Sequenza21

Garden of Dreams

David Maslanka

Dallas Wind Symphony

Jerry Junkin

Writing for a large ensemble, especially a traditional, professional orchestra, can be a dangerous venture for today’s composer. Hours, days, and years (sometimes) of composition, orchestration, preparation of parts, and personal anguish over a score that may get two hours of concert hall rehearsal before a world premiere. However, should a wind ensemble ever ask for a commission, quickly say yes. Wind ensembles (symphonies, bands, etc), particularly collegiate groups, are gifted with practice time enviable by any orchestra and their directors tend to be excited about new music.

Jerry Junkin and the Dallas Wind Symphony have released 77 minutes of music by David Maslanka on the Reference Recordings label, proof that composers can get a break in today’s “orchestra-eat-composer” world. As far as I can tell, this recording was completely underwritten by someone other than the David Maslanka, and the performance quality leaves nothing to complain about.

The music itself combines Bach chorales as “emotional focal points” (composers words) and influences of John Adams, with long droning phrases and chords that build over time. The spaces can be wide, with little motion, but when David writes fast music, it it engaging and purposeful. A Child’s Garden of Dreams is based on the work of Carl Jung, and freely “describes” five dreams of a young girl who died of disease. In Memoriam is based on Bach’s “If Thou but Suffer God to Guide Thee.” The concluding work on this disc is a symphony, and is full of references to Bach chorales and hymn tunes, is predictable and forced (with a glaring reference to Philip Glass about two minutes into the first movement).

Lion’s Eye/Lion’s Tale

Pauline Oliveros

The Berkley Gamelan Ensemble

Carter Scholz, HTML programmer and sampler performer

Pauline Oliveros, composer-performer, has been a transforming force in music since 1961. Her broad range of activities, from Deep Listening (Oliveros’ orginal concept) to performances on her just tuned accordion, have made her a unique and compelling voice in modern composition.

By their very nature, Oliveros’ works can’t be reviewed. Each performance is different and “correct,” with limitless freedom for the performers. The Berkeley Gamelan Ensemble with Carter Scholz using a sampler, tackles the forty-five minute Lion’s Eye from 1985. Oliveros’ writes for gamelans in a way that suits each instrument. Higher pitched instruments are given more notes, while lower pitched are given longer note values. The sampler allows patterns and pitches to be repeated or sustained at impossible levels, but also participates with the ensemble as another member.

Lion’s Tale for sampler (1989) uses composer created patterns that are generated by computer, allowing for a unique performance each time.

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Common Sense Composers’ Collective

New Millennium Ensemble

Rarely does one see the intentional joining of forces between composers. The competitiveness found in the performing arena is common in the composers’ world, though more passive-aggressive. Unfortunately, our animal desire to survive and rise above the pack isolates and divides us. So when a composers collective comes along, it can be refreshing to observe the fruits of friendship as expressed in the latest release through Albany Records of the Common Sense Composers’ Collective and the New Millennium Ensemble.

The performances by the New Millennium Ensemble are exciting and energetic (not to mention the very fine sound engineering). The composers represent an era influenced by Reich and Adams, jazz and rock, filtered through Guggenheims and Ivy League educations. Nothing sounds academic or contrived, and even when the post-minimalist clichés are apparent, the intensity and motivation behind the performance makes each work on this disc worthwhile.

Watching Olga Neuwirth’s opera Lost Highway is like watching a Harry Potter movie after having read the book: the material transfers all right, but one wishes the team behind the retelling had gone further in re-imagining the original work for a new medium. Lost Highway follows David Lynch’s movie more or less scene for scene: many images from the film get repeated on stage, and many lines from the screenplay find their way – sometimes awkwardly – into the libretto (written by Neuwirth and Elfriede Jelinek). Neuwirth’s principal musical conceit is to have Fred and Renee – the dull, troubled couple – speak their lines, while Pete and Alice – the sexy, transformed version of the same couple – sing theirs. This sounds promising in the program notes, but in reality Neuwirth doesn’t follow through: the majority of the lines in the opera – including those belonging to Pete and Alice – are spoken. What lines are sung come across often as labored and sluggish, rather than fantastical and intense. Neuwirth adopts a highly melismatic approach to setting the text, and this approach, while it blends well with her very ambient score, has the undesirable consequence of suddenly retarding the action on stage. Seeing as many of the most emotive and seemingly “operatic” lines are spoken, one wonders how and why she really chose what to have sung.

But still: Lost Highway is by no means a bad time. My comments above notwithstanding, the show in general moves along with sure-footed efficiency, and the often very short scenes rarely close without making an impact. There is also much to admire in Neuwirth’s music. The murky electronic burble that underscores most of the action recedes nicely at many times to reveal a sardonic choir of brass instruments, or an intimate set of strings. She even manages to sneak in some amusingly “American” sounding bluesiness and to capture the peculiar, dreamy dread that is Lynch’s trademark. And her decision to make Robert Blake’s “Mystery Man” a countertenor is a touch of genius. I didn’t get, however, the extended quotation from The Threepenny Opera early in the show. Nor can I imagine an explanation that would convince me this was the right time for a little haranguing from Bertolt Brecht.

The Oberlin Conservatory Contemporary Music Ensemble did a splendid job in the pit, and certainly this entire project does that wonderful school proud. But if composers, artists, or playwrights are to do justice to David Lynch, they must be as imaginative as he is. Neuwirth and Jelinek might have done better by dropping the original screenplay altogether, throwing together a libretto by riffing spontaneously on Lynch’s images, themes, and language, and turning Lost Highway into a wild fantasy on a wild fantasy. What we have instead is something much more literal-minded, and, therefore, something not especially faithful to the original material at all.

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If the video doesn’t show up here, you can view it on the actual YouTube site here.

Monday Evening Concerts are alive and well and being given in the great acoustics of Zipper Hall!  And if you don’t know why that’s important you’re reading the wrong blog.  Last night’s program was the most stimulating in four or five years, stimulating because it presented works by six talented composers, works that were fresh and alive and downright good music.

One of the fresh approaches in the new MEC is to have a musician serve as curator for the program, selecting composers to bring to our attention and determining the works to support the rationale.  In this first program Steven Stucky identified six composers in their early-to-middle careers, composers he felt we should know more about.  As Stucky pointed out, the awards received and notable appearances given by these six point out they are certainly not “unknown artists”; instead, they are composers we should know much more about.  Our local Xtet group provided the professional musicians for five of the six works (student violinists performed the sixth), and composer/conductor/professor Donald Crockett of USC and Xtet conducted four of the pieces.

The concert began with “Gran Turismo” (2005) by Andrew Norman, one of the twenty-year-olds, currently in Rome enjoying his Rome Prize.  His bio lists 12 other prizes for composition.  The work is a delightful perpetual motion for eight (8) violins.  It was inspired by some paintings by Italian Futurists, particularly those of Giacomo Balla showing racing cars, paintings attempting to show movement and speed.  A great start for a concert! 

James Matheson wrote the next work, “Falling” (2000) for violin, cello and piano.  Matheson did his graduate work (MFA, DMA) at Cornell, studying with Stucky and writing his doctoral thesis on Harbison’s music.  Also with awards aplenty (I’ll stop saying this), Matheson received a commission from Carnegie for Upshaw’s Perspectives series, a composition for soprano and chamber orchestra.  “Falling”, with a recurring motif of descending notes only to end in peaceful contemplation, acknowledges pre-modern musical forms while speaking in contemporary musical language.  I could find only one clip of another work by Matheson on the Amazon search, and another clip on iTunes.  I’d like to hear both his Carnegie commission and his work for the Albany Orchestra.

Sean Shepard, the other composer in his 20s, closed the first half with “Lumens” (2005) for violin, cello, flute/piccolo, clarinet, piano, and percussion, primarily tuned percussion.  His web site gives three clips, which sound exactly as I remembered the performance, plus notes on the composition.  I find it interesting that he would mention that some might object to the prettiness of the work, but that he persisted and was able to write something that might be so accessible.

A slightly older contingent had works in the second half of the concert, kicked off by “peal” (2000) by Philippe Bodin.  This is a work for violin, cello, flute, clarinet, and piano.  Bodin’s note describe the work as variations on a theme of a two-voice canon.  My ears don’t hear canon inversions, so I’ll accept his description.  His personal web site provides two good clips (and here) of the interesting music.

If applause can be trusted, the audience favorite was the fifth work, “Darkness Visible” (1998-1999) by Ana Lara.  Her work (for violin, viola, cello, bass, flute, clarinet, piano, percussion).  This is accessible, but moody — quite appealing to an audience hearing it for the first time.  Her web site gives eight mp3 clips, all of other works but bearing a compositional relationship to what we heard last night.  Amazon has only one composition of hers, on a multi-composer CD.  One of her compositions was performed by our local Long Beach, but her works deserve much more exposure.

The program closed similarly to its start, with a work about speed (or time), “Faster Still” (2004) by Brian Current.  The master, Alan Rich, quotes Stucky as describing the work:  “It’s as if Elliott Carter wrote only arpeggios.”  The work is for solo violin and piano, accompanied by a traditional string quartet.  The solo violin part is fast and furious (most often), and the piano part is probably somewhat challenging, although it’s not as showy.  Tempi change constantly.  No sound clips are available.  Only one of his works is listed by Amazon.  His web site, however, does provide some interesting mp3s, on two web pages.

Steven Stucky made his point:  these are composers we should hear more.

Saturday night we saw the L.A. Opera’s production of “Mahagonny“.  The reviews haven’t been good.  I liked it.  Very much.  I thought it was the best realization of Brecht’s theories of theatre that I’ve seen, and Audra McDonald was a great Jenny.  Conlon as conductor kept all touches of romanticism out of the playing.  Of all my musical enthusiasms from college, the one to last has been that for Kurt Weill’s music.  I think Brecht is seeming more and more like an historical artifact, but that music is still fresh and bracing.

Jerry Z