The advantage of calling the Kimmel Center’s new music series Fresh Ink is that “fresh” is relative, combining “new” with “refreshing” on this program of music for violin, Jennifer Koh, and piano, Reiko Uchida, ranging from 1942 to the present.
“Relax, and leave the driving to us,” John Adams recommends for his 1995 Road Movies. Lively, energetic, light, the piano ground rolls along with violin commentary; repetitive, but with enough variation to be identifiably Adams. But then the ground switches to violin with percussive piano punctuation. When the piano ground returns, it’s almost an old soothing friend, and the commentary has a jazzy swing. The very slow hypnotic second movement has a motif that extends and elongates in a duet. The closing is back to a fast ride with jagged non-stop rhythms.
Gyorgy Kurtag pulled together short selections from earlier pieces Signs, Games and Messages for solo violin in 1995. Distilled and intense is how the soloist describes this Romanian composer’s work; I would add short and percussive phrases, and vastly differing moods – violence, sorrow, folk music, dance and classic Bach.
In Lou Harrison’s 1998 Grand Duo you hear long echoes of held notes in the piano, under a scalar motif with violin melody above. The “estampe” movement reminded me of the Adams in its ground and cadenza format, but not as user-friendly. The center movement is a spare and delicate counterpoint, the slow movement is two melodies played simultaneously, and the close is a lively polka that just ate up the bow.
Poulenc’s 1942 Violin Sonata references Spanish music in this commemoration of Lorca. The first movement is a rhythmic theme and development with a surprisingly sweet and poignant melody. Poulenc quotes Lorca’s poem “the guitar makes dreams weep” for the second movement and its plucked strings, muted melody and romantic lushness. The presto tragico movement has internal contrasts, minor versus major, serious versus sweet melodies, dense notes versus open space, and a sudden ending.
And then we come to the world premiere of String Poetic by Philadelphia composer Jennifer Higdon – five poetic songs based on her own poems – a series of visual impressions: jagged climb, nocturne, blue hills of mist, maze mechanical and climb jagged. Each of these is a stand-alone work, in particular the ineffably poignant “piece of night – night of peace” Nocturne. Blue Hills of Mist begins so smoothly it seems an extension of the Nocturne, but includes some of the Jagged Climb influence in its increasing drama and grandeur; the plucked string effect in both piano and violin has an Oriental effect that ends in mid-air. Amazing Mechanical explores a maze of speeds without losing its forward momentum, and Climb Jagged reprises the rhythmic opening.
Fresh Ink Series
Kimmel Center
Philadelphia, Pa
October 21, 2006
(Reposted from Penn Sounds 10/26/06)
Keys to the Future is an annual festival of contemporary music for solo piano here in New York City. This year’s event will take place November 7-9 (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) at Greenwich House’s Renee Weiler Concert Hall. If you’re interested in checking out pertinent information, the website is http://www.keystothefuture.org/ or you can contact me directly at joe@keystothefuture.org.
The six pianists participating this year are: Lisa Moore, Blair McMillen, Tatjana Rankovich, Lora Tchekoratova, Polly Ferman, and myself. I thought I’d talk briefly here about the Festival and then focus on one piece from each of the three programs.
My goal as Artistic Director of Keys is to get listeners up to speed on what’s been happening in recent years with solo piano music. This season, the Festival has opened up a bit to include a handful of pieces from the 1970s and 80s. Keys to the Future has embraced the stylistic diversity of the contemporary scene, and you will hear pieces on the same evening of a type that are rarely if ever performed on the same program (for example, a short work by Berio followed by an arrangement of a Radiohead tune on 11/8).
Here’s a look at three of the pieces:
On the first night (Tuesday, 11/7), the brilliant pianist Lisa Moore will perform Henri Dutilleux’s Le Jeu des Contraires (Prelude No. 3) (1989). Here are some notes on the work by Etienne Moreau:
“The piano has been—and continues to be, at age 90—a source of inspiration to Dutilleux, his piano works providing a significant key to the evolution of his aesthetic beliefs. The possibilities in terms of sound offered by its harmonic richness and the diversity of its timbres attract Dutilleux to the instrument.
In Le Jeu the composer has concentrated all his harmonic, rhythmic and acoustic ability, displaying a remarkable mastery of ‘mirror’ writing. This piece seems to represent the very culmination of the musical and sound world of Henri Dutilleux, exemplifying the merging of intelligence and instinct inherent in all his compositions.”
On the second evening (Wednesday, 11/8), I will perform Arvo Pärt’s “Für Alina.”
Pärt composed “Für Alina” in 1976, and this little piece announced – quietly, thoughtfully – the arrival of his “tintinnabuli style.” The music is reminiscent of ringing bells, hence the name. Tintinnabuli works are rhythmically simple, and do not change tempo. It was written originally as a gift for an Estonian girl on her own in London.
On the third evening (Thursday, 11/9), virtuoso Tatjana Rankovich will play Bruce Stark’s “Winged.” Here are some comments on the work by the composer:
“The notion of angels has been a source of musical inspiration to me for years. Often the mere thought of other-worldly, high-energy beings in unseen dimensions brings forth a rush of ideas, as though they were eager to share their cosmic music if only I would turn them a listening ear. Winged is in one movement containing essentially two parts. The first and largest part represents a visitation by angels from invisible worlds, depicted in materials ranging from swirling figures to gentle melodic passages to ecstatic outpourings. After their disappearance, the last part (introduced by a low drone in the bass) represents a reminiscence from the human perspective on having witnessed these wondrous creatures. Here I quote the famous Christmas song Angels We Have Heard On High in fragments, with a slight reference to its “Gloria” section as the work closes.”
I hope you come to one or more of the evenings. It should be fun. Please take a look on Sequenza21.com next Friday for my third and final post.
Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Music Events, Other Minds, San Francisco
Our friends at the Other Minds new music community have announced the program for their 12th Other Minds Music Festival and, as usual, it is a dandy. This year offers a rare opportunity to hear important works by eight of today’s most innovative composers, invited by Other Minds Executive Director and Festival Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian.
On the program are American premieres from two of contemporary classical world’s elder statesmen, Per Nørgård of Denmark and Peter Sculthorpe of Australia, as well as guest composers Maja Ratkje (Norway), Joëlle Léandre (France), Ronald Bruce Smith (Canada), Daniel David Feinsmith (U.S.), Markus Stockhausen (Germany), and Tara Bouman (Netherlands).
The annual festival begins with three days of private retreat for guest composers, and continues with concerts and panel discussions at the Jewish Community Center, San Francisco, December 8-9-10, 2006.
The dates are Friday, Dec. 8 (8pm); Saturday, Dec. 9 (8pm); and Sunday, Dec. 10 (2pm), 2006, at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco’s Kanbar Hall, 3200 California St. at Presidio Ave. Panel discussions with composers and performers, hosted by Charles Amirkhanian, begin one hour prior to each concert. The program is here.
Other places: Our friend Brian Sacawa, saxophonist extraordinaire, has buffed up his blog, Sounds Like Now, and moved it to a new location. Go visit.
If this page looks funny to you and you are using a PC, it is probably because you are using Internet Explorer 6 or earlier. You can fix this problem in about three minutes by going here and downloading and installing IE 7. It’s free and painless. (You Mac users are on your own.)
Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Music Events, S21 Concert
Third installment of a series of Composer Perspectives previewing the November 20th Sequenza21 Concert.
First of all, many thanks to all the people doing the behind-the-scenes work to make the upcoming Sequenza21 concert happen. It’s a daunting task, bringing all of these disparate voices together. I wonder if concertgoers don’t routinely underestimate the headaches that are hidden behind any successful performance.
I’m very curious to hear the music on this concert, having come to know all of the composers a bit online and not at all in person. But I’m uncertain which pieces I will actually be sitting in the audience for. At some point in the evening, I will be on the stage, performing in the premiere of Singing silver with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE).
Scored for narrator, soprano, horn, cello and guitar, Singing silver is my latest attempt to combine words and music in a way that fully satisfies the needs of each. The narrator (me) speaks most of the text, with phrases spinning freely off of specific beats in the score. The soprano (Tony Arnold) echoes some of the text, but more often blends wordlessly with the instruments, acting as a connective sinew between the muscle of poetry and the bone of music.
Similarly, the words of Singing silver are the tissue that connects the person I’ve become with the child I once was. We all have rites of passage; mine took place in an autumn dusk, walking home from school, stepping into a busy street for God knows what reason.
Here is the text:
I was crossing the road on an autumn afternoon when a spark in the pavement caught my eye,
sun low in the sky.
I dropped to the ground on one red knee and peered into the black and gold,
as the day grew old.
Sixteen thousand jewels I found shattering the autumn light,
while the air prepared to greet the night.
Sixteen thousand diamonds calling colors to the sky
Sixteen thousand stars and crowns astounding to the eye
But I knew the ones you’d love.
I will bring them home to show to you.
I will bring them home to give to you.
I will bring them home.
I was crossing the road on an autumn afternoon when a lonely tone caught my ear,
a careful keening, strangely near.
I stopped and listened to the sky, sun angled to my right,
clutching at the night.
Sixteen thousand sounds I found shattering the autumn air,
as the day rolled over in bewildered prayer.
Sixteen thousand fragments tumbling through the atmosphere
Sixteen thousand jangled dreams rebounding in the ear
But I knew the ones you’d love.
I will bring them home to show to you.
I will bring them home to give to you.
I will bring them home.
I was crossing the road on an autumn afternoon when a flash of metal spun me round,
and up off the ground.
I thrust my arms out left and right, sun darting under me,
fleeing westerly.
And then I saw him, sitting near, laughing gently at the blurring cars
Singing silver in my ear, like sixteen thousand dangled stars.
Sixteen thousand silent smiles shining in the mist
Sixteen thousand aspirations dancing in his fist.
And I knew that he would love you.
Come home with me, I have someone to show you.
Come home with me, I have someone to give you
Come home.
Keys to the Future is a festival of contemporary music for solo piano that began here in New York in 2005. Season 2 takes place November 7-9 (Tues., Wed. and Thurs.) at Greenwich House’s Renee Weiler Concert Hall. (If you haven’t been there, this intimate hall is ideal for listening to piano music.) If you’re interested in checking out pertinent information, the website is http://www.keystothefuture.org/, or you can contact me directly at joe@keystothefuture.org. The six pianists involved are: Lisa Moore, Blair McMillen, Tatjana Rankovich, Lora Tchekoratova, Polly Ferman, and myself. I thought I’d talk briefly here about the Festival and then focus on one piece from each of the three programs.
My goal as Artistic Director of Keys is to get listeners up to speed on what’s been happening in recent years with solo piano music. In 2005, we were fairly rigid about the pieces on the programs being very recent, but this season, the Festival has opened up a bit to include a handful of pieces from the 1970s and 80s. My rationale was that pieces by a great but little-known British composer like Howard Skempton are so rarely performed that, despite the fact that some were composed 25 years ago, they will be as new to most listeners. The Festival has embraced the stylistic diversity of the contemporary scene, and you will hear pieces on the same evening of a type that are rarely if ever performed on the same program (for example, a short work by Berio followed by an arrangement of a Radiohead tune on 11/8).
Now to 3 of the pieces:
On the first night (Tuesday, 11/7), I will play 8 short works by the aforementioned Howard Skempton. These pieces combine minimalism and the English folk tradition, expressed in the form of extremely condensed miniatures, some of which last for less than a minute. Three of the pieces were composed in memoriam: for Cornelius Cardew (“Well well Cornelius”), John Cage (“Of Late”) and Morton Feldman (“Toccata”). I thought rather than start the Festival with a dazzling virtuosic showpiece, I’d begin the Festival with some peaceful, meditative sounds.
On the 2nd evening (Wednesday, 11/8), brilliant pianist Tatjana Rankovich will open the program with Franghiz Ali-Zadeh’s “Music for Piano” (1997). Ali-Zadeh is a native of the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan whose eloquent music is poised between the Middle East and the modernist West. “Music for Piano” is notable for turning the middle register of the instrument into a stand-in for the “tar,” a long-necked lute played across the Middle East and Central Asia. To accomplish this, Tatjana will prepare the instrument with a beaded necklace over the central portion of the strings inside, as instructed in the score.
On the third evening (Thursday, 11/9), Polly Ferman, the world’s foremost specialist in the piano music of Latin America, will close the program with Osvaldo Golijov’s “Levante: Fantasy on a Chorus from the ‘St. Mark Passion’” (2004). This is Golijov’s first piano work. Based on the eleventh section of his 2001 Passion–a setting of the story of Judas offering to betray Jesus for silver coins–the piece is fired by Latin American dance rhythms. The composer has compared the section to a raucous Cuban meal in which a drunken priest relates the biblical narrative. Interestingly, in the process of transcription to piano, the music morphed from Cuban rhythms to tango.
I hope you come to one or more of the evenings. It should be fun. Please take a look on Sequenza21.com next Friday for my second post.
Joe
Joseph Rubenstein
Artistic Director, Keys to the Future
Achtung!
If you read something contrary here previously, consider this an update. The Lily Pad in Cambridge has been closed temporarily to obtain proper codes and licenses; they hope to re-open soon. Therefore, the Earle Brown FOLIO event scheduled for tomorrow night, Oct. 20, by the Callithumpian Consort will be rescheduled on a future date.
* * * * *
One conclusion that a body might draw from the Callithumpian Consort’s outing last week in Boston is that what some contemporary music needs — and richly deserves — is a near-empty concert hall.
No, seriously. Would Earle Brown’s “Sign Sounds” and John Luther Adams’s “songbirdsongs” have been anywhere near as atmospheric if the New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall had been — sickening thought — full? Ah we happy few, all forty (40) of us.
The point comes up because of the way that “songbirdsongs” in particular relies, first, on silence, both in itself and as background; and second, on space, not just in the sense of there being a sort of aerating nimbus around the sounding notes (i.e., good acoustics) but room enough, measured in linear feet, for a pair of piccolo players to go wandering about inside and outside the auditorium making like birds.
These weren’t Messiaen birds, they were Adams birds. A nice thing about an Adams bird, if one can generalize, is that if it feels like modulating a bit that’s what it will do — just a little. And that’s as far in the direction of grandiosity as they ever get. Jordan Hall being three storeys high and with lots of doors to enter and depart from, there was a blessed abundance of perches.
So described, “songbirdsongs” might have you wondering about what’s been helpfully labeled the Cringe Factor. Yes, the titles that the piece’s sections bear — “Morningfield Song,” “Apple Blossom Round,” “Wood Thrush,” “Joyful Noise,” “notquitespringdawn,” “Mourning Dove,” “Meadowdance,” “August Voices” — do suggest a New Agey niceness that will not appeal to all tastes. And there were moments when you felt the composer was really pushing it (must all this be so calm, sparse, and Alpha-wavey?) but then what should land on us but an expertly timed, shock-cut, irruptive coup de theatre — so that’s what all those percussionists were on hand for.
Forget about the Cringe Factor then. Cumulatively, there turned out to be a much greater variety of tone color and strategy in “songbirdsongs” than might first have appeared. Examples: the quiet vibraphone roll teetering on the edge of audibility — you had to crane to see where it was coming from — that produced the oddest, near-electronic sort of hum; “Mourning Dove,” with its literalist sighing bent notes; the “Apple Blossom Round”; and the noisy bits, which in this context had the feel of natural disturbances.
How much of this sort of thing is too much? Reactions will differ, but evidently not a very great deal. “Relaxing but not insignificant” (John Schaefer) is one take on Adams’s music, “You either love it or like it” (Evan Johnson) another.
Finally, a matter we’re not exactly sure that the composer consciously intended. Toward the end of “songbirdsong,” as event placidly succeeded event, your reviewer became aware of a steady, silent pulse beneath it all — something like 50 ticks to the minute. The instrumental attacks were variously on or to either side of the pulse, but mostly on. It was there, wasn’t it? Or was it the brain that was supplying it? Or both?
The performers, excellent all, were: Nana Aomori, Jessi Rosinski (piccolos), Jeffrey Means. George Nickson, Joseph LaPalomento, Daniel Zawodniak (percussion), Stephen Olsen (celesta), Gabriel Diaz (violin).
* * * * *
Earle Brown’s “Sign Sounds,” which mobilized some 18 players plus conductor, raised certain questions if you thought about them as the music was going on, but somehow didn’t if you didn’t. The questions would have been: What, precisely, is in that score, and of what kind and how much, and did it matter?
It’s irresistible to quote Paul Griffiths, that indefatigible and learned pro, on the subject of Brown’s music:
“His aim was not the empty space of Cage, nor the quiet space of Feldman, but the decisive object — not the extinction of the composer, nor the liberation of the performer, but the creation of a well-made piece, one that would have a sure identity for all the variability of form and detail introduced by means of indeterminate notation. The more indeterminate the notation, the more the identity of the piece would have to be visual …”
— “Modern Music and After: Directions Since 1945” (Oxford University Press, 1995).
In this particular performance of “Sign Sounds” there was a sense of the piece being assembled and set up out of blocks of air, right there in front of you — and in that loveliest of musical work places, Jordan Hall. How everything did sound — the sprinklings of celesta, some very in-tune string harmonics, the lyre-like punctuations of the harp, a swinging brass choir, and the quartet of mallet-wielding percussionists who, when the texture allowed, created one doozey of a great splash (like New York Modernist flung paint? Just a thought.)
Near-stasis then a flutter of activity — it was at these extremes, it seemed, that all these colorful sonic possibilities were being realized. At one point a series of staggered entrances had you listening for, of all things, a fugue. A fugue! But shouldn’t ghostly traces of such things be appearing in Brown? His worklist does include after all, though from early on, a fugue and a passacaglia.
In any event, the piece went over like you wouldn’t believe (40 pairs of hands clapping, all belonging to the right people), and there was an encore: a fragment of what had gone before, sounding pretty much as we’d heard it the first time.
The heroes and heroines of this performance were: Jessi Rosinski (flute), Will Amsel (clarinet), Amy Advocat (bass clarinet), Adam Smith (bassoon), Andrew Stetson (trumpet), Dylan Chmura-Moore (trombone), Hester Ham (piano), Minji Noh (celesta), Franziska Huhn (harp), Ethan Wood and Heather Wittels (violins), Ashleigh Gordon (viola) David Huckaby (cello), David Goodchild (bass), Jeffrey Means, John Andress, Joseph Becker, William Holden (percussion) and Stephen Drury (conductor).
* * * * *
First on the program was Alvin Lucier’s “Ever Present,” which as a late arriver (accursed Harvard/Dudley bus) we were reduced to experiencing from outside one of the windowed doors leading in to the auditorium. The flutist, sax player, and pianist all looked quite at peace with themselves, not having very many notes to play and perhaps for other reasons as well. Anyway, we didn’t hear any. But wait, was it the overhead lighting in the corridor that was giving off that high-pitched technological noise? Or ventilation gone haywire? No, silly, it was one of Lucier’s beloved electric gizmos.
RICHARD BUELL can be reached at rbuell@verizon.net
The program is called All About Love so it’s only fitting that there be something old and something new when the Metropolis Ensemble opens its second season Thursday night at 8 pm at the spectacular Angel Orensanz Foundation Center for the Arts.
The “old” part of the concert will be supplied by Claudio Monteverdi’s dramatic three-voice “operatic scena” Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorind.
It’s the dramatic tale of battle between two lovers, Clorinda (a Moor) and Tancredi (a knight-Crusader) which could benefit a lot with items such as a clitoral sucker. (Lucky for us all these Muslim-Christian conflicts are a thing of the past).
The “new” is composer-in-residence David Schiff’s song cycle, All About Love, set for tenor, mezzo-soprano, and chamber ensemble, and based on a collection of texts from Petrarch, Louise Labé , Melville, Marina Tsvetaeva, Keats, and Proust.
I’m not quite sure how they pulled it off but Schiff and musical director Andrew Cyr have lined up four of the hottest young singers in town to perform the program–tenor Thomas Glenn; mezzo Hai-Ting Chinn; soprano Melissa Fogarty and baritone and stage director Daniel Neer.
The Metropolis Ensemble, a non-profit chamber orchestra dedicated to unique and daring programming, was formed more than a year ago with idea of bringing together New York’s best musicians to perform in downtown venues and create programs that support new music in audience friendly environments.
“New music should be a cultural event, a celebration, and we aspire to make our concerts such events, where ambiance and context, as well as the social aspect (we worked hard to get wineries to donate free great wine, so it’s kind of a great value to attend, and a very party like feel) is an important element of the mix,” Cyr says.
The Metropolis Ensemble is a terrific organization with an ambitious agenda and, I might add, one of the sponsors of the Sequenza21 concert. It would be great if a lot of our regulars turn out for what is sure to be a terrific program. If someone would like to review it, I may be able to get you in free.
Thursday, October 19, 8 PM at The Angel Orensanz Foundation Center for the Arts, 172 Norfolk Street, New York, NY 10002, 212-529-7194. To purchase tickets for “All About Love”, please visit www.metropolisensemble.org or call 917-930-6106.
Over the next few weeks you’re going to be hearing a lot from the composers on the upcoming Sequenza21 concert. We’re all pretty chatty around here, and these posts are going to be one of our little publicity stunts. Here’s a sample of the sort of thing you might be seeing.
Piece: Pause Button Excerpt
Composer: David Salvage
Performer: Thomas Meglioranza
Poet: Kevin Davies
About two years ago I was looking for a text for a song-cycle for baritone and piano. Having set Christina Rossetti and Rupert Brooke, I felt obliged to find a contemporary poet. I found much poetry that I liked and even began some settings of Yosef Komunyakaa. But nothing felt right. Then a friend of mine mentioned a poet whom I had never heard of: Kevin Davies. I rummaged around online (Davies being too obscure for most bookstores) and came upon his volume “Pause Button.” After reading about two pages, I knew that, even though I didn’t know what he was talking about, there was music here.
After much deliberation, and gaining permission from Kevin (a new music fan, by the way), I decided on a passage from the book’s second half and began to write. Early sketches resembled Berg, with a thick, chromatic piano part and the voice assuming an integral – rather than dominant – role. But as I pressed forward, the feeling that I was just writing dumb notes began to bother me. So I started paring down the piano part until, one day, after having listened to György Kurtág’s “Hölderlin Gesänge,” I decided to chuck the piano part altogether and a write a solo.
Two years later “Pause Button Excerpt” is seeing the light of day. And what a day it’s
seeing. Last winter, completely out of the blue, baritone Thomas Meglioranza e-mailed me having read about the piece on my Sequenza21 Wiki page. He was looking for solo baritone music and wanted a copy. Tom won last year’s Naumburg competition and is not only a stupendously gifted singer, but a real Mensch as well. Go to his website, and you’ll learn that the best way for anyone to chalk up frequent flyer miles is to attend his performances. (There are lots of them, and they’re all over the place.)
It’s a thrill to dwell here on the musical side of this concert. Being the point man on this thing mostly means figuring out how to get the marimba in the building and making sure we have access to all the electronic equipment the (other) composers require. Preparations, in all honesty, are going shockingly well. Just gotta keep certain committee members from killing each other. But folks, this is going to be awesome.
P.S. But can our concert possibly be as awesome as this apple pie?
For all the allusions to chaos and complexity in the American Composers Orchestra’s Orchestra Underground concert at Zankel on Friday night, the evening was a surpisingly mellow–dare I say it, even melodic–affair. If new music is going to be this much fun to listen to there is a real danger that people are going to start coming to concerts.
This is not to say the program was not adventuresome, just that it contained some unexpected crowd pleasers. The guy sitting next to me, a visiting pianist/composer from St. Louis named Ken Palmer who came strictly for the Ives opener (Ken had written his dissertation at Yale on the Concord Sonata), even allowed that he would like to hear a couple of the pieces again and ventured that this weird Corey Dargel dude could be some kind of “breakthrough something or other” hit.
The evening began with orchestrated versions of Charles Ives’ Four Ragtime Dance, Nos. 2 and 4, originally composed for piano. The thievery from Scott Joplin and Hubie Blake would be offensive if it were not so disarmingly obvious and re-mixed with church songs and marching band ditties with such consummate wit. By the time we got to “Bringing in the Sheaves” (or “bringing in the sheep,” as we sang just to be naughty when I was a kid), everyone in Zankel Hall had a grin on their face.
The chaos part of the evening was supplied by Brad Ludman’s Fuzzy Logic, four short movements of dazzling electronia augmented by Lauren Bradnofsky on amplified cello and various orchestral instruments, as well as a dandy video by Boom Design Group. I liked the way each of the movements began on a confident, assertive trajectory, became more convuluted and accelerated until they split apart, and then dissolved with a kind of a whimper. Not sure what it means except maybe it doesn’t matter where you begin you’re going to wind up lost anyway so you can stop anywhere. Silvestrov does that, too, although his music starts out tentative before it totally wimps out.
Michael Gandolfi’s two-movment piece As Above was also a video collaboration (with Ean White), with the first short movement called “Touch” based on natural images and the second called “Electric” based on more urban images. Touch was more chaos, a kind of jerky musicial cubism, based on the science of fractals, but Electric drew from vanacular musical languages, including rock, blues and some super-infectious “flying down to Rio” Latin rhythms. It had a beat and you could dance to it.
The major complexity element of the evening was supplied by Michael Gatonska’s After the Wings of Migratory Birds, a brilliantly rendered tone poem based on the composer’s re-imagination of the sounds made by swallows gathering in migratory flocks–the way they sound when they move at the same time, the way they all flap their wings in unison, the way they suddenly fall perfectly still at the same time. The orchestration was dense and often breathtaking, with some stunning moments of pure beauty in the strings. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that this is a La Mer for the age of complexity.
Susie Ibarra did a piece on a drum set which was short and not too loud, qualities I appreciate in a drum solo. The evening ended with Evan Ziporyn’s Big Grenadilla, a concerto for bass clarinet, which he performed admirably himself with impressive breath control. Ziporyn’s music is so competent, so assured, so well-constructed that I really, really hope to like it someday. I’m sure the fact that it leaves me cold is my failing, not his.
One of the several fun points of the evening was the beginning of the second half when a recording of Charles Ives hammering away at a piano and singing some hardy patriotic World War I ditty was played for the amusement of those assembled. The recording was a little blurry but I could have sworn Ives said “That sucked” at the end. It couldn’t have been that, although the sentiment was certainly accurate.
And, of course, the hit of the evening–the peoples’ choice–was our own boulevardier Corey Dargel, who brought down the house with a tres amusant song called All the Notes and Rhythms I’ve Ever Loved about composer boyfriends who, knowing that he can’t orchestrate, steal his stuff and use it in their own pieces which is a kind of “sadistic, back-handed compliment.” It was the usual Corey brilliant mix of satire and truth.
My new friend Ken in the next seat over is right; Corey is destined to become some kind of “breakthrough something or other” hit. Anybody need an intellectual Peter Allen?
Tonight’s joint performance at the Used Book Café by Hilary Hahn and Chris Thile was an essay in the satisfactions of virtuosity. Any concert-goer who can no longer thrill to the sound of lightning-fast fingers should go his or her way and leave the rest of us to our fun. For sure technique is not all. And for sure the steps to acquiring a technique that can thrill are becoming more brutal and inhuman to mount by the year. And, also for sure, much that is essential to extraordinary music making is often lost on the climb. Some may even grumble that Hahn and Thile fly only so high as they do because they travel light.
But tonight, sitting through solo and duet renditions of Bach, Tartini, Bob Dylan, Fiona Apple, and others, one happily forgot the old complaints about virtuosity and sat back contentedly in the rush of arpeggios, trills, tremolos, and scales. One smiled at the clear joy Hahn and Thile took in collaborating with a fellow musical athlete of the first caliber, someone who could play along tight no matter how blazing the tempos dared. This isn’t to say the country whiz kid winging his way through the classics and the conservatory prodigy tentatively testing the waters of folk music always made for an effortless couple: Thile’s Bach got pretty runny, and Hahn’s bluegrass was a little green. But the super-abundance of talent on display more than made up for the moments of musical awkwardness. Hahn and Thile charmed and dazzled through the evening, and we all cheered. Both artists have new CDs out, and let’s hope they both sell lots and lots of them.
P.S. On a more somber note, Tower Records is officially breathing its last. I’m not up for a eulogy tonight (lectures yet to prep); but the “Going Out of Business” signs in the windows of the grand store by Lincoln Center are making me feel a little bummed.