Composers

Composers, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Flute, Music Instruments, Performers, Resources

Glissando Headjoint for Flute

The Glissando Headjoint for flute was invented by performer, composer, improviser, and inventor Robert Dick. Essentially, it adds a carrier tube to the standard C flute headjoint. The lip plate can be moved along the carrier tube to create true glissandi. Much of Dick’s work with the headjoint is in an improvisatory style; most of my work with it has been largely through commissioning works. One of the most rewarding things about this activity as a performer is seeing the variety of sounds composers require from the headjoint in their works. The minimal repertoire for glissando flute compared to the vastness of the rest of the flute repertoire across the centuries really highlights that the lack of precedent drives some pretty rewarding creativity. 

The first work that I performed with my newly-purchased headjoint in 2013 was Jay Batzner’s Dreams Grow Like Slow Ice. Written for glissando flute and electronics, it’s an evocative work that brings to mind an icy, barren landscape. I’ve had the pleasure of performing it fifteen times on three continents. I’ve worked with Jay on two other works involving the headjoint: Fire Walk, which is for solo glissando flute and is based on ideas from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks; and Used Illusions, a large work in three movements for glissando flute and concert band, based on Guns N’ Roses tunes. 

Andrew Rodriguez’s Highways for solo glissando flute brings to mind the sensations of driving at night: being lulled to sleep, occasional lights when traveling through towns, the mixing of dreams and waking consciousness. It’s a highly effective work that uses the glissando effect masterfully to blur the lines between being asleep and the reality outside the vehicle. 

The Dream Has Ended in Death by Aaron Jay Myers is based on a lithograph of the same name and uses a variety of sounds to create a mood representative of the visual art inspiration. It is particularly effective to project the lithograph behind the flutist during a performance. This work is also for solo glissando flute. 

Chamber music involving the Glissando Headjoint can also be effective. Wes Flinn’s Urban Legends X: Mothman is written for glissando flute and trombone, and the similar glissando effects are really heightened when utilized by both players. Similarly, Alan Theisen’s Pura Besakih, inspired by the temple complex in Indonesia of the same name, uses glissando flute and traditional C flute in a duet.

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When writing for glissando flute, there are helpful resources to help composers find the sounds they want to hear. Several documents on Robert Dick’s website (http://robertdick.net/the-glissando-headjoint/) include fingering charts, which explain the extended lower range. His website also includes a selection of demonstration videos. Most importantly, work with your performer either before starting the composition process or throughout it to confirm your ideas will work within the limitations of the instrument. For example, the headjoint extends the lower range of the flute to a low A, but it can’t be played very loudly. Another limitation is just plain physics. The headjoint can only move so quickly, so some combinations of notes and headjoint placement within the carrier tube are simply impractical. Keeping the lines of communication open with your performer will reveal any of these quickly.

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Tammy Evans Yonce, an Atlanta native, is a flutist, collaborative musician, writer, and professor. She is a dedicated new music performer who is particularly interested in the commissioning and teaching of new music. Dr. Yonce has commissioned over twenty works involving flute, many with a specific focus on creating new music for the Glissando Headjoint. She is Associate Professor of Music at South Dakota State University. Her recently-released album, Dreams Grow Like Slow Ice, includes several works for glissando flute. She can be found at tammyevansyonce.com and on Twitter @TammyEvansYonce.

by Tammy Evans Yonce
Composers, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Seattle

A year without Matt Shoemaker (1974–2017)

Matt Shoemaker

One year ago the Pacific Northwest’s new music community was stunned by the suicide of Matt Shoemaker: painter and musician, enthusiastic traveler, frequent performer with Gamelan Pacifica, and accomplished creator in the genre of dark ambient. Shoemaker’s “electroacoustic soundscapes” have been released in a variety of formats by Elevator Bath, Helen Scarsdale Agency and other labels, and I offer an overview of this work in the Second Inversion article Mutable Depths: Remembering Matt Shoemaker. Shoemaker was a veteran of Seattle’s formidable electronic music scene, and he often performed his music at the Chapel Performance Space, the workhorse venue for experimental music in this city. It was there that an assembly of his colleagues, friends and admirers gathered on the night of May 5 to honor his memory.

Eric Lanzillotta opened the evening by coaxing deep, dense sonorities from a Moog MG-1 analog synthesizer. These gently modulated sounds were soon joined by filtered bands of pink noise, and then by low frequency sine wave glissandos. These latter often seemed to be amplitude modulated by a noise source to create an irregular tremolo, a time-honored technique for introducing complexity into the innately regular sonorities of electronic instruments. Lanzillotta often collaborated with Shoemaker, and the two can be heard jamming together in a 2005 session that has been released on Anomalous Records. An excerpt thereof is available on SoundCloud:

Jim Haynes took the stage next. This California-based musician and Helen Scarsdale Agency proprietor began by recounting the impact of encountering Shoemaker’s music for the first time (“Fuck, this guy is doing what I’m trying to do, only way better”). Next Haynes stepped up to his instrument table and brought in a major sixth drone that anchored the first several minutes of his set. Like Lanzillotta, Haynes exclusively used abstract, synthesized sounds—most notably a series of falling glissandos that swelled to an incredibly loud and thick climax before suddenly evaporating into one of those electronic “rattles” that evoke the world of Forbidden Planet-style sci-fi movie soundtracks.

I’d been curious about the half dozen 40W halogen bulbs scattered across Haynes’ setup until finally, ten minutes in, they started to illuminate, powered by the same pink noise source that was controlling the amplitude of his rumbling oscillators. A visual and aural crescendo ensued, the blinding effect of these irregularly flickering lamps inside the otherwise dark Chapel interior suggesting a campfire emerging from beyond the grave—a vast improvement over those tacky synchronized disco lights you see at popular concerts and clubs.

As he’d done before, Haynes suddenly cut the signal to the lamps and oscillators, leaving only a faint heartbeat-like pulse. After a few forlorn palpitations, the set ended. Of the evening’s offerings, it was Haynes’ music that reminded me the most of Shoemaker’s.

Matt Shoemaker’s LP Isolated Agent/Stranding Behavior ‎(Elevator Bath eeaoa031) featuring his original artwork

Up next was Climax Golden Twins, a Seattle-based experimental music band that has been active in various guises for 25 years, and whose configuration for the night comprised founders Robert Millis and Jeffrey Taylor along with Dave Knott and Jesse Paul Miller. The instrumentarium featured analog and digital synths, guitars, a hi-hat and an array of toys and other homemade contraptions. The music was free improv with the continuous transitions and generally slow tempos that are characteristic of that genre nowadays. The 20 minute set included the first concrete sounds of the evening: radio signals transduced through guitar pickups, sampled instruments and, most poignantly, excerpts from Shoemaker himself playing a Millis piano piece. These latter sounds, repetitive tinkerings on a C♯ minor triad of a kind I’d associate with Brian Eno or West Coast postminimalism, served to anchor the final five minutes of the set, which saw Knott walking through the space plucking this same chord on a ukulele as the piano excerpts played on, both forward and backward.

Knott remained onstage for a solo set that featured a half-sized bottleneck guitar with custom re-entrant tuning designed so that when the fingerboard is barred at the 9th fret, the strings can be played on either side. Its timbre reminded me of the spicy, transient-rich sounds of a Japanese biwa or samisen. The improvisation began in free rhythm, eventually taking on a steady pulse the way that a raga performance might progress from alap to jor. As the music grew more animated, Knott’s use of a sliding glass rod imparted a bit of Hawaiian inflection, and for the last few minutes Knott performed overtone singing over his now-steady strumming.

Miller returned to close out the event with a video featuring footage he shot in Indonesia, where Shoemaker had once spent several formative months. The multilayered imagery was conveyed in extremely fast cutting, sometimes combined with time lapse layers, and the montage was accompanied by synth drones mixed with field recordings (also from Indonesia). It was a suitable conclusion, and a reminder of the visual side of Shoemaker’s art (which was simultaneously on display in a memorial exhibit at Jack Straw New Media Gallery). All told, it was a substantive and beautiful evening of timbrally rich music befitting its dedicatee.

by Michael Schell
Composers, Contemporary Classical, Deaths, File Under?

RIP Oliver Knussen (1952-2018)

Knussen Honorary Doctorate RAM July 2018
Oliver Knussen received an honorary doctorate from the RAM on 5 July 2018.

Saddened to learn of the passing of composer and conductor Oliver Knussen. One of the truly great musicians of our time, Knussen had received an honorary doctorate from the Royal Academy of Music, where he was Richard Rodney Bennett Professor of Music, just a few days ago.

A renowned pedagogue as well as a superlative conductor of contemporary music, Knussen held positions with such organizations as London Sinfonietta, Aldeburgh Festival, Tanglewood, BBC Symphony, and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.

While not as prolific as some of his contemporaries, his catalog included a number of high quality works. Knussen will be remembered for compositions such as his two Maurice Sendak operas – Where the Wild Things Are and Higglety Pigglety Pop – orchestra pieces such as the Horn and Violin Concertos and Fanfare with Fireworks, and his settings of Walt Whitman and, in a Requiem for his late wife Sue, Emily Dickinson and W.H. Auden. Knussen’s final work, O Hototogismu!, consisted of adaptations of 17th-19th century Haiku poems for soprano and ensemble. It was premiered at Aldeburgh in June 2017.

by Christian Carey
Composers, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, New York

Da Capo Players at Merkin Hall (Concert Review)

Da Capo Chamber Players Perform a Potpourri of American Works

Da Capo Chamber Players

Da Capo Chamber Players

Merkin Concert Hall

June 4, 2018

NEW YORK – Themed programs and portrait concerts are all the rage these days. As such, it is refreshing when an ensemble goes eclectic, presenting a diverse array of music. Such was the case on Monday, June 4th, when Da Capo Chamber Players performed eight pieces by living American composers who write in a plethora of styles. Consisting of violinist Curtis Macomber, cellist Chris Gross, flutist Patricia Spencer, pianist Steven Beck and joined by guest artists soprano Lucy Shelton, clarinetists Marianne Glythfeldt and Carlos Cordeiro, and percussionist Michael Lipsey, the musicians are a formidable cadre of some of New York’s best new music performers. This was handily demonstrated in all of the works on offer at Merkin — how often can you depend on that level of consistency?

Few groups perform the rhythmic patternings of minimalism more assuredly than the Da Capo Players. Here they clearly delineated the differences between various types of ostinatos. Sweet air (1999) by David Lang juxtaposed its repetitions with distressed dissonances, In the sole premiere on the program, Dylan Mattingly’s Ecstasy #3 (2018) presented passages filled with an alt-folk-inflected melody. An arrangement by Robert Moran of Philip Glass’s Modern Love Waltz (1980) may have explored repetition in the most straightforward way of the pieces here, but its fluid playfulness made it a fetching addition to the proceedings.

The modernist wing of composition was represented too. Elliott Carter’s Canon for Four (1984) received an incisive rendition, with the contrapuntal details of the work vividly underscored. Tanoa León’s One Mo’ Time (2016) mixed a varied palette of chromaticism with inflections of gospel and jazz. She is one of the best at allowing these two traditions to coexist in her music in organic fashion. Christopher Cerrone supplied one of the evening’s most imaginative works. Hoyt=Schermerhorn for keyboard mixed a gradual build-up of soft textures that was somewhat indebted to the works of Feldman but through quicker changes of harmony. Over time, effects such as reverb and treble register loops brought the piece from its eighties origins into the twenty-first century. Amalgam (2015) by Taylor Brook, was the concert’s most experimental piece, with the players (and soprano Lucy Shelton) moving from disparate roles to unison playing, then heterophonic treatment of the piece’s melody. Amalgam is a fascinating composition that certainly proved to be a successful experiment for Da Capo.

The concert’s standout was Romancero (1983), for soprano and ensemble, settings of four medieval poems thought to be from the Sephardic Jewish tradition by Mario Davidovsky. Shelton was as expressive as ever and well-matched for the angular challenges posed by Romancero’s post-tonal pitch vocabulary. Her voice ranged from delicately floating pianissimo passages to forceful forte declamations. The instrumental parts are quite demanding as well, reminiscent of the complexly articulate language of Davidovsky’s electroacoustic Synchronisms. Shelton is a frequent collaborator with Da Capo (see a recent video of their rendition of Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire below), and their association showed in the intricate interplay between voice and instruments: a gem of a performance.

As if to remind us of the celebratory catholicity of taste that bound together the disparate strands of this program, its finale was the brief, yet brilliantly multi-faceted, Encore (1991) by Bruce Adolphe. Composed to celebrate the Da Capo Players’ twentieth anniversary, it has remained a staple of their repertoire. It is hard to believe that the group has now been going for 48 years. Based on the vigor with which they performed at Merkin Hall, the sky’s the limit for their upcoming golden anniversary season.



[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw-OItKIZMc&w=560&h=315]

by Christian Carey
Chamber Music, Composers, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Performers

ArchiTAK at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music

NEW YORK – On February 10th, 2018, Architek Percussion and TAK ensemble presented five US premieres in the DiMenna Center for Classical Music’s Benzaquen Hall. The program, charmingly titled ArchiTAK, was composed entirely of new music by New York and Montreal composers. Walking into the hall expecting some sort of configuration to accommodate five percussionists, a flautist, clarinetist, violinist, and vocalist, I was instead greeted by nine chairs in a tight, even row behind nine microphones. I heard members of TAK ensemble behind me discussing the location of “the knives.” I was ready to expect the unexpected as the program began with Myriam Bleau’s Separation Space. The piece began with these nine performers manipulating electronically processed microphones with tapping, scratching, sandpaper, and yes, a chef’s knife. Adding to the rich amalgam building in the speakers, performers began to play pre-recorded media from cellphones, and two began to sing in a close, gently pulsing dissonance. The work was an excellent opening to the program. I found myself having a thought that I would return to many times throughout this program. New music can be strange, intimate, challenging, and moving, and in capable hands, can be all four at once. Taylor Brook’s Incantation left the stage to Architek Percussion, with each member of the quartet equipped with a hi-hat prepared with a small towel, two metals bars (each tuned to form a microtonal octachord spanning the width of about 2 semitones), a brake drum, and a violin bow. Early questions I raised to myself about the authenticity of their performance considering the handicap of headphones (presumably playing a click) were quickly replaced with a respect for these performers as they flawlessly moved through the aggressively fast and equally demanding piece with incredibly tight ensemble. The first half of the program concluded with A Song About Saint Edward the Confessor by Isaiah Ceccarelli, which again utilized the full complement of players. Opening as a vocalise before later unfolding into a proper song, the piece capitalized on vocalist Charlotte Mundy’s unaffected voice and pure tone, while still leaving her room to realize a richly expressive performance. While her diction was very clear and the hall was intimite, I felt that omitting the text from the program was a missed opportunity.  

Moments into New York composer David Bird’s Descartes and the Clockwork Girl, I understood why this was programmed after a short break. I again found myself considering the strange, intimate, challenging, and moving as the piece worked through timbre pairings that were as conceptually attractive and musically effective. I am still particularly taken with Carlos Cordeiro’s performance, balancing passages that demand incredible dexterity with clean, sustained bass clarinet multiphonics. The program concluded with Taylor Brook’s Pulses. For the fifth time that night, I found myself almost entirely outside of time, so engrossed in the performance that I honestly could not give an accurate break-down of the roughly 90 minute program.

After the final piece concluded and members of Architek Percussion and TAK received a strong round of much deserved applause, a gesture towards the audience revealed that both David Bird and Taylor Brook were in attendance for this performance. For all these musicians did to curate and present moving and compelling works of new music, there were several missed opportunities in the presentation of the program itself that could have gone a long way to making the music more accessible. Given that each piece contained such evocative, programmatic titles, I have a feeling including program notes would have provided audience members with a better vocabulary to appreciate the work of both the composers and performers. With a composer present for three of the five pieces on the program, I feel it was a real missed opportunity not to hear about their work from them, especially considering the intimate nature of the venue.

 

ARCHITAK

Myriam Bleau —Separation Space

Taylor Brook — Incantation

Isaiah Ceccarelli — A Song About Saint Edward the Confessor

David Bird — Descartes and the Clockwork Girl

Taylor Brook — Pulses

 

Architek Percussion: Ben Duinker, Mark Morton, Ben Reimer, Alessandro Valiante

 

TAK ensemble: Charlotte Mundy, voice; Laura Cocks, flute; Carlos Cordeiro, clarinet; Marina Kifferstein, violin; Ellery Trafford, percussion

by Cortlandt Matthews
CDs, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Deaths, File Under?, New York, Obits

RIP Matt Marks (1980-2018)

Matt Marks

All of us at Sequenza 21 are saddened to learn of the passing of Matt Marks. A musical polymath, he was a composer, new music advocate, provocative Twitter presence, co-founder and key organizer of New Music Gathering, and a versatile performer, both a vocalist-actor in various projects and a founding member of the ensemble Alarm Will Sound, in which he played French horn and for which he did imaginative arrangements.

I met Marks on several occasions, but will allow his close friends and family to share reminiscences of a more personal nature. Among all those who knew and encountered him, either as a social media presence or “IRL,” his intelligence, sense of humor, persistent advocacy for gender equality in concert music and other worthy causes, and formidable talent will be sorely missed. Condolences to the many people whose lives he touched.

Read and Listen Further: Matt Marks

Matt Marks on Twitter.

The Matt Marks Music Page (personal website).

Matt Marks at New Music USA.

A 2017 review in the New York Times of Marks’s opera Mata Hari.

And a scene from the opera:

Mata Hari from PROTOTYPE Festival on Vimeo.

Steve Smith, writing in 2010 in the NY Times, profiled A Little Death, Vol. 1, a performance piece and recording with soprano Mellissa Hughes for New Amsterdam. It served as an introduction to Marks’s music for many.

Arrangement of “Revolution Number 9” for Alarm Will Sound:

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?, New York, Orchestras, Philadelphia Orchestra, Twentieth Century Composer

Philadelphia Gives New York Premiere of Van der Aa’s Violin Concerto

Violinist Janine Jansen performing with conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin and The Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, 3/13/18.
Photo: Steve J. Sherman

 

New York Premiere of Van Der Aa Violin Concerto

The Philadelphia Orchestra

Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Music Director and Conductor

Janine Jansen, Violin

March 13, 2018

Carnegie Hall

Published on Sequenza21.com

By Christian Carey

 

NEW YORK – Dutch composer Michel Van der Aa (b. 1970) is best known for his imaginative and formidably-constructed multimedia works that incorporate both film and electronics. Notable among these are the operas Blank Out (2016) and Sunken Garden (2012), as well as a music theater work based on Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet (2008). Even pieces for acoustic ensembles, such as the clarinet chamber concerto Hysteresis (2013), have frequently incorporated electronics as part of their makeup. Thus, when Van der Aa composed his Violin Concerto (2014) for soloist Janine Jansen and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the absence of electronics was significant. (Interestingly, after the success of the concerto, his follow up piece for orchestra, Reversal (2016), also abstains from the electronic domain).  However, even in the analog realm, Van der Aa incorporates a sound world that acknowledges his interest in decidedly non-classical elements.

 

The score indicates that the solo violin part should be played with the vibrato, portamento, and usual techniques common to the instrument in contemporary concertos. The accompanying strings however, are asked to refrain from using vibrato in sustained passages, creating a kind of sine tone effect. Various styles are incorporated in the solo part, from bluegrass fiddling to more angular contemporary passages. Other aspects of the orchestration hearken to pop music terrain: near the end of the first movement, for instance, a climax approaches house music in its boisterous brass and percussion.

 

On March 13th, joined by Jansen, the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, delivered an energetic and assured performance of the concerto at Carnegie Hall. The violinist played with the supreme confidence of a soloist who has endeavored to make a work entirely her own. With its variety of solo demeanors, both shaded and nuanced and explosive and mercurial, Van Der Aa’s Violin Concerto seems the ideal vehicle for Jansen’s multi-faceted artistry. The Philadelphians matched her playing with equal confidence, with strings sensitively taking up the “sine tone” accompaniment of the sostenuto passages and winds, brass, and percussion gamely taking on roles in the electronica mimicry of wide swaths of the piece. Interpretively speaking, Jansen and Nézet-Séguin were on the same page throughout. In a dramatic conclusion to the piece, the violinist played her last gesture nose to nose with the conductor, eliciting surprised exhalation and then sustained applause from the audience.

 

Sergei Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony is one of my favorite of the composer’s works and I have seen a number of performances of it in concert. While I might quibble here or there with Nézet-Séguin’s tempo choices, the conductor’s tendency to press ahead during the potentially “schmaltzy” moments of the piece rendered it free of several layers of sentimental “varnish:”  still emotive yet utterly fresh-sounding. The Philadelphia Orchestra’s strings are justly renowned and were exemplary here, but the winds, brass, and percussion each contributed in both spotlight and ensemble moments as well. Thus, it was a touching exchange onstage when the conductor insisted on walking out to each of them in turn, bestowing embraces and well-earned praise.

 

Jansen and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, have recorded Van Der Aa’s Violin Concerto for Disquiet Media. It is paired with the aforementioned Hysteresis, performed by Amsterdam Sinfonietta, directed by Candida Thompson, with Kari Krikku as soloist. The performances are detailed and evocative, giving an excellent sense of the composer’s approach to ensemble works. One hopes that both the recent high-profile performances of the Violin Concerto and this persuasive recording prove inviting to other soloists and ensembles: Van der Aa’s work is worthy of wider currency.

 

 

by Christian Carey
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, New York

Tuesday: So and JACK at Zankel

So-Percussion-and-JACK-Quartet-0306

Tuesday: JACK/SO Tonight at Zankel

Performances at Zankel Hall on March 6 at 7 PM (note the early start time) will feature two of contemporary classical music’s estimable chamber ensembles. JACK Quartet and SO Percussion team up in a program that includes a string quartet premiere by Philip Glass, a pitched percussion work by Donnacha Dennehy, and a piece for the combined forces and prepared disklaviers by Dan Trueman. (Tickets here).

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Open Source Music Festival 2017

Recently Open Source Music Festival was kind enough to send us some videos of JACK and pianist Joel Fan performing as part of the 2017 Festival. We’re still decoding the JACK offerings and will post them another day. But below, Fan plays two pieces by Augusta Thomas and Bernard Rands. Collectively titled ‘Two Thoughts about the Piano,’ they demonstrate the pianist’s virtuosity, with trills, repeated notes and angular gestures abounding to explore the entire compass of the instrument. Follow the YouTube link to hear the rest of the performances.

by Christian Carey
Chamber Music, Composers, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, New York

Sheila Silver Composer Portrait at Merkin Hall

Sheila Silver

 

The Music of Sheila Silver: A Celebration

Merkin Concert Hall

February 8, 2018

By Christian Carey

Published on Sequenza 21

 

NEW YORK – Composer Sheila Silver has taught at Stony Brook University since 1979. On February 8th at Merkin Concert Hall, an all-Silver program celebrated her tenure at the university. In addition to colleagues and students past and present, the hall was filled with area musicians – including multiple generations of composers – who were most enthusiastic in their reception of Silver and the estimable renditions of her work.

 

Even when composing instrumental music, Silver often bases her work on literature and describes it in terms of its narrative quality. The earliest piece on the program, To the Spirit Unconquered (1992), played by Trio de Novo – Brian Bak, violin, Phuc Phan Do,  cello, and Hsin-Chiao Liao, piano –  is inspired by the writings of Primo Levi, a survivor of the Holocaust who was imprisoned in Auschwitz. One of Silver’s most dramatic compositions, in places it is rife with dissonance and juxtaposes violent angularity with uneasy passages of calm. In the video below, Silver mentions trying to imbue it both with the searing quality of Levi’s struggle and, at its conclusion, some sense of hope based on his indomitability in the midst of horrendous experiences. Trio de Novo are a talented group who performed with detailed intensity and imparted the final movement, marked “stately,” with exceptional poise.

 

Soprano Risa Renae Harman and pianist Timothy Long performed an aria from the opera The Wooden Sword (2010),  in which Harman displayed impressive high notes to spare. Her acting skills were on display – comedically sassy – in “Thursday,” one of the songs from Beauty Intolerable (2013), Silver’s cycle of Edna St. Vincent Millay settings. Soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, joined by pianist Ryan McCullough, presented another, more serious, Millay song, “What My Lips Have Kissed.” With Bak providing additional atmosphere, they also performed an aria from Silver’s current work-in-progress, the opera A Thousand Splendid Suns. Gibbon sang with considerable flexibility and purity of tone, at one point exuberantly spinning around while effortlessly holding a high note. Currently part of the group workshopping the opera, she seems perfectly cast. The songs and arias displayed a sumptuousness that served as a fine contrast to the denser language of the piano trio.

 

Dawn Upshaw was slated to perform with pianist (and longtime Stony Brook faculty member) Gilbert Kalish. Sadly, Upshaw had bronchitis and couldn’t sing on the concert. Gibbon valiantly stepped in, learning Silver’s On Loving, Three Songs in Memory of Diane Kalish (2015) in just two days. Her performance on the concert was supremely confident, betraying none of the last minute nature of the switch. Indeed, the three songs – settings of Shakespeare, St. Vincent Millay, and Khalil Gibran, were among the most stirring of Silver’s works on the program, displaying an autumnal lyricism and wistful poignancy. Kalish, a renowned accompanist, played with characteristic grace.

 

The second half of the concert showed still two more aspects of Silver’s work: a short film score and a more overtly political chamber piece. The first, Subway Sunset (1999), is a collaboration with her husband, the filmmaker John Feldman. It intersperses scenes of busy commuters with a gradually encroaching sunset adorning the sky near the World Trade Center. Although filmed before 2001, the duo dedicated it to the victims of 9/11. Seeing the towers on film will always be haunting. The musical accompaniment, a duet played by bassoonist Gili Sharret and pianist Arielle Levioff, created a solemn stillness that left space to contemplate the various implications of what used to be a normal scene for twentieth century commuters.

 

The program concluded with Twilight’s Last Gleaming (2008), a work for two pianists and two percussionists that is a commentary on the post 9/11 state of affairs. Its three movements’ titles – War Approaching, Souls Ascending, Peace Pretending – give a broad outline for the work’s impetus. Twilight’s Last Gleaming requires stalwart performers and Kalish, joined by pianist Christina Dahl (also on Stony Brook’s faculty) and percussionists Lusha Anthony and Brian Smith, provided a committed and energetic account of this challenging and penetrating piece. The large percussion setup included a considerable assortment of gongs as well as various pitched instruments and drums. The percussionists engaged in a complex choreography between parts, at times catwalking around the gongs’ stands to arrive perfectly in time for their next entrance. In the piece’s final section, an extended musical deconstruction of “The Star-Spangled Banner” takes place with all of the musicians engaging in an increasingly fragmented presentation of the tune. The piece closes leaving the penultimate line  “The Land of the Free…” cut off by a musical question mark: a powerful ending to an evening of eloquent music.

 

 

 

 

by Christian Carey
Bang on a Can, Composers, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Orchestral, Orchestras, Review, Seattle

Seattle Symphony unveils David Lang’s symphony without a hero

David Lang’s symphony without a hero received its premiere on February 8/10 by its commissioner, Seattle Symphony and Music Director Ludovic Morlot. As usual, Lang spells his title in all lowercase letters, a gesture of acquiescence that particularly befits the resigned tone of this work’s namesake, Poem Without a Hero by the Soviet writer Anna Akhmatova. Lang, who is quite the Russophile, took his inspiration from Akhmatova’s wartime lament for her hometown Leningrad (St. Petersburg), besieged and abused at the hands of both Nazis and Stalinists. Lang’s reflections present as a single-movement essay that, regardless of one’s feelings toward postminimalism or orchestral composition in general at this stage of the 21st century, surely deserves to be ranked among his most compelling works.

Lang conceived symphony without a hero as the unfolding of “a melody that goes from the beginning of the piece to the very end—a 28 minute tune”. This melody, closer to 23 minutes at Morlot’s tempo, lies in the bass instruments: a gruff pseudo-ostinato that constantly tries to climb a C♯ minor triad (C♯ G♯ C♯ E) without ever literally repeating itself. It’s somewhere between a “real” tune and a clumsily-executed arpeggio exercise (imagine the fragmentary musical gestures of The Little Match Girl Passion, but louder and harsher). Above it the high strings, coupled with other treble instruments, spin a tonally ambiguous web of overlapping sustained tones derived from the bass tune, creating an effect akin to the angelic choir atop Ives’ texture in the Prelude to his Fourth Symphony. There’s little going on in the middle registers—it’s as though each instrument is compelled to choose between bass and treble. As Lang puts it, the two sides “don’t talk to each other”.

As from a tower that commands the view
From nineteen-forth I look down.
As if I bid farewell anew
To what I long since bade farewell,
As if I paused to cross myself
And enter dark vaults underground.

(1941, Leningrad under siege)
– Anna Akhmatova, translated by Nancy K. Anderson

David Lang (photo: Dacia Clay/Second Inversion)

Lang has spoken about being led into composition through his early encounters with Shostakovich. And the tone of his symphony is akin to Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony shorn of its triumphalism and cumulative effect. I kept thinking of that piece’s notorious first movement, but with its melodic and harmonic details blasted away, leaving just the repetitive martial rhythms as symbolic foundations to the bombed-out buildings of wartime Leningrad whose smoldering shells remain but whose trappings of life have been pulverized and left to circulate as a disorganized cloud in the smoky air. As if to reinforce the siege metaphor, Morlot positioned the drums at the left of the orchestra with the lower strings and brass on the right, effectively enveloping the jumbled and pleading voices of the treble choir. There’s definitely an edge to this music that you don’t always get with Lang.

Halfway through the symphony the quasi-ostinato stops, leaving the web of treble instruments standing alone. Most prominent here are the violins, supported by some high woodwinds, harps and a celeste. The bass reenters, but now with an alternation of sustained chords a half-step apart, reminiscent of Philip Glass (for whom Lang once worked as a copyist, meticulously typing the lyrics of Akhnaten into the score). As before, bass and treble proceed independently until the bass finally drops out entirely, leaving the violins (just as in Ives’ Symphony) with the last word.

To complete the evening Morlot paired Lang’s symphony with its putative opposite, Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life) from 1898. The antebellum naiveté of that old warhorse has long screamed out for revisionism, and programming it after the brutal honesty of the Lang only seemed to emphasize its insouciance. If there was a moral to the evening, it was that true heroes are the ones bearing hard witness to bitter truths. In that light we can be grateful for Seattle Symphony’s long record of supporting contemporary music, a record that one hopes will continue despite the imminent departure of both its Music Director Morlot and its President/CEO Simon Woods.

by Michael Schell