continuous vocal line that often included great jumps in pitch, brilliantly applied her strong and agile voice to the expressive libretto. The powerful brass section of the wasteLAnd collective provided a solid foundation of German sensibility. For the mostly English-speaking audience, the unconventional pitches and harmonies in the tuning actually served to intensify the sense of immersion in another culture, and nicely complimented the elegant German prose heard in the recording. A profound silence was observed at the conclusion of this work, followed by loud cheering and sustained applause. The Cantata or, You are the star in God’s eye is a moving journey through poignancy and sorrow as seen through the words of Friederike Mayröcker and felt in the music of Wolfgang von Schweinitz.

by Paul Muller
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles

Cold Blue Solos in Santa Monica

Cold Blue Music presented an evening of solos as the latest in the Soundwaves series of new music concerts held at the Santa Monica Public Library. Music by Daniel Lentz and Michael Byron was performed, with the composers in attendance. Pianist Vicki Ray and harpist Tasha Smith Godínez were on hand as soloists along with a nice crowd arriving on a perfect spring evening.

River of 1,000 Streams (2016) by Daniel Lentz was first up, featuring Ms. Ray at the piano and accompanied by a prerecorded track of fragments of the piece that were played through two large speakers on the stage. Ms. Ray wore an earbud that provided synchronization cues during the performance. River of 1,000 Streams began with thick tremolos played in the lowest register of the piano, joined by a deep tremolo rumble issuing from the speakers. The composer is quoted in the program notes stating that this piece was “conceived one early morning on the banks of the Yellowstone River.” Accordingly, there is a strong, flowing feel, surging and swelling like a powerful force of nature. The sounds coming from the speakers consisted of up to eleven different layers, weaving in and out of the texture. These were nicely complimented by the piano, and the overall result was a dark, roiling tide of sound, constantly in motion.

Although seemingly simple in structure and consistently dense, River of 1,000 Streams continuously evolved over the course of the performance. The repeating patterns moved slowly up the piano keyboard, with each new set of pitches adding to the feeling of burgeoning motion. The dynamics rose and fell,  adding to the sense of immense movement. As the pitches climbed up to the middle registers of the piano, the electronics often issued strongly contrasting waves of lower tones, maintaining the sense of depth and power. The continuous playing of the tremolos, the coordination with the recorded track and the shaping of the dynamics were all expertly executed by Ms. Ray, fully engaging the audience throughout the entire performance.

As the piece reached into the upper registers of the piano, the feeling turned decidedly optimistic, even as the speakers poured out their forceful streams of sound. Every so often, a series of three or four non-tremolo chords in the piano added some drama. The optimism ultimately turned to awe and finally transcendence as the higher notes on the keyboard were heard. The piece closed on a deep rumble in the speakers, offset by long trill on the highest piano notes, neatly summarizing the entire journey. River of 1,000 Streams is a monumental work, as deeply powerful as the river that inspired it.

The second solo of the evening was In the Village of Hope (2013), by Michael Byron. This was performed by Tasha Smith Godínez who had arrived with an impressively beautiful harp that dominated the right side of the stage. The composer writes: “In the Village of Hope is a piece of unabashed virtuosity. Its complex temporal structure and intricate counterpoint vie for the listener’s attention. Pitch resources are limited to diatonic collections, enabling harmonic relationships to seamlessly cycle through seven contiguous key changes.”

This work is roughly analogous to the Lentz piece in that the texture is fairly consistent. However, In the Village of Hope is much lighter and has a more gentle feel. The copious notes pouring from the harp felt like raindrops falling on the leaves of a deep forest. Full of motion, yet always restful and serene, this piece evokes a distinctly exotic sensibility. The several key changes were very effective and provided a sense of renewal to the listener’s ear as the piece progressed. Ms. Godínez might have been expected to be quickly exhausted by the complexity and quantity of notes, but her hands were a model of economy in movement. The playing was impressively expressive and the acoustics of the space did not detract from the delicate texture of this piece. In the Village of Hope coasted to an elegant conclusion, providing another transcendent experience of the evening.

River of 1,000 Streams and In the Village of Hope are both available on CD from Cold Blue Music.

by Paul Muller
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles

Nick Norton at Art Share

On Cinco de Mayo, Art Share in Los Angeles was the venue for Music for Art Galleries, a concert of music by composer Nick Norton. The occasion was the completion of Norton’s Doctoral studies at the UC, Santa Barbara and a large crowd gathered to hear a program of no fewer than ten pieces of his music. A dozen of the top musicians in the Los Angeles new music scene were on hand to perform what proved to be an intriguing variety of original works.

The program opened with Mix Bus 09, an electronic piece that filled Art Share with a deep rumbling roar, a bit like an idling motorcycle engine mixed with static electrical discharges. The entire venue was darkened, and this served to amplify in the mind the already loud and menacing sounds. The volume increased to an overwhelming industrial level, and then tapered back down as the lights came up to begin the next piece.

Song for Justine and Richard (On a Lyric by Conor Oberst) began immediately, written for and performed by vocalist Justine Aronson and pianist Richard Valitutto. The contrast with Mix Bus 09 could not have been more pronounced as Song for Justine and Richard began with series of quiet notes in the piano followed by warm and welcoming chords. The voice joined in with strong, sustained tones that floated above, creating a lovely mix. The was a sense of the mystical mixed with the exotic, but nicely avoiding the overly sentimental. The singing, naturally, was precisely matched to the piano accompaniment and the result was a beautiful and touching piece.

Monet in Greyscale followed and this was for string quartet featuring soft, feathery trills in the viola and cello offset by long, arcing tones in the violins. An ethereal and airy sensibility predominated, even as the cello and viola phrases became increasingly active. The steady tones in the violins insured that the overall feeling was always calming and restful, and the piece coasted to its finish on a warm finishing chord. Monet in Greyscale is a remarkable mixture of the complex and the sustained, resulting in an unexpectedly restful tranquility.

Music inspired by nature followed. Quiet Harbor for flute, bass clarinet, cello and violin combined slightly discordant notes to create a settled, if solitary and remote feeling, as if coming upon a far-off anchorage after a long sea voyage. Darkly mysterious tones from the bass clarinet mixed with very high pitches in the flute and violin to create an intriguing blend that evoked just a touch of melancholy. The more active Broken River Variations for piano, violin and viola had all the movement and stridency of a rapidly flowing stream. Repeated chords in the piano with longer, sustained tones in the strings gradually tamed the roiling texture to bring a sense of direction and purpose, as the headlong rush of a stream might become the ordered flow of a small river. At the finish there was a pronounced rolling feel to the rhythms, in keeping with the character of a fully grown river. Broken River Variations is a well-crafted portrait of a watercourse as it transitions from youth to maturity.

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by Paul Muller
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles

Pauline Gloss in Los Angeles

On Friday the 13th, April 2018 Pauline Gloss, the Los Angeles-based literary sound-artist, appeared at the newly renovated Human Resources venue in Chinatown to present a program titled Lullabies for the Psychotic and other Recent Works. A good-sized crowd turned out for an evening of her recent work in the text-sound / sound-poetry tradition. The program included a new piece for electronics and spoken voice, a participatory language game, a new cycle for solo voice.

The program began with a new piece for electronics and spoken voice. The hall was darkened and empty allowing the audience to move about. Ms. Gloss stood at a computer table equipped with a microphone. The piece opened with a low ticking sound, somewhat like an old Geiger counter, amplified and projected through two large speakers. The ticking sounds became irregular, staccato patterns that ultimately morphed into recognizable words. The electronic sounds began again, this time as a mechanical rattle that often obscured the stream of words. Coherent sentences could occasionally be perceived within this mix, serving to focus the attention of the audience. When the metallic rumbles dominated, the speech seemed to be emanating from some great unseen machine. When the speech was clearest, a human element prevailed. Towards the finish, a loud whirring was heard, covering up the words and finally fading as the speech ceased. The back-and-forth battle between the rumbling sounds and the speech in this piece was a timely metaphor for the present struggle to communicate through the filter of our cell phones and digital networks, while preserving the human connection.

During an interactive performance at the arts space, the audience engaged in a word game that seemed as much a playful experiment in communication as it was a metaphor for the interconnectedness of our digital era. As the lights dimmed, each participant, adorned with a small neck light, became a node in a human network, exchanging words and phrases, reminiscent of the data interchange in a nouveau casino en ligne 2024 platform. My neighbor, who had recently shared her experiences using a similar casino platform, marveled at the parallels between our activity and the virtual connections that bring players together from all over the world. Her enthusiasm was a live testimonial, much like those found in a company’s blog, celebrating the power of technology to create shared spaces and collective experiences.

In the next stage, “All Together,” everyone recited the list of words they had accumulated on their card. Some of the words spoken as a list became understood as phrases. Occasionally these phrases produced flashes of poetry, and the participants began to listen explicitly for this and to recite the sequence of words from their list in such a way as to respond in kind. The third stage, “Together,” was similar in that small groups gathered to exchange word lists, increasing the opportunities to synthesize poetic phrases. Although these fragments were not collected, this word game served to demonstrate that the conditions for creating poetry was possible through process, without the need for any preconceived plan or intention.

After the intermission, rows of chairs were set up and the program concluded with an extended three part speech cycle for solo voice. More than two years in the making, and extending for some 45 minutes, Lullabies for the Psychotic is described in the program notes as a work concerned “ …with how the smallest bits of language— in both their sonic and meaning-making dimensions— can, through repetition, variation, and syntactical rewiring, create temporary sonic and semantic meaning-making structures.” Ms. Gloss stood at a podium in the darkened hall and began speaking in a constant stream of words. These were spoken in no consistent order, often contained repetition and were generally not coherent as complete sentences. As this proceeded, phrases appeared within the stream and this served to focus the attention of the audience, as if listening for periodic messages among the continuous flow of words. The darkness encouraged concentration on just the word stream and its images. Ms. Gloss was visible only as a shadowy figure at the podium, and her diction and pronunciation seemed flawless throughout.

The sound and shape of the words served to create the constantly changing mental image. Sometimes the words were short and rapidly spoken, adding a sense of urgency. Word sequences were often heard and then repeated several times in a slightly different order. Sometimes the delivery was questioning, adding uncertainty. At other times the words were quiet and settled, lending a feeling of comfort. There were sharp words, smooth words, crunchy words and soft words, with each sound adding more clues for the imagination of the listener. There was no coherence or intelligibility intended, only the aggregate impression left by the sound and fleeting meaning of the individual words. Images created from the words built up a new construct in the listener’s mind, partly from sound shapes and partly from meaning – Lullabies for the Psychotic, operating at the intersection of poetry and music, is a most intriguing process of creation as well as an enlightening experience. A long and enthusiastic applause followed this amazing effort.

Ms. Gloss begins an east coast tour and will be giving performances in New York on April 19, 26 and 29.

by Paul Muller
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles

HOCKET and Wiest/Lee at Monk Space in Los Angeles

On March 20, 2018, Tuesdays @ Monk Space presented A Phenomenal Hum in Cracked Time. This was essentially two separate concerts: soprano Kirsten Ashley Wiest with pianist Siu Hei Lee were featured in the opening half, and the HOCKET duo in the second. A light rain didn’t dampen the turnout for this midweek performance and a good-sized crowd filled Monk Space for a full program that included a world premiere and works by several local composers.

The first half of the concert, titled DAWN, opened with Apples and Time Crack in October (2015), by Jack Van Zandt. This is a four movement work for soprano and piano, dedicated to Ms. Wiest who sang the premiere in September, 2017. The text was provided by the poet Jill Freeman. The opening movement began with rapid descending piano scale followed by a soaring vocal line that arced above an increasingly complex accompaniment. The piano playing was as precise as the voice was expressive, and a feeling of uncertainty mixed with mild anxiety established the sense of this piece right from the start. The active piano line was offset by a deliberately declarative voice, singing wistfully of the autumn. The final phrase was the perfect ending to this movement: “ Who knows what witch or wolf lies ’round the corner of November.”

“A Poem Sat Looking”, the second movement, was more subdued with a slower tempo and softer dynamics. This had a more reflective feeling and seemed to breathe a bit more freely with the relaxed pace. The balance between the soprano line and piano here was particularly impressive, given the close acoustics of Monk Space. Movement three, “The Nightingale”, opened with a series of rapid passages in the piano that convincingly evoked the agility of birds in flight. The soprano entrance was purposeful and dramatic, rising solemnly above the elaborate accompaniment and the contrast between the piano and voice in this movement was especially vivid. Lines such as “Outside our gate the nightingale soars on wing and song over trees here then gone…” skimmed gracefully over a rolling sea of sixteenth notes with rigorous discipline from both performers. At times a more automated feel prevailed, as imposed by the text that compared the perfection of a mechanical bird to nature. The final phrases were whispered – with nature prevailing – as the last notes slid into silence.

The concluding movement, “Helen’s Invocation,” is described in the program notes as ”…the piano version of the opening aria from Van Zandt and Freeman’s opera-in-progress, ‘A Thousand Ships,’ that explores different views of Helen of Troy’s role in the Trojan War.” This opens slowly with deep notes in the piano and a strongly dramatic vocal line, full of jumps in pitch and rapid rhythms. There is a mystical feeling here, like some pagan ritual; this aria is set just at the start of Helen’s voyage to Troy. The long, soaring vocal lines reach upward and make and fine contrast with the swirling piano passages in the lower registers. As this movement proceeds, the feeling gradually becomes more heroic, ending plaintively with the last lines of the text: “Stay this willing tragedy we have begun.”

Apples and Time Crack in October is an impressive collaboration of text and  music that in this concert combined piano and voice with extraordinary performance virtuosity.

A Sonatina (2016) by Bill Alves followed, based on a poem by Gertrude Stein “A Sonatina Followed by Another.” The composer writes that “Although the poem is filled with charming though fleeting images of her stay in southern France, I have extracted lullaby-like bits of the text that seem to refer to her life partner, Alice Toklas.” A Sonatina opens with a quiet repeating figure in the piano and a softly declarative entrance by the voice. After the storm and drama of the first piece, A Sonatina delivered a gracious and calming presence. The piano accompaniment has a pastoral and liquid feel, like a running spring brook. Ms. Wiest’s vocals were transparently pure of tone and virtuous in their simplicity, in keeping with the spirit of congeniality in the text: “Little singing charm can never do no harm, little baby sweet can always be a treat.” The piano pulled back just enough to give some room to the voice, and the gentle singing was perfectly matched to the lyrics. A Sonatina is a quietly introspective work that on this occasion was enhanced by a most agreeable and sensitive performance.

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by Paul Muller
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Just Intonation, Los Angeles

Polytope Premiere at Automata

The much-anticipated premiere of Daniel Corral’s new multimedia piece, Polytope, was staged in the snug spaces of Automata in the Los Angeles Chinatown district on March 18, 2018. Presented by Microfest LA and performed by the composer along with Erin Barnes, Cory Beers and Andrew Lessman, every seat in Automata was occupied. A year in the making, and built on previous Corral solo works such as Diamond Pulses and Comma, Polytope extends the same techniques to an  ensemble format.

Polytope is described in the program notes as “a multimedia musical performance for microtonal MIDI quartet, fitting somewhere between a string quartet, Kraftwerk, James Turrell, and an Indonesian dhalang (master shadow puppeteer).” The sounds were activated by four square MIDI keypads with a total of 64 buttons each. The buttons were mapped into tonality diamonds such that the numerator of the harmonic ratio was along the X axis and the denominator along the Y axis. In this way, all possible combinations were available to each player. The keys were also lighted and color-coded for pitch and timbre. A camera mounted above the four keyboards allowed the colors and patterns to be projected onto the wall so that the audience could follow along. Various subsets of the keys were programmed to be lit at different times as the piece proceeded, and this acted as a sort of visual score. The shadow of the performers’ hands moving over the lighted keys was also visible, adding a welcome human element to all the technology that was also featured on this site.

Polytope began with a few spare, sustained tones with a cool, electronic feel. After a few moments notes became more varied and rapid, and a nicely active repeating melody emerged. The lighted keys began to rearrange themselves – sometimes with a row being added or subtracted, or alternately, the lighted keys would form  into a completely new pattern. As the four players worked at the changing key presentations, there was a kaleidoscopic element to both the sights and the sounds. After a few minutes of observation, the color and position of the keys projected on the wall could be decoded into anticipated sounds, further engaging the audience.

The repeating melodies increased in complexity, most often resulting in a pleasantly minimalist texture. The steady, pulsing groove in these sections was a real credit to the performers, who had to actuate each tone by pressing the small buttons in the correct sequence. The players were experienced pitched percussionists, but the crowded keypads and unfamiliar tactile feel was surely a challenge. There was no written score score, but the players seemed to be guided by the changing combinations of lighted keys that appeared before them.

Polytope extends for about an hour and projects different sensibilities at different times. An optimistic minimalist groove generally prevailed, but this was sometimes replaced by pure electronic sine tones that cast a cool remoteness. There were also stretches with a strong primal beat in the lower registers, and occasionally the piece evoked a sense of mystery and uncertainty. That the players were observed only by the shadows of their hands added just enough of the human element to make this a convincing performance. The decision to keep the players themselves mostly out of sight on the darkened stage was a brilliant stroke – watching four people pushing buttons would have been a distraction. The lighted keys on the screen also removed any expectation of pitch and timbre that might have attended a performance with acoustic instruments. The total darkness freed the audience to concentrate on the music and the visual relationship of colors and tones.   Polytope is an extraordinary piece of musical and visual art that features just intonation tuning in a vivid presentation that is both accessible and compelling.

by Paul Muller
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Just Intonation, Los Angeles

Microfest LA Brass Concert

On a rainy Saturday night, March 10, 2018, Art Share LA hosted an all-brass concert of microtonal music performed by Trio Kobayashi and members of the CalArts Brass Ensemble. Six pieces were heard, including two world premiers, all presented by Microfest LA.

Plainsound Chorus (2017), by Wolfgang von Schweinitz was first, performed by Trio Kobayashi. This was a section of Cantata, a new work to be premiered in full at RedCat on May 23. Strong upward scales began the piece, and each of the three instruments – horn, euphonium and tuba – followed an independent line that gave this a busy, song-like feel. The alternate tuning was impressively realized with the valved instruments, and the predominance of low tones provided a solid foundation for the many unfamiliar harmonies. The warm brass sounds elicited a choral sensibility and the steady pulse focused the texture. As the chords moved in and out of the familiar, presenting various possible perspectives, the experience was reminiscent of viewing a cubist painting. Plainsound Chorus is a promising preview of the larger work to come.

Gravlax (2015), by Matt Barbier followed, and this was the world premiere. The composer was joined by a second trombone player and a trumpet, all muted. A static electronic recording that featured a continuous deep rumbling sound was heard through the speakers at the front of the stage, and the density and volume proved almost impenetrable. The instruments were played softly, so that they were were almost inaudible against the electronic background, and this served to focus the concentration of the listener. The muted trumpet was perhaps most effectively heard when it occasionally rose above the jumble, and these soundings provided a bright and welcome contrast. The trombones were also briefly heard, and served to add some color to the roar below. Gravlax is related to those very quiet pieces where the economy of sound magnifies its impression – in a similar way, the short flashes of brass tones rising out of the churning background multiply their effect, sharpening the listener’s acuity and expanding perception.

The premiere of Chaconne (2018) by Andrew McIntosh, was next, performed by Trio Kobayashi. This began with sustained tones in the tuba and euphonium, soon joined by the horn. The result was a series of warm, brassy chords that filled the room with some lovely harmonies. The presence of moving tones within the chord was most effective, nicely integrating the pitches selected from an alternate tuning. Seemingly disparate tones were impressively melded into the organic whole. The simplicity of this approach, combined with the cordial sensibility of the brass, made for a most pleasing combination. The intonation and tuning of the sustained tones by Trio Kobayashi was precise, with fluid dynamics in the texture that engaged the listener. This piece was finished by McIntosh concurrently with Shasta, a much larger brass ensemble work that received its premiere at Disney Hall three weeks ago. The two are very different in scope and palette. Where Shasta feels more like a narrative, Chaconne is an insightful exploration of the relationships between tuning, chords and their constituent pitches.

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by Paul Muller
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles

John Adams Conducts Green Umbrella Concert at Disney Hall

The latest installment of the LA Philharmonic Green Umbrella concert series rolled into Disney Hall on Tuesday, February 20, 2018. Music by Julius Eastman, Anna Thorvaldsdottir and a premiere by Andrew McIntosh were performed. A screening of the iconic anti-war piece L’s G.A. by Salvatore Martirano, with live performance art by Ron Athey as Politico, rounded out the program. Only a few empty seats could be seen as an eager audience settled into place.

The first piece was AURA, by Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir, performed by the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet. This was played completely in the dark – no stage lights or house lights in the entire space. The LAPQ was just barely visible in dim outline on stage, hunched over their percussion instruments. They wore lighted green wristbands on each arm so that their movements could be seen throughout the hall. AURA began with chiming sounds and a soft rattle followed by what sounded like a bowed vibraphone tone plate. More intriguing sounds followed. The darkness, the moving green lights and the mysterious tones instantly created an atmosphere that gave full rein to the listener’s imagination. It was as if we were observing some secret ritual in the dead of winter in pagan Iceland. Ms. Thorvaldsdottir is well known for building convincing sound worlds out of unusual musical materials, and it would be hard to overstate how effectively this was accomplished here. The playing by the LAPQ – who had performed this piece before – was nonetheless remarkable given the extended techniques involved, the many notes and instructions in the score and the total darkness of the stage. AURA is a captivating experience that, despite the modest musical forces and subdued dynamics, works on the imagination in  surprising and powerful ways.

Shasta, by Andrew McIntosh followed, an LA Phil commission and world premiere conducted by John Adams. The stage was filled with a brass ensemble, timpani, percussion, a piano and harp. The composer is an avid hiker and recently climbed Mount Shasta. He writes of this experience: “Mt. Shasta is a unique mountain among California peaks, since it is a massive isolated cone located at the southern end of the Cascade range. Most of California’s major peaks are in the Sierra, which are completely different in nature, since the high peaks in that range are all surrounded by other peaks of similar height. This gives Mt. Shasta panoramic views from the top unparalleled in any other place in California, as well as a peculiarly lonely and melancholy feel.”

McIntosh is a string player by training, but has written for various other ensembles; Shasta is his first major work for brass and the piece proceeds in several short movements. The opening is filled with upward moving scales, arcing glissandos and a strong melody in the trombones so that the feeling is one of climbing a perilous mountain trail. At one point, some bowed xylophone notes sting like a blast of icy air. A trumpet sounds above some sustained tutti chords as if to announce that the summit has been reached, and here the music takes on a more mystical feel with quiet notes in the horns and piano. Towards the finish, the dynamics further soften and muted trumpets provide a strong sense of standing atop the remote heights. Shasta is an evocative and convincing portrait of both the exertion and the exhilaration of mountain climbing, and was received with sustained applause.

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by Paul Muller