Bryan Senti has shared a video of “Mantra,” the first single off of his forthcoming album Manu, out June 24th via naïve.
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concert review, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, New York, Orchestral, Review, Twentieth Century Composer
April the First proved a propitious date for the New York Classical Players’ much anticipated program featuring a new collaboration – and premiere – with the Parker Quartet. In the mere twelve years since their inception, NYCP has consistently brought spirit and devotion to so much of what they do, and this early Spring concert at W83 Auditorium was no exception. In many respects, the highlight of the evening was Jeremy Gill’s joyous new work, “Motherwhere,” a concerto grosso for the Parker Quartet and NYCP. But well-worn, oft’-loved music by Tchaikovsky was also on offer, delivered with great heart. And that is how the evening began:
Opening the program as soloist in the Andante Cantabile for cello and strings, Madeline Fayette, (NYCP’s own), commanded centerstage. Forthright, with an immediate brand of lyricism, Fayette radiated warmth from her cello, upheld by a muscularity of execution. Her global tone seemed born of a seductively dark palette. While lush and nourishing was Fayette’s romantic sense, the coloring became all too similar at times. One hankered for more variety in sonority, extracted from the piano end of the dynamic spectrum. Brighter hues too, would have enhanced an admittedly emotionally satisfying reading. Conductor Dongmin Kim guided the chamber orchestra deftly, ever sensitive to Fayette’s richly etched lines. Notably, Tchaikovsky’s moments of silence were realized expertly by Fayette, aided again by the orchestra’s soft touch. At times it seemed as though conductor Kim was a little too aloof and might well have taken opportunity to invigorate the proceedings with contrasting textures and inner accompaniment parts, especially from the upper strings.
From the start, it was apparent that NYCP has an affinity for Tchaikovsky and such canonic works remain a hallmark of their repertoire. The second Tchaikovsky item on the program was the irresistible Serenade for Strings of 1880. It can easily be observed that the New York Classical Players straddle two worlds: that of a high-level ensemble who don’t really need a conductor, and that of the effortless sinfonietta who follow their leader with attentive skill and palpable delight. NYCP’s performance of the Serenade threw both spheres into sharp relief.
From the outset of Movement 1, this “Pezzo in forma di sonatina” bristled forth with an excess of springtide energy and conviction. Every single player was committed to the sum of the parts and proved adept at sweeping, upsprung passages. The full-blooded fortes were ever impressive, generous in their tonal production. The orchestra seemed less able to dig into the finer work of textural detail and soft timbres; refined aspects of blending were, at times, problematic. Nevertheless, moments of delicacy and whispered tunefulness were gloriously realized in the third movement, the Élégie.
In what has come to be earmarked as a personal work from Tchaikovsky, the Serenade’s folksy tendencies were cleverly enlightened by NYCP. At times, the spirit of Dvorak came to mind, as dance elements and rhythmic physicality were exemplified by the orchestra, flattering much of the performance. Kim’s conducting was precise and encouraging yet missed the larger picture. A “bird’s eye view” of this music would have been more satisfying.
A particularly memorable solo from the concert master nearly stole the show but it seemed to encourage the entire ensemble to really shoot for the top in the final movement, rhapsodically reaching every phrase with a breadth of expression. (This approach does prove effective – and often necessary! – in Tchaikovsky’s music.)
The evening’s premiere, Jeremy Gill’s Motherwhere, leapt to an earnest start, giving ample platform to the Parker Quartet’s myriad attributes. Vitality and playfulness abounded as this concerto grosso was set A-reveling, an ideal showcase for what the Parkers have become celebrated for. Characteristics of each of the four solo instruments (the concertino) bubbled happily to the fore, where divergent gestures narrated a candid mode of expression, integral and benevolent, perfectly suited to the musicians Gill so reveres. During a recent interview, the composer declared his affection for the Parker Quartet: “Writing for them is a joy, and I hope that joy is manifest in the notes I write for them.” He also emphasized his desire for “creating ideal environments in which ensembles can play and sound their best.” Motherwhere boasts eclectic source material, various in its own inspirations. Night School: A Reader for Grownups (2007) is a book of stories by author, Zsófia Bán. This was the starting point for Gill in an endeavor to “evoke, musically, the experience of reading her book.” The structure of Gill’s musical “metamorphosis” indicated itself, as he converted Bán’s “bag-of-tales” into a tightly wrought, nearly continuous set of twenty-one bagatelles. Self-proclaimed, this represents his objective to “match up the emotional evocations of the music and the tale.”
The Parker Quartet divine much from Gill’s 슬롯사이트 economy of means, transforming terse, even simple motives into a lingua franca for the listener to relish. Elements of familiarity are welcomed, as Gill’s sunny, near-hummable lines ring of truth and of beauty, distilled with a congenial dose of Americana. His carefully considered formal structures urge a dramatic, even theatrical, listening experience. Also finding folk aspects implicit to the string orchestra profile itself (cf. Tchaikovsky), Gill’s penchant for highlighting the concertino serves his purposes well; lower strings were especially punctuated. Some extended techniques proved effective throughout Motherwhere, often serving as percussive devices (ie. pizzicato, strumming and glissandi). The unison passages, while arresting, posed intonation challenges and became cumbersome, if not gritty.
Jeremy Gill’s vision of form, interaction and brightness of spirit must be thoroughly commended here. Through strength of artistic vision, technical expertise and familiarity with the commissioning ensemble, the composer has achieved a kind of cinematic, fictive musical world, jolly and inviting.
Equal enthusiasm for Zsófia Bán’s literary talent cannot be overstated. Indeed, her “bag-of-tales” might be requisite reading after this musical premiere. Bán herself mused on the “accidental encounter” that composer Gill had with her work. She likened it to “the clicking of two billiard balls on a global pool table.” And the entire performance at West 83rd Street, on this first April night in 2022, had that very air about it: a spirited, celebratory meeting of like-minded colleagues and friends. The specter of Antonio Vivaldi, with his ubiquitous provenance of “Spring,” saluted us too from on high.
NOTE: This concert review dates from a performance on Friday, April 1, 2022 at W83 Auditorium, New York
Bang on a Can, Brooklyn, Chamber Music, Choral Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Festivals, jazz, Music Events, Performers, Premieres
Two years ago, I was editing a 2020 interview with the composer David Lang about the new multi-day festival that Bang on a Can planned for that spring, Long Play, when I realized the significance of the festival title. The year 2020 would be Bang on a Can’s 33rd anniversary. Long Play = LP = 33 rpm. Very clever! Although the festival was delayed for two years, it retains its name.
The inaugural Long Play festival takes place on April 29, April 30 and May 1, 2022 at a half-dozen venues in Brooklyn, including BAM, Roulette, Littlefield, the Center for Fiction, Mark Morris Dance Center, Public Records and the outdoor plaza at 300 Ashland. Over 60 performances are scheduled. Some are free, but most are accessed via a day pass ($95) or a three-day festival pass ($195). Over a hundred performers range from the Sun Ra Arkestra to jazz pianist Vijay Iyer to bagpiper Matthew Welsh (complete list is here).
Lang, along with the composers Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon launched Bang on a Can in New York City in 1987 with a 12-hour concert in a downtown art gallery. The organization became known for its annual marathon concerts in New York, and later expanded to include a performance group (the Bang on a Can All-Stars), a commissioning program, education programs and festivals at MASS MoCA in the Berkshires, a record label (Cantaloupe), and an on-going extensive online series created when live concerts were cancelled during the pandemic.
Looking back on our conversation on February 25, 2020, most of what Lang and I discussed is still relevant to the rescheduled Long Play Festival. Here is the interview, edited for length and clarity.
Gail Wein Successful marathons have been your signature event for Bang on a Can for 33 years. So what prompted the creation of this differently-formatted festival, Long Play?
David Lang Over the last couple of marathons we have tried to expand our reach to different kinds of music and to other kinds of communities. After a while of doing that, we felt like we were inviting people on to the marathon for slots of 15 or 20 minutes that we wished were an hour or two hours. And so we got interested in a lot of other kinds of music and it just seemed like we weren’t spending enough time with them.
I remember thinking – this is at the last marathon – people would come in and they would go, “That was incredible. Why am I only wanting that for fifteen minutes?” What we’re hoping to do with this is to say, we’ve uncovered all these incredible connections between all these different kinds of music. And now we really want to let people go deeper into what those connections do and where they go.
Gail Wein Of course, it’s a much bigger scope. Three days, and a bunch of venues. And instead of the marathon’s free admission, this one is ticketed.
David Lang There’s still going to be a bunch of free things, including some outdoor events, because we really like the idea that we have a wide doorway, that lots of different kinds of people can come through with no barriers. But it’s also true that when you start working with so many hundreds of musicians and so many different kinds of venues, that it’s just not possible for us to fundraise to make the entire thing free anymore. So we came up with this plan that, for essentially the price of one ticket, you get a pass which allows you to see everything and then you’ll just be able to go in and out of performances and check out music from all these different communities.
Gail Wein How does the aesthetic of the performers and the programs and the repertoire differ from that of the marathons?
David Lang I don’t think it differs at all.
We’re still looking for people whose definition of what they do is: they wake up in the morning and tell themselves that they’re innovators. They wake up and they say, there’s a kind of traditional music that’s involved in my world and I’m not doing that. That’s always been the way we’ve judged people to come on to the marathon. We wanted to find people who were pushing their fields. The difference here is that we’re able to go deeper into other kinds of communities like jazz and rock music and indie pop and ambient and electronica and be able to invite more people who are pushing their boundaries.
Gail Wein I was thinking about the longevity of Bang on a Can as an institution. Institutions come and go, organizations come and go, various folks have mounted series, marathons, festivals. But not that many have lasted a third of a century. To what do you attribute Bang on a Can’s longevity?
David Lang I’m sure some of it is just dumb luck. But also we have a kind of hippie mentality about what it is we do, where we want everyone involved in the organization to be as excited and passionate about it as possible. If something comes up that we are not passionate about, we don’t do it. Some organizations, they just begin to think, well, we have a payroll to meet. We’ve got to do this, and this is what we did last year.
One of the things that we’re really proudest of about this festival and also about our sister festival that we started in summer, which is the Loud Weekend Festival at Mass Moca, is that we’re able to change and get excited about other kinds of things and then turn the organization so that it can take advantage of what we’re all really excited about. Everyone who works at Bang on a Can is a musician; we only hire people who are musicians. And so when we talk about these things in the office, we really are sharing ideas of the things that we are all getting excited about. And so when you do something like this, when you say this is a new direction that we’re going in, or this is the kind of music we want to include, or this is a new initiative for something we’d like to do, it’s something that energizes everybody. That’s one of the reasons why we can stay fresh, because everybody understands how committed we all are to the mission of the organization.
Gail Wein I’ve been thinking about this: New York City is already one big music festival every single day.
David Lang It is.
Gail Wein So why do you think New York and New Yorkers need this festival?
David Lang One of the beautiful things about this is the pass, quite honestly. In New York, there are always 500 concerts to see every single night. And you pay your money and you go see it and you stick it out, right? And then you say, I know I’m going to see this one, I don’t know that other kind of music, so I’m going to go see the one I know because I have to pay the money and I have to sit there for the concert.
At Long Play, we have all of this music within a few blocks of each other, all in walking distance, in Brooklyn, all the concerts are scheduled to go on simultaneously. What I’m really hoping will happen is that people with the pass will be encouraged to check out things that they wouldn’t necessarily check out because they have the right to go to that concert. So that’s our thought of how to replace the thing that we loved so much about the marathon, which is to put this kind of music next to each other, so that someone would come out of watching twelve hours of the music at the marathon and having a kind of cross section of a huge swath of interesting innovative things. What we’re hoping now will happen is that because I’ve already bought a pass, I’m going to check it out. And if I don’t like it, I can get up in 10 minutes and go check something else out. I’m not obligated to spend $50 for a concert of stuff I don’t know.
Gail Wein How did you choose and curate the artists and the programs and the venues as well?
David Lang We wanted to find places that were all in walking distance. And of course, that means that we started talking to everybody a year ago in order to get on their schedules. And then we just went to every single person who works in Bang on a Can and asked, what do you want to see? People just thought, what’s the widest, most varied, most exciting bunch of things from a bunch of different musical directions that we can come up with?
Gail Wein What do you hope audiences will come away with after experiencing the Long Play Festival?
David Lang What I’m really hoping will happen is that people will think that the world is full of all sorts of exciting things going on right now. And and that it’s full of creativity and wildness and inspiration and and that the world is very large. You know, I think sometimes when you go to a concert that’s neatly packaged and everything fits and everything makes sense. You go, this is a complete experience andI don’t need anything else. What I’m really hoping will happen is that people will come to this thing and they’ll go. That was unbelievable. And the world is full of all sorts of things that I have to continue to check out.
I asked David Lang which of the artists and programs were his favorite. A message he sent in an email newsletter earlier this month sums up his thoughts about the 2022 festival.
April 5, 2022
LONG PLAY really reminds me of those choose-your-own-adventure books – you get to make your own musical path through each day.
That is why I am going to plot my course through the weekend, very very carefully – I want to make sure I build my schedule around the concerts that I really have to see. Such as:
Stimmung – Karlheinz Stockhausen – It is hard to imagine that a European modernist classic from the 1960’s is in reality a meditation on everyone in the world having sex with each other, but that is what it is. Ekmeles sings at the Mark Morris Dance Center at 5pm on Friday, April 29.
Iva Casian-Lakos plays Joan La Barbara – Bang on a Can introduced these two to each other on one of our Pandemic Marathons last year, commissioning a new work from Joan for Iva’s fiery cello playing. The result was so electrifying that they have made it into a show, and I need to hear how it has grown. At the Center for Fiction at 2pm on Sunday.
Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han Oh, Tyshawn Sorey – Their album UNEASY came out last year on ECM and it has been on heavy rotation in my studio ever since. It’s tuneful and moody and thoughtful, and I really want to hear them play together, live. At Roulette on Saturday at 8pm.
Eddy Kwon – composer, singer, violinist – their music is so beautiful and flows so smoothly across so many boundaries that is hard for me to even describe it. The songs feel like the hit arias from the foundational music of a culture I have never experienced before. Magic. Sunday at 4pm at the Center for Fiction.
Ornette Coleman – The Shape of Jazz to Come – Coleman was a motivator for so much forward motion in music. This legendary album from 1959 was a big part of that, and it is still pushing musicians to move forward. I want to be there when six composers show us how with their world premieres. At BAM’s Opera House 7:30pm on Sunday, May 1.
And then I have to figure out how to run between all the other shows, trying to see as much as I can.
Nona Hendryx! Arvo Pärt! Sun Ra! Éliane Radigue! Zoë Keating! Galina Ustvolskaya! Pamela Z! JG Thirlwell! Soo-Yeon Lyuh! Craig Harris! The Brooklyn Youth Chorus! More! Much more!
Plus I will try to see my own show (Death Speaks) with Shara Nova on Sunday at Mark Morris, if I can figure out how to fit it in.
Whatever the schedule ends up looking like, I have a feeling you are going to see me there with circles under my eyes, as I run from show to show to show to show to show.
But I know I am going to be super happy.
– David Lang
Best New/Experimental Recordings
Trio IX and Exercises
Christian Wolff
Trio Accanto
Nicholas Hodges, piano; Marcus Weiss, saxophone; Christian Dierstein, percussion
Wergo CD
Three String Quartets
Christian Wolff
Quatuor Bozzini
New World CD
On Trio IX and Exercises, Trio Accanto performs recent music by Christian Wolff, a composer with whom they have often collaborated. Trio IX (2017) is dedicated to the group, and it is filled with tunes ranging from J.S. Bach to work songs to quotes and “reminiscences” from Wolff’s own music. This is a palimpsest of a quodlibet, and all the better for it, as the strands from Wolff’s repertory of tunes are crafted into a fast shifting colloquy between trio members. Snippets of material are passed back and forth, with frequent interruptions and sudden confluences that make for many delightful surprises. Trio Accanto also performs some of Wolff’s most recent pieces in his Exercises series, from 2011 and 2018; open instrumentation, mobile form compositions. The similarity between these freer pieces and Trio IX, and the fact that the performers worked on the music in close consultation with the composer, suggest that this is a benchmark recording for understanding Wolff’s recent performance practice.
Wolff’s String Quartet: Exercises Out of Songs (1974-1976) is another covert quodlibet, one in which Wolff’s music takes on an Ivesian cast, both in terms of some of the material and the collage aspects of the form. Once again, rapid stops and starts deliberately disrupt the flow. These juxtapositions are performed spotlessly by the estimable Quatuor Bozzini. Cast in a single movement, For Two Violinists, Violist, and Cellist (2008), as the title suggests, breaks the string quartet mold, allowing each player their own space and a degree of agency. This goes hand in hand with the egalitarian sensibility that Wolff has espoused both in his writings and music, always viewing new works with an eye toward collaboration. For Two Violinists, Violist, and Cellist ups the dissonance quotient but retains a highly gestural rhythmic language. Its one attacca movement, clocking in at over a half hour, is a compelling retort to large-scale late modernism. Out of Kilter (String Quartet 5) was written in 2019, and contrasts the previous piece in terms of design. Cast in a series of short movements, the demeanor now shifts within movements and between movements, capturing a plethora of moods, tempos, and solo, duo, and ensemble deployments. Wolff is nearing ninety years of age, yet he still has more tricks up his sleeve.
Pauline Anna Strom
Angel Tears in Sunlight
RVNG
Pauline Anna Strom passed away in December 2020. She left behind her first new album in over thirty years, Angel Tears in Sunlight, which was released on RVNG in February 2021. The recent resurgence of interest in “sisters with transistors,” female synthesizer pioneers, has enabled a number of artists to be reconsidered and reissued. It has also inspired several to make new work. Strom was part of the dawning of New Age music, an unfairly maligned genre that is having a resurgence in interest. However, Angels Tears in Sunlight demonstrates that Strom’s work was never about easy stylistic markers. It includes pieces like “Marking Time” and “I Still Hope” in which one can readily hear how minimalism and ambient electronica were touchstones. Wide ranging glissandos in “Tropical Rainforest” unhinge elements of the music from simple harmonic trajectory into synth experimentation that resides further out. One only wishes Strom had gotten to see how deservedly this new music has been warmly received.
Meadow
Linda Catlin Smith
Mia Cooper, violin; Joachim Roewer, viola and William Butt, cello
Louth Contemporary Music Society CD
Kermès
Julia Den Boer, piano
New Focus Recordings CD
Meadow was released December 11, 2020, too late for most music critics to catch it in time for year-end coverage (except Steve Smith and Tim Rutherford-Johnson, of course). Since the release of this half hour long string trio composed by Linda Catlin Smith, both the composer and the label of this release, Louth Contemporary Music Society, have grown in terms of influence and recorded output (see the Frey review below). Meadow contains a lush, primarily modal, harmonic palette tempered with piquant dissonances. Smith takes her time unfolding various patternings of the primarily chordal texture, creating a deliciously unhurried amble through fascinating, distinctive musical pathways.
Catlin Smith features prominently on Kermès, a release on New Focus by pianist Julia Den Boer that features four pieces by female composers. The Underfolding once again features added-note harmonies, but these are interspersed with pure triads and, in a fleeting but fetching middle section, offset by a descending bass line. Crimson, by Rebecca Saunders, has some delightfully crunchy verticals, a constantly evolving set of clusters that move upward from the middle register to encompass widely spaced gestures in the soprano register. These two angular off-kilter ostinatos create complex rhythmic interrelationships. The lower register enters belatedly and is startling upon its appearance. Crimson’s denouement is something to behold. Déserts, by Giulia Lorusso, includes five movements responding to the flora and fauna of deserts in different locations. Lorusso often uses the sustain pedal to extend bass note jabs and dissonant intervals. These are juxtaposed against repeated open fifths and octaves, which reveal a plethora of overtones when sustained. Lorusso depicts powerful images of the desert as richly inhabited rather than the default brittle dryness that other composers have adopted. Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Reminiscence begins with open intervals and quickly moves to widely spaced diminished sonorities, from there incorporating polychords with the tritone remaining prominent. It is the first piece by Thorvaldsdottir that I can recall using chordal arpeggiations in the bass, which presses the piece forward during its conclusion.
Alex Paxton
Music for Bosch People
Birmingham Record Company/NMC
Taking the bizarre work of 16th century artist Hieronymus Bosch as an inspiration, on Bosch People improvising trombonist and composer Alex Paxton writes exuberantly polystylic music that switches abruptly from genre to genre: think Zappa, Zorn, and Vinko Globakar in a mixing bowl. Backed up by ten crackerjack musicians who inhabit jazz, rock, and contemporary classical, the music is breathless for the sopranos, saxophonists, and Paxton himself; likely for the listener as well.
I Listened to the Wind Again
Jürg Frey
Louth Contemporary Music Society
Hélène Fauchère, Soprano; Carol Robinson, Clarinet; Nathalie Chabot, Violin; Agnès Vesterman, Cello; Garth Knox, Viola; Sylvain Lemêtre, Percussion
Louth Contemporary Music Society has released a treasure trove of recordings via their Bandcamp site this year. This new recording of Jürg Frey’s I Listened to the Wind Again, for soprano, clarinet, strings, and percussion, is a standout among chamber releases of new music this year. Frey sets fragmentary quotations from French-Swiss poets Gustave Roud and Pierre Chappuis, Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi, and Lebanese-U.S. poet-painter Etel Adnan. The gentle declamation of the text is exquisitely rendered by Hélène Fauchère. The rest of the ensemble undertakes similarly aphoristic lines, slowly and softly, which gradually thread together into an achingly beautiful web of layered interplay. I Listened to the Wind is a captivating listen.
Enno Poppe/Wolfgang Heiniger
Tonband
Yarnwire and Sam Torres
Wergo DL
Annea Lockwood
Becoming Air/Vanishing Point
Nate Wooley, trumpet
Yarn/Wire
Black Truffle DL
Michael Pisaro-Liu
Stem-flower-root
Nate Wooley
Tisser/Tissu Editions DL and Chapbook
Composers Enno Poppe and Wolfgang Heiniger collaborate on the work Tonband, a piece for the piano/percussion quartet Yarnwire plus live electronics. Heiniger is skilful at finding and emulating all sorts of vintage keyboard sounds and also supplies synthesis that glides through glissandos and microtones. Each composer has a solo work as well. Enno Poppe’s Field unfurls off-kilter ostinatos, building sheets of chromatic scales on mallet instruments and piano. Tonband, featuring live electronics performed by Sam Torres, is an imaginative combination of percussive timbres elicited from Yarn/Wire along with a diverse palette of bleep electronica. Heiniger’s solo turn Neumond, based on horror movie soundtracks, is an appropriately spooky electronics piece but also features a number of melodic fragments, each of which could be a theme in its own right.
Two recent instrumental pieces by Annea Lockwood are included on a recent Black Truffle release, Becoming Air/Vanishing Point. Trumpeter Nate Wooley is challenged to transcend the limitations of his quite considerable chops on Becoming Air (2018). Wooley is a masterful trumpeter, who specializes in overblowing and extended techniques, but the piece deliberately creates an environment in which some notes will inevitably waver. Starting out soft with lots of silences and abetted by electronics, it eventually crescendos into a gale force of fortissimo distortion. Yarn/Wire is featured on the second piece, Vanishing Point, a threnody for the mass extinction of insects. While there is no attempt at deliberate parody, the ensemble does an estimable job creating an insectine ambience that is movingly evocative.
The format for Michael Pisaro-Liu’s Stem-flower-root is an appealing one: a download with a chapbook discussing the piece’s inspirations in detail. It was premiered at Brooklyn’s For/With Festival, for which Wooley commissioned solo trumpet pieces from composers who hadn’t previously considered the medium. Allowed here to address music that celebrates rather than devolves his sound, Wooley plays sustained tones with abundant air supply. Octaves and overtones enter over a unison to create polyphony based on the harmonic series. Sine tones play a prominent role as well, allowing for a different color to complement the trumpet. I love the depiction of the score, how Pisaro-Liu, in reference to the titular subject, describes sections as “branchings.” Wooley is an extraordinarily gifted player, and in tandem with one of the most imaginative composers in the US, he creates a winning performance of an absorbing piece.
Louis Andriessen
The Only One
Nora Fischer, soprano
Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor
Nonesuch Records
Louis Andriessen passed away this year at age 82 . The Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, has released one of Andriessen’s final works, The Only One (2018), on a Nonesuch recording. It is a set of five orchestral songs, with an introduction and two interludes, for soprano soloist Nora Fischer. The texts are by Flemish poet Delphine Lecompte, who translated the ones used into English.
Fischer is a classically trained vocalist who is also adept in popular and cabaret styles. Her singing is abundantly expressive, ranging from Kurt Weill style recitation through honeyed lyricism to raspy screams. This is particularly well-suited both to the texts, which encompass a range of emotions, from rage to resignation, and to the abundantly varied resources Andriessen brings to bear. In The Only One, his inspiration remains undimmed; it is a finely wrought score. Much of it explores pathways through minimalism equally inspired by Stravinsky that have become his trademark. Andriessen is also well known for resisting composing for the classical orchestra for aesthetic reasons. Here he adds electric guitar and bass guitar and calls for a reduced string cohort, making the scoring like that used for a film orchestra. Harp and piano (doubling celesta) also play important roles. Esa-Pekka Salonen presents the correct approach to this hybrid instrumentation, foregrounding edgy attacks and adopting energetic tempos that banish any recourse to sentimentality. As valedictions go, “The Only One” is an eloquent summary of a composer’s life and work.
A More Attractive Way
IST
Rhodri Davies, prepared harp; Simon H. Fell, prepared double bass; Mark Wastell, prepared cello
Confront Core Series 5XCD
Improvising String Trio’s scintillating interplay is captured on A More Attractive Way, a generous boxed set of live performances from 1996-2000 in the UK. All three members of IST use preparations, so that at times they challenge the listener to recognize the players among a “super instrument” of effects. Harpist Rhodri Davies, bassist Simon H. Fell, and cellist Mark Wastell are chronicled at the outset of their collaboration at a gig in London, which is followed by performances in Barclay, Norwich, and Cambridge. Already compelling at the outset, it is fascinating how the group’s dynamic and their collective sense of pacing and shaping extended materials evolves to an almost extrasensory level by the conclusion of the quintuple CD set. Free improvisation at the highest level.
Canoni Circolari
Aldo Clementi
Kathryn Williams, flutes; Joe Richards, percussion; Mira Benjamin, violins; Mark Knoop, piano
All That Dust D/L
Italian composer Aldo Clementi (1925-2011) made the venerable procedure of canonic writing seem fresh again with the unconventional instrumentation of his work Canoni Circolari (2006). Alongside three other process-driven and relatively compact pieces, the listener is treated to Clementi’s passion for patterning ranging from clocks to chess, to canons from all periods of music. On Overture, Kathryn Williams overdubs a whorl of scalar passages in proportional rhythm for a dozen flutes in different shapes and sizes.
Percussionist Joe Richards and pianist Mark Knoop create a Westminster Abbey level of clangor on the mimicked bell-changing of l’Orologio di Arcevia. Mira Benjamin overdubs eight violins, once again in polytempo relationships to each other, on Melanconia. The whole quartet interprets the enigmatically notated titled work, a canon with interpretation left open about which parts are taken by whom and when to stop. When is the circle broken? In three minutes – one could imagine even more. How often does one say that about a round?
Tulpa
Curtis K. Hughes
New Focus Recordings
Curtis K. Hughes’s second portrait CD was released this year on New Focus; the programmed works span from 1995 to 2017. There is craft-filled consistency from the earliest to most recent works, with the principle change being an ever more assured compositional voice and a major work in Tulpa, a 2017 piece for ensemble. Tulpa is engaging throughout, and seems to be a culmination of the other, smaller, compositions on the CD. Whether for soloists or writ large, Hughes writes compelling music that is artfully crafted and energetically appealing.
-Christian Carey
Best EP of 2021
Light Past Blue
Alex Somers & Aska Matsumiya
Mini LP
Sometimes music sneaks up on you. This recording, Light Past Blue, just dropped Friday, indeed out of the blue, braving the hustle bustle and list making of the holiday season to provide 20 minutes of exquisite calm.
Alex Somers is a composer and producer who has worked with a heady roster of talents that includes Sigur Rós, Jónsi, Julianna Barwick, Sin Fang, and Gyða Valtýsdóttir. He performed in the duo Jónsi & Alex Somers, who released two albums Riceboy Sleeps (2009) and Lost and Found (2019). Somers has been prolific in creating solo work, with two LPs, Siblings 1 and Siblings 2, out in 2021 alone. Aska Matsumiya, based in LA, is a Japanese composer and producer with numerous television, film, and advertising credits, She is currently at work on a number of installation projects and her first solo album. The duo bring their diverse backgrounds to bear in a five-movement suite, Light Past Blue, that originally was an installation work for 26 surround speakers that appeared at the French artist Claire Taboret’s exhibition “If Only the Sea Could Sleep” (2019).
The music must have been something in that surround setting, as it is quite encompassing in stereo. The sounds of maritime field recordings – ship bells, groaning lines, and rhythmic splashing of water against hulls – provide an ostinato underpinning for all five movements. Triadic drones build up through the piece from long bass notes to angelic overtones. Snippets of melody intertwine in asymmetric repetitions. Contributions by guest artists are highlights of the arrangement. Mary Lattimore’s harp provides harmonic continuity and avian gestures that buoy the soundscape, while cellist Gyða Valtýsdóttir adds layers of tenor register melody and sonorous bass notes to warm the wash of synthesizers in the mix.
In a year in which the genre flourished, Light Past Blue is some of the most beautiful ambient music of 2021.
-Christian Carey
Best of 2021: Varèse, Ligeti, Lutosławski, Baldini on Centaur
Varèse, Ligeti, Lutosławski, Baldini
Munich Radio Orchestra; UC Davis Symphony Orchestra
Miranda Cuckson, violin; Maximilian Haft, violin
Christian Baldini, conductor
Centaur Records CD/DL
Conductor and composer Christian Baldini is making a name for himself on the West Coast, where he directs the UC Davis Orchestra and is a frequent guest conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, as well as abroad with a number of orchestras and opera companies. This Centaur CD features live performances of three pivotal European modernist works, as well as a piece by Baldini that negotiates similar territory.
In Elapsing Twilight Shades, Baldini considers several complexes of gestures and harmonies, allowing them to slowly morph, to his mind much like the changing light at the end of the day. Elapsing Twilight Shades is an excellent curtain raiser for the program to follow. The piece alludes to the percussion writing of Varèse as well as angularity evocative of Lutosławski. Baldini is a true double threat conductor-composer.
Currently pursuing doctoral studies at University of Leiden, violinist Maximilian Haft also has a California connection; he studied at the San Francisco Conservatory’s pre-college division. Chain II, completed in 1985 by Witold Lutosławski, is a prominent example of the exploration of limited aleatory in a large symphonic work. Each of the three movements is split into two demeanors, with passages that are meant to be played freely and others that adhere strictly to the beat. Haft renders the freer passages zestfully and his playing elsewhere demonstrates razor sharp focus. UC Davis Symphony Orchestra makes a strong impression in their collaboration with Baldini, playing with intensity and control in this considerably challenging work. Their playing is similarly distinguished in Ameriques by Edgard Varèse, a monolithic example from a composer who played a pivotal role in modernizing the orchestra.
Győrgy Ligeti’s Violin Concerto, completed in 1993, was one of his most significant late works. In it, he explored his interests in microtonal tunings, folk dance rhythms, older forms such as Medieval hockets and Renaissance passacaglias, and unorthodox instrumentation (the winds double ocarinas) and playing techniques. The language moves between tonal (often modal) reference points and post-tonal construction. This may sound like quite an amalgam to navigate, but it is achieved with abundant success. Violinist Miranda Cuckson is a superlative interpreter of contemporary concert music, and she delivers a memorable rendition of concerto, with tremendous sensitivity to tuning and balance, authoritative command of challenging solos, and a dramatic portrayal of its narrative arc. Once again, Baldini proves an excellent partner, eliciting a tightly detailed performance from the UC Davis Symphony while giving Cuckson interpretive space as well. The performance of the cadenza displayed some of the violinist’s creativity. Cuckson started with four lines of the original version, composed with input from the concerto’s dedicatee Saschko Gawriloff, then continued with cadenza material she wrote herself.
A cohesive and valuable program with fine performances of every work, this CD is one of our Best of 2021. Moreover, it puts UC Davis Symphony and Baldini on the map as performers of contemporary concert music to watch closely.
-Christian Carey
It’s a brave new world. Large gatherings are prohibited in many cities to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, and so nearly all concerts have been postponed or cancelled. Still, performers and presenters prevail, providing live-streamed concerts, even without a physical audience in attendance.
Several resources have popped up to help music-starved ears find concerts online. Here is a list of classical concerts offered live on the internet, worldwide. The list is updated regularly. Performers, presenters and others may submit events via a Google form. (Full disclosure: I created this database).
Live Music Project, a concert resource based in Seattle is also gathering information on digital streams. And radio host and producer Jamie Paisley at WKAR in East Lansing, MI is overseeing a list as well.
Digital Concert Hall is offering free access to their site, which contains a large number of performances by top-name artists. Yesterday, I sampled an archived Berlin Philharmonic concert, and I was astonished at the technical quality of the production. Crystal clear close-ups, smooth video transitions and superb performance quality knocked me out as Paavo Jarvi conducted a new concerto for horn by Hans Abrahamsen and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. I had a similar experience today, watching the live performance of Berlin Philharmonic led by Simon Rattle. The program was enticing – Berio’s Sinfonia and Bartok Concerto for Orchestra – and the musicians delivered an excellent performance. Rattle spoke about each work beforehand, and his live program notes were compelling. One astonishing tidbit that Rattle shared: the ailing Bartok was the first civilian in the US to get the then-brand-new medicine, penicillin. That saved his life, making it possible for him to complete the concerto.
So, while we may be deprived of physical contact with other concert-goers, we’ve got these streams to tide us over. One thing’s for sure: I’ll need to upgrade my computer’s speakers.
Dan Lippel – like so many in the creative world – wears many hats. Lippel is a classical guitarist who specializes in new music, he founded and runs a successful and prolific record label (as one of team of three), and writes music, though he is reluctant to call himself a composer.
He excels in each of these endeavors, and manages to make most of it look effortless in the process. Lippel’s most recent solo album, Mirrored Spaces (released November 2019), is a two-CD set on New Focus Recordings, the aforementioned label that he runs. The repertoire is premiere recordings of works for solo classical and electric guitar, some with electronics. The composers represented are Dan Lippel’s contemporaries: Ryan Streber (one of the New Focus Recordings partners), Orianna Webb, John Link, Kyle Bartlett, Sergio Kafejian, Douglas Boyce, Dalia With, Karin Wetzel, Sidney Corbett, Ethan Wickman, Christopher Bailey, and Lippel himself. Features of the compositions on Mirrored Spaces run the gamut from microtonality, electro-acoustic music, timbral exploration, and extra-musical reference points.
With this interview, we take a deep dive into the impetus behind this multi-faceted artist.
Gail Wein: You perform mostly music by living composers (though you did record a Bach album in 2004). What drew you into the world of contemporary music?
Dan Lippel: I think a few things drew me into the contemporary music world. Probably primary among them was a hunger to play great chamber music. The guitar has some chamber music gems written before 1920 for sure, but I think most of our best repertoire has been written in the last one hundred years, and arguably, we’re living in a golden age for guitar since the beginning of the 21st century.
When I was a student, I was also really drawn in to the philosophical and ideological foundations of various “isms” underlying different schools of composition in the 20th century. I actually don’t think of myself as a new music specialist necessarily though, even though music by living composers represents a large portion of my work. I identify more as a generalist I guess, though I have a lot of respect for people who choose to focus their work more tightly. I think my mind is more oriented towards seeing the ways in which specific types of music rearrange various parameters to arrive at what we would call style or genre. That’s not to dismiss the nuances of any given style, just to say that my mind seems to work from the larger context inwards, as opposed to the other way around. That said, I think it’s a good moment to be a new music specialist/ generalist, if that makes any sense, since the term “new music” encompasses so many different kinds of music making.
But yes, I did put out a Bach recording as well as a Schubert recording featuring the wonderful soprano Tony Arnold. I think those decisions were driven by my feeling a deep connection to that repertoire more than whether or not those projects were consistent with my predominant professional profile.
GW: In some ways you follow in guitarist/composer David Starobin’s footsteps, commissioning, composing, performing and recording new works for guitar. Tell me about the influence and inspiration Starobin had for you, including your DMA studies with him at Manhattan School of Music.
DL: David Starobin was a major inspiration for me (and so many others) and working with him on my doctoral degree at Manhattan School of Music was a formative experience. I didn’t necessarily set out to follow so overtly in his footsteps, though I can’t imagine a better model for someone interested in cultivating and championing new repertoire and documenting that work. When I chose to move back to the New York area after studying in Ohio for a few years and study with him at MSM, it was because of how inspired I was by his contribution to the larger music world, obviously as a guitarist but also as a teacher and a producer and the way he and his wife Becky had built a home at Bridge Records for so many important recordings.
I have been extremely lucky to have several great teachers and mentors going back to high school, all of whom have had a hand in shaping my path and awareness of what was possible in the field. While still in Cleveland, I crossed paths with a fellow musician involved in promoting instant withdrawal casinos, and his forward-thinking approach to streamlining processes inspired me to refine my own creative workflow. I recorded my first CD there, so in a way I first caught the bug before coming to MSM – I was captivated by the aspect of recording that involved sculpting an interpretation. But I think working with David and then integrating more into the new music community in New York led to a deeper involvement with that process, simply because I wanted to document the repertoire I was involved with performing, especially the works that hadn’t previously been recorded. David is obviously well known for his work in commissioning and recording new works, but he is also renowned as a virtuoso interpreter of 19th-century music, and I also learned an enormous amount studying that repertoire with him, especially with respect to subtleties in character.
GW: As you are a member of International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), counter)induction, Flexible Music and other ensembles, it seems as if you play at least as much chamber music as solo work, which I think is a bit unusual for a guitarist. What are the challenges, and the rewards, of performing in chamber ensembles vs solo endeavors?
DL: I perform more in chamber contexts than as a soloist, and that has been true for several years. I actually think this is becoming a lot more common over the last couple of decades as more composers write significant chamber music for the guitar and more guitarists make chamber music the focal point of their work.
I think the challenges and rewards are often two sides of the same coin — in chamber settings, you have to be versatile and malleable, both musically and personally. Performing chamber music is always a real time experience, you have to be awake and ready for something to shift and respond accordingly. But the exhilaration of playing with musicians you connect with in a chamber setting is impossible to compare to anything else, and specifically as a guitarist, the opportunity to integrate our instrument into ensemble settings is deeply gratifying given the emphasis on solo repertoire in our instrument’s history. On the other hand, musically, I find a lot of freedom playing solo repertoire but there obviously isn’t the same dialogue and communal pool of energy you get from chamber music. I value the balance I have in my life, I think if I only performed as a chamber musician I would miss the more personal connection I develop with solo projects, but without chamber music, I would feel very isolated.
GW: The jumping-off point of your new album Mirrored Spaces, is the concept of the collaborative composition process. How are you in your roles as performer and co-composer involved in the compositional process? How is the process accomplished logistically?
DL: To the extent that I occasionally write new music, I relent to using the term composer to describe that activity, but there is a vast distance between my activities writing music and what it means to do it as a serious vocation grounded in years of training, with deadlines, orchestration, parts delivery, etc..
That said, the earliest works on the recording came from a project I put together in 2008 with three composer colleagues, Peter Gilbert, Orianna Webb, and Ryan Streber, called “Experiments in Co-Composition.” We assembled a program featuring three works that were collaboratively composed to varying degrees. Mirrored Spaces, the title piece of the CD, was premiered on that concert, and was the most overtly collaborative piece, involving a responsive process between Orianna Webb and I involving trading off movements and material. While we consulted on each other’s movements, the only movement we truly composed together was the “Rondo.” Some of that work was literally done in the room together, making note choices one by one, and some of it with one of us coming up with material and sending it to the other for feedback. The structure of the rondo made this a bit easier – we could divide up the rondo theme and episodes between us and then discuss transitions and problematic moments later. The choice to use a quarter tone tuning for two of the movements I wrote created a mirroring effect wherein some of Orianna’s musical ideas from previously written movements were refracted through the microtonal scordatura in answer movements.
Ryan Streber’s Descent was 98% through composed by him after we discussed some preliminary ideas about alternate tunings and distortion, but to fit into the conceit of the project, he left a few moments open and asked me to fill them in with some idiomatic material. Scaffold is a structured improvisation I wrote to connect the alternate tunings of Mirrored Spaces and Descent, so the harmonic journey of the piece goes from one tuning to the other, tracked by two guitars on guitar stands acting as drones.
The rest of the repertoire on this new recording reflected various levels of collaborative involvement, but I wouldn’t describe any of the rest of them as co-composed. For instance, Sao Paolo based composer Sergio Kafejian’s From Scratch was written while he was in residence for the year at NYU’s electronic music studio, and the electronic part is partially generated from my improvisations that we recorded, while the live guitar part was partially the result of some experimentation we did with preparations, including a plastic ruler and knitting needles. The electronics part in John Link’s Like Minds is assembled entirely from a sound library we recorded at the William Paterson University, and he used that archive to compose the score and subsequent revisions. Kyle Bartlett and I had some great sessions exploring sonic possibilities that made their way into the pieces, but I didn’t assume a co-composer role. Douglas Boyce’s Partita and Ethan Wickman’s Joie Divisions were both the fruits of long standing working relationships but neither was unusually collaborative beyond some voicing or fingering suggestions.
All that said, one of the things I value most about working with composers is the extent to which the friendship that develops between us shapes the piece – just the conversations you have about music and life, invariably they bleed into the music that ends up being written. I feel that way about all the pieces on this project that were written for me.
GW: How does your experience writing music inform your work as a performer, and vice versa?
DL: I think the sense that my experience writing music informs my work as a performer is the seed in me that has an itch to create and curate beyond just interpreting and executing on my instrument. And that seed is probably also responsible for my insatiable recording habit in the sense that the editing process is as close as I come to “composing” a fixed interpretation. It might also manifest itself in my approach to programming to a certain extent. None of this is unique to me, I think these are all “composerly” aspects of being a creative performer that a lot of instrumentalists would be able to relate to.
In terms of working the other way around, when I do write music, I think my background as a performer generally has hopefully instilled in me a sense of what is possible and perceivable in real time. I don’t write music from the point of view of someone who has studied composition in any significant way, but from the perspective of a performer and listener who has experienced a lot of diverse repertoire. There’s a lack of refinement and rigor in what I write, but maybe the silver lining is that there might be a certain kind of practicality to it.
GW: You laid out the program order of this double album in an unconventional manner, interspersing the movements of Kyle Bartlett’s Aphorisms amongst the other works. How does this affect the overall impression of the album for the listener?
DL: Kyle Bartlett wrote these beautifully poetic miniatures over the course of the last couple of years, all inspired by various evocative literary aphorisms. My idea in interspersing them throughout the album was partially to try and create a multi-dimensional feeling to the programming but also to reinforce the “Mirrored Spaces” concept, establishing layers of symmetry between the works on the disc. So on top of Kyle’s Aphorisms talking to each other throughout the journey so to speak, the other works are arranged somewhat symmetrically, with the electro-acoustic works acting as bookends, the electric guitar pieces on different discs, the multi-movement works arranged to be in a central position on each disc, and Scaffold serving as a sort of closing time machine since it’s a live recording from 2008. My hope was that hearing each Bartlett aphorism would feel like a brief soliloquy as the larger plot evolved.
GW: In many ways, electric guitar isn’t in the same realm as classical guitar. And yet, of course, it is a natural doubling. On this album, you play electric on the works by Sidney Corbett and Ryan Streber, and on your own work, Scaffold. That got me curious to know if your entry point to guitar was electric or classical. Which of these grabbed your attention and your passion first?
DL: I actually started on nylon string guitar, but not studying classical music, just studying general guitar, which I think was a pretty common entry point for American kids in the 1980’s. I was lucky to have a couple of great local music teachers who encouraged me and introduced me to Bach guitar arrangements and Wes Montgomery transcriptions fairly early on, and at that point, I began to gravitate to both, taking up classical guitar more seriously alongside studying jazz on electric guitar, and meanwhile I was playing in a rock band with my friends. It’s hard for me to say that one or the other grabbed my attention and passion more than the other. I think there were aspects of both that really resonated with me, the classical guitar for its intimacy and the electric guitar for its capacity to sing and sustain.
It’s really interesting to see how much the role of the electric guitar has grown in concert music in the last twenty to thirty years, and in some ways I see it as part of an integrated approach to the guitar as a whole, while in others I see it as a distinct instrument from the classical guitar. Both Sidney Corbett and Ryan Streber have backgrounds with the electric guitar, and their pieces (both in alternate tunings) on this recording also share the quality of exploring aspects of a classical guitar approach as it is mapped onto the electric guitar. Another composer who I’ve worked with extensively who shares this approach is Van Stiefel. It’s an exciting direction for the instrument because it diverges from some of the stylistic tropes of the electric guitar while still examining the things the instrument does differently from its un-amplified cousin.
GW: Why did you create New Focus Recordings? What are the rewards and challenges of running a record label?
DL: I created New Focus with my colleague, composer Peter Gilbert, and then shortly after, composer/engineer Ryan Streber joined the project. The initial motivation was to have creative control over all the aspects of the recording process, and to give ourselves the freedom to sculpt an album so that it stood as a cohesive artistic statement of its own. Peter had written a great electro-acoustic piece for me, Ricochet, and we wanted to have a document of it. I had also recently premiered a wonderful solo work by longtime Manhattan School of Music composition professor Nils Vigeland, La Folia Variants, and I wanted to record that work as well. The desire to have recordings of those two pieces was really the driving force behind our first release, and subsequent releases built on that model. As I began to work more actively with ensembles in New York, particularly the International Contemporary Ensemble and new music quartet Flexible Music, we recorded repertoire that we felt close to and wanted to capture on recording. Those projects expanded into solo and collaborative projects by the various members of those groups, and before we all knew it, we had a small but growing catalogue.
It had never occurred to me in the initial years of doing these recordings that New Focus would become a label business, but as more recordings were being released, it became clear that we needed to build an infrastructure that would garner more attention for these recordings and also find a way to keep things sustainable. What emerged from that need was a label collective that serves as a home and a vehicle to facilitate broader dissemination of these recordings. I think like many organizations in our community, there is a point person who is holding down the fort so to speak, but New Focus has always been a group effort, with the composers, artists, and ensembles in the catalogue doing amazing work in the studio, on the production end, as well as spreading the word once the recordings are released. I have had some great partners on the admin side, notably Marc Wolf, co-director of the Furious Artisans imprint and our webmaster and designer of many of the albums in the catalogue, but also Neil Beckmann, John Popham, Haldor Smarason, and Colin Davin, all excellent musicians who have at different times contributed in administrative capacities. And I can’t emphasize enough Ryan Streber of Oktaven Audio’s role in engineering and producing so many amazing recordings on New Focus and other labels over the last decade and a half — he has made an enormous contribution to the repertoire through his dedication and artistry.
Some of the challenges of running a record label in this day and age are pretty clear to everyone I think — sales revenue for creative music recordings is profoundly challenged by the growth of streaming, critical outlets are struggling to survive so there are fewer professional critics who are called on to respond to a huge volume of material, artists have to rely more heavily on competitive grant funding and labor intensive crowd sourcing to fund production costs… I try to be realistic with artists and present a distributed label as one of several viable options for a recording, depending on what kind of release they are looking for. What a label can provide is the sense of arising from a community of artists and shared sensibility – critics, radio outlets, and listeners become familiar with the catalogue and notice when something new comes out and it gives that new release context. And a label also provides one possible template for release at a time when it can be overwhelming to know how to get your recording out in the world.
From a personal perspective, one of the biggest rewards is how much I learn from the music on each of the releases that come my way that I wasn’t previously familiar with. Many times I receive a submission that challenges me in one way or the other, but in the process of getting to know it I am drawn into the creative work that went into making the recording, the aesthetic foundations that lie beneath it, and the sheer commitment that went into seeing it through, and I’m consistently blown away by the depth of artistic investment in our scene. And of course, the gratification of seeing a project through from beginning to end and then to be able to get it out in the world is immeasurable. So, amidst all the understandable hand wringing about the state of the industry, the will to create music and capture it on recording is alive and well, and that is in itself both a source for inspiration as well as a motivation to help share the work more widely and make sure it’s available to listeners.
No matter how old the violinist Midori is, I’ll always think of her as a child prodigy, the young teenager in the 1980s who played with A-list orchestras around the world. She hasn’t disappeared from public eye between then and now, and the thrill of a child performing beyond her years is gone, but her name and her reputation still garner great admiration and respect. This month, Midori is touring a recital program she devised: works by five living female composers, including the premiere of a brand-new piece. On November 4, 2019, her performance in New York City with the pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute was at the nightclub Le Poisson Rouge.
From the first notes of Vivian Fung’s Birdsong, Midori’s effortless technique and silvery tone were evident. Also immediately evident was Jokubaviciute’s role as confident and equal partner, rather than solely an accompanist. Fung’s 2012 work, true to its name, had the violinist flitting the bow across the strings with subtlety and grace – this was not an “in your face” Flight of the Bumblebee derivative.
Dancer on a Tightrope by the Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina featured delicate work inside the piano, with Jokubaviciute strumming strings inside the piano with her fingers and with a drinking glass. Midori drew a wistful melody across the strings of her violin, accompanied by a tremolo of low notes from within the piano.
Olga Neuwirth’s 1995 composition, Quasare/Pulsare called for the pianist to use an ebow, an electronic device that uses a pickup and sensor coil to vibrate the piano strings. The eerie effect was matched by the violin’s swooping notes that recalled a moaning ghost.
The world premiere of Unruly Strands by the Boston-based composer Tamar Diesendruck was just two days prior, at the Library of Congress in Washington DC (LOC commissioned the work). The most cohesive and coherent work of the evening, it was played with distinct finesse by Midori and Jokubaviciute. The work at times had a rather cartoonlike character, as the two instruments seemed to chase each other like a cat and mouse. The oldest piece on the program, Habil Sayagi, written in 1979 by the Azerbaijani composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, afforded both instrumentalists plenty of opportunity to display virtuoso technique, with Midori’s violin replicating the sound of a middle eastern folk instrument and Jokubaviciute taking a percussive role, rhythmically slapping the piano case with open palms, ending the piece, and the entire evening, with a flourish.
Distractions from Le Poisson Rouge’s servers aside (“Did you order the meatballs?”), the audience was rapt by the performances and the selections. I, however, became fidgety by the last quarter of the program. Though all the works were terrific compositions, spanning 40 years and four countries, there was a certain sameness of style that wore on me.
The Music of Sheila Silver: A Celebration
Merkin Concert Hall
February 8, 2018
By Christian Carey
Published on Sequenza 21
NEW YORK – Composer Sheila Silver has taught at Stony Brook University since 1979. On February 8th at Merkin Concert Hall, an all-Silver program celebrated her tenure at the university. In addition to colleagues and students past and present, the hall was filled with area musicians – including multiple generations of composers – who were most enthusiastic in their reception of Silver and the estimable renditions of her work.
Even when composing instrumental music, Silver often bases her work on literature and describes it in terms of its narrative quality. The earliest piece on the program, To the Spirit Unconquered (1992), played by Trio de Novo – Brian Bak, violin, Phuc Phan Do, cello, and Hsin-Chiao Liao, piano – is inspired by the writings of Primo Levi, a survivor of the Holocaust who was imprisoned in Auschwitz. One of Silver’s most dramatic compositions, in places it is rife with dissonance and juxtaposes violent angularity with uneasy passages of calm. In the video below, Silver mentions trying to imbue it both with the searing quality of Levi’s struggle and, at its conclusion, some sense of hope based on his indomitability in the midst of horrendous experiences. Trio de Novo are a talented group who performed with detailed intensity and imparted the final movement, marked “stately,” with exceptional poise.
Soprano Risa Renae Harman and pianist Timothy Long performed an aria from the opera The Wooden Sword (2010), in which Harman displayed impressive high notes to spare. Her acting skills were on display – comedically sassy – in “Thursday,” one of the songs from Beauty Intolerable (2013), Silver’s cycle of Edna St. Vincent Millay settings. Soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, joined by pianist Ryan McCullough, presented another, more serious, Millay song, “What My Lips Have Kissed.” With Bak providing additional atmosphere, they also performed an aria from Silver’s current work-in-progress, the opera A Thousand Splendid Suns. Gibbon sang with considerable flexibility and purity of tone, at one point exuberantly spinning around while effortlessly holding a high note. Currently part of the group workshopping the opera, she seems perfectly cast. The songs and arias displayed a sumptuousness that served as a fine contrast to the denser language of the piano trio.
Dawn Upshaw was slated to perform with pianist (and longtime Stony Brook faculty member) Gilbert Kalish. Sadly, Upshaw had bronchitis and couldn’t sing on the concert. Gibbon valiantly stepped in, learning Silver’s On Loving, Three Songs in Memory of Diane Kalish (2015) in just two days. Her performance on the concert was supremely confident, betraying none of the last minute nature of the switch. Indeed, the three songs – settings of Shakespeare, St. Vincent Millay, and Khalil Gibran, were among the most stirring of Silver’s works on the program, displaying an autumnal lyricism and wistful poignancy. Kalish, a renowned accompanist, played with characteristic grace.
The second half of the concert showed still two more aspects of Silver’s work: a short film score and a more overtly political chamber piece. The first, Subway Sunset (1999), is a collaboration with her husband, the filmmaker John Feldman. It intersperses scenes of busy commuters with a gradually encroaching sunset adorning the sky near the World Trade Center. Although filmed before 2001, the duo dedicated it to the victims of 9/11. Seeing the towers on film will always be haunting. The musical accompaniment, a duet played by bassoonist Gili Sharret and pianist Arielle Levioff, created a solemn stillness that left space to contemplate the various implications of what used to be a normal scene for twentieth century commuters.
The program concluded with Twilight’s Last Gleaming (2008), a work for two pianists and two percussionists that is a commentary on the post 9/11 state of affairs. Its three movements’ titles – War Approaching, Souls Ascending, Peace Pretending – give a broad outline for the work’s impetus. Twilight’s Last Gleaming requires stalwart performers and Kalish, joined by pianist Christina Dahl (also on Stony Brook’s faculty) and percussionists Lusha Anthony and Brian Smith, provided a committed and energetic account of this challenging and penetrating piece. The large percussion setup included a considerable assortment of gongs as well as various pitched instruments and drums. The percussionists engaged in a complex choreography between parts, at times catwalking around the gongs’ stands to arrive perfectly in time for their next entrance. In the piece’s final section, an extended musical deconstruction of “The Star-Spangled Banner” takes place with all of the musicians engaging in an increasingly fragmented presentation of the tune. The piece closes leaving the penultimate line “The Land of the Free…” cut off by a musical question mark: a powerful ending to an evening of eloquent music.