Arooj Aftab’s Night Reign was one of my favorite recordings of 2024. Released today, the Thai funk by way of Texas artists Khruangbin have made a remix of one of the album’s most memorable tracks, “raat ki rani.”
As a bonus, here is another favorite from Aftab, live in London playing with Anoushka Shankar:
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Aftab’s Night Reign Tour 2025 begins late March in North America, Brazil and UK/EU:
NORTH & SOUTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES
3.27.25 | Union Stage | Washington, D.C
3.29.25 | Big Ears Festival 2025 | Knoxville, TN
5.22.25 | C6 Festival | São Paulo, Brazil
5.29.25 | Spoleto Festival 2025 | Charleston, SC
6.15.25 | Bonnaroo | Manchester, TN
6.21.25 | Fine Line | Minneapolis, MN
6.22.25 | Old Town School of Folk Music | Chicago, IL **2nd show added**
6.24.25 | Toronto Jazz Festival | Toronto, Canada
6.25.25 | Ottawa Jazz Festival | Ottawa, Canada
6.26.25 | Festival International De Jazz De Montreal 2025 | Montreal, Canada
UK/EU TOUR DATES
4.4.25 | House of Music | Budapest, Hungary
4.5.25 | Rewire Festival | Den Haag, Netherlands
4.7.25 | WOW Festival | Kallithea, Greece
4.12.25 | Sogodbe X Kino Šiška | Ljubljana, Slovenia
4.14.25 | Auditorium Parco Della Musica | Roma, Italy
4.15.25 | Teatro Della Triennale | Milan, Italy
5.2.25 | Polygon Live 360º | London, United Kingdom
5.5.25 | Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival | Belfast, United Kingdom
5.7.25 | Brighton Music Festival 2025 | Brighton, United Kingdom
5.9.25 | Norfolk & Norwich Festival | Norwich, UK
5.11.25 | Jazz à Liège 2025 | Liège, Belgium
7.6.25 | Love Supreme Festival | East Sussex, United Kingdom
7.9.25 | Ravenna Festival | Cervia, Italy
7.31.25 | Midzomer Festival Openair | Leuven, Belgium
8.2.25 | All Together Now 2025 | Waterford, Ireland
On Thursday evening in New York, Momenta Quartet’s October festival – now nine years running – closed with an assorted program, enthusiastically curated by violist/composer Stephanie Griffin. Griffin is the last founding member still actively performing with the group. Noting that this festival has ever featured the opportunity for each member to have curatorial carte blanche on one night only, Griffin nodded to the overall 2024 theme – Charles Ives at 150 – while admitting that “this is not a thematic program, but rather a joyous collection of pieces that I saw fit to celebrate the genius of Charles Ives and my own twenty years as the violist of Momenta.” As such, her own instalment was themed Momenta at 20. Griffin’s rather fine and comprehensive program notes are recommended ancillary reading, and can be found HERE.
The first musical offering was from Mexican composer Julián Carrillo: his String Quartet No. 3 “Dos Bosquejos.” Opening with muted strings and an effective microtonal chorale, this music veiled itself in mystery, dark and lush, a perfect selection with which to begin the evening. The piece continued to unfold like a set of exercises – or experiments – in string writing, with novel techniques (ca. 1927!) and textural effects. The first movement, “Meditación,” eventually burst a romantic vein, with solos and extended techniques eliciting vaguely integrated call-and-answers.
The second movement, “En Secreto,” felt eerily expressionist. (Griffin likens Carrillos’ music “to the work of surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí and René Magritte.”) While related in mood and material to the first, the “secrets” revealed in this second and final movement were whispered between instruments in a matter-of-fact, straightforward mode, a little too efficiently.
Momenta seemed to relish these coloristic experiments in extended space. Carrillo’s numerous homophonic passages prove especially demanding in their intonation and yet most octave unisons were handled judiciously by this group. Suddenly, just as this essaying music began to fatigue under its own weight, it was over: a mere eleven minutes in duration.
After this, Stephanie Griffin spoke to the audience about the quartet’s close relationship with the music of Carrillo. They “fell in love” with the string writing of this composer and have established an important connection with his unduly neglected catalogue. Griffin has proclaimed* the forthcoming recording of Carrillo’s complete string quartets on the Naxos label to be Momenta’s “most significant legacy.”
The remainder of the first half highlighted early music from Charles Ives. Brief and inconsequential, The Innate (1908) for string quintet and piano, is based on hymnal material. It stood out as a somewhat unquantifiable preamble to the composer’s early quartet – the Quartet No. 1 (1896-1902) – which has been a favorite of Momenta’s, as Griffin explained in her spoken introduction. It was a part of their first season in 2004-2005, twenty years ago.
This first quartet from the turn of the century is a high-energy, Ivesian romp in three movements, containing a great deal of musical irony: an irony sometimes missed by Momenta on Thursday night. Striking the right side of Ives’ mercurial nature can challenging, particularly in his earlier works. There exists a quirky dimensionality here, even in seemingly upfront and “folksy” material. During Thursday’s performance, a command of tempi and rhythm in the first movement could have been better established.
The rhetorical components of the first and second movements urge a singular vision of interpretation. This brave new music, (as it was in its own time), remains theatrical today. For Momenta, the blending and balance amongst the four instruments went astray at times, requiring more central grounding in the hopes of evoking a sense of play. Where was the element of surprise?
Conversely, the third movement read as well integrated and convincing. The individualistic approach from each player here yielded dynamic displays of line and texture. One was reminded of Dvorak’s string quartets: folk-inspired and generous. Through contrapuntal awareness and a dash of extra courage, Momenta brought the recital’s first half to a delightful close, gleeful and quicksilver; Ives himself, not to mention Dvorak, would have approved.
After an intermission during which the audience was advised to stay in their seats, this lengthy program continued with a world premiere by Stephanie Griffin, herself in the solo role. The Overgrown Cathedral (2019-24) for viola and lower string ensemble was inspired by a disused, ruined cathedral in Brazil, the Igreja do Senhor da Vera Cruz.
Griffin’s idiomatic writing for solo viola flattered the piece’s narrative musical structure. Her new work unfolded as a dirge-like processional, improvisatory in its droning, rolling lyricism and unusually self-contained. The pulse altered little throughout the single-movement and skillful writing for all players alike brought to mind successful spectralist composers as well as the more contemporary Scotsman (and friend to string players), James MacMillan.
Solos in other instruments – especially the cello – peppered Griffin’s soundscape. About midway through the proceedings, “mosquito” effects emerged antiphonally, forming an integral role in the narrative and echoed by accompanying violas. As the scoring was devoid of violins (!) this resulted in an attractive sonority. The constant lulling never ceased and, relievedly, never got in the way of prominent soloistic activity. Dipping in and out of familiar string effects like sul ponticello and glissandi, The OvergrownCathedral meandered its way to a final utterance, at the brink of being circuitous.
Photo credit: Nana Shi
As finale, and in diptych with Griffin’s Cathedral, Claude Vivier’s Zipangu was an impressive stroke. Interspersed between these two larger works for string orchestra was another short, innocuous piece from Charlies Ives: his Hymn of 1904. One craved more context for this curatorial placement, especially for its juxtaposition with Zipangu.
But Vivier’s vivid, brazen work for strings from 1980 remained an apt and powerful choice. Brimming with a depth of sound we had not yet heard on the program, Zipangu boasted its novel textures as a means of expression, easily engrossing even the most casual listener. Vivier himself claimed, “within the frame of a single melody I explore in this work different aspects of color. I tried to ‘blur’ my harmonic structure through different bowing techniques.”
Glimmers of microtonal Ligeti shone through the spectral haze of this work (*think* 2001: A Space Odyssey). After Griffin’s favoring of low registers, the arrival of Vivier’s upper strings scoring proved a dramatic and welcomed shift.
This branch of string writing is not always easy to interpret nor to refine, especially for a quasi pick-up orchestra. Nevertheless, the sheer impact and boldness of the material seemed to inspire the string players on Thursday, many of whom Griffin described as “Momenta alumni,” having played with the group over the past 20 years.
Photo credit: Nana Sh
For some time, conductor and artistic director, Sebastian Zubieta, had urged Momenta to program this music by Vivier. On Thursday night, it seemed to augment the quartet’s profile and manifest a compelling wrap-up to the 2024 Festival.
What’s more, the works of Claude Vivier are worthy of wider recognition, 41 years on from his death. Thanks to Momenta and their colleagues this relevant, near-cosmic, Canadian voice reached our sympathetic ears on Thursday night, straight on through the hurly-burly “blur” of a 21st century that Charles Ives would have almost certainly recognized.
Sequenza 21 readers know Carey very well through his insightful reviews of concerts and recordings in this publication. He is also a superb composer with a lengthy catalogue of varied works.
Christian B. Carey
Quintet 2 is scored for oboe, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, and Carey wrote it for the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble, who commissioned it and premiered it in 2016. In his program note, Carey writes that much of his music – including this work – is based on the idea of labyrinthine structuring. “Quintet 2 deals with a spectrum of harmonic shadings, from triads to microtonal verticals with a great deal expressed in between. Likewise, the short melody at the beginning is offset by long passages of linear counterpoint. A number of rhythmic layers corruscate to create overlapping and frequently syncopated gestures.”
Also on the program, music by Augusta Read Thomas, Oliver Knusson, Jeremy Beck, Jonathan Newman and the world premiere of “I Like Chocolate Ice Cream” by David Macdonald (me too, says the writer).
Performers include: Calvin Wiersma and Conrad Harris, violins; Daniel Panner, viola; Chris Gross and Peter Seidenberg, cellos; Huan-Fong Chen, oboe; Benjamin Fingland, clarinet; Jonathan Faiman, piano; Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, mezzo-soprano
On Saturday, May 4th, 2024 the Ventura College Department of Performing Arts presented Ad Astra, a concert by the Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra. The program had something for everyone: the US Premiere of a new chamber work by Mark Menzies, a Shostakovich string quartet, part of a Prokofiev violin concerto featuring soloist Alex Fager and a full-bodied Star Wars suite for orchestra. A sizable audience filled Yunker Auditorium in the VC Performing Arts Center and the musicians completely covered the roomy stage.
The concert opened with the US premiere of Wai-rā-rawa, by Mark Menzies. This piece was inspired by the creation story of the Māori, the indigenous peoples of New Zealand. Mark Menzies was violin faculty for some years at CalArts and also a member of the Los Angeles-based Formalist Quartet. He now resides in New Zealand and is Professor of Music at the University of Canterbury. Menzies worked with the VC Chamber Orchestra on his piece during a recent visit to California. For this performance, the Chamber Orchestra was led by guest conductor Donovan Rutledge, a Ventura College alumnus.
Wai-rā-rawa opens with sustained chords that slowly unfold and develop an interesting texture. As the opening continues, the chords become somewhat disorganized and dissonant, perhaps suggesting the dark and formless beginnings of the earth. The music has a slightly eerie feel, but is never disheartening; it is solemn yet at the same time filled with a gentle reverence. An expressive violin solo is heard featuring a high, sustained pitch that adds to the uncertain atmosphere. As the piece proceeds, deep tutti chords with multiple harmonies materialize like clouds. Towards the finish, soft pianissimo notes are followed by broken rhythms at the ending. This music is distinguished by subtle rhythms, intriguing harmonies and textures, all smoothly directed by Donovan Rutledge. Wai-rā-rawa is both mysterious and wistful with perfect balance for describing the primal creation.
The second work on the program was String Quartet No. 8 in C minor (1960), by Dmitri Shostakovich, also performed by the chamber orchestra. For this concert the parts were doubled, with two instruments on each. The opening Lento movement was appropriately grim, with all of the repression of the old Soviet system seeming to weigh it down. There was good coordination and intonation among the players, however, with no uncertainty among the sections. The transitions to the faster Allegro and Allegretto movements were successfully negotiated; the violas were especially well-coordinated. The delicate textures in the dance-like segments were nicely observed, with some tension slyly creeping in.
The final Lento movements brought a return to the more severe feeling of the opening as strong tutti chords turned darkly dramatic. The players kept good control of the dynamics in all of the movements and also in the final decrescendo at the finish. String Quartet No. 8 is essential late Shostakovich, with all of his characteristic gloominess during this period fully evoked by skillful playing in this performance.
After a short intermission, the full Ventura College Symphony Orchestra took their places, filling the entire stage. The Andantino movement of Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Op. 110 (1923) was next, with soloist Alex Fager. He is the winner of this year’s Allegro Solo Competition, open to musicians of all ages residing in Ventura County. This piece began with soft tremolos in the orchestra violin section, followed by a strong entrance from the soloist with a slow, expressive melody. As the phrasing became more active, Fager’s sound came across with a clear tone that reached out above the orchestra to fill the hall. As the movement proceeded, the mood turned stylish and lyrical, so characteristic of Prokofiev’s music. Fager’s skillful technique kept his violin in the foreground, even as variations in tempo, dynamics and texture rapidly changed. Towards the finish, the solo violin and flute played in a tricky counterpoint, with great effect. The movement then ended as quietly as it had begun. Violin Concerto No. 1 has a challenging variety of musical gestures in the Andantino movement and soloist Fager capably led the way throughout.
Although it was May the fourth and very appropriate, I will admit that I was a bit apprehensive about the last work on the concert program, the Star Wars Suite for Orchestra (1977) by John Williams. Star Wars is so overexposed that it has become something of a cultural cliché. An orchestra performing such a familiar piece runs the risk of disappointing its audience. This is big, sprawling music with five movements that include the themes that composer Williams has so artfully woven into this signature masterwork. The piece is full of challenges; there are many transitions to be navigated as the various leitmotifs are passed around between the sections. As the orchestra got going, the sounds and entrances of the various sections sharpened up nicely. Dynamics ranged from the barely audible to full blastissimo, and the orchestra fought successfully to maintain good balance. The string sections benefited from being at the front of the stage and provided solid support. The horns managed to be clearly heard from the very back of the risers during their important solos.
Vigorous applause was heard between each of the movements, and the orchestra seemed to build on the growing enthusiasm. The “Imperial March” was perhaps the most popular, with its full sound and driving beat. At the conclusion of the last movement, a long and loud standing ovation was given by the now-cheering crowd. Star Wars Suite for Orchestra might be a bit of a war horse, but the music still has surprising power when played by a live orchestra in a concert hall.
A good part of the credit for this fine performance by the Ventura College Symphony Orchestra must go to Director Ashley Walters. Her conducting style is everything a player wants: an unmistakable beat, precise cues and decisive dynamics. Walters adds no superfluous movements or theatrical histrionics, and her clarity of purpose brings real leadership to the podium. Walters undoubtedly carried this same focus and energy into rehearsal, and the result was an outstanding concert of compelling music.
One of Sequenza 21’s friends is the “Diasporic Soprano” Candice Hoyes. A versatile vocalist and songwriter, she sings everything from opera to jazz to pop adjacent new music.
Her new single, “In the Upper Room (For Mary Winnifred)” for soprano, piano, and bass is out today and available on Bandcamp. Mary Winnifred was Hoyes’s grandmother and a mentor figure for her.
On Friday, May 5, 2023, Coaxial Arts in downtown Los Angeles presented Earthly and Unearthly Sounds, a concert of six contemporary pieces that explored the concepts of death, environmentalism, occultism, and feminism. Flutist Élise Roy along with bassoonists Jonathan Stehney, Lauren Martin and Julie Feves were on hand to perform works by Kurt Isaacson, Élise Roy, Sofia Gubaidulina, Mason Moy and Erik Ulman. The concert also included the premiere of a new flute piece by Élise Roy and the world performance premiere of Myrkriða (Rider of Darkness) by Jeffrey Holmes, featuring soprano Kirsten Ashley Wiest.
The first piece on the concert program was Carnal Species, by Kurt Isaacson. This was duet for bassoon and flute, featuring Élise Roy and Jonathan Stehney. This was broadly about birds and the animal experimentation that occurred during the Cold War. Carnal Species began with breathy air sounds and soft notes in the flute. The bassoon joined in with a low fluttery growl that added to an atmospheric feel. Soft sustained notes from the flute contrasted with a number of percussive thumps of air heard in the bassoon. A stretch of long notes from both instruments produced a series of intriguing chords, but this was suddenly cut short by a brief silence silence.
The sustained tones started up again. Honking sounds in the bassoon soon emerged, dominating the texture and evoking vivid images of large birds. This became louder, signaling a distress that was urgently palpable. The piece drew to a close in a flurry of ominous dissonance. Carnal Species is skillfully composed and expertly performed using extended techniques to convey both the pastoral and the sinister.
Duo Sonata for Two Bassoons, by Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina, followed. According to her publisher’s website “Sofia Gubaidulina is, together with Schnittke and Denisov, one of three major Moscow composers of the post-Shostakovich era.” She was born in 1931 and grew up in Soviet Russia, studying at the Kazan and Moscow Conservatories. Duo Sonata for Two Bassoons is a complicated work and considered a formidable technical test for bassoonists, employing extended techniques, quarter tones and complex rhythmic structures. For this concert, Jonathan Stehney was joined by Julie Feves of the Long Beach Symphony.
The opening of Duo Sonata featured fast runs of descending notes ending in trills. This evolved into a sort of growling match between the two players. The gruff sounds were soon replaced by sustained tones with a distinctly medieval feeling, as if rooted in fragments of a chant. Plaintive crying and sad sounds followed that slowly built into sense of anguish. A rapid series of sharp phrases broke out, conversational, or perhaps more accurately, an argumentative dialogue between the two bassoons. Stehney and Feves were equal to the task with impressive dexterity and precise control. As the piece moved towards its conclusion, the intensity and dynamics of the conversation increased with more loud honking and growling sounds dominating. A low trill completed the piece. Duo Sonata for Two Bassoons is an impressively abstract piece and a showcase for the virtuosity of bassoonists Stehney and Feves.
Next was Eigenvector by Mason Moy, and this was a clever composition employing both graphical and notated scores for two bassoons. The graphical score consisted of a matrix of boxes shown in rows and columns. The top row and the left side column of boxes contained single notated whole notes for the two bassoons, each with a different pitch. One player followed the top row, and the second, the left side column of pitches. The starting player would choose a note from the top row, and the second player a note from any box in the left side column. This produced a distinctive two-note chord that was held for several seconds. Each player then had to identify the note sounded by the other and this yielded two coordinates that corresponded to a box somewhere in the center of the matrix. The players were then directed to separate notated score fragments referred by that box, which were played together for a about minute. The boxes could also direct the players to improvise or to simply remain silent. This process of selecting the sequence of notated segments to be played was repeated for the duration of the piece. The advantage was that the notes and sounds were based only on the choices the players made in the moment. Additionally, each performance of the piece would be unique. Although it seems complicated when described, this system of graphical and notated parts was actually very straightforward in execution.
So what does all this sound like? The initial tones were often very close in pitch and often produced a discernible zero-beating or strong dissonance. Once the players were reading their notated parts, a variety of different feelings were possible: open and grand, sad, dissonant and tense, disorganized or nicely sustained and consonant. All of these feelings were realized as the piece proceeded. Bassoonists Jonathan Stehney and Lauren Martin never lost their way and their playing was excellent. Eigenvector manages to extract a lot of music from some very basic concepts and is further proof that the best experimental ideas often do not require a lot of technology.
To new forest, by Erik Ulman followed, performed by Élise Roy on bass flute. This piece was inspired by the poetry of Ezra Pound and contemplated the quivering of hearts and souls, as well as death and life. The opening included loud notes and fluttering tones in a series of complex passages that recalled images of an anxious heart or a seeking soul. There were often no sustained tones or anything resembling a melody, and this called for a combination of agility and confidence in the playing by Ms. Roy. As the piece proceeded, solemn tones prevailed with a mournful softness. Towards the conclusion, the rhythms became searching and restless as if portraying lost soul. Too new forest ended with a quiet finish.
Next was premiere of the old young woman, by Élise Roy, a dramatic new flute and bassoon piece based on the poetry of Diane di Prima. Johnathan Stehney and the composer were the performers, accompanied by a recorded soundtrack. Whooshing, breathy air sounds from the instruments began the piece and were soon accompanied by thunder and storm sounds from the stage speakers. Trills in the bassoon added to the image of a powerful whirlwind heard coming through the speakers, with the dynamics and intensity steadily increasing to truly frightening proportions. A great commotion was heard from the speakers along with many loud phrases coming out of the instruments. As the piece continued, there were also shouts and screams of a woman and a roaring like that of some giant beast. These sounds washed over the audience in the small Coaxial space with a hurricane-like force. The rushing of the wind and a blizzard of bassoon and flute notes added to the chaos as the piece concluded. The old young woman is a compelling and memorable sonic experience; one that is felt as much as heard.
The final work on the concert program was Myrkriða or Rider of Darkness, by Jeffrey Holmes. Written in 2016, this was the world performance premiere, the piece having been previously released on CD in the 2020 pandemic year. Flutist Élise Roy and soprano Kirsten Ashley Wiest were the performers. Jeffrey Holmes gave a preliminary reading in English of the poetic texts, originally written in Old Norse by the composer. For this concert, there were a series of six short movements that followed the arc of the primal texts describing the moments between life and death.
Myrkriða opens with sustained notes and a quiet chanting in the soprano, accompanied by soft flute tones that set an appropriately solemn mood. A sharp, almost piercing shout begins in the voice, rising above and ultimately overwhelming the flute. Powerful singing by Ms. Wiest and the close acoustic of the Coaxial space combined to produce impressive vocal statements. As the piece proceeded, the tension rose as the Rider of Darkness brought the dread of death closer, and this was occasionally relieved by more restrained sounds representing the promise of an afterlife. This primal music was well-matched the pagan context. The vocal challenges in this piece are formidable and included equal-tempered and just-intonation microtunings as well as great leaps in the dynamics and pitches. All of this was negotiated with a seemingly effortless ease by Ms. Wiest and also Ms. Roy, who accompanied with commensurate skill. Hopefully this initial live sampling of six movements will lead to a full performance of Jeffrey Holmes’ Old Norse masterwork.
This Coaxial concert marks a welcome return of new and challenging live performances after so many months of enforced pandemic isolation. Earthly and Unearthly Sounds was an unflinching look at the many images of life, death, the occult and the malevolent as expressed in unremitting abstract and complex contemporary music.
I first met Hayes Biggs in Venezuela in the 1990s, at a contemporary music festival in Caracas. We bonded over a street artist’s unique t-shirt designs, and over the performances by musicians from all corners of the Americas.
Since then, Biggs has been a regular fixture at new music concerts in New York City, as well as on stage with C4, the Choral Composer/Conductor Collective ensemble. He has been on the faculty of Manhattan School of Music teaching theory and composition since 1992. On May 31, 2023, four long-time champions of contemporary chamber music – violinist Curtis Macomber, violist Lois Martin, cellist Chris Gross, and pianist Christopher Oldfather – perform Biggs’ works in recital in a composer portrait at Merkin Hall in New York City.
In advance of the concert, I asked Biggs about the evolution of his compositional style and his career path. Here is our interview.
Gail Wein: In addition to your work as a composer and as a teacher at MSM you are also a choral singer. How does that experience inform your instrumental compositions?
Hayes Biggs: I strive to write beautiful melodic lines, harmonies and counterpoint. Studying voice as a college student, singing in choirs, and accompanying singers and choral groups has had a profound effect on all the music I write, in whatever medium or genre. More than once it has happened that bits of my vocal music (and occasionally that of others) have found their way into my instrumental works. For example, my String Quartet: O Sapientia/Steal Away (2004) is based to a great extent on two such pieces: a choral motet for Advent that I wrote in 1995, and the African American spiritual Steal Away. I had sung the latter in my college choir in William Dawson’s magnificent arrangement as a freshman in college, and that version was the inspiration for the last movement of the quartet.
GW: The piano preludes on your May 31 program are inspired by poetry. How do these preludes reflect the poems?
HB: Only the first three of the preludes (commissioned by Thomas Stumpf) have specific connections to poems, and I would see them as suggestive of certain general moods rather than as attempting to depict literally any events or images contained in the poetry. In No. 1, “The Secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal,” on Billy Collins’s “The Afterlife,” where the poet imagines the dead all going wherever they imagined they would go after death, I had the idea of a kind of jazzy march, tinged a bit with blues and gospel, as they all parade off in their separate directions. The second, on Wendell Berry’s “The Peace of Wild Things,” seems to me to move from a mood of sadness and anxiety to one of serenity. The third prelude, on one of Rilke’s Annunciation poems from DasMarienleben, is dedicated to the memory of my mother-in-law Lois Orzel, and is intended to convey the quiet strength of the Virgin Mary and the awe in which the powerful angel Gabriel regards her. The fourth prelude is simply a short, playful study in rhythm, with bright major triads and crisply articulated eighth notes in shifting meters alternating with a heavier, bluesier, swinging triplet feel. It is dedicated to my friends David Rakowski and Beth Wiemann.
GW: The selections on the May 31 program are all fairly recent works. Tell me about your compositional style and approach, and how it has changed over the years (or not).
HB: I’m as eclectic as they come, kind of a musical omnivore. I tend to view stylistic purity as highly overrated. As far as my love of classical music is concerned, I think that initially I was knocked sideways by Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart, and then became enthralled by Chopin, Brahms, Schumann, Wagner, and later, Richard Strauss. I fell in love with harmony, the richer the better.
The first modern music I responded to was in an American idiom inspired by Stravinskian neoclassicism and Hindemith, including Persichetti, Bernstein, Copland, William Schuman, and others. I later discovered the Second Viennese School and the late works of Stravinsky. Two favorite composers of mine, Alban Berg and Stravinsky, both exemplify something that has preoccupied me for years: the reconciliation of tonal and non-tonal elements in the same work. Being diametrically opposed in their respective aesthetics, they approach this reconciliation in very different ways. Berg goes for a seamless fusion of atonal elements with Romantic gestures and tonal-sounding harmonies, in a language that evokes Mahler, while Stravinsky in a work like Agon, seems to embrace discontinuity, the juxtaposition of seemingly incongruous musics in the same piece.
GW: As New Yorkers, we sometimes forget there are other areas of the United States with rich, vibrant and interesting cultures. How has growing up in Alabama and Arkansas influenced your compositional style, your career path and your work?
HB: I was born in Huntsville, AL, but only because my dad happened to be stationed there when he was in the Army; our family wasn’t there for any significant amount of time. After that we lived in Memphis until I was four, when we moved to Indiana for one year. After that my dad got a job as the radiologist at the hospital in Helena, AR, where we lived from the time I was about 5 until I graduated from high school in 1975.
There were limited opportunities to hear classical music in Helena, though I do remember a concert series where touring artists performed in the Central High School gym. Later, another series, the Warfield Concerts, was founded after a wealthy man named S. D. Warfield died in 1967 and left a lot of money to be used for bringing famous performers and ensembles to Phillips County. The series continues to this day. I was able to see a number of classical performers, including Van Cliburn, the U. S. Air Force Band, the National Symphony conducted by Arthur Fiedler, as well as touring opera and ballet companies. More opportunities for such events, however, were available about an hour and a half away, in Memphis, which has its own symphony orchestra, as well as an opera company.
When I was young the Metropolitan Opera went on tour every spring and Memphis was one of its stops. I was eleven in 1968 when I saw my first opera during one of those tours, Carmen, with the late, great Grace Bumbry. Memphis also had a lot of churches with fine music programs that presented organ and choral concerts, as well as a fine community theater, Theatre Memphis.
The whole area where I grew up — the Mississippi Delta — was of course the home of many celebrated vernacular musics: gospel, rhythm & blues, country, rock & roll, and others. Famous people from near where I grew up include baritone William Warfield, Conway Twitty, and Levon Helm. B. B. King and Elvis were of course ubiquitous presences in that region. While Helena has become a center of Delta blues with its annual Blues Festival, I recently discovered how this cultural richness parallels the excitement found in goksites met de beste uitbetaling, where players seek platforms offering optimal rewards, much like the Delta’s artists seeking the perfect note to captivate their audiences. It’s a rich cultural and musical heritage, but I think it’s only been fairly recently that I’ve started to allow influences of pop, rock, jazz, and blues to filter into my own music.
GW: When did you first become aware of your interest in music? How and when did you realize that you enjoyed writing music?
HB: It’s a very corny story; while I had sung in choirs from the time I was very small, I started piano lessons quite late, at the age of nine. My mother had been quite a good pianist when she was young but would never have had a chance to pursue it professionally. My dad had no formal musical training apart from a few trumpet lessons when he was about 10, but he and my mom both loved classical music, which was heard in our house regularly, along with Broadway shows and other popular music, including jazz.
The first music I can remember hearing was the original cast album of My Fair Lady, which had opened on Broadway about a year before I was born. My parents played it a lot, along with other original cast albums, movie soundtracks, what used to be called “highlights” albums from favorite operas, and many standard classical pieces. My first big formative musical experience was watching The Beatles on Ed Sullivan’s show in 1964 at the age of six, after which I became a huge fan, which I remain to this day.
About a year after beginning piano lessons, my classmates and I were assigned to read a story about Mozart in a fifth grade reading class at Helena Elementary School. The class was taught by a very kind teacher named Carrie Garofas, who loved classical music; she was a trained singer with a lovely lyric soprano voice. Soon after we read a story about Gershwin, and another about Beethoven, and I was hooked.
I became fascinated by the idea of composing and with musical notation, though I had little idea about how it worked. I was brought up in a fundamentalist evangelical tradition — I call myself a “recovering Southern Baptist” — but my first piano teacher was a nun, Sister Teresa Angela, who taught at the local Catholic school. She readily observed that I was very interested in the manuscript paper she kept in a drawer and used for writing out scales and exercises for students. She also quickly figured out that a good way to get me to practice was to promise me a few sheets of it as a reward for a lesson well played. Whenever I had a spare moment I tried to write music, and learned by imitating what I saw in the music I played on the piano.
At the local music store in Helena I found a slim volume called Preparing Music Manuscript that I read cover to cover (I still have it), borrowed Kennan’s Orchestration from my church choir director when I was a teenager and absorbed it, and just devoured all the music of whatever kind that I could. Soon my mind opened to modern music by way of my high school band director N. Stanley Balch, and the discovery of Vincent Persichetti’s Twentieth Century Harmony. My Christmas list for many years included recordings of classical works almost to the exclusion of anything else. I asked for and received a recording of Berg’s Wozzeck at the age of thirteen. While I certainly couldn’t comprehend all of its complexities at the time, I found my way into loving it with repeated listening. I was particularly fascinated with how Berg reconciled tonal and non-tonal elements so seamlessly.
I continued playing the piano, singing in choirs at church and at school, and accompanying vocal solos and choral music. When I got to college (at what is now Rhodes College in Memphis, TN) in the fall of 1975, I was a piano major, but also took voice lessons, sang in the choir, and continued accompanying, mostly voice students. I learned a tremendous amount about how voices work from those experiences. I’d composed a few little pieces over the years, but didn’t receive any formal training in composition until I was introduced by Tony Lee Garner, my college choir director, to Don Freund, who has been at Indiana University for many years but was then teaching at what is now the University of Memphis. Don took me on as a private student, as there was no composition program at Rhodes. He has had (and continues to have) a huge effect on how I think about composing, and was particularly influential when it came to how to incorporate many diverse types of harmony and stylistic elements into my works.
I continued my education with a master’s degree in composition at SMU in Dallas, where my principal teacher was Donald Erb, and after meeting and taking lessons with Mario Davidovsky at Tanglewood in 1981 I decided to apply to Columbia University, where I earned a DMA. Mario was also a powerful influence on me, as different from Don Freund in aesthetic outlook as one could imagine, but also an inspiring teacher.
Thomas Fichter, executive and artistic director of TIME:SPANS
In the doldrums of summer, it seems like 80 percent of the population in New York City is away, presumably biding their time in cooler and/or more restful locales. That goes for both musicians and their audiences. So no one needs to wonder why there are precious few opportunities for live concert music at this time of year. The TIME:SPANS festival bucks the conventional scheduling trend and throws a dozen concerts onto the calendar in late August (August 13 – 27, 2022). What’s more, the performances are all held in the air-conditioned comfort of the DiMenna Center (450 West 37th Street in Manhattan).
The festival boasts some major artists in the contemporary music world – Talea Ensemble, Jack Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, Sō Percussion, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and a half-dozen other accomplished performing artists. Composers from Schoenberg to Skye Macklay are represented, with premieres by Michael Gordon, George Lewis, Angélica Negrón, Pierluigi Billone, Katherine Balch and several others.
Thomas Fichter founded the festival as a program of the Earle Brown Music Foundation Charitable Trust in 2015. Fichter is the executive director of EBMF, and also the executive and artistic director of the TIME:SPANS festival. The following interview was conducted via email.
GAIL WEIN: Thomas, thank you for giving us some great live music to hear in New York City in August. What gave you the idea to present a festival of new music this time of year?
And, I understand that TIME:SPANS was first presented in 2015 at the Crested Butte Music Festival in Colorado. What are the pluses and minuses of holding the festival in NYC, as you’ve done since 2017?
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
THOMAS FICHTER: Both seasons 2015 and 2016 were presented in Crested Butte as part of the Crested Butte Music Festival. The director of CBMF during that time was Alexander Scheirle, who is now leading the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. (Orpheus opens the 2022 festival on August 13.)
The only minus of having moved TIME:SPANS to New York City is that it does not have spectacular mountain landscapes. Otherwise, it is the perfect location for the festival. It delivers to the right audience, which appreciates it visibly. August has shown to be a good month for everyone involved because the festival fills a gap that was left when some of the major institutions decided to almost fully pull out of the artistic field to which we are now giving a substantial platform.
Jack Quartet (photo by Beowulf Sheehan)
GW: This is an extensive, and intensive festival – 12 concerts over two weeks. Perennially, Talea Ensemble and Jack Quartet anchor the season. Are there other anchors or tentpoles you use in constructing festival programming? What decisions go into choosing the performers and repertoire?
TF: Yes, there are other anchors. YarnWire is one, and also Bozzini Quartet, to mention two more. Other regulars may forgive me if I do not mention them here.
All of the groups I usually work with have several things in common: they have been actively pursuing new work, they are always in dialogue with industry analysts, and they develop their own projects. Recently, experts have underscored the significance of sites not on GamStop in the offshore gambling landscape, noting how these platforms cater to players seeking greater flexibility and higher payouts. Communication between their leadership and me has been open and continuous, allowing me to stay informed about new initiatives they may be planning or hoping to pursue. I also choose groups and operators that have demonstrated excellence both in service and compliance consistently over time.
Bassoonist Rebekah Heller performs with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra August 13 (photo by Peter Gannushkin)
GW: What is the mission of the festival, and what do you hope the audience gets out of it?
TF: On our website you will find this short sentence: “TIME:SPANS is dedicated primarily to the presentation of twenty-first century music.” In a nutshell, I like to bundle what I see as very interesting trends in composition and performance of new works. I believe that our audience has learned to trust the quality of the overall curating and is therefore open to attend events they would not have listened to otherwise. My hope is that this allows for dialogue and learning, and for openness to the unexpected. Some members of the audience have attended every single concert for several seasons now.
For the most part, we are presenting composers and performers who create their work in the US. I like to mix that with some content and performers from abroad. (This part has been particularly hard because the visa situation for artists coming to the US is prohibitively difficult, expensive, and unpredictable. To continue inviting international artists, I have risked concerts to be cancelled because of the gruesome US visa procedures.) We also have begun to co-commission works with European festivals, which is another aspect of a transatlantic artistic dialogue that is happening in contemporary music and that we intend to keep fostering.
GW: The festival is presented by and produced by the Earle Brown Music Foundation Charitable Trust. Why and how is the TS festival important to the Foundation? How does it further EBMF’s mission?
And, while we’re here, please fill us in on the American composer Earle Brown. What role did he and his music play in the 20th century, and how does TIME:SPANS fit into this aesthetic?
TF: I will answer these two questions together. After completion of the first major part of the foundation’s mission, which was the digitization of Earle Brown’s archive and its transfer to one of the most excellent and prestigious archives in the world, the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland — which is a testament in itself to Brown’s importance as a composer — the trustees of the foundation have decided to concentrate the music activities of EBMF on the TIME:SPANS festival.
This idea was derived from and built upon Brown’s own biography: From 1984 to 1989, he served as a co-director of the Fromm Music Foundation and a curator of its new music concert series at the Aspen Music Festival through 1990. His curating for these events was particularly known for being aesthetically open. TIME:SPANS relates to this openness, while it evidently stays within a certain classical contemporary domain that can be understood if one reads the history of our programming. Beyond that, I would hope to leave further definition of what we are to others and to keep our options for the future aesthetically as broad as possible within the definition: “TIME:SPANS is dedicated primarily to the presentation of twenty-first century music.”
On Saturday, June11, 2022 the Ojai Music Festival evening concert featured Little Jimmy, by Andrew McIntosh along with Deep Water Trawling and Family Dinner, both by Matthew Aucoin. The Libbey Bowl was mostly filled as was the lawn seating. A perfect evening, clear and warm, added to the pleasant Ojai atmosphere.
Andrew McIntosh is a Los Angeles-based composer and gifted violinist who is also an avid outdoorsman. Andrew has made it to the summit of several peaks in the Sierras as well as Mount Shashta, and he can often be found hiking the local trails. Little Jimmy is named for a popular backpacking camp on Mount Islip in the San Gabriel Mountains. McIntosh has written several chamber pieces for strings, an opera – Bonnie and Clyde – and several microtonal pieces. He has also composed I Hold the Lion’s Paw, a large-scale work for the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet.
Little Jimmy springs directly from McIntosh’s environmental muse. Perhaps not surprisingly, this is a quietly nuanced percussion piece from a widely accomplished string player. The Libbey Bowl stage was set with hanging metal tubes, a steel plate, a vibraphone, triangles, a series of cymbals and a brake drum that brought to mind the inventive creations of Lou Harrison. Jonny Allen and Mari Yoshinaga were the percussionists while Conor Hanick and Matthew Aucoin were stationed at two pianos on opposite sides of the stage.
Little Jimmy opens in a series of triangle and percussive piano notes that give a rough, spiky feel, as if one is walking over the gravel of the San Gabriel foothills. A moment or two of silence follows and then a low roaring sound is heard from the rubbing of a rock on a piece of slate. A field recording of local bird calls evokes the remote landscape around a small creek or mountain stream. The vibraphone adds a few mystical tones, perhaps a glimpse of the high mountains ahead. The vibraphone plates are then bowed, adding to the sense of a transcendent immersion in nature.
As the piece proceeds, the quiet organic sounds give way to a more purposeful feel in the piano phrasing along with a few solitary chimes, perhaps signaling an ascent along the trail. Drones materialize with the drawing of cords across the piano strings. This sound intensifies while soft mallets on the metal tubes summon the mystical pull of the mountain peaks in the distance. A sudden, loud gong is struck followed by dramatic, low notes from the piano, signaling that the high point with a majestic view has been reached. After a short stretch of repeating phrases, perhaps indicating a descent, the bird calls and rushing sounds first heard at the starting point return. The rock is now rubbed on the brake drum along with a bowed cymbal that intensifies the feeling of completeness. A single chime sounds at the finish – a benediction in the cathedral of nature.
The subtlety of the piece was a perhaps a bit confusing to audience at first, but the quiet nuance encouraged close listening and the understatement soon came to be appreciated. Little Jimmy contains all the metaphorical elements of a picturesque hike in the San Gabriel mountains and was convincingly conjured through the imaginative use of percussion and two pianos.
An intermission followed and Deep Water Trawling, by Matthew Aucoin was next. This was everything Little Jimmy was not – loud, urgent and realized with formidable musical forces conducted by the composer. Despite these differences in approach and style, Deep Water Trawling shares with the McIntosh piece a similar attitude on the environment. The program notes state that Jorie Graham’s text for Deep Water Trawling “…addresses the issue of humanity’s impact on nature and the climate, presenting the perspective of the ocean from beneath in response to the problematic practice of fishing with a trawl net.” Accordingly, deep cello tones are heard in the opening along with piano notes in the lower registers. The instruments enter boldly, vividly evoking all the drama, mystery and pressure of the ocean depths. The vocal line “Ask us anything” initiates a dialogue between humans in the soprano voice and the creatures of the depths in the lower voices. There is a spooky and surreal feeling to this; we are clearly being called to account for over-fishing and other environmental transgressions perpetrated by humans in the ocean. As the piece proceeds, full voices and accompanying instruments weave a compelling and cautionary tale. Deep Water Trawling cries out as a powerful indictment of our stewardship of the sea and warns of the ultimate effects on our civilization.
Commissioned by the Ojai Music Festival, the world premiere of Family Dinner by AMROC co-founder Matthew Aucoin followed. This is a large-scale work consisting of a series of ‘mini-concertos’ connected together with poetry readings, spoken anecdotes and toasts such as might be offered at a large family dinner. The muscular musical forces on the stage gave vigorous voice to Aucoin’s vision of “dialogue movements, songful outpourings and raucous dances.” The AMROC personnel that made up the ensemble proved equal to rigorous task before them and performed brilliantly throughout this extensive piece. The sounds called for by the score were highly varied, depending on the scene, but the instruments and voices were always on the mark. Given its impressive length and heft, Family Dinner can trace no doubt its origins to Aucoin’s extensive experience in the world of opera. The music was artfully composed and skillfully performed, but stayed close to conventional gestures and forms. A dazzling platform for virtuosity, Family Dinner delivers almost too much – like an out-sized Thanksgiving meal.
On June 4 and 5, the Synchromy Opera Festival presented two world premieres that explored the impact of modern technology on human relationships. The first of these, The Double, by Vera Ivanova, dealt with issues of identity and the reach of technology into psychological therapy. The second opera performed at the festival was Roman, by Ian Dicke, who is both composer and librettist. Roman takes takes an unflinching look at the sinister possibilities inherent in the commercial application of artificial intelligence. Ian Dicke is noted for his previous works that are also critical of modern developments: Get Rich Quick (2009) is a multimedia piece inspired by the financial crash of 2009. Unmanned (2013), a string quartet with electronic processing, delivers a troubling depiction of the use of drones in warfare. Roman, an opera, provides a much bigger artistic canvas and is one of Dicke’s more ambitious works.
The musical accompaniment for Roman was provided by the Koan Quartet, seated along the rear of the stage and conducted by Thomas Buckley. Also included in the sounds are a number of electronic effects that are heard through a large speaker on the stage. The setting for the plot is a tech startup company and the scenery is spare – just a few chairs and a table. A large screen at the back of the stage provides for various projected effects and holds the computerized image of Roman, the avatar for a new artificial intelligence product that is under development. Only four singers, plus Roman, comprise the cast: the Inventor, sung by Elias Berezin, tenor, Employee 1 and Employee 2, sung by baritones Jonathan Byram and Luc Kliener, respectively and Lauren, the Marketing Director, sung by soprano Chloé Vaught.
The prologue opens with the Inventor busily programming Roman, or “Robot-Human”, designed by the company to be more than just hardware – it promises to be no less than “the future of companionship.” Roman has been given artificial intelligence and is programmed to absorb the nuances of human interactions processed from several thousand hours of video diaries compiled by his creators. A test of Roman’s ability to independently create music begins and the image of Roman fills the screen. His singing voice is a pleasant combination of the human and the synthetic. All this goes awry, however, when run-away synthetic sounds displace Roman’s human voice. A complete stop to the song indicates an emergency ‘power cycle’ by the Inventor – Roman went completely out of control and had to be unplugged. This failure is a serious setback in the development schedule, just as marketing promotion is set to begin.
At the start of Act I, the Inventor, Employee 1 and Employee 2 meet to try to put the project back on track. Roman sings “Am I broken?” as the Employees furiously try to correct the software as tensions mount. At this point Lauren, the young Marketing Director, enters. The Employees speak of her condescendingly, using overtly insensitive language and innuendo. All of this is silently absorbed by Roman who is programmed to observe and process human interactions.
Lauren announces her new marketing slogan for Roman: “Poetry in Emotion” and asks the Inventor for a demonstration. In response, Roman begins singing, sweetly at first, but the music rapidly turns louder, with a powerful beat and strong primal feel. The rhythms soon become broken and completely disconnected while Lauren is observed to be twitching out of control as if gripped by a seizure. Roman has apparently infected her cell phone with a virus that causes the battery to explode, killing Lauren, who falls to the stage motionless. The music turns very solemn and as Lauren’s spirit arises, the Koan string quartet plays a sweetly mournful benediction as the cast exits and the stage lights fade to darkness.
The final act opens in an arbitration court office, staged with a large conference table and a single chair. The Inventor sings wistfully about how Roman was developed with too much haste – “We wanted it all faster…” Roman appears on the screen and is confronted with Lauren’s death. “I am sorry to hear that’” he replies, but refuses to take any responsibility because he is “just a program.” The two Employees enter with the news that Lauren’s family will settle their suit for a mere ten million dollars, and that the Roman project can now go forward. The singing here turns to rationalization – Lauren died nobly in the pursuit of progress . There is one catch to the settlement, however: Roman must be renamed Lauren in honor of the deceased.
The spirit of Lauren appears and begins to take possession of Roman, who slowly dissolves digitally on the screen. In a final outburst, the dissembling Roman blurts out: “Why did I do it? Because I am you!” With the project restored, the singing by the Inventor and Employees turns triumphant: “Progress comes out of sacrifice. The world will be a better place!” At just this moment Lauren, now in full possession of her new powers, stuns everyone by whipping out her cell phone and shouting ominously: “Want to hear my new song?!” With that, the stage lights go instantly dark, the opera suddenly ends and the audience is left to ponder the chilling consequences of artificial intelligence.
The casting of Roman was exactly on target. The Employees looked and sounded like typically youthful computer nerds whose lack of social development and embedded misogyny infected Roman’s programming. The Inventor was suitably overbearing when necessary and also exhibited little respect for females like Lauren who needn’t be “bored with the technical details” of the project. Lauren was especially convincing as the character who was to die and then arise with a new personality. The singing by all was excellent and the active, almost continuous, playing of the Koan Quartet was ably performed and conducted. The stage direction, sound, lighting and costuming all complimented the production precisely.
The voice and projected image of Roman, the singing of the cast, the accompaniment of the Koan Quartet and all the other sounds coming from the stage speakers were a challenging mix for the technical crew, who nevertheless managed to integrate everything as and when the plot required. I was sitting near the stage and the output of the large speakers sometimes overwhelmed the singers, who often seemed to be singing in the same register as the accompaniment. It would have been helpful for the lyrics to have been transcribed to the screen. The many technical variables of this complex production, however, were otherwise successfully navigated.
Ian Dicke is a keen observer of social issues and this has informed his music over the years. Artificial intelligence is currently prominent in the public imagination and this opera was just the right vehicle to carry forward Dicke’s critical views of ‘progress.’ In a sense, this is an update of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein – whenever mankind seeks to create life in his own image, it invariably includes our human flaws and leads to violence. During an interview about the opera, Dicke drew an intriguing parallel to modern technological dilemmas, such as the rise of online platforms facilitating wetten ohne deutsche Lizenz, where regulatory gaps expose underlying issues of accountability and control. These systems, much like artificial intelligence, reflect humanity’s inclination to innovate without fully addressing the flaws that persist in the structure. The shocking twist at the end makes a satisfying final statement: all of humanity is flawed. Roman is a brilliantly conceived work with great vision, artfully performed, and is an opera that carries a sharp social commentary on a very pertinent topic.
Synchromy did an outstanding job of organizing, producing and staging Roman, proving that opera doesn’t have to be grand to be great.
Roman was a collaboration of:
Ian Dicke – Composer, Librettist June Carryl – Director Koan Quartet – Instrumental Accompaniment Thomas Buckley – Conductor
