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Mark Robson and the Debussy Project at Piano Spheres

Mark Robson and the twelve composers involved in his Debussy Project.

Mark Robson and the twelve composers involved in his Debussy Project.

This week, Zipper Concert Hall at the Colburn School hosted the latest installment of the Piano Spheres series, a concert by pianist Mark Robson entitled “The Debussy Project.” Specifically, the program placed Debussy’s Douze Etudes against a set of compositions by living composers—each responding in their own way to a particular etude from Debussy’s set.

Robson’s command of the Debussy was stunning: watching his performance, one could get lost in the theater of fingers built into the work. But beneath the virtuosic flurries was a technical mastery that highlighted Debussy’s emphasis on texture, and amplified the orchestral spirit of his piano writing. The simplicity of concept that underpins each etude might have risked sounding like a progression of, well, studies, but in Robson’s hands they provided a window into how various musical materials were treated by Debussy to create a musical language rich with contrast, layers, and detail.

The twelve accompanying composer reactions constituted the second half of the recital, and the range of styles and approaches indicated the degree to which Debussy’s language continues to serve as musical inspiration, continues to provide a bridge between past and future. Some focused on his style: Kotcheff’s work evoked virtuosic and dramatic contrasts, and Ivanova’s explored the commenting, often brash, musical interruptions. Bansal and Kohn both tapped into Debussy’s proclivity for sheathing his musical ideas with layers of sparkling textures—a foregrounding of detail taken to the extreme by Gates, whose piece unfolded flurries and sheets of sound until a final, tender conclusion.

Others focused on exploding those details out of time completely, exploring harmony and texture carefully and without Debussy’s liberated, roaming abandon. Rothman and Gibson used low piano harmonics to create a patient, meditative atmosphere anchored by the resonance of the piano. Norton’s response utilized two pianos (Vicki Ray joined Robson on stage for this) for spacious, overlapping textures that in their freedom managed to capture something of Debussy’s penchant for fleeting sentimentality, that return later as tinted, softly-distorted memories. Also in this vein was Robson’s own reaction, a magic act of sorts, summoning rich timbres and sonorities that moved seamlessly between the piano and electronics.

It might have been interesting to have seen the works paired directly with their inspirational counterpart, but hearing the progression of Debussy’s original twelve etudes in direct sequence, in my opinion, better prepared the audience by giving a framework to identify and appreciate the various types of inspiration and influence employed by the commissioned works. It is rare that a solo piano recital of this length can maintain my interest throughout, but the quality of Robson’s performance and the strength of the music was certainly worthy of the audience’s attention. And from what I could hear in muffled murmurs around the hall between pieces, Piano Spheres has succeeded in building an audience that is willing to give that attention, and which is appreciative of the talent presented.

Interview: Nick Norton on his music and community

This Saturday, May 5th, soon-to-be-Dr. Nick Norton is premiering the first evening length concert of his music at Art Share, in an event titled Music for Art Galleries that is doubling as his PhD recital. Nick is the founder and editor of New Classic LA so felt a bit conflicted about covering his own event, but asked the other writers and me what we thought and we agreed that an interview would be appropriate so that we readers and listeners might have at least some background information on him, as well as some sense of his musical thoughts and activities. I know Nick from casual conversations but only in preparation for this interview did I immerse myself in his music.  It was time well spent.  Suffice to say, I urge you to check out his online recordings and, if you can, come to his concert on Saturday.

Composer Nick Norton. Photo by Lindsey Best.

Composer Nick Norton. Photo by Lindsey Best.

What was your entrée into music?  At what age did you realize that music was a part of you?  What kind of music spoke to you first and how did your stylistic identification evolve over time?

Whoa, we’re starting with a big one. Okay! I certainly started young with some piano and guitar lessons that didn’t stick. My mom was in film and TV, so I was always surrounded by all sorts of arts and entertainment. I expected I’d eventually become an artist of some sort, maybe a photographer or filmmaker, and I did always like music quite a lot – I remember how excited I was the first time I got to buy CDs for myself. I think things changed late in elementary school, when we moved from Los Angeles to a much smaller town called Newbury Park. It was a sports-centric town that was, at least at the time, pretty cut off from culture, and with how horrible and cliquey little kids are, I immediately became an outcast loner. I’d pretty much watch TV or read every day after school, and would leave MTV on all night back when they used to play music videos nonstop, I think mainly to distract myself from how lonely I was. Though I was totally unhappy for a lot of years, in hindsight I’m incredibly grateful for how that led me into music.

I’m not totally sure of the timeline here, but I remember two very specific events that got me into taking music seriously. The first was a school assembly where high schools kids came and played instruments for us. I heard someone play a saxophone and said “yes, I’ll take one of those please,” and joined the school band. Suddenly I had something to do other than watch TV or read after school! It was magical. The other, perhaps more important one, was discovering punk, probably sometime in middle school. This is cliche, at least among punks, but I went to a couple of shows in garages and at the Thousand Oaks Teen Center and Ventura Theater and thought “whoa, other loners! Maybe we have something in common! And they don’t seem to think I dress weird!” Plus the music was SO different from anything on the radio or that the “outside world” knew about, and so much more raw…I was just immediately in love. Punk isn’t technically hard to play – in fact it’s so focused on community and breaking down the audience/band barrier that it’s not supposed to be – so I started thinking “hey I can probably do that” and picked up guitar again.

It’s funny that you ask how my stylistic identification evolved over time, because as far as I’m concerned I’ve never actually left punk. The thing I realized, though, was that the things that defined the genre for me had less to do with music and more to do with ethics. I was reading all of Greg Graffin’s writings sometime early in high school, where he was discussing freedom of thought and self-determination and how the corporate desk jockey from a family of hippies might be just as much a punk as those of us in studded belts and safety pins, and something really stuck for me. I love punk music, and still do, but the thing I loved most about it was how self-driven it was, and how it didn’t care that it was different from what the masses (read: popular kids) were into. Following that line of interest, rather than the power chords/kick kick snare aspects of the sound (which I do love), I eventually got into hardcore, then really experimental rock. I’d never left the school band though, so was playing some jazz and classical music there, and when I got to college double majored in music and political theory. The timing and environment just worked out in that I was at UCSD and we started studying Cage and the downtown New York scene right around when I was getting into noise and drone bands, so the jump to the “classical” world felt totally natural. Even calling it a separate world of some sort seemed incorrect to me. I probably would have gotten there myself via La Monte Young and the minimalists if school hadn’t done it for me first. I was just like “whoa, there’s a path where you can get a degree in this?” That’s when I started taking theory and history and composition classes seriously, and like to say that I worked backwards into the canon from there. Nowadays if I’m writing a piece with, say, a very traditional classical vibe, I’m still thinking of it as an extension of my relationship with and growth in punk.

Europe.  I’m a native New Yorker whose lived in a number of European cities, and as such, it’s something I’m instinctively aware of.  But as someone who’s now been in LA for 20 years, my awareness of it is diminishing.  I see that you did some of your studies in Paris (at Ecole Normale de Musique, a school I also attended!) and London.  How important were those years to your musical development and how did they jibe with, or contrast with, the musical aesthetic you were developing and experiencing in California?

Attending a conservatory-style school in Paris was huge for me. For one thing, it made me realize that if I was going to do the composer thing, I had a LOT of work to do to catch up to these students who had been at it since age 3. I went in with my bachelors and was essentially a remedial charity case compared to the Juilliard kids in attendance. “Sorry, modulation is what now? Why do Germans have their own augmented chord?” At UCSD – like a lot of undergrads, I now know – I had tried to slide through the earlier parts of theory and history to get to the stuff I was into doing, which was largely either total serialism 60 years late or basically minimalism, which I still dig into here and there.

Anyway! I learned a lot there, though perhaps most important was learning how much I had to learn, or how little I knew. Socratic wisdom, if you will. That’s probably the first time I felt a real drive to analyze Bach, and do counterpoint exercises, and actually work hard on ear training. I’ll almost certainly never be as good at that stuff as a lot of those people, but at least it made me bone up on everything that I thought I’d need, which continues to this day.

There’s another side to this first Europe sojourn too: oh my god their music was boring! Other students could run circles around me in class, but if I asked them about a current artist they liked they’d draw a blank, and 90% of their music sounded like Hindemith lite. It was like they were only doing music because they had degrees in it and didn’t know what else to do, and weren’t even particularly interested in it. That’s not true of everyone there – I did make some great friends whose work I continue to respect and enjoy now – but it was definitely the general vibe. I wrote what I now consider to be a childishly-shallow attention-getter of a string trio. Harmonically it was really boring, and the teachers there didn’t seem into it, but it used, like, one extended technique and ended in a surprising way, and at the final concert of the program people – including the teachers – went totally nuts. Like they’d never heard someone tap on a soundboard before and I was a genius. That was completely insane to me, and gave me some resolve to say “okay, you’re doing something that doesn’t really fit with what the people in this classical slice of the world know, and if they don’t get it and they’re uncomfortable with it, fuck em.” But to say fuck them I’d have to catch up with them a little too, and make sure I was doing it well. Hence deciding to go to grad school in Europe and try to get the super traditional training I felt I’d missed.

King’s College, where I did my MMus, went as expected, which was wonderfully. I learned a ton! I loved London and went to concerts every night! I wish I’d kept in better touch with my friends and teachers there, because a lot of them are doing awesome things and I miss them. Rob Keeley in particular was a huge influence on my work today. I once spent like 30 minutes describing the system I was using to generate pitch and rhythmic material to him, and he said “okay, but what does it sound like?” I’d been writing stuff for my bands using my instincts, but most of my concert music up until then was still using algorithms or serialism as a crutch, or a shield against what I thought of as a lack of traditional classical abilities. Rob asking me that kind of made me re-assess my whole “I am in two worlds” view. I think my concert music, if we want to call it that, got a lot better very quickly, or at least suddenly felt a lot more like me than it had up to that point. There’s definitely a “before” and “after” to that lesson with Rob in thinking about my own musical past.

To prepare for this interview, I gave myself something of a crash course in “The Music of Nick Norton.”  First of all, let me say that I very much enjoyed that, so thank you.  I was familiar with a few of your pieces before but this immersive study made me realize the scope of your musical activities, especially with respect to genre.  There are some composers whose music is poly-stylistic within a given piece.  I didn’t find this to be the case with your music.  Rather, I heard works, compositions, songs, whatever term works, that seemed rather pure with respect to the genre of that particular piece.  Is that a fair observation?

I would say so. I try not to be too conscious of genre norms because they can be quite limiting, and instead try to ask “what does this piece need? Will this idea make the piece stronger?” In a lot of cases the result of that is something that makes a lot of musical sense – at least to me – and part of making musical sense is coherence. That said, while there are some polystylist pieces I dig a lot, I am wary of using genre signifiers in an obvious way, which is somewhat necessary in a polystylist piece. It can very easily become “guess the reference” rather than living in the world of the piece you’re hearing.

Genre, for me, has a lot more to do with socioeconomic circumstances or, at best, tone color and instrumentation, than with anything musically abstract, and in writing I often think in musical abstracts. For instance, when I’m writing with my bands Honest Iago or The Newports, I’m not asking “does this fit with a punk sound,” but am instead concerning myself with if enough tension has been built up to justify a release, or if a chord progression has repeated too many times in too exact a way, or something like that. One thing my bandmates have commented on, particularly in The Newports, is my obsession with not giving away your entrances. In almost every single Bach fugue the voice that is about to re-enter rests for a few bars before it does, which makes the entrance that much more exciting. Just like the trombones at the end of Beethoven 5. The other guitarist in The Newports now knows that if we’re gonna write a new section, I’m very likely going to take something out of the previous section so that the new one is fresher. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m the very same composer, using the very same skill set. If I’m wearing black denim and it’s distorted and amplified people call it punk, and if I’m wearing a blazer and there are program notes people call it contemporary classical music, and if the audience is lying on their backs they call it ambient. Whatever.

I will admit that I really enjoy messing with these discrepancies. ASCAP, for instance, arbitrarily divides their divisions into “concert music” and “pop/rock” and “country” and “rhythm & soul.” Concert music pays A LOT more per performance than the popular genres, so I tend to register my bands’ albums as song cycles for voices, two guitars, bass, and percussion, and let them figure it out. I can’t imagine what they would do with Ted Hearne’s piece for Saul Williams and string quartet.

Nick Norton performing his piece <em>On Geology</em> at Home Audio in April.

Nick Norton performing his piece On Geology at Home Audio in April.

You seem very busy, very willing to divide your creative psyche into multiple personae and work hard on all of them.  Is this a conscious choice or just what feels good, right, fun, etc.?  Is that something that is or should be more important to today’s musical participants?

It’s all an expression of the same basic passion. My first job, in high school, was as a counselor at Camp Emerald Bay on Catalina Island. I discovered that I LOVE introducing people to new things. Perhaps my favorite feeling is seeing someone else have a moment of realization about a new experience, of having their preconceptions challenged and ending up happy about what they learned. When I began composing and learning about the classical world, I essentially wanted to be the gateway drug between musical worlds for people from both, to let what I thought of as the conservative classical folks hear something in popular music and say “whoa, that actually is very good” and to show the people who are used to rock shows that what happens in the concert music world is vibrant and interesting. At a young age I thought I was unique for having this view, but it sure seems like a lot of interesting musicians are ignoring traditional boundaries these days, and I think that makes for better music for all of us.

It’s really beyond that, though: I started New Classic LA and Equal Sound for the same reasons, and I don’t think I necessarily need to be the composer or performer to allow someone to have that moment. Maybe a piece already exists that would mean a lot to someone, or open someone’s mind, in a way my music wouldn’t. If I think that’s the case, then the best thing I can do is send them a mixtape or take them to a show. This even extends into my love of craft beer, and starting the beer recommendation app Barly with my friends. The number of people who say “I hate beer” and have never had anything aside from a light lager kind of astounds me. Give them a sip of a Belgian quad, or something that fits their palate, and you often get a “whoa, I didn’t know beer could taste like that.” Their mind opens a little, and I really, truly see this as a way to improve the world. “I didn’t know beer could taste like that” or “I didn’t know that music could sound like this” or “I didn’t know that I like kayaking” might, for someone, somewhere, eventually lead to “I didn’t know not all Muslims are terrorists” or “I didn’t realize women are my equals” or, from my own perspective, “I didn’t know some Republicans aren’t horrible.” I’m still working on learning that one. But yeah, it’s really all the same, and I just try to do whatever seems most useful in any given moment or situation.

As to what “should” be more important, I don’t think I’m in a position to judge that for other people. And shoulds are dangerous anyway.

From what I can see, you play in at least two rock/punk bands.  Are they side projects for fun or an integral part of your musical persona?

Absolutely integral. However, in both of those bands, the other members have very full non-musical lives, so the bands themselves are becoming a little more like “very very serious hobbies” than anything I’ll be able to do in a full time way. That’s talking from a career standpoint though. As far as writing music goes they’re incredibly important to me. I learn a ton through playing with them, and have a great time – perhaps we don’t talk about having fun enough, but it’s pretty damn important – so I don’t see my work with them really slowing down anytime in my life.

Would narrowing your focus (e.g., just writing “concert music” or just creating electronic works) spoil the fun of it all?

I think I’m incredibly narrowly focused on music. The things that sometimes get neglected are my health, finances, and personal life. That seemed like a worthwhile trade in my twenties. Now, especially with non-musician friends buying houses and having kids and stuff like that, I’m trying to put a little more emphasis on, say, making time to hang out with my girlfriend and her dog, or taking some down time here and there, or caring a bit more about what I am paid than I like to admit. Whenever I’m at home trying to take a break and watch a movie or something on a night when there’s a show somewhere in town (i.e. every night), I do have to turn off the little voice that says “you should really be at that show.” That’s a struggle.

You’ve mentioned community to me.  I can’t tell you how important that word, that concept is to me.  (I decided to go back to grad school not because I wanted to pursue an academic career but rather I needed to be immersed in a musical community and I wasn’t finding it in the real world.)  You’ve got a big recital coming up on May 5th and it seems to me that a large part of your musical community is helping you realize this concert.  Who do you consider to be the primary members of your community and what defines it as such?

I don’t really want to name people for this answer, because I am sure I would make someone feel left out, and that is something I am sensitive to. That said, I think the people in the community who I am most inspired by, and most want to work with, are the ones who are working hard to help other people in the community. I think – aside from great programming and performances – the thing that makes wild Up, the LA Phil, WasteLAnd, MonkSpace, and a bunch of our series and institutions here in LA so fantastic, are that they are focused on helping other people. WasteLAnd is NOT the Nick Deyoe show, it’s the “how can we provide opportunities for interesting music to get heard in a compelling way” show. Dudamel and John Adams may be the faces of the LA Phil, but the organization is great because of how many composers they program. They don’t focus on themselves. Hell, I feel weird about not having music by anybody else on my own PhD concert.

You and I have also mentioned the state, if not also the fate, of the musical scene, the community, I guess you could say, of our fair city.  At the risk of flattering you (which I’m honestly not trying to do) I would go so far as to say that you are one of the people, one of the factors advocating for, shaping said community.  What drives that?

That is incredibly kind of you to say. I am not sure I know what drives it, aside from the whole life-mission thing of trying to open minds that I talked about earlier. The thing is, community is a necessity. You can’t do all the things I want to do without involving other people. And you’ve gotta have humility and recognize that you’ll never be the best at everything, if at anything. You and I were talking about websites once, and you said that my personal one was really solid. That’s because I recognized that someone else, in this case Traci Larson, is way, way better at designing websites than I am. Of course she is! She’s a designer, and I’m a composer. I’d have to be pretty hard headed to think that I can make something as good as it can be when whatever that thing is is not part of my main skill set. If I want to make an awesome record, sure, I can learn a bit about mixing and engineering, or I can recognize that Nick Tipp is better at that than I will ever, ever be. But I’m better at writing music than he is. If the goal is to make a great record, we’d better work together. If the goal is to inflate my own name then I can do it all myself. And it will not be nearly as good. If the work truly comes first, before your ego, the community sorts itself out.

For all the talk of “music” as existing, even thriving in an environment where genre, style, underlying aesthetic or political motivations might seem to create a fractured landscape, I really feel like we’re living in something of a Golden Era.  It is certainly not unified stylistically yet I do see it as a rather coherent, happily-multi-headed creature. Do you agree?

I think we’ve always lived in that era, and big institutions are just getting better at recognizing it. That said, the idea of being stylistically unified is a bit scary to me. It implies that some kind of Platonic asymptote for music may exist, and if it does then we can all just quit now. It doesn’t, though. The varying views of what makes music good are what makes music good.

One thing that I found really refreshing about LA’s “classical” scene is the relative abundance of non-traditional venues.  One of my first classical encounters here outside of the major venues was through the folks at Classical Revolution.  I believe you’re interested in similar issues, involved with similar issues as well, right?

This is something I think about a lot. Here’s the thing: what people in the classical scene call non-traditional venues are actually traditional venues. We have it backwards. How is putting music on at a bar or art gallery or outdoor festival in any way unique or interesting? I go hear bands and songwriters at bars all the time. Those are the places where 99% of the music in the world is performed. That’s normal. It’s weird that a traditional classical venue requires you to dress nicely, pay a lot, and sit there in silence. As far as I’m aware classical music in the modern era is the only genre where audiences aren’t expected to dance or move or react in some way.

I think this is, at its core, a marketing problem for the classical world. People say “we’re playing Haydn – in a bar!!!” and expect the public to show up, because “in a bar” is supposedly the interesting part. It’s not. I can’t stress enough how normal playing music in a bar is. If I asked you to come hear my band, and you asked why, and I said “because we’re playing with amplification and you can drink a beer,” you’d look at me like I was insane. The music has to be the key.

This is a big part of why Andrew Glick and I founded Equal Sound. A lot of the music in the new classical world is fucking awesome, and no one hears it because people have all these preconceptions about what classical music is. The fact that Tristan Perich is on the same shelf at a record store as Clara Schumann, and is marketed in much the same way, is completely absurd. What we want to do with Equal Sound is to essentially hide the fact that what we’re presenting comes from the classical world. Instead of saying “isn’t it interesting that we are putting a string quartet in a cool gallery space,” we are saying “come hear this rad show of music by these interesting artists!” We don’t see ourselves as competing, insofar as there is competition among presenters for attention, with series like WasteLAnd and Monday Evening Concerts and Green Umbrella. We see ourselves competing with Spaceland Presents and FYF and Goldenvoice. We just usually have more violins.

We basically stole this idea from wild Up, and probably from others before them. When they got started they were playing at the Echo Park Rec Center. DIY hipster heaven. If they’d started up with shows at the Broad Stage or something, they’d be just another chamber orchestra playing new music and begging for donations. By putting themselves into the popular music world, they stood out as incredibly interesting and worth seeing. My understanding is that their publicist came up with the idea to never use the word “classical” or “new music” or even talk about “the tradition” and a lot of the members were uncomfortable with it at first, but wow did it work. “Wait, your band has a huge string section? I have got to see that!” But they’ve got the musicianship and programming down to back it too. Sometimes that gets lost in these conversations, but it’s really at the core. A good frame can’t save a bad painting, but a bad frame can ruin a great one.

OK, a quick tangent pertaining to my own music-philosophical anxiety, if I may: Whether there is a unified “scene,” or even if it’s fragmented, positively or negatively, to me, the underlying and more important, even terrifying question is this: What is the role of music, for the individual and in society?  Do we need it?

Of course we need it. Or at least I need it – I don’t want to speak for others. But if I had any questions about that I probably wouldn’t be doing this. I love my life in music, and I’m insanely lucky that I get to spend a lot of my time and energy on it. It can, though, at times be incredibly taxing. If I didn’t believe it was a necessary thing for me to be doing, I’d probably relax a little, get a job at a nonprofit or something that has a slightly more tangible or obviously measurable effect on the world or pays a lot more, and just make music as a hobby. That’s not me, though.

How much of music, your music and the music of our community, is political or in any way a critique of our society?  (And how much should it be?)

I think hearing music as a critique of society would be up to each individual listener or musician, but I tend to think that for just about everything the meaning is defined by the individual experiencing it, so any sort of objective answer is really impossible.

I will say, though, that to me virtually everything I do is political. Fact is I get to try to make a living in music because I don’t have to worry in my daily life about shelter, food, clean water, being enslaved for human trafficking, getting shot when I walk out my front door, having a front door…I have a fucking iPhone that I get annoyed by when it is slow. The fact that I get to be annoyed by that, compared to how a lot of people live, makes me into an ungodly rich person who gets to make music. And I am very, very far from rich by Los Angeles standards. I think I have to use that privilege responsibly, and use these skills that I am so, so lucky to have the opportunity to have to try to do some good in the world.

At the same time, we do want to recognize sacrifices of people that allow us to do this. My great grandparents crossed Europe on foot with no money. We have to think that they went through a hardship like that so that someday someone like me could be more comfortable, and do something that makes them happy. If I get to draw some dots on a line that I think sound nice instead of going to work in hellish conditions to earn barely enough to eat, then in some way I feel like I’m honoring the aims of all the people who have struggled for better lives for everyone. And in whatever way we decide to approach it, we have to keep up that struggle for others. We owe it to people.

I think to understand the value, the excitement, the momentum towards polystylistic appreciation and acceptance (Kendrick Lamar’s recent Pulitzer win comes to mind), I think it would be wise to understand where that comes from.  Was it not borne, decades if not centuries ago, of a strict, urgent stratification, categorization of the various musics?  If so, why do you think that was?  Is it racist?  Classist?  And not to be glib, but does it even matter?

It’s absolutely racist and classist, and it absolutely matters. When, to your previous question, I said that I am lucky to have had the opportunity to try, I wasn’t kidding. An artist like Kendrick – and I don’t know his whole history – probably didn’t have a lot of money for music lessons. He also probably – certainly actually – had a far higher risk of getting shot by a cop than I do. Yet he’s making incredibly creative and vital music that is complex and connected to a huge portion of society that many of us with money and degrees often ignore.

The thing we’ve seen in people’s reactions to the win, at least in racist assholes’ reactions, is like a fear of invasion. It’s not totally unfounded, as classical music as a “genre” is, at its heart, a tradition of wealthy European landowners or the most powerful churches in the world paying people to make things for them to put their names on. It is literally designed to be insular and exclusionary. That makes some people feel secure. Someone like Kendrick getting recognized by a big institution for making, I don’t know, really cool art? is a threat to the people who have felt secure with their institutional support.

The funny thing here is that this all actually lines up quite nicely with the “little tiny genre” thing we were talking about earlier. There’s so much awesome music in the world that some classical institutions love to pretend doesn’t exist. And let’s be honest, a lot of traditional academic composers would not really be surviving their own careers without grants and commissions and teaching positions. The socioeconomic structure of classical music is not the way most music-making works, but some of us who work in it or write about it treat it like the way the everything is. And a minority always wants to protect itself.

That all sounds glib, but I’m actually hopeful. Sometimes you need a good kick in the face. Maybe a few people got one and we can all be a bit more open in our listening and understanding now. And it’s not a competition. It’s very possible to love black metal and the Romantic era and hip hop and blues and noise rock and Frank Sinatra with the same passion. Music is just, you know, rad.

So this recital of yours is, if I’m not mistaken, part of your doctoral work as you complete your academic studies.  When I was a student, it seemed like the academic path was practically a requirement if you were to function in the modern classical world.  But for better or worse (much better, in my opinion) academic participation is considerably less crucial than it was just a couple decades ago.  How do you see this, and is teaching and/or additional academic involvement part of your plan?

There are definite advantages to an academic career, or at least the promise of one: economic stability, getting to talk about music with students and colleagues, having summers off, all that. It sounds pretty cool. Unfortunately this is 2018 and actually getting one of those cushy jobs is incredibly unlikely. A lot of people end up teaching adjunct at five universities and having no time for actually making music. Did you see that university in Illinois advertising “volunteer” teaching positions for people with PhDs? That’s exploitation on the face of it, and maybe unions will do something useful, but much as we try to fight it we can’t really ignore the free market. If people are willing to take those unpaid positions there are going to be more of those unpaid positions. As far as I’m concerned the stable academic career path for composers is basically over, and people are just taking a while to realize it. I’m working on other options to essentially get out ahead of the rush.

One thing that I see as a problem is that a lot of people who are tenure track faculty now came up in the world when that was a viable option, and are still advising their students as if it is. I think it’s a disservice to students to let them think that there’s a stable career path there that they can access without an giant amount of work. I respect the people who make it in, but I don’t think it’s for me, at least not yet. It would be an enormous amount of work for something that isn’t my main focus.

The ironic thing here is that I teach at Chapman University and I’m lucky to have that gig. But it has shown me, to some extent, how limiting doing the adjunct life thing can be. I was never late delivering a piece before I started teaching. It’s a little like if I say “I want to be a musician!” and someone responds with “cool, you can be a teacher!” That just sounds so incongruous to me, it’s like telling a kid who wants to be a scientist that they can be a lawyer, or telling a kid who wants to be a lawyer that they can be a farmer. If someone offers me a cool teaching job I’m likely not going to turn it down, but I think my energy is better spent on writing pieces and putting on concerts.

Let’s discuss the actual music, shall we?  I’ve seen the program for your recital.  You’re presenting quite a varied program.  There are many works that are not afraid to be, dare I say, beautiful.  Are “beauty” and “beautiful” loaded words?  What do they mean to you and how do they (or don’t they) pertain to your music?

I’m not sure. I try to be honest about what I think a piece needs, and take my own ego or any ideas about what I want listeners to think about me out of the equation when I write. Lately that’s had me turning to writing more “traditionally beautiful” music. I will say that, as a person who grew up in weird rock and went to UCSD, that it scares me a bit. Whenever I write an elegant line I’m still like “wait, isn’t this supposed to be more aggressive?” I’m not totally comfortable with that sound yet. If I was, though, it probably wouldn’t be very interesting to me. I can make horrible noises all day if I want to – and I don’t mean horrible in a bad way! Sometimes we need a bit of horror. But right now writing music that is somehow comforting is something I seem to be doing. Wonder what that means.

I feel like I started composing at the tail end of an era where you were either decidedly atonal or dissonant, or you were equally-decidedly consonant, usually in the form of something akin to what was called “The New Romanticism.”  I found the stratification limiting, not to mention polarizing.  Between your “classical” works and your various electric/electronic/rock/punk, such excluding stratification, compartmentalization, seems considerably less present.  Is this a conscious decision rooted in revolt or simply the natural way of your musical expression?

Well, the pieces I sent you were pretty consonant as it’s what I’ve been doing lately. I think I started out being quite inspired by modernist anti-populism, which UCSD is still quite into. Early Boulez was my favorite stuff for a long time, and I definitely have pieces that stem from that tradition, though I haven’t written one in a little while….these days I try not to be conscious of things like that, though, and just write honestly. Sometimes the music gets pretty thorny, but that hasn’t happened in many recent pieces.

Actually I do have a really gnarly mixed chamber quartet that I think I want to rewrite as a piano concerto. That’ll be a cool one.

You seem comfortable with music that is virtuosic and difficult to play (your All The Wrong Notes and Mirror Smasher come to mind) as well as music that is not particularly challenging on a technical level. Do such things, as such, enter into your compositional calculus or is that, as an isolated criterion, not of interest to you?

As artistic expression it’s not particularly interesting to me, except to say that I do think hard-to-play music requires a certain energy level that is harder to attain in stuff that is easy to play. If I want something to feel really intense, I want the musician to feel really intense about it. Making it challenging can be a way to achieve that, but it’s not really the goal. It’s a means to the thing I am interested in, which is more like a musical-final-product sort of thing. I care a lot about that, and whatever means get me there in the most effective way are cool by me.

To follow up, you have a number of really lovely pieces that exist in various guises, whether acoustic or electronic. Quiet Harbor is a simple, peaceful chamber piece with acoustic instruments, evoking the sounds of the water, boats, foghorns, general mood of pastoral, calm space..  On Geology for electric guitar and electronic sounds is similar in its simplicity, its adherence to tonal centers, yet obviously created by a different sonic palette.  Beach Song is almost shocking in its folk simplicity.  (It reminds me of early 20th century Americana, with a hint of Ives’ modernism.  Also some brash rock and jazz inflected interjections towards the end!)  Is this simplicity a statement, a reaction, or just how music goes?

Well, it’s somewhat related to what I said about means in the previous answer. Those jazz and rock interventions in Beach Song are there because I wanted some dramatic contrast, and instead of merely using different harmony or rhythms or whatever, I thought I could get an even stronger contrast by mixing in things that are entirely foreign to what it seems like the language might be. I once heard Ted Hearne use the phrase “genre counterpoint” and that stuck with me. I kind of ask myself what my goal is, and then try to figure out the best way to achieve it, regardless of where that leads or comes from.

A note on On Geology: everything in that piece is guitar with some effects pedals. None of the sounds are synthesized. I don’t really care that they are or aren’t, and I’m happy to use whatever sounds are effective for the piece…but aren’t guitar pedals rad?

Anything else you’d like to add?

Just that this is far and away the most in-depth anyone has ever gone into my music, and I really, really appreciate it! Answering these questions was a lot of fun, and very interesting, and made me think about a lot of things. Thank you!

I also just want to take a minute to express my thanks to you, and the other New Classic LA writers, for contributing to this site. I had no idea when I started a concert calendar whenever that was that it would turn into this. And I’m thankful every day for the energy you all put in to keep it up.

Just in case anyone is curious about conflict of interest – I am, after all, the editor of this website – I wrote to all the writers and said “I’m having a concert that I want to have covered, but I’m very concerned about posting my own stuff on the site. I don’t want it to be self-serving or biased. Tell me what to do.” What you and Leaha came up with was the fact that if another composer putting on a show like this came to New Classic LA for an interview I would definitely say yes to them and put them through our normal process for getting coverage, which I was about to put myself through, so it felt okay. But if people don’t dig that I get it.

Details about and tickets for Nick’s concert on Saturday are at nick.brownpapertickets.com. You can find his music, concert dates, and more at nickwritesmusic.com.

Nadia Shpachenko’s Quotations and Homages Convinces in Concept and Execution

In an era marked by emphasis on thematic programming, sometimes it seems the theme counts more than the music, or that the music serves the theme. When all goes well, however, a theme can lend insight and bring pieces together synergistically, where they are better together than apart.

nadia shpachenko quotations and homagesThe latter is what happens on Nadia Shpachenko‘s new CD, Quotations and Homages. Noticing that some of her favorite composers had written pieces based on existing music, she conceived of a program to celebrate the practice of composing with quotation. The next step was to select the right repertoire, and to commission the rest.

“I approached composers I know and like and commissioned the music to fit this programming concept,” explained Shpachenko on the program’s genesis.

The result was a body of works that simultaneously looks backward and forward—a program that honors existing traditions while venturing forth into new terrains of composition.

Opening the recording with an uplifting brilliance–by turns motoric and ecstatic–Tom Flaherty’s Rainbow Tangle draws on the seventh movement of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, which “immediately came to mind” when Shpachenko commissioned the work. Flaherty transforms the gentle waves of Messiaen’s piano writing into a mosaic of rapid-fire repeated notes, interspersed with rapturous chordal outpourings. Electronics heighten the piano part and add unexpected dimension, much as that of the original quartet’s instrumentation.

The program takes a turn for the dark and stormy in Missy Mazzoli’s Bolts of Loving Thunder, an offshoot of the Rhapsody in G minor by Brahms. Recounting her own “enthused but sloppy” renditions of the work as a developing pianist, Mazzoli draws on many of the same gestures Brahms used in the Rhapsody: chordal crashes, energetic surges of arpeggiation, and flurries of tremolando activity. A unique statement emerges, at once Mazzoli’s, yet clearly welling up from the work’s guiding source material–a kind of séance of Brahms through music.

Next up, Peter Yates’s Epitaphs and Youngsters, proves how dynamic and flexible Shpachenko’s homage concept turns out to be. The work contrasts in mood and means with the preceding music, and that to follow. Generally introspective, the work draws on varying musical styles to convey the essence of figures important to Yates, in this case, John Muir, W. C. Fields, Glenn Gould, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Shpachenko intones text quotes in a lyrical sprechstimme with feeling and understanding. The artwork of Shpachenko’s own sons also served as inspiration, hence the “youngsters” in the work’s title.

In another commission by Shpachenko, Vera Ivanova’s Six Fugitive Memories reflects on a range of piano repertoire in a collage of six short movements. Ivanova cleverly reinterprets essential fragments by Debussy and Satie (whose music coalesces like two colliding galaxies in “Debutie”), Prokofieff, György Kurtág, Morton Feldman, and Galina Ustvolskaya at her most formidable.

In a reverse palette-cleanser of sorts, Nick Norton’s startlingly compact work, Piano Piece for Mr. Carter’s 100th Birthday, iterates every note on the piano exactly once. The highly virtuosic work of nine seconds in length effectively divides the album down the middle, sending the second half off in an energetic burst of raw pianistic power.

Taking the album down a surreal turn, Adam Borecki’s Accidental Mozart injects a healthy dose of humor with his terse variation set after Mozart’s Sonata Facile, K. 545. Each variation is inspired by an alcoholic beverage (never mind that most who play the Mozart are underage), including Dirty Martini, Cheap Boxed Wine, and Absinthe. Borecki conveys the spirit of each drink in vivid musical depictions, proving that homage need not be serious. Shpachenko has performed the work with a slideshow of clever pop-art slides to accompany each variation. The slideshow adds significantly to the work, but even as audio alone the work belongs on the disc and including it was the right decision. Shpachenko’s sensitive rubato and probing creativity fill the gap of missing visual cues.

The genius of this album is in its effortless flow. Each work follows naturally from one to the next. Though unified by the common theme of homage, each piece is wholly individual and unrelated to the others, enabling continuous listener attention.

Daniel Felsenfeld contributed in an area heretofore untouched on the album: rock, with all its drive and defiance. The seventies band Velvet Underground served as impetus for his Down to You is Up, where Felsenfeld channels the spirit of his younger years driving the streets of Los Angeles while listening to the subversive band. The work, and Shpachenko’s committed rendering, satisfy in the visceral sense expected of rock at its best.

Shpachenko is joined by top pianists in their own right (Genevieve Feiwen Lee, Vicki Ray, Aron Kallay, Sarah Gibson, and Thomas Kotcheff) for the final two numbers on the disk.

James Matheson’s Bagatelle commemorates Beethoven, composer of many bagatelles, though here it is the Eroica symphony that provides the quotation vocabulary. Perhaps also an homage to Sonata form, the piece “pulls apart, recontextualizes, stacks, and layers” the quoted music, and does so on a distinctly Beethovenian scale: 6 pianists on 3 pianos.

The album concludes impactfully and intuitively in a work by Tom Flaherty, his Igor to Please. Commemorating Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, the work stems from the famous “Augurs of Spring” chord, but only hints at it. A work as inherently diverse as the album itself, it is scored for six pianists on two pianos, two toy pianos, and electronics.

Though derived from the Rite, Flaherty’s Igor bears little resemblance to the music of Stravinksy. Instead, it conjures the macabre world of pagan Russia and its barbaric springtime rituals in a way that resonates with contemporary ears. Utilizing differing musical languages and very different musical forces, the two composers attained similar achievements: to edify, dazzle, perhaps trouble, and certainly please.

Quotations and Homages undoubtedly comes at great effort on Shpachenko’s part. The concept is creative, the program well constructed, and Shpachenko’s pianism is of the highest caliber. The recording is sure to remain a mainstay of the contemporary discography for posterity.

Quotations and Homages is available on Reference Recordings at referencerecordings.com/recording/quotations-homages and from all major online music retailers.

Synchromy + HOCKET present Crusoe at LACC

Composer/pianist/HOCKET member Sarah Gibson emptying out a treasure chest during Synchromy's performance of Rzewski's Crusoe.

Composer/pianist/HOCKET member Sarah Gibson emptying out a treasure chest during Synchromy’s performance of Rzewski’s Crusoe. Photo by Adam Borecki.

If there were any doubts that the LA new-music scene is in the midst of a surfeit of musical and aesthetic diversity, Synchromy and HOCKET’s evening of music, titled Crusoe, on November 5 should certainly quell them. The playing, centering on Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff of the piano duo HOCKET, and later adding a larger ensemble, was truly exceptional: precise, expressive, virtuosic where needed, yet playful, even comedic where possible.

The concert’s first half was comprised of four compositions for piano-four-hands by four local, living LA composers.

Alexander Elliott Miller’s Clock Smasher made for a striking and auspicious beginning. As its title might suggest, the opening motif, in four hands in ascent, burst open a vivid sonic palette that would traverse and transmogrify in interesting and musically satisfying ways.

Composer Alexander Elliott Miller, here playing guitar with Linnea Powell, viola, on Synchromy's performance of Crusoe. Photo by Adam Borecki.

Composer Alexander Elliott Miller, here playing guitar with Linnea Powell, viola, on Synchromy’s performance of Crusoe. Photo by Adam Borecki.

In his program note Miller makes mention of the “… polyrhythms, many of which do have a sort of ‘tick-tock’ quality, like a room full of out-of-sync clocks.” This is most certainly accurate but it only begins to suggest the variety and vitality of harmonic and gestural realms it creates and explores. Clock Smasher teases us at first with a metronomic, pulsed music which evolves into something ominously hovering, then interrupted by syncopated rhythms infused with quasi-jazz harmonies. Even the mention of the “J Word” is sometimes frowned upon – personally, I don’t frown upon it – but regardless of what that might suggest to you, this is certainly not a jazz composition. But that isn’t to say that it doesn’t flirt with tonality, some very lovely melodies and, at times, even hints at something Bill Evans might have mused about at the keyboard.   This music, as Miller’s notes suggest, does subvert its own idiomatic tendencies with those irregular rhythms, to my ear something of a this-is-definitely-NOT-jazz insistence, which then somehow, artfully evolves into a spacious, airy coda, punctuated by big, long and spacious chords. A poignant, striking work.

The next piece on the program was Marc EvansOne Wandering Night. This piece was for a slightly varied configuration of HOCKET in that Ms. Gibson remained on the piano while Mr. Kotcheff moved to an electric keyboard and they were augmented by the addition of two melodicas (played by the composer and Nick Norton).

Fun fact: I went to a Joe Jackson concert when I was a kid, probably around 1980. He whipped out a melodica and declared it “The Instrument of the Future!” Perhaps he was right. I do hear a lot of melodica at new music concerts these days.

Evans’ piece was inspired by Bartok and that came through clearly enough. There is always the danger of being on the wrong side of the line separating homage from uninspired imitation. Fortunately, One Wandering Night falls decidedly on the right side of that line. While the melodicas played a sort of wheezing Eastern European Bartokian ostinato, definitely and pleasantly reminiscent of Bartok’s own take on modal folk melody, the piano and electric keyboard sputtered and interjected their own contrasting bits. I found this particularly satisfying as it reminded me, on a simple level, of Bartok’s own 2-handed piano trickery, where the two hands remain, stubbornly, in their own domain (key, mode, register) despite any discord that stubborn autonomy might produce. And on a more complex level, it reminded me of one of my very favorite pieces of music, Messiaen’s jardin du sommeil d’amour, a movement from his Turangalîla-Symphonie. While the melodic and harmonic technique is quite different in Messiaen’s masterpiece, a similar bifurcation and their disorienting affect is in play.

L to R: Marc Evans, Sarah Gibson, Nick Norton, and Thomas Kotcheff perform Evans' One Wandering Night.

L to R: Marc Evans, Sarah Gibson, Nick Norton, and Thomas Kotcheff perform Evans’ One Wandering Night.

And playful it is. As the piece progresses, the tempo of the melodicas’ pumping melody increases and the interjections become more intense until, like a tired Hungarian hiker on the banks of the Danube, all four instruments slow down until they reach total repose. I must admit to being completely unfamiliary with Evans’ work but if this piece is at all representative of his musical sensibilities, then I definitely want to hear more.

Nick Norton told us from the stage that his Mirror Smasher was a number of things. He said it was “minimalisty” (and as such, “easy to write”), loud, and a work in progress. This piece was, again, for the four deft hands of HOCKET, and in fact even the pitch material itself was produced and ordered by them. The unordered (or, to quote the program, “played about a zillion different ways, as if looking at it in a broken mirror”) pitch set is:

H O C K E T = B G C D E F#

Yet again, HOCKET played beautifully. The piece begins with a clear tonal center, pulsing along as “minimalisty” pieces often do. But not long into the playing, a pre-recorded track of electronic sounds makes its presence known.

Norton’s choice of electronic sounds – both their timbre and idiomatic qualities – were a highlight for me. The combination of the smooth, hypnotic four-handed piano combined with the somewhat Kraftwerky buzzes, gently evolving into higher pitched electronic sounds reminiscent of some of the organ work in Einstein on the Beach really made for a powerful electro-acoustic marriage.

About halfway into Mirror Smasher the volume cranks up significantly. (The composer warned us of this before the performance. There will be no lawsuits.) If there was a hint of Einstein before the knob was turned, now the Einsteinian character felt married to something more like Heavy Metal, even Rock Opera. (Norton’s program note says that the title is a nod to Alex Miller’s Clock Smasher but I couldn’t help wonder if it might, even subconsciously, have any connection to The Who’s Do I Smash The Mirror, from Tommy. OK, probably not, but still…) OK, Rock Opera is misleading at best, demeaning at worst. But Mirror Smasher’s loud second half is formidable, powerful, and I could easily imagine it, as the composer suggested, being extended into a much longer Minimalist work. While different in pitched/melodic material, it reminded me, in a very good way, of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music in its powerful, gyrating and relentless sonic attack.

The program’s first half concluded with Jason Barabba’s The Distance of the Moon. The piece takes its title from a story in Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics of the same name. Calvino’s work is a collection of clever, fanciful tales, sometimes mischievous, sometimes romantic and nostalgic, often subverting our expectations if not the laws of nature as we’ve come to understand them. Calvino’s Distance of the Moon is a story about the moon, which, once upon a time, existed but a hop away from the Earth, but is now gradually moving farther and farther away. As the two spheres continue to distance themselves from each other, the inhabitants abandon the moon for the Earth. All but one of them, who decides to remain, forever, stranded alone on the moon.

Barabba’s musical interpretation of the story is itself a clever, fanciful tale. But unlike the rather light quality of the short story, it is a significant, weighty work. This is not to say that it isn’t imbued with moments of lightness – it is! – but it is not a mere bagatelle, but rather a significant musical and pianistic undertaking. Distance of the Moon was originally composed for a single pianist (presumably the two-handed kind) but as such it was almost impossible to play. I can all too easily believe this. Even in its two-person version, it is quite challenging.

Stylistically, it manages to explore a number of moods and idiomatic gestures yet still most definitely feel like a coherent, unified work. Moments of romantic, almost tonal passages intermingle deftly with strong, almost Schoenbergian dissonances. Lugubrious night music passages transition into stumbling, irregular rhythms with almost-BeBop melodic lines.

In the end, analogous to the story on which its based, Distance makes us feel the separation, the yearning, the tension hoping, however in vain, for a resolution. It ends, fragile and sparse, in a delicate and beautiful diad. Two notes at either end of the piano keyboard. A deep work, and one that I suspect would definitely reward repeat hearings and analysis.

Then came an intermission. If this had been a meal, I would have felt not full but satisfied. This was a chunk of concert that delivered four works of diverse character yet not, as a whole, illogically incongruent. But wait, there’s more…

The second half began with Mayke NasDiGiT #2.  (For the curious, I don’t think there’s a DiGiT #1.)  For those who don’t know (I didn’t), Ms. Nas is a Dutch composer, born in 1972. I don’t know how her work wound up on this program but it was a perfect palette cleanser. DiGiT is, to my ear, entirely devoid of a single specified pitch for any of the four hands, or four forearms, or two foreheads that activate the piano keys. It is, to be clear, a humorous bit of performance, perhaps a commentary on what we consider to be “high art.” It also allows a piano duo to highlight a different take on virtuosity.

DiGiT centers itself around a variation of our childhood schoolyard hand jive or clapping game that involves an intricate collaborative clapping between two people (usually young girls), while simultaneously singing a rhyme. (Shimmy Shimmy Cocoa Pop! was the one the Black girls bussed into my Queens elementary school taught me). DiGiT, however, is inspired by another favorite, Oh Little Playmate. It is not only a charming work – one that HOCKET obviously enjoyed immensely – but even a virtuosic one, albeit in a very different way. Piano keys are only played in clusters, but other sounds arise from the intricate interplay of the two pianists’ strikes against the palms, arms, and thighs of themselves and each other. The rhythms are at times satisfyingly smooth, even evoking soft shoe dance moves in their elegance and grace. It’s very much a performance piece, and, if you like, you can see an older performance of it (not by HOCKET, but by eighth blackbird, here:

The concert itself was billed under the title of CRUSOE. The grand finale, so to speak, was Frederic Rzewski’s composition of that name. Rzewski, born in 1938, is seen as a somewhat enigmatic figure of the 20th century avant-garde, someone who studied with “Uptown” and Princeton figures (Babbitt, et al.) yet whose own musical output butterflied effortlessly among genres widely, from serialism to minimalism. His works are coherent and easy to describe in and of themselves. But to describe what a “Rzewski piece” might be is near impossible.

Isaac Schankler, Thomas Kotcheff, and Nick Norton performing Rzewski's Crusoe. Photo by Adam Borecki.

Isaac Schankler, Thomas Kotcheff, and Nick Norton performing Rzewski’s Crusoe. Photo by Adam Borecki.

As for Crusoe, where to begin? First of all, it was a delight! Which is not to say that it was necessarily such a delight on the page, but Synchromy upped the dose for our viewing pleasure. The stage was adorned with a backdrop of a deserted island, inflatable palm trees and beach balls. A large ensemble adorned themselves a la Castaway, with everything from light headgear to a stuffed parrot on a shoulder to, in the case of one player (Mr. Norton, on guitar) a full-on shark suit! It was most definitely an aesthetic choice, not one dictated by the score, and I found it to be a wise one which bore much (tropical?) fruit.

Crusoe employs a performing force of unspecified instruments, requires its players to sing and chant various lines about Robinson Crusoe, play percussion instruments, and do other things that might make a Musicians Union bristle. The vocal sections are interspersed among bright, quite lovely pointillistic instrumental episodes. As such, Crusoe is reminiscent at times of some of Harry Partch’s better works, albeit without the microtonal schema.

Soprano Justine Aronson performing Rzewski's Crusoe with Synchromy and HOCKET. Photo by Adam Borecki.

Soprano Justine Aronson performing Rzewski’s Crusoe with Synchromy and HOCKET. Photo by Adam Borecki.

After various chants, instrumental interludes, spilling of doubloons, breaking of branches, dusting off of hands, tinkling of toy pianos, swords whirred as they are raised in the air, heads patted, feet stomped, the Narrator (sung by Justine Aronson) comes forth to chant the last line. At which point she is pelted by the ensemble with beach balls. The End! (I won’t call the Union if you don’t.)

As I said, Rzewski is enigmatic. And Crusoe is no less an enigma. Did this performance, and this piece, provide any insight into the tale of Robinson Crusoe? No, not really. Did it give me a sense of what Rzewski’s compositional voice was? Well, kinda sorta, inasmuch as only one of his pieces might. But more importantly, it was a perfect end to Synchromy’s ambitious concert, a perfect counterweight to an already diverse and profound selection of our community’s musical wealth.

Pianist Nadia Shpachenko Honors Audience in Homage-Themed Recital at Sound and Fury

Nadia Shpachenko’s obviously masterful recital last Saturday concluded the second season of the estimable new music series, Sound and Fury Concerts on a high note.

Delivered with an authority and unhesitating know-how that left no room for doubt, Shpachenko’s virtuoso program of new music for piano—both solo and electronically fleshed—revealed how convincingly present-day composers can match the prestidigital feats of Liszt and Chopin. Simultaneously, universal statements on life and art, expressed in a heartfelt lyricism still resounding almost audibly, emerged to elevate the afternoon event into something profound.

Vacating the ostensibly far-flung protectorate of Pasadena in favor of a more central Downtown Arts District, the Sound and Fury season touched down at Art Share LA, a flexible creative environment serving as gallery, workshop, and performance space. The venue’s edgy, industrially rustic atmosphere and attention-arresting exhibition comingled for the ideal new music terroir. Warm, supportive acoustics brought out the best of a dubious Kimball grand, whose surprisingly sweet, singing tone belied its dilapidated exterior.

At a hearty seventy-five minutes in length, Shpachenko’s thoughtfully ordered offering of uniformly winning pieces, centered on a theme of “quotations and homages,” was an homage to the audience—an inviting, overflowing musical cornucopia, impacting listeners all the more directly in its uninterrupted flow:

“Once I begin a program, I prefer to maintain intensity through to the end, rather than leave the stage midway,” commented Shpachenko in post-recital remarks. As if leading by example, the pianist’s sustained energy bolstered listeners into progressively deeper engagement throughout, up to the concluding work which seemed to arrive ahead of schedule.

Commissioned by Shpachenko herself, the program’s opening piece, Vera Ivanova’s 6 Fugitive Memories, set the tone for what was to follow in its variety, aphoristic wit, and evocative imagery. A festschrift of sorts, six clever pastiches perceptively comment on composers with anniversaries in 2016, year of the work’s premiere. Ivanova sensitively alluded to musical identifiers of each composer in concise reinterpretations of quoted material, leaving listeners hungry for more at every turn.

Calling listeners to attention in a torrent of thunderous tone clusters punctuated by intermittent treble range chirps, the opening sketch draws on the uncompromisingly modernist sixth sonata of Galina Ustvolskaya, a relentless procession of raw, barbaric sonority with only the faintest suggestion of anything resembling melody.

Committed classicist Prokofieff served as impetus for the next number, “Fugitive No. 2,” a response to the picturesque Visions Fugitives. A bubbly, effervescent accompaniment supported sweeping, rhapsodic gestures in the foreground for a contrasting emotional foil against the cool preceding and subsequent movements.

Palettes were cleansed in meditation and clarity, as only Feldman, the next movement’s guiding example, can organize into being. Gentle, bell-like note-moments melted to mark the passing of time, like the falling of delicate icicles.

Shortly, aromas of goulash and sun-scorched paprika came to mind in a movement after Hungarian composer Gyögy Kurtág, “Playing Cimbalom.” Shpachenko adroitly manipulated a fine wooden mallet on the piano’s strings, as if playing the Cimbalom—a Hungarian hammered dulcimer for which Kurtág provided the bulk of the repertoire.

The suite concluded in a surreal collision of two tensely co-existing icons of post-Romantic French music—Debussy and Satie, in “Debutie.” The famous opening chords of Satie’s first Gymnopédie are subtly paired with the initial whole-step cascade of Debussy’s prelude Voiles (“Veils” or “Sails,” or both…Debussy wouldn’t say). The two works find a peaceable if strained cohabitation. Satie’s soothing major sevenths meld with Debussy’s bleak, directionless whole-tone environment for a musical synthesis of Ivanova’s conception, a whole as great but different from its parts’ sum.

In Shpachenko’s dedicated hands, 6 Fugitive Memories proved a fully satisfying, complete listener experience in itself, without need of enhancements or additions. Yet the opening electronics of Tom Flaherty’s Rainbow Tangle, next on the program, signaled new sonic dimensions emerging to compliment and enrich the piano.

Setting out with a clear vision for her program, Shpachenko approached composers with a specific request: write a piece inspired by another composer. “I approach composers I know and like, and commission music to fit my programming concept,” the pianist articulated from the post-concert receiving line.

Her concept struck a chord with Flaherty, composer of two works on the program, who “immediately recalled a passage from Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, and relished the excuse to play with some its elements.” The Quartet’s seventh movement, “Tangle of rainbows for the angel who announces the end of time” provided the thematic vocabulary for Flaherty’s 2015 work. Vibratory repeated chords course up and down the piano’s range, expanding upon the gentle undulations in the piano part of Messiaen’s “Tangle.” Brilliant, original electronic elements as striking as the original Quartet’s instrumentation, heightened the ecstatic topic, while a crisp, interlocking hocket texture lent a drive and acerbic bite, galvanizing Messiaen’s otherworldly atmosphere.

Spun of more contemporary inspiration, Daniel Felsenfeld’s Down to You is Up, harkens back to the composer’s own early years, which were filled with the subversive sounds of The Velvet Underground. Felsenfeld’s three-movement work for piano solo draws on source material from the band’s debut album, “Velvet Underground and Nico.” The opening movement is a free adaptation of key melodic fragments and the piano part from “All Tomorrow’s Parties.”

Belting the work’s energetic opening chords with the self-forgetful abandon of a rock star, Shpachenko set a decidedly rebellious mood, rousing listeners to heated attention. A contrastingly introspective mood shortly followed in “So Cold/So Lonely,” movement two of the cycle. Repurposing Velvet Underground’s song “Pale Blue Eyes” as a musical loom, a collage of delicate chords started life as accompaniment to the original song—then the song was removed, leaving the accompaniment self-standing.

The final movement, “Everything Was Alright,” quoted more strictly, this time from “Beginning to See the Light.” Fiery charge returned to the hall as Underground’s darker elements rose up, channeled through a motoric bass ostinato and a blaze of squeezed, descending arpeggios, terminating resolutely.

Least quotational but equally relevant, the program’s next work, Close Ups (Through Tiny Eyes) by Stephen Cohn derives inspiration from Realist painting: “The art of depicting nature as seen by toads…,” notes Cohn. Augmentation and diminution—contrapuntal devices extant from Palestrina to the present—power the work in an interplay of expansion and contraction, ultimately heightening listener perception.

Meditative sonorities alternated with crashing chords and driving scalar figuration in 15ths. A cute, understated tremolo figure between the hands recurred continually, unifying contrasting elements and restoring listener orientation at regular intervals, finally returning in full forte for a decisive last word.

Forging ahead indefatigably, industrious Shpachenko spryly prepped the upcoming number, donning ear bud and microphone headset and issuing a brief sound-check. A conspicuous white screen instantly grew functional as the first slides of an art show materialized. Epitaphs and Youngsters, by Peter Yates, a cycle of melodramas (in the original meaning of the term: spoken word over music), honors four creative figures of intangible relation, connected by their meaning to the composer. Inspired by Shpachenko’s “absorbing presentations of eternal moments,” each movement is cast in a harmonic language reminiscent of the honoree, complimented by Shpachenko’s resonant sprechstimme on pertinent texts, and images by young artists Yates admires, Shpachenko’s own sons. A movement for naturalist John Muir features rugged quartal harmonies, while intricate contrapuntal lines accompany a quote by Glenn Gould, and an overflowing stream of words by juggler W. C. Fields stretches past a Gershwin-inspired musical tapestry, ending the work openly, in a tender moment of wonder.

Shpachenko resumed her seat at the piano—briefly—turning a sharp musical corner to ground listener sensibilities in the terse, steely brilliance of Nick Norton’s Piano Piece for Mr. Carter’s 100th Birthday. The aphoristic work, a reflection on the sinister sparkle of Elliot Carter’s Caténaires, uses all 88 keys exactly once in rapid-fire succession for a jolt of musical adrenaline to the senses.

The homage offering by Missy Mazzoli, Bolts of Loving Thunder, next on the lineup, is especially personal for pianists. Written for Emmuel Ax’s “Brahms then as now” project of 2014, the piece is an homage to Brahms, based closely on the Rhapsody No. 2 in G minor, op. 79, a repertoire staple of student and seasoned pianists alike. Reminiscing on her own “enthused but sloppy” renditions of the piece as a budding pianist, Mazzoli reinterpreted the Brahms Rhapsody by emphasizing its tempestuous effects in dense, thundering chords, dramatic hand-crossings, and lighting-like ascending arpeggios. Shimmering accompanimental tremolos recall the Rhapsody’s mysterious development section, while the key heartbeat rhythm of the Rhapsody’s second theme palpitates the new Bolts into an intense, vibratory finish.

The rhythmic drive quickly resurfaced in Tom Falherty’s Igor to Please—occupying final position in the program (officially). An eagerly awaited world premiere, Igor to Please immediately sets out to show Stravinsky as the great liberator of pulse, where Schönberg might be called liberator of pitch. Highly charged syncopations and sharp interplay of piano and electronics fill out source material from the famous “Augurs of Spring,” the startling moment in The Rite of Spring, where dancers lunge and stamp to throbbing blows of dissonance. Initially polarizing—indeed inciting a riot at its premier—the work is now canonical. Yet the “Augurs” retains its power to revitalize and stimulate, like an invigorating deep-tissue massage.

Scored for piano and electronics, Igor benefits from a rich palette of sonorities, including harpsichord and toy piano, as well as stereo-sonic effects. The work is slated for performance in an alternate, assuredly impressive instrumentation of two pianos and two toy pianos, with six pianists (among them Shpachenko). Hopefully the unique electronic effects will find expression in the acoustic version, for an equally pleasing rendition.

Nadia Shpachenko performs Adam Borecki's Accidental Mozart

Nadia Shpachenko performing Adam Borecki’s Accidental Mozart

Billed a “bonus/encore” piece, Adam Borecki’s Accidental Mozart, the final musical number of the afternoon, was a good natured, zany parody of Mozart’s piano Sonata in C major, K. 545. In the ilk of Satie’s sardonic Sonatine Beauroctratique or the poignant Dr. Gradus ad Parnassum by Debussyparodies of equally obligatory teaching repertoire—Borecki’s “set of very serious various,” breathes new life into the ubiquitous, tradition-encrusted classic. Each variation is modeled after a particular alcoholic potable, whether imported beer, boxed wine, rare whisky, or even stronger spirits. Evidently an expert in libations, Borecki conveyed the essence of each beverage with clear musical gestures, punctuated by humorous pop art slides. Audience members emerged a little closer, having shared a round of drinks.

Shpachenkos’s generous program was preceded by music of Sound and Fury founders, Christian Dubeau and Christine Lee. Lee performed her Crystal Glass, a piece about pure sound depicting the breaking of glass through the sparkling pops and crackles of granular synthesis. A haunting melody is accompanied by, and later accompanies, the tasteful electronic effects.

Dubeau presented the first four of his forthcoming set of twelve preludes for piano and electronics. The opus’s promising initial numbers treated of weighty environmental issues in the San Gabriel mountains, where Dubeau grew up. Recorded material and live processes infused depth and additional meaning to the piano writing, complimenting it naturally.

Musical proceedings concluded, a cordial Shpachenko greeted enthused attendees. Stragglers later coalesced into an ad hoc reception at nearby Wurstküche, where gracious Stephen Cohn toasted to the pianist’s success, thanking her for “giving composers a reason to go on writing.” Shpachenko tasted her first sip of beer, pronouncing it smooth. A Chimay ale, the question arose whether it would figure in Adam Borecki’s next piece.

Review: “Walkabout” Synchromy and the Argus Quartet at Boston Court

This program was the epitome of newness. Nothing old enough to be enrolled in first grade and three world premieres, Synchromy and The Argus Quartet‘s February 27 concert achieved a rare level of innovation, with the presenter and ensemble working together to build an effective, feasible, and enjoyable program to showcase all their talents. Like a sonata, it built up, developed, had some themes come back, and ended on a sort of cadenza with a new theme -that of the voice. We had heard the voice before; the narrator, Chelsea Fryer, had also been introducing the pieces. One could say this non-performance voice became integrated into the program. Or perhaps it had been part of the performance all along, that as soon as the doors closed and the lights when down everything that happened on or near the stage was performative.

The Argus Quartet, with narrator Chelsea Fryer, performing Eve Beglarian's "Testy Pony"

The Argus Quartet, with narrator Chelsea Fryer, performing Eve Beglarian’s “Testy Pony”

The concert opens with a sunrise in Andrew Norman’s Sabina, from the Companion Guide to Rome, for solo violin. It begins with a whisper, not even a note. When the sound finally starts, it sounds far away, almost like an echo in a canyon. It creaks into existence, broken by bird calls and wind. The violin finally begins a kind of fiddling over a drone and splitting high notes so pure. The sun is finally high enough to be seen through the window of the church that inspired Andrew Norman, and the violin plays a single, pure melody. No birds, no wind, nothing but a sweet melody.

Following the sky theme, the sunrise is clouded over by Kaija Saariaho’s “Cloud Trio,” which adds a viola and cello to the violin soloist but is still not the full quartet yet. This work depicts four types of clouds, and the audience is invited to imagine which clouds they are. Like many, I can identify cumulus as the fluffy ones and that’s it. Regardless of lacking the vocabulary to name the clouds, the types were clearly depicted in the music. Each has its own identity, utilizing thick harmonies or sparse counterpoint or the rhythmic shush shush of col legno.

Staying within the theme of Rome, one of the most popular archaeological sites in the world, Zaq Kenefick’s funeral song of the people of the ruined cities, speaks to the beauty and brokenness of the ruins. The violin plays a trembling solo and the viola strums chords dissonant with the cello. The video of folding black cloth was surely a beautiful artistic choice, though I must admit I and many other audience members I talked to afterwards were uncertain what to make of the visuals. The piece was over almost as soon as it began, the length itself a reflection of the lost ruins.

Immediately before intermission, the concert changed gears and addressed the modern: Skronk. A word thrown around in various musical genres and circles, it is a thick onomatopoeia. The introduction defines it in many ones, and generally as “not a thing you are, but a thing you do.” The piece features strong pizzicati and a syncopated rock rhythm and melody, some fiddling tossed between the different instruments, and overall frankly smoother string playing than I would have expected from a word that can mean the skronk of an electric guitar. This one was a fast crowd pleaser and kept everyone on their toes. Ending as though someone suddenly turned up the volume and then plucking away into nothingness like the fade-outs of rock songs of the ‘90s, John Frantzen captured the many facets skronk may and can represent.

Post-intermission, we were given something of a variation on a theme. The music kicked off with three excerpts from Norman’s Companion Guide to Rome for string trio, featuring swirling harmonies, birdlike whistles, crackling glitches, whispering on the bows, and plucked pizzicato like rocks skipping on a pond. This was followed by Nick Norton’s String Quartet No 1., in which chords slid like skates on ice and the melody bounced between the four instruments in a playful game of keep-away. The second section was frantic, reminding me of a car race – the way the upper strings chomped rhythmically at the notes and the cello made engine revs pealing past the stage, going so far as to imitate the Doppler effect, it seemed. The third ethereal movement felt like flying in a dream. The dramatic violin swelled alongside the pastoral lower strings, all slowing until they ran out of steam. The perfect end to the day that Norman’s first piece began. But a false ending gave way to screeching and tapping. The spell was broken. Composers have great power over the audience, and with great power comes great responsibility. Norton made the daring choice to shatter the beauty he built.

The Argus Quartet performing Nick Norton's first string quartet.

The Argus Quartet performing Nick Norton’s first string quartet.

After Norton came the second Kenefick piece, harvesting tunes of the people of the rope-tree towers, this one featuring the viola practically crunching itself in half to sound like white noise on an old CRTV, a dark melody in the violin with dissonance in its twin, and the cello rumbling beneath it all. This video panned the length of a red cloth rope. Again, I will not pretend to have understood or fully appreciated the visuals provided, but the piece was an intriguing exercise in tension and release, and well placed in the middle of the second half of the program. It is experimental enough that I might experiment with it on a Spotify playlist someday, just to see how it goes.

Gabriela Frank’s excerpts from Leyendas: an Andean Walkabout gave a breath of fresh air from the concert hall by taking the audience on a pastoral journey through the Andes via “Tarqueada,” a piece imitating the split tone flute played in quartal and quintal harmony, “Himno de Zampoñas,” or panpipes, and “Chasqui,” the messenger runner who relies on small instruments light enough to carry on journeys, particularly small guitars. Each section was magnificently portrayed by the quartet, making the flutes and panpipes sing and drums thwack and guitars strum, all on bowed strings. For brief moments I was transported to the Smithsonian Folkways Festival of 2013 when a Quechua band played on the instruments the strings were portraying. The effect was astounding and beautiful, and I felt nostalgia for a place I’ve never been, only heard.

The concert ended with Eve Beglarian’s Testy Pony, which featured the cellist, a video and prerecorded sounds, and the narrator. A charming story of a girl who gets a pony and learns a life lesson, the pleasant tale is backed by a constantly rolling cello playing in time with the prerecorded sounds. If you don’t think this is technically challenging, try cooking while watching a chef on TV, and you’ll get some idea of the balancing act at play. This work seemed to finally end the “day” we started, as we watched the back of a horse gallop out of sight and out of mind.

The brief descriptions and interpretations of the pieces reveal a variety of ways in which music can be “new” and concerts can showcase facets of interest. Composition can show off new techniques, new subject matter (or old, in the case of the ruins, but in a new way), or use new orchestration. Synchromy is a collective of composers showing off recent works, and the Argus Quartet specializes in modern techniques. The New Classic LA facebook page has a rule that only ‘new’ music may be posted. 15th century madrigals are not new, but perhaps the way in which they are performed is new. Film music is not a new genre anymore, but a fresh composition is new. ‘New’ is such a tiny word packed with so much to interpret and interpolate. Regardless of how you take any of it to heart or choose to think about music, last Friday’s concert was a fair epitome of newness.

Synchromy and Wild Rumpus: From The Bay to LA

Last weekend, composer collective Synchromy bridged the Nor Cal/So Cal gap and opened the floodgates for inter-state collaboration. In other words, they hosted the incredible San Francisco based new music ensemble Wild Rumpus, down here at ArtShare. After seeing the group perform at last year’s New Music Gathering, Synchromy member Nick Norton said that it was “only a matter of time” before they made their way down to LA. And while building a “California Sound” might be a bit ambitious for a single concert, the performers and composers featured showed an impressive artistic breadth that never felt overwhelming. More importantly, what this concert lacked was pomp. The audience was small (as one might expect for an out of town group) but excited to see what Wild Rumpus had in store. While some of the music was thorny, the whole show ended up fun. Fun isn’t typically the go to description of Contemporary Art Music, but from the noisy neighbors who did not care that “Serious Art Making” was happening downstairs, to Norton’s tie dyed FYF shirt and his band’s logo duct-taped to the front of the bass drum that made its way into the percussionist’s setup, the whole night felt a little impromptu, kind of spontaneous, and a bit like hanging out in a good friend’s garage.

Wild Rumpus at ArtShare on January 23rd. Photo by Adam Borecki.

Wild Rumpus at ArtShare on January 23rd. Photo by Adam Borecki.

San Francisco provided some amazing composers, and Wild Rumpus brought some killer players. It was a little novel seeing new faces on the Art Share stage that has become a bit of a home base for LA new music. But the novelty was quick to wear off, and the talents of the performers soon stood in full display. For close followers of Synchromy, a pair of trombone solos from last years anti-valentine’s day concert were reprogrammed, this time under the interpretation of Weston Olencki. Both Richard Valitutto’s Walk of Shame and Scott Worthington’s Unphotographable were outstandingly played. The Valitutto was rendered shamelessly and brashly as a piece of its name and nature ought to be. And the Worthington proved an indomitably delicate wall of glissandoing brass against the backdrop of a slowly shifting sine wave.

The two trombone solos were stylistically distinct, as was the rest of the concert. Each piece seemed in a different world than the previous, making each moment fresh, never fatiguing despite a few pieces that lingered in soundworlds for an extended period of time. Despite their stylistic differences, each piece drew from its context on the program and it was interesting to see similar soundscapes explored by different composer. For example, where Walk of Shame started brassy and noisy and had petered itself out by the end, Sonnet XX for solo cello composed by Ursula Kwong-Brown, and performed by Joanne De Mars, started sweet, almost melodramatically so, and slowly peppered in more and more gritty gestures eventually ending in a shimmer of harmonics Unphotographable had an electroacousitc companion on the program too, Spectral Fields in Time by LA based Joshua Carro featured a longer form with slowly shifting masses of sound and the timbres of the full instrumental ensemble of Wild Rumpus. It featured the amplified wash of cymbals, (which harkened to the Lucier-esque LFO of Worthington’s miniature) and heavily amplified piano to accompany the ensemble’s winds, bass, and electric guitar. Both electroacoustic pieces suffered from a logistic issue: the placements of the mains. While ArtShare is a relatively wet hall, it certainly isn’t as reverberant as Zipper or any other recital hall. As such, the high mounted mains really made the electronic elements feel very separate from the ensemble. This was passable for the Carro due to the size of the ensemble, but really took away from the Worthington.

Another gripe on the venue were the neighbors. As the final sounds of Balance of Power by Dan VanHassel (also co-director of Wild Rumpus) faded out, dance music thudded in from a tenant upstairs. (Artshare is an apartment for artists as well as a venue). The piece relied on stark contrasts between more intense moments of percussive groove and lush swelling noisy chords, and while at first the Cagian response of an upstairs boombox seemed a little cute, and almost appropriate for a concert of new music, it continued, ruining more subtle moments both in Walk of Shame and Sonnet XX. Despite the interruption, the VanHassel was executed brilliantly, and was, (to one who is only fleetingly familiar with the composer’s work) quintessential VanHassel, featuring an incredibly well blended ensemble sound and and incredible accuracy within the group.

The Norton and the Barabba utilized the full ensemble along with vocalist Vanessa Langer. Brabba’s cry trojans cry was evocative of the VanHassel, though, with textures peeking in and out of each other a bit more subtly. The piece was extensively theatrical making great use of Langer’s immense stage presence. Beach Song by Norton may have been the only lone wolf on the program, seemingly unpaired. The song is an adaptation of a pop song originally written “after suffering a dramatic New Year’s Eve break up” and then re-re-arranged for Wild Rumpus. The use of classical voice provided an incredibly interesting juxtaposition over the very singer/songwritery text and the timbrally interesting arrangement.

While Wild Rumpus probably won’t be back in town for a while, if you end up up the coast, or they end up down here, I highly recommend coming out to see this incredibly versatile ensemble. The video below features their performance from last year, and the Carro that was on the program last week:

Review: Aron Kallay: Beyond 12: Volume II

Microtonality is often quipped at as “the cracks between the piano keys.” It is tradition in our Western art culture to have the smallest interval be what is called a half step, or semitone; but why do we divide the octave into twelve semitones, why not eight or thirteen? In the live preview last week at Harvey Mudd College of the second volume of his Beyond Twelve series, Aron Kallay used an electronic keyboard to realize a six different composers’ takes on alternate tuning and temperament.

The program kicked off with I’m Worried Now by Monroe Golden. The first thing that struck me was the schizophonia – Aron would strike a key in what ought to be the lower register of the piano, and it would sound a note from a higher register. He would sweep his hand up and down the keys in a glissando and it seemed a crapshoot whether the notes would rise or fall. One of the notes I scribbled during the performance reads: “Vince Guaraldi on an ancient piano in a thunderstorm.” The piece is jazzy and tipsy. The thunderous low notes set apart from the tip-toeing upper melody. The retuning sometimes sounds intentional and other times not, to the intriguing effect that it would set my teeth on edge and then resolve into tonality, though no longer equal temperament; yes, during the performance I was certainly worried. All in all, music that moves your emotions and mind in such a rollercoaster is surely a triumph by Golden.

Alex Miller’s composition The Blur of Time and Memory used 1/10th (instead of ½, or half) steps. The result was that chords in which one or two notes move chromatically upwards seemed to peel away from the original chord identity to glide into another, like a chameleon shifting its coloring. The piece was meditative overall, intensified in sections by shifting harmonies and tugging the listener’s ear through tonal areas it is not used to visiting. It ended with an uncanny resemblance to wailing wind in a drafty room, like a ghost had haunted the keys to take the tuning out of whack.

Underbelly, by Stephen Cohn, utilized notes above and below the standard piano range, in which a dance fitting for the Mad Hatter’s tea party plays and the Jabberwocky thumps below in the bass region. The unfamiliar overtones from the bottom register give an otherworldly twist. The other parts of the piece resembled water music, but with more finesse and realism thanks to the microtonality at play. The smaller intervals gave an ultra-realistic fluidity to the cascade of notes winding through the recital hall.

The last work before intermission was Paths of the Wind by Bill Alves. It began as a wall of sound, like standing atop a windy mountain straining to hear the rumbling bass melody in the distance. The clusters of notes washed together and averaged into a drone which became a musical line unto itself. Like the Cohn piece’s effectiveness in using microintervals to enhance fluidity, Alves glided through notes like a bird on the wind, seemingly continuously rather than discretely. Without microtonality, there is no way a piano could sound so natural; it’s as if wind were transported directly into the hall and pitched to a melody, but still unfettered by tonality. A truly spellbinding work by Alves.

Post-intermission we were treated to two more pieces, the first of which, Involuntary Bohlen Piercing, was composed by Nick Norton. This used temperament in an even more unorthodox manner, by cutting up a perfect twelfth instead of a perfect octave into segments. The twelfth is divided into thirteen even segments, each slightly less than a quarter-tone larger than our equal-tempered half step. The first scribble I have for this one reads: “Drunken tip-toeing complete with running into things.” In other words, the piece begins hesitant and gentle, even a little uncertain, but is soon brought out of its nascent stages by magnificent Rachmaninoff-esque crashes. Reminiscent of Schoenberg’s Six Small Pieces for Piano, minimalists like Terry Riley, and a peppering of Impressionism, this piece was never dissonant, but always pleasant even when alien. The pacing was slower than the other composers’, but worked within the frame of the hesitant beginning and end. The tolling bells near the end seemed to be a clock announcing the end of the piece, or perhaps, in Norton’s case, the nearing completion of his PhD.

The concert ended with Clouds of Clarification by Robert Carl. Given my adoration for the book and movie “Cloud Atlas,” it was difficult to extract my mind from that world. Carl explained before the performance that the piece included four movements played without break: water, earth, wind and fire. After a stately opening, the first high note not belonging to the equal temperament was jarring like a shard of glass. The aquatic movement came off like water dripping from stalactites, and had a distinctly crystalline feel. The music split the difference between pentatonic and whole tone scales as it moved into the earth movement, lumbering across the keys. Upon reaching the air movement, Aron’s hands looked like birds flitting on the keyboard, and it was reminiscent of Olivier Messiaen’s bird pieces. Nearing the end, each low thwomp in the bass was ear cleansing relief between microtonal clusters, like healing a burn from the fire movement. My favorite part of the piece was watching the composer react to Aron’s portrayal. He knew every note he wrote; this piece, like everything he has written, is his child, and he was infectiously joyous hearing it realized. I believe most of audience felt his enthusiasm, and I hope all may be as enthusiastic as microtonal music when they encounter it.

Free show alert(s): Abagail Fischer at the Hammer, Aron Kallay and Rafael Liebich at my house

Yep, you read that right. New ClassicLA is having a house party. This Friday at 8, Aron Kallay and Rafael Liebich will be premiering piano pieces by Ben Phelps, Jason Barabba, and yours truly (along with a few other locals) at my house apartment in Santa Monica. I’ll also be opening the first bottle of my homemade amber ale (fingers crossed that carbonation is going as it should), and I believe a friend is bringing up a keg of something awesome that he made too. And Jason has agreed to make some kind of cakes, which I can tell you from personal experience will be utterly delicious. But yeah, the music! It’s going to be killer, and nice and loud, and you should come. I’m not so hot on posting my address on here, so email newclassicla@gmail.com and I’ll send it to you.

Then, Saturday, at 3:00 pm (more than enough time to get the shrimp omelette at Literati on the way over from my couch), Abagail Fischer presents ABSYNTH at the Hammer as a part of wild Up‘s residency there. Here’s the info from the facebook event page:

ABSYNTH is a constantly evolving multi-media program for electronics and voice, conceived by mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer and directed by wild Up founder Christopher Rountree. Hailed as “riveting” (New York Times) and “sumptuous” (Boston Globe), Ms. Fischer makes her premiere performance in Los Angeles here. This program will include commissioned works by Nico Muhly, Caleb Burhans, Kevin McFarland, Florent Ghys, and interspersed by other works by Missy Mazzoli, Wes Matthews, Kurt Weill, Milton Babbitt, and more. Richard Valitutto will assist on keyboards.

ABSYNTH has been performed in varying lengths since 2007, in locales from John Zorn’s Lower East Side venue- the Stone, to Brooklyn’s Galapagos Art Space, presented by American Opera Projects.

For more info http://wildup.la/events/chamber-music-abigail-fischer-absynth/