Experimental Music

Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Los Angeles, Women composers

The Ground Beneath Her Feet at the wulf

On October 11, 2017 downtown Los Angeles was the venue for a new collaborative performance by Rachel Yezbick, Carole Kim and Eric Heep. Coaxial Arts, the new home of the wulf experimental music concert series,  welcomed in a mid-week audience that arranged itself on the floor and along the brick walls in quiet expectation of an unconventional program.

The performance space was darkened as the program opened with Eric Heep’s Bubble playing through the speakers. The sounds were realized from digitally generated oscillations that were processed by computer using a bubble sort algorithm. The result was a series low buzzing sounds that gradually increased in volume and lowered in pitch. After a few moments a new starting buzz was heard, and the process repeated. The close acoustics of the Coaxial space amplified the details of density and texture as each new sequence of the piece proceeded. Sometimes two pitches very close in frequency were heard so that zero-beating occurred. At other times overlapping sequences were heard at widely spaced frequencies, giving rise to a variety of interactions as these unfurled downward. In one sequence, the initial buzzing was heard to have a sharp attack followed by decay and this resembled the striking of a large cathedral bell, minus its tone.

Eventually Bubble ran quietly down and at a given signal, Rachel Yezbick and Carole Kim stood up and approached a large gray latex bag in the center of the space. They entered  one at a time, until both were fully enveloped in its close folds. A wireless microphone was embedded with them and sent the internal sounds back to the computer for processing and into the sound system. All was quiet as the crouching shape lay motionless on the floor and this marked the beginning of The Ground Beneath Her Feet. The amorphous shape and the darkened space allowed the imagination to work, especially as the gray latex bag more or less completely obscured the human forms within. When lying or prone, the shape was seen as benign,  like a sleeping house cat. When creeping along the floor, the shape became something both strange and curious. The movement, the breathing sounds and the occasional suggestion of body and limbs convincingly conjured a presence that was alive. When the performers rose up and moved menacingly towards the audience,  seated just a few feet away with their backs against the wall, primal instincts took over and this change of posture suddenly felt threatening – as if a bear had wandered into Coaxial Arts. The entire performance was very engaging; that a large gray  bag containing two performers could evoke so many different perceptions was remarkable.

As expressed in the program notes, there were deeper intentions behind The Ground Beneath Her Feet:  “… the yearning for shape and the resulting assault against the surface when the desired form is untenable.” Taken from the title of a Salmon Rushdie book, this piece “reflects on the trauma of breaking through into new worlds, metamorphoses and aspiration.” As the work concluded there was much cheering and applause as the two performers emerged. This piece is physically strenuous and on a warm night Ms. Yezbick and Ms. Kim appeared as if they had just come from an extended workout in the gym. The Ground Beneath Her Feet vividly portrays the yearning and struggle for meaning while the striking movements and gestures of the performers completely captured the imagination of the audience.

Photo by Brittany Neimeth

 

by Paul Muller
Books, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?

Required Reading: Experimental Music Since 1970

experimental music since 1970

Book Review:

Experimental Music Since 1970

By Jennie Gottschalk

Bloomsbury, 2016

284 pp.

From the very beginning of Experimental Music Since 1970, author Jennie Gottschalk lets us know that her perspective is that of a “maker,” a composer. This is instructive as to the book’s approach and to its inclusion and, in some cases, exclusion, of experimental composers who have made an impact over the past five decades. These decisions are based on a particular composer’s vantage point rather than an attempt to construct an all-encompassing canon of “important” figures, which in the fragmented and various perspectives of the postmodern era no book could truly do without devolving into mere name-checking and cataloging. Happily, Gottschalk’s book is anything but a catalog — her portraits of various wings of experimental music are vivid and often detailed. It is the viewpoint of a fascinating “maker,” someone who embraces an array of imaginative approaches to musical experimentation.

Gottschalk suggests that one of the purposes of her volume is to serve as a continuation of Michael Nyman’s seminal Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. Perhaps in response to the centrality of Cage in the earlier volume, she begins Experimental Music Since 1970 with a deconstruction of the composer’s 4’33”, pointing out the various pathways into experiment that the piece still affords today. Gottschalk identifies these central concerns as follows: indeterminacy, change, non-subjectivity, research, and experience. While it is quickly pointed out that not all experimental music engages all of these issues, they prove to be pivotal in the way that Gottschalk defines and describes experimentation.

With these initial precepts laid out, the book proceeds to further parse experimentation into particular spheres of activity, with each chapter tackling one or more of these. Thus we are spared a chronological overview and when concerns overlap in composers’ works, they may reappear throughout the volume. This does lead one to question certain choices of space allocation. For instances, even given all of his fertile creativity, why is Peter Ablinger so often referenced while microtonal composers Ezra Sims and Joe Maneri and hypercomplex composers Brian Ferneyhough and Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf are not mentioned even once? Apparently, the second modern school falls outside of Gottschalk’s purview. While one can fall back on her statement that she is a composer rather than a historian, it is somewhat disappointing that these significant types of experimentation seem “beyond the pale” (interestingly, there is similar neglect of American late modernism in Tim Rutherford-Johnson’s recent After the Fall: Music Since 1989). The presence of experimental jazz is also spotty, with a few references to artists such as Anthony Braxton and George Lewis but nothing about, for instance, Ornette Coleman, Alice Coltrane, and Sun Ra. Another challenge is some haphazard copy-editing, particularly in the book’s latter half.

These caveats aside, what is covered here is a splendor of imaginative music-making that will supply much food for thought. Gottschalk is particularly in her element when discussing the Wandelweiser collective, approaches to instrument-building, ad hoc electronics, improvisation, sound art, ecomusic in general and site-specific works in particular. The book’s inclusivity in terms of race, gender, and sexuality may, along with Rutherford-Johnson’s similarly sensitive treatment of these issues in Music Since 1989, help to slay a few stereotypes about composers. Gottschalk’s website, Sound Expanse, continues to build upon the achievements and aims of Experimental Music Since 1970, providing a valuable companion to the book and a “must bookmark” resource all by itself.

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by Christian Carey
Canada, CD Review, CDs, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?

Marc Sabat and JACK – Harmony (CD)

 

Marc Sabat

Harmony

JACK Quartet

Canadian Composers Series #5

Another Timbre

 

Euler Spirals Scenery (2011), Claudiu Ptolemy (2008), Jean Philippe Rameau (2012)

 

A long time fixture on the Toronto scene as a string performer, improviser, and composer, Marc Sabat now resides in Berlin. However, he has taken his experimental penchant for tuning systems with him, writing in extended just intonation with a fluency that rivals Harry Partch and Ben Johnston’s own explorations of pitch. On the CD Harmony, JACK Quartet plays two quartets and a duo with rapt attention to the detailed nuances of Sabat’s pitch language and a keen sense of its corresponding flowing rhythms.

 

Euler Lattice Spirals Scenery (2011) is a five movement work that name checks various elements and personages of the intonation studies milieu. The first movement, Preludio, is subtitled “Les Quintes Justes” and it indeed does deal with sustained pure fifths in evocative fashion. Two of the movements, numbers two and five respectively, are titled Pythagoras Drawing. Movements three and four are each dedicated to a different composer who has been influential on Sabat; they are titled Harmonium for Claude Vivier and Harmonium for Ben Johnston. Each successive movement sends us a little further into the dark forest of dissonant overtones that accumulate on top of “Les Quintes Justes.” Thus, the entire piece can be seen as gradually revealing the compass of Sabat’s pitch palette.

 

Claudius Ptolemy (2008) is a duo, played by JACK violinist Christopher Otto and cellist Kevin McFarland (note: Jay Campbell now plays with the group). Open string double stops as well as dissonant intervals, harmonics, and ambling melodies combine in this adagio essay to make a fresh-sounding conglomeration of familiar playing techniques. The aforementioned “ambling affect” is one that Sabat shares with a number of his Canadian colleagues, not least Linda Catlin Smith, whose volume in the Canadian Composer Series (#1) appeared as a review here earlier in 2017. The final work on the Sabat CD is named after another important music theorist: Jean-Philippe Rameau (2012). Here the simultaneities are particularly fetching, with double-stops from multiple quartet members overlapping into beautiful chords. In one of his treatises( from 1737), Rameau struggled to describe the consonant and dissonant properties of just intonation: Sabat’s Rameau lays it out for all to hear with abundant clarity. 

 

by Christian Carey
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Los Angeles

Dog Star 13 – The Mean Harpsichord

On Thursday, June 15, 2017 Dog Star Volume 13 landed at the Cal Arts campus for a concert titled The Mean Harpsichord. No fewer than three harpsichords were in place at The Wild Beast, where every chair was filled with someone interested in hearing experimental music at the cutting edge. The 2017 Dog Star Orchestra series, a local new music tradition since 2005, featured a total of eleven concerts this year and has been running at various locations all around Los Angeles since June 3.

The first piece on the concert program was Tasten, by Eva-Maria Houben and for this two harpsichords were employed, manned by Robert Holliday and Sepand Shahab. Two soft notes by Holliday began Tasten, followed by an extended silence. About 30 seconds later, and almost as an answer, three separate notes were heard from the second harpsichord. More silence followed, allowing the notes to ring out and slowly decay. This pattern continued with the sounding of one, two or a few notes by each harpsichord, followed by an extended silence between.

The two harpsichords seemed to alternate in turn, but not strictly, and the extended silences acted to draw the listener into a heightened level of concentration. It was as if each set of notes added a clue to some larger form or structure. There were occasional seven or eight note phrases, but no chords, and the sounds were never hurried. This is very spare music, and it often seemed like a quiet conversation between two people who know each other very well – perhaps after dinner on a dark porch – with the long silences actually adding to the communication. The score for this was not conventionally notated, but was rather a page of instructions followed by several more pages of symbols and letters that gave the harpsichord players their cues. Tasten reduces pitch, rhythm and dynamic content to the minimum while at the same time raising the listeners awareness in ways that are not otherwise experienced in a conventional musical performance.

Arianna (Monteverdi) by Mark So followed, and for this some 10 musicians with their various instruments gathered while a field recording of street sounds and construction equipment was heard over the speaker system. A solemn, deep tone was heard from something like a small hand-pumped portable organ accompanied by softly sorrowful notes from a violin. Harpsichords joined in as well as a cello, creating a feeling of disconnection and loneliness that was very effective in combination with the impersonal sounds coming from the field recording. All of this was slow and stately – there was nothing rapid or with a rhythmic beat. The texture was smooth and lush, and some lovely harmonies were heard at times among the various instrument groupings. A pop tune and then some faint voices were heard in the field recording that contrasted with a series of low, mournful chords from the portable organ and strings. The strongly expressive feel of this piece was the result of distributing small sections of an original Claudio Monteverdi score to the various acoustic instruments. There was no effort to quote this music per se, but rather fragments of chords and harmonies were employed in diverse ways to create the richly haunting mood. Arianna (Monteverdi) is an impressive example of the creation of a new contemporary piece fashioned from the musical DNA of a 17th century Italian master.

Shadow Earth, by Michael Pisaro was next and this was performed by Sepand Shahab at the harpsichord. This began quietly with a few short sequences of notes, followed by some simple chords that unfolded into a modest dissonance as the piece progressed. Counterpoint appeared in the lower registers and this led to a series of thick chords that precipitated a dark, mysterious feel. There was no continuous beat or pulse in this music, but rather a sequence of brief, disconnected passages; sometimes these included chords with harmony and at other times just a few singular notes. It was very much the musical equivalent of a woodcut relief print – where the total is the sum of the ink markings and the white space – so that the viewer’s brain forms the completed image. The abstraction of the sound that is heard in this piece partners with the listener’s imagination. Shadow Earth nicely evokes the contrasting darkness and light of shadows in the same way – the music paints only a part of the image and the listener completes the picture.

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by Paul Muller
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?, Percussion

LA Percussion Quartet – Beyond (CD)

Los Angeles Percussion Quartet

Beyond

Works by Daniel Bjarnason, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Christopher Cerrone, Ellen Reid, and Andrew McIntosh

Sono Luminus 2XCD

Los Angeles Percussion Quartet performs on one of the most compelling releases of early 2017. Beyond (Sono Luminus, June 16, 2017) is a double-disc helping of new works for percussion ensemble by Daniel Bjarnason, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Christopher Cerrone, Ellen Reid, and Andrew McIntosh. All of these composers are up and coming stars in the new music world. Both Reid and Cerrone are New Yorkers (Reid is now based in NY and LA) who have taken Los Angeles by storm in recent seasons with opera and orchestra projects. Bjarnason and Thorvaldsdottir are Icelandic composers who both have a strong connection to the West Coast. McIntosh is very strongly identified with the LA scene, as a composer, string performer, and the guiding force behind Populist Records, one of the most interesting experimental labels out there (here is my recent review of a Populist release by Daniel Corral).

One of the fascinating things to hear on Beyond is the way in which each composer translates their musical approach to the percussive idiom. Thus, Bjarnason’s penchant for dynamic and scoring contrasts is demonstrated in Qui Tollis, a composition equally compelling in both its pianissimo and fortissimo passages. Thorvaldsdottir’s Aura maintains its creator’s fascination with pitched timbres and colorful clouds of harmony; these are deployed with a deft sense of ensemble interplay. Cerrone imports acoustic guitar and electronics in the five-movement suite Memory Palace. The places he references are familiar to New Yorkers, from the pastoral hues of “Harriman” to the tense ostinatos of “L.I.E.” (Long Island Expressway, for those of you who have the blissful fortune to be unaware of this stress-filled commuter highway), and his depictions ring true. Fear-Release by Reid presents a dramatic use of unfurling cells of rhythmic activity alongside pensive pitched percussion. Its coda for metallophones is particularly fetching; after all of the built up tension of the piece’s main body, it serves as a kind of exhalation.

The culminating, and most substantial, work on the recording is McIntosh’s I Hold the Lion’s Paw, a nine-movement long piece some three quarters of an hour in duration. Much of its composer’s music concerns itself with microtones and alternate tunings – he is experienced in playing both Early music’s temperaments as well as contemporary explorations of tuning. Thus it is no surprise that McIntosh’s pitch template for I Hold the Lion’s Paw is an extended one. However, this is just one aspect of a multi-faceted piece, which also makes extensive use of low drums and cymbals for a ritualistic colloquy. Still more ritualized, taking on an almost sacramental guise, is the pouring of water and striking of ceramics filled with water. Every percussionist I know loves an instrument-making assignment and McIntosh doesn’t disappoint: DIY elements include aluminum pipes, cut to fit. None of the elements of this significant battery of instruments seems out of place: despite the use of water, I Hold the Lion’s Paw is no “kitchen sink” piece. On the contrary, it is a thoughtfully constructed and sonically beguiling composition. Several excellent percussion ensembles are currently active: Los Angeles Percussion Quartet is certainly an estimable member of this elite cohort.

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Los Angeles, Review

Cazan, Gloss and Anderson at Betalevel in Los Angeles

On Saturday, May 27, 2017 Betalevel was the venue for a concert of experimental music, spoken text and radio sounds as created and performed by Scott Cazan, Pauline Gloss and Casey Anderson. A nice crowd ventured into the colorful subterranean performance space on a quiet holiday evening in the Chinatown district of Los Angeles.

The first piece on the program was Grammar, by Scott Cazan, who presided over a computer table filled with cables leading to mixers and speakers. A section of the floor in front was filled with symbols and letters chalked onto the cement prior to the start of the performance. These markings acted as the score and represented the computer keystrokes to be applied as the piece progressed. Grammar began with a steady rhythmic beat, followed by a series of continuing trills in something like a marimba, all of which established a nice groove. After a few moments, a short burst of white noise was heard and this recurred on intervals of a few seconds. A deep bass tone entered, sforzando, and this was heard again after a somewhat longer interval. The result was to establish a congenial and layered texture, propelled along by the various recurring elements.

About a third of the way through a soft hissing was heard, increasing in volume until it obscured all but the low growls in the sforzando bass. The regular rhythmic elements became overwhelmed – leaving the listener without that reassuring reference – and the hissing sound became more menacing, like the scream of an out-of-control steam vent. A high metallic screeching was added to the mix, and the intensity increased to something approaching the sound of a dentist drill. The confined spaces of Betalevel amplified the piercing sounds – almost to the threshold of pain – but at just that point the squealing subsided and then ceased, allowing the bass tones and then the percussion to reappear. The original elements from the beginning reasserted themselves, restoring order, and slowly faded out in a peaceful ending. Grammar is an artful mix of the reassuringly familiar and the totally terrifying, with both possibilities hanging in the balance – a metaphor for these uncertain times.

Pauline Gloss was next with three text/sound works, First Piano Lesson, Trauma Response and An Integration, presented serially and without pause. This began with First Piano Lesson, a recording of a spoken piece, played through the speaker system. The stream of words first came singly, and then were repeated in various combinations and permutations; each phrase a clue that added to the total picture. The speech was processed through self-oscillating band-pass filters and this gave the text a thin aura of musical tones. As described on the sonospace.org website: “First Piano Lesson is a compressed coming of age story produced from accreted and recombinant language. The majority of the piece is built out of the materials of one 8 word sentence, whose purpose is to act as a sort of DNA of boyhood, both in terms of its syntax and language material. As the language repeats and is recombined, a story emerges.” This technique is surprisingly effective – the listener concentrates, parsing out the information embedded in the stream of words, while at the same time responding to the tone coloring and shape of the recited text.

About halfway through, the recording ceased and Trauma Response began, delivered live by the composer from the stage. The same process was employed – minus the acoustic filtering – and now the spoken words had a more immediate and intimate feel. The contour of the phrases depended more on the shape and sound of the words, and the patterns were assembled to convey different weights and textures. At times, even individual words were broken down into syllables and used in the stream of text. All of this was confidently delivered by Gloss, who had to contend with low lighting and the varied patterns of words and phrases in the score.

The second half of First Piano Lesson then resumed and the recorded words seemed even more rounded and softened by the filtering in contrast to the live speech. An Integration completed the set, spoken from the microphone, and this was perhaps the most forthright piece. The contrasting sharpness and smoothness of the word combinations was more apparent, exerting a more pronounced influence in shaping the overall emotional feel. Strong declarative words, short hard words and phrases containing opposite meanings were most effective. Phrases such as “Is not” and Is so” when repeated together provide a powerful double message from both content and texture. Although created from simple materials, these text/sound works operate at the intersection of cognition and emotion, expanding the vocabulary of art into new territory.

The final work on the concert program was performed by Casey Anderson, stationed at an audio console equipped with a PC, a 1 minute tape loop, amplifiers and an AM/FM portable radio. This piece was untitled, but Anderson’s compositions invariably involve broadcast radio and the process employed here was very straightforward: tune the radios until something is heard, let this play for a few seconds, and move the tuning again. Luckily the reception in Betalevel – deep under the streets and alleys of Chinatown – was adequate, and a variety of sounds were heard and looped as the piece proceeded. Sometimes a station came in clearly and intelligibly, bringing the usual commercials, sports or news. At other times, static was heard and because this counted as a sound, it was included in the sequence. Occasionally there were random squeals and chirps, and this added something of a musical dimension. The rapidly changing sequence of sounds challenge the listener to engage cognitively or emotionally, depending on the type of signal received.

Both AM and FM stations were heard, in all their many varieties. Faint stations, as well as those in a foreign language, prompted more intense concentration as the listener tries to put the newly received sounds into some sort of context. Stations clearly heard triggered emotions that depended on the content: casual interest for sports or news or perhaps disdain for some all-too-familiar commercial. As the various stations and static washed out over the audience, the brain was kept busy reacting emotionally or sifting for context. The individual listener responds to each stimulus, and this ultimately becomes an enlightening exercise in self reflection.

More experimental music will be featured in the coming Dogstar Orchestra series of concerts, running June 3, through June 17, 2017 at various locations throughout Los Angeles.

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

Carolyn Chen, Happy Valley Band in Los Angeles

Saturday, April 29, 2017 and Human Resources in the Chinatown district of Los Angeles was the location for the Experimental Music Yearbook concert that featured a new work by Carolyn Chen and a set by the visiting Happy Valley Band. The wide open spaces of Human Resources were just right for the expansive choreography of Ms. Chen’s Signs of Struggle, and a perfect venue for the booming exuberance of David Kant’s amplified Happy Valley Band ensemble.

First up was Signs of Struggle by Carolyn Chen and this began with four players filing silently into the performance space – unoccupied save for a large drum on the floor surrounded by various found objects. Two of the performers were blindfolded, and led out into the open space, turned around several times until disoriented, and then left to wander blindly about. The other pair seated themselves at the drum on the floor.

The wandering pair, no doubt using aural cues, eventually met and began to struggle, as if wrestling. The pair sitting at the drum had a clicker, and when this sounded all movement stopped, resuming again after a second click. The wrestling pair worked their way to the drum, engaging one of the two seated there. The three now wrestled their way back into the open space, each pulling in different directions and constantly engaged, while sliding and crawling along the floor. Eventually all four were drawn into one rolling scrum, each struggling to keep the others from moving in any given direction. The blindfolds had been removed by this point and all were in continuous physical motion with the heavy breathing of the players clearly audible. This contest of strength became almost comical at times, provoking a few scattered laughs among the audience.

At length, all four arrived back at the drum. Here they separated and began heaping found objects on the drum head. With each grabbing the rim of the drum, they began to pull and push, contending for the direction that the drum should take along the floor. The sound that the drum made as a result of these efforts became a remarkably strong metaphor for the physical struggle witnessed just prior to this point in the performance. The objects on the drum head created a swirling roar, punctuated by sharp raps as some of the pieces were thrown upward and fell back. The final contest over the direction of the drum continued for a minute or two before all fell silent at the finish.

We have all heard percussion parts that put us in mind of cannons or hoof beats – but this was much more powerful and vivid even though it was not particularly loud or dramatic. It was as if the physical drama in the first part of the performance prepared our brain to acutely receive the symbolic sounds of the struggle as portrayed by the prepared drum. The choreography of this piece is extensive – Carolyn Chen’s score, performance notes and sketches run to several pages. The physical exertions of the players – Liam Mooney, Erika Bell, Davy Sumner, and John Eagle – were met with extended applause. Signs of Struggle is an enlightening combination of physicality and musical symbolism that surprises the listener with its power of suggestion and stimulation.

After a short intermission, the chairs were rearranged to face the Happy Valley Band, who had arrived from the Bay Area with an impressive array of cables, amplifiers, speakers sound boards, monitors and computers. Along with leader David Kant on saxophone, there was Andrew Smith at the keyboard, Beau Sievers on drum kit, Alexander Dupuis on guitar and Mustafa Walker, bass guitar. In addition, three local players sat in on various pieces during the set: Eric K.M. Clark, violin, Casey Anderson, saxophone and Sam Friedman, harmonica.

The music of the Happy Valley Band is based on transcriptions of popular songs which are highly processed using sophisticated signal analysis software that separates out the component parts. This is a multi-step process that, according to Kant’s website “…determines notes by changes in pitch and amplitude. With adjustable thresholds, it is tuned to the character of the material tracked. If, for instance, the material is rhythmic, amplitude onsets may be weighted more heavily than pitch onsets, and vice versa.”

Ultimately, this data is mined for pitch content and a local pulse, and at this microscopic scale the transcribed result varies greatly from standard temperament and conventional rhythms. “The pitch notation is fully microtonal, notated to the closest twelve-tone equal-tempered pitch and modified with microtonal cent deviation indications. The rhythmic notation is transcribed to the pulse of the song. Rather than transcribing to a constant pulse, the rhythmic notation is transcribed to a map of where the beat actually falls in the recording.”

The goal is to reproduce in performance what the recording machinery has ‘heard’ during the recording process. The result is akin to analyzing the DNA of a popular song and then performing a sort of exploded genetic mutation to produce music that, although very complex and unique, is recognizably related to the original. During the performance the vocal track of the original pop song is heard, and this acts as a guide for the players as well as giving the audience some helpful context.

Hearing the Happy Valley Band play is a bit like standing in front of a blast furnace – the notes pour out at a furious clip, at full rock band intensity. The Human Resources performance space has large flat walls with a hard floor, and this tended to amplify the already powerful sounds, partly at the expense of the recorded vocal track. The first piece began with a loud crash of a chord followed by some complex drumming, and the waves of sound were soon rolling out over the audience. There was no common beat – and the various parts were rapidly played with a highly complex figuration. The playing by the musicians was frantic, and notated pages flew off the music stands gathering in heaps across the floor as the piece progressed. The overall feel, however, was surprisingly organic and cohesive. The harmonic connections to the vocal track were just strong enough to unify the separate streams of sound in the mind of the listener.

The more recognizable pieces with the strongest vocal lines tended to be the most effective: songs by Phil Collins, Elvis Presley and James Brown being perhaps the most memorable. It’s a Man’s World by James Brown had the best balance between the vocal track and the instruments, the band having dialed back a bit on the volume. A fine sax solo by David Kant a added to the close-knit feeling with the original. As the set continued, different players rotated in and out. In one piece, the amplified harmonica of Sam Friedman rose to the top of a swirling texture to dominate in a most pleasing way. There were crisp violin solos, saxophone licks and many artfully played passages that quickly materialized and just as quickly disappeared. The spirited ensemble and high intensity dynamics, however, did not overwhelm the intrinsic connection of the transcribed playing to the original piece. This charm of this music is that it is like hearing an old, familiar tune – from the inside out. The Happy Valley Band continues to experiment at the ragged edge, tinkering with the genetics of popular songs to produce powerfully unique music.

A new album by the Happy Valley Band, ORGANVM PERCEPTVS, is now available as a vinyl LP and by digital download at Indexical.

 

 

by Paul Muller
Canada, CDs, Chamber Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?

Linda Catlin Smith on Another Timbre

Linda Catlin Smith

Drifter

Apartment House and Bozzini Quartet

Another Timbre at105X2

 

Born in the US and residing in Canada for more than a quarter century, Linda Catlin Smith has become a fixture on that country’s cultural radar. She has been welcomed and feted as one of Canada’s own. For instance, she is only the second woman to win the Jules Léger Prize for Chamber Music and has had a long association with the ensemble ArrayMusic, whom she served as Artistic Director. Several recordings have been released of her music, but last year’s Dirt Road won her critical acclaim and belated notice in the United States, ending up on many critics’ “best of year” lists (mine included). Released by Another Timbre, Dirt Road was merely a foretaste of that label’s commitment to Canadian music. Another Timbre has recently released a set of five recordings in its Canadian Composers series (another batch of five is due later this year).  Catlin Smith features prominently, with the double disc Drifter serving as Volume 1 in the series. Other composers include Martin Arnold, Isiah Ceccarelli, Chlyoko Szlavnics, and Marc Sabat.

 

Drifter’s program is performed by two chamber groups: Apartment House and Bozzini Quartet. The “drifting” in question is not itinerant hitchhiking, but rather the placid tempo pathways frequently chosen by Catlin Smith. The piano trio Far from Shore, played here by Philip Thomas, Anton Lukiszevieze, and Mira Benjamin,  is a case in point. Slow, soft music for the trio, often reminiscent of Morton Feldman’s approach (one that Catlin Smith acknowledges as a signature influence on her work) abides alongside passages of colorful piano chords. The spectrum moves from inexorably repeated constrained sets of pitches, to chromatic counterpoint, to whole washes of sound. The intuitive sensibility that Catlin Smith claims as her approach in preference to any dogmatic systemization clearly allows her to move through constantly changing musical terrain, all the while maintaining an organic sense of each piece. How does she manage this? An interview in the booklet accompanying the Canadian Composers set quotes her as saying,”Listening. Lots of listening.” One could do worse as a composer in any style to listen as carefully as Catlin Smith does.

 

Cantelina (2013) for viola and vibraphone, played by Emma Richards and Simon Limbrick, presents another of the composer’s interests, one in heterogenous instrumental pairings. Both here and in the Piano Quintet ( 2014), another of Catlin Smith’s predilections, exploring tightly knit counterpoint in close registral positions, is featured. The overlapping in Cantilena is quite fetching (it is a combination that should be explored by more composers and one I’ll keep in my own hip pocket) and it is equally affecting when writ large in the quintet. The title work is also for a seemingly challenging combination, piano and classical guitar, played by Philip Thomas and Diego Castro Magas, but Catlin Smith’s gentle daubs of coloristic harmony and unequal ostinatos work beautifully in this duo context as well. Mon Qui Tremblais (1999), played by Thomas, Benjamin, and Limbrick, has a pulse-driven piano part that is joined by sustained violin and bowed pitched percussion. An interesting notational device is used: rather than writing out all the notes and rhythms, the composer specifies that the musicians silently read a Rimbaud poem and use its speech rhythms to shape the musical work (for instance, the percussionist gets his attack points from the accented French syllables).

 

Bozzini Quartet appears in two string quartets by Catlin Smith. Folkestone (1999) pits a persistently high violin line against blocks of slow articulated, syncopated chords played by the other three members (these have an almost accordion-like quality in their spacing). Gradually, other lines emerge from the texture, with the cello playing a poignant solo dissonant with the rest of the harmony. The chordal passages begin registrally to disperse, bringing the locus of activity closer to the violin’s sustained flautando melody. Mid-register lines now break free and the chords move in double time for a brief stretch before ceding the terrain to widely spaced and again slowly articulated harmonies. This alternation of patterns includes still more elements to be introduced: pizzicatos, duets, flashes of quartal harmonic brilliance, and a bass-register cello melody made truly weighty by the registers it has balanced against before. Clocking in at more than 32 minutes, Folkestone is a substantial and thoroughly captivating composition. Gondola involves members of the quartet coming in and out of unison and a gentle boat-rocking pacing that Catlin Smith describes thus:”The title loosely refers to its slight undulation or floating qualities – a subtle motion or disturbance of the surface, like trailing the hand in water.”

 

Evocative imagery for truly evocative music-making. Drifter is an album (a double-album at that) worth savoring.

 

 

 

by Christian Carey
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Just Intonation, Los Angeles, Violin

John Eagle and Emily Call at the wulf @ Coaxial Arts

March 26, 2017 brought the opportunity to hear experimental music performed by John Eagle and Emily Call at the wulf @ Coaxial Arts. Since the sale of the former wulf building on Sante Fe Avenue last fall, various venues around town have been used for performances and the latest of these is Coaxial Arts on South Main Street. The space is smallish, but with the brick walls and overhead track lighting, Coaxial feels like a cross between Automata and Monk Space. Almost every chair was occupied as a knowledgeable crowd filed in on a quiet Sunday evening in downtown Los Angeles.

A sound installation, quieting rooms (2012), by Michael Winter was in progress as people were arriving, and this set the tone for the evening. As the program notes explained, quieting rooms is “… a very crude genetic algorithm (i.e., a model of Darwinian evolution) attempts to put two signals out of phase and quiet the room.” quieting rooms begins with moderately loud electronic sounds comprised of what seem to be several frequencies. The algorithm operates on these – adding signals that are out of phase – and with each succeeding generation of sine tones, the quieter ones are favored so that eventually the sound diminishes. What starts out as a complex and robust swirl of sound eventually thins out, as each new generation lowers the intensity and volume. A series of soft, pulsing and beeping tones in the background help to vary the texture. The entire process takes several minutes from start to finish, and then repeats. Always engaging, quieting rooms is an interesting application of evolutionary natural selection operating on musical processes.

The second piece, necklaces (2014) was also composed by Michael Winter and performed by John Eagle on a specially tuned guitar. As described by Winter in the program notes, the “…score represents all possible unique picking patterns of 4 strings sounding the same pitch. such limited focus accentuates minor variations in tuning, string tension and string gauge.” necklaces unfolds in a continuous stream of steady 8th notes, and with careful listening it is possible to discern minor differences in intonation as different strings are added to the playing sequence. Some strings had a deeply resonant and warm feel while others had more of a twang or a steely sound. It was a bit like listening to a prepared guitar, but much more understated. By focusing attention on these small variations instead of a pitch palette, the brain builds up a sense of rhythm and structure from the repeating patterns and their permutations. After just a few minutes, hearing these subtleties became almost automatic, and were not obscured even when the quieting room sound installation recycled. All of this is more engaging than it might seem and necklaces is an enlightening excursion into the boundaries between music and cognitive perception.

The final piece in the program was tuning #3: I. Ascending (2016) by John Eagle and was performed by Emily Call on violin. According to the program notes, “tuning #3 is comprised of various subsets of the 4-note, justly tuned, chords possible in the violin’s first position.  In this subset (Ascending), a basic ‘ascending’ shape is imposed where each finger must be positioned equal to or higher than the last.” An electronic reference tone is sounded for each chord subset and the performer must adjust the intonation of the ascending notes as the piece progresses. The score consists of a series of cells, each containing a chord subset. The performer initiates the reference tone with a foot pedal and then completes the chord, feeling for the best sequence and complementary intonation. The result was a wide-ranging exploration of the many emotions that were present in the chords of each cell. The feelings that emerged were variously, warm and welcoming, soothing, unsettled, questioning, anxious, searching, nostalgic or resolute. This music is always in the moment, and best heard unencumbered by expectation. Each cell brings a new, but fleeting, expressive vocabulary – some fragments were very vivid and others very beautiful. The audience was engaged throughout, listening carefully to catch the next flash of emotional color. The thoroughness of this working out of the chord sequences brought to mind the methods of Tom Johnson, and tuning #3 makes for an intriguing journey, charting less familiar musical territory.

The 40 minute length of this piece makes tuning #3 an exercise in stamina for the soloist. Emily Call proved more than equal to the task, even while constrained by a short pickup cable and the necessity of frequently activating the foot pedal. There was no loss of energy in her tone or hesitation in her intonation, even as she processed how to deal with each of the reference tones. Ms. Call was a model of grace and poise throughout and her efforts were rewarded with extended applause.

Orr Sinay, Jeese Quebbeman and guest composer Stellan Bark from Berlin will appear at the wulf.@ Coaxial Arts at 8:00 PM on April 7, 2010.

by Paul Muller
Composers, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Los Angeles, Review

Music of Jürg Frey at Cal Arts

Frey1On January 13, 2017, Cal Arts presented The Path and the Expanse, a concert of music by Jürg Frey, a member of the Wandelweiser collective. A modest crowd braved Friday the 13th traffic to gather at The Wild Beast for an evening of intense concentration and state of the art experimental music. Five different pieces by Jürg Frey were performed by 15 alert musicians, including a world premiere.

Circular Music No. 7 (2015/16) was first and this began with soft, sustained chords in the violin and bowed vibraphone that produced a distant, solemn feeling. A series of hushed beats from the bass drum added to the mystical atmosphere. The violin of Erik Carlson carried the piece forward, accompanied by a bassoon and extensive percussion section that contributed a variety of subdued sounds. The occasional tutti passage raised the volume slightly, and added some nice coloring while a bowed cymbal and a light xylophone passage completed the pattern. A high, thin pitch from the violin marked of each set of phrases as the piece tiptoed forward to a quiet finish. Circular Music No. 7 is both peaceful and reserved, like the dawn of a foggy morning.

The second work, WEN 58 (2007), was a solo trumpet piece played by Ethan Marks. This opened with a long silence followed by two short, muted notes – and then more silence. Longer tones followed, quietly subdued, ending with a questioning feel. This pattern of brief notes and silence continued, the intermediate silences lasting a full 15 seconds or so. The overall effect was to create a sense of space and openness as the piece unfolded. Ambient sounds occasionally crept into the performance space from outside, but this only added to the expansive feel. Mr. Marks displayed admirable poise and good control of his intonation even as the dynamics of the piece never rose much above piano, and the many entrances were, of course, very exposed. WEN 58, as it is a solo trumpet piece, works against the listener’s expectation of a loud, brassy outburst and acts to focus attention on the interactions of silence and the more subtle sounds produced by this unlikely instrument.

In Memoriam Cornelius Cardew (1993) followed and this was a short solo piano remembrance performed by Nicole Ying. Two low notes heard as a chord in the lower register opened the piece, and these were played with great sensitivity and expressiveness. More quiet chords followed, introspective and subdued, and these had a sad, bluesy feeling, although never melancholy. Only a few minutes long, In Memoriam is an economical and ultimately elegant commemoration, played with warm empathy by Ms. Ying.

Although the oldest work on the program, the world premiere of Vielleicht bin ich wirklich veloren (1980, rev. 1993) was next, and the ensemble included flute, clarinet, trumpet, piano, violin and cello along with soprano Stephanie Aston. This began with a short, high-pitched dissonant tutti chord – followed by silence. This had an unsettling feel, especially when a single quiet piano note was heard and a soft violin tone steadied the atmospherics. Another tutti sforzando chord sounded, this time followed by a quietly sustained soprano note that lent an airy, ethereal quality to the aftermath. This pattern of a sharply loud chords, gently sustained tones and silence continued throughout, with the various instruments taking turns holding the longer pitches. The timing of each sforzando chord was needle-sharp, thanks to vigilant playing and the careful direction of conductor Nicholas Deyoe. The dynamic contrast and bright dissonance of the tutti chords acted to heighten their perception by the listener against the background of the quieter stretches – they seemed to explode out of the ensemble and into the audience. Vielleicht bin ich wirklich veloren  comes from an earlier stage of exploration by Frey into the relationship of sound, dynamics and silence, and this piece is instructive to his later works.

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by Paul Muller