Tag: the wulf

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

John Eagle and Emily Call at the wulf @ Coaxial Arts

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Paul Muller
Composers, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Minimalism, Premieres

Tom Johnson In Los Angeles

TomJ1On Friday, February 22 the week-long 2013 residency of Tom Johnson in Los Angeles was capped off with a concert of his music at the wulf, an experimental performance space deep in the gritty heart of industrial downtown. Featured was the Los Angeles premiere of  ‘Clarinet Trio’ and four other works, plus the occasion was also marked by the release of a new CD of Tom’s works titled ‘correct music’ from Populist Records. About 50 people crowded into the reclaimed factory loft to attend the event and what the wulf lacks in amenities was more than compensated by the enthusiasm of the young audience. The concert was free and there was an ice chest full of  Tecate beer – what’s not to like?

Tom Johnson’s time in Los Angeles this past week was spent giving lectures on mathematics and music at Cal Arts, hosting an exhibition of his drawings in the Art Share LA gallery and presiding over concerts of new music. Tom has deep minimalist roots and, according to the concert notes, “works with simple forms and limited sonic materials, utilizing logic and mathematical models in both his music and his drawings.”

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The concert began with Clarinet Trio, performed by Jim Sullivan, Brian Walsh and Damon Zick. This piece consists of a series of short passages with changing sets of three note chords separated by short pauses.  Tom Johnson uses mathematics and sets of drawings to describe his intended sequence of the various permutations of musical sound and these are then translated into the written score and parts.  Clarinet Trio was constructed to explore the possible ways of playing seven different three-note chords and this took about 20 minutes to unfold. The different segments varied in rhythm, attack, dynamic and tempo but the ensemble playing here was very tight and each phrase was cleanly played with good intonation. The acoustics of the small space at the wulf were well-matched to the musical forces and those listening were very attentive during  the Trio – even the 5 second pauses between phrases became familiar after a few minutes. The occasional horn blast from the nearby freeway made its way inside during the silences, but this was not a distraction. The premiere was well-executed by the performers and well-received by the audience.

The second piece was Eggs and Baskets, a narrated piece that is similar in construction to Tom’s Narayana’s Cows. The idea in Eggs and Baskets was to musically describe all the possible ways to put six eggs in two baskets. The two baskets were represented by a viola, played by Andrew McIntosh and a clarinet played by Brian Walsh – as the narration progressed each player sounded a series of notes representing the number eggs in his ‘basket’. The interplay between the viola and clarinet thus became increasingly varied as the permutations grew, with notes trading rapidly back and forth within the same phrase – but this was cleanly done and very effective. The narration by Douglas Wadle nicely connected the playing to the concept, making for an enjoyable piece.

Trio for Strings followed and this set out to play “all possible 3-note chords adding to 72 where C = 24” – some 280 combinations altogether. This was a smooth legato sound of rapidly changing tone combinations, often dissonant. I found that my ear would follow one or the other string players for a time, the chords that sounded were brief and constantly changing. The pitch discipline of the string players was impressive as each tone typically did not bear any familiar relationship to those around it. Hearing this piece is like listening to a computer roll through the possible permutations of a pitch set and it gives a striking example of just how small a subset our traditional tonalities are of all the possibilities that are available in the equal-tempered scale.

Tilework for Piano followed and this was played by Dante Boon, the Dutch composer and pianist. This was similar to Clarinet Trio in that it consists of a series of short phrases built from a limited number of tones, separated by short pauses. The piano gives this piece a more introspective feel and I found my ear tended to concentrate more on the patterns than the pitches or timbre. A concert presented by Mr. Boon will be given at the wulf on February 28.

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The concert concluded with Eight Patterns for Eight Instruments, and the musical forces used for this performance were sax, piano, violin, clarinet, accordion, guitar, flute and oboe. There is a video of this piece on YouTube as played mostly by strings but the use of winds here yielded a brighter, more accessible sound. ‘Eight Patterns for Eight Instruments’ consists of eight short segments of scales and simple chord patterns. This music is as close to the classic minimalist style as was heard during this concert and the eight instruments played tightly together, filling up the space with a well-balanced sound. A sort of warm optimism radiates from this piece that is appealing and, if anything, too short.

This concert was a good illustration of just how fully grounded is the music of Tom Johnson on the mathematics of combinations and permutations. Rarely has a music been so rigorously architected – the drawings that Tom uses to structure his work look very much like a set of drafted plans or a chemical diagram for a complex molecule.  Other minimalist composer’s of Tom’s generation incorporated repetition and gradual changes in rhythmic patterns to realize their music. Tom’s music stands out because of his use of an entirely different mathematical space to guide the structure of his works.

Further information about upcoming events at the wulf is available here.

More about the exhibition of Tom Johnson’s drawings at Art Share LA can be found here.

by Paul Muller