these are the tears of things…
It was merely a week ago that I made another visit to a Green Umbrella show with my husband at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. I was gleaming with excitement at the prospect of being able to review the LA Phil New Music Group for the first time, especially with the traction that California Festival has gained in recent months. However, two days later, I received word that my grandmother had passed away, merely a week before I was planning to visit her in rural Taiwan. And so, I find myself writing to you from an empty cafe in Taipei, set to a gentle drizzle near my childhood home. Right now, my heart is heavy with love & sorrow, my mind racing with core memories. Everywhere I look I see her smile, I hear her voice. As an immigrant child, I cannot help but share a sliver of what I feel after missing every one of my grandparents in their final moments. Though many of you have never met her, I can only hope you will remember her as you remember your own.
As I begin to process everything these past two weeks have offered, I am having a hard time forgetting the glistening sounds of heaven in Sunt Lacrimae Rerum (these are the tears of things) written by Dylan Mattingly. From classic literary passages of The Aeneid, Mattingly was able to capture the totality of human experience through the universality of tears, illustrating the beginnings & ends of life through a palette unlike any other composer I have encountered. Written for two prepared pianos & two harps slightly detuned and estranged from one another, one could hear a powerful semblance of traditional Gamelan music through the ancient metals of gangsa & kemanak and the transcendental strings of siter & rebab. The piece began with the two pianists, Joanne Pearce Martin & Vicky Ray tiptoeing in pointillistic, Ravel-like fashion, only to be joined by Emily Levin & Julie Smith Phillips strumming low, pentatonic chords on their bright red harps, inviting us to let go of all of our inhibitions and to feel everything we are capable of ever feeling. In Mattingly’s own words, “these are not tears of sorrow – or at least not sorrow alone. These are the tears of everything, of the everythingness present in each moment, the superabundance of life’s experience, an understanding which we fear overwhelming us should we turn towards it too often. These are the tears of life’s entirety…”.
And as these tears continue to unfold & unravel, more of our collective experience continues to reveal itself through the organic fraying of microtonality found in nature. Our bodies gently ascend into the twilight, while our ears quietly submerge into a toy piano lullaby. Martin & Ray do a marvelous job at hypnotizing & pacifying the crowd like the dream mobile I once had under my crib, only to be awakened by a sudden recall of the very beginning, a reminder of the inevitability of death and the promise of peace in the afterlife. As Levin & Phillips renter the scene, they build into an immovable mass of sound, steadying with lifting volume yet tangling itself with polyrhythmic complexity. Finally, the last chord strikes, as if we have reached the end of time, a new beginning, and our ears are coated with the everlasting reverberation of heaven’s gates, a moment of nirvana that can only be experienced in the acoustic & visual spectacle that is Disney Hall.
Before the audience has long to think, our ears perk up as like meerkats to the sound of little branches splitting in the quiet. Like most pieces, our percussionists Matthew Howard & Joseph Pereira are placed in the back of the ensemble for Sketches of Chaparral, composed by my wonderful colleague M.A. Tiesenga, but it is no coincidence they are the first & last to be heard in this piece. We see Vimbayi Kaziboni on the podium motion to them with not much else happening, encouraging us to the edge of our seats. Though I’m well acquainted with this music (Tiesenga has composed a piece for me in the past) I truly did not know what to expect. We start to hear those same ordinary branches ruminating, coalescing with metal, accompanied by gristly sul ponticello gestures from Ted Botsford on the bass. Our attention is redirected to indeterminate wind gusts in the form of air shooting through woodwind instruments, a recall of the psithurism I used to experience on long picturesque walks with my grandmother. We are treated to fleeting overtone glimmers, like morning sunlight peaking through leaves, brushes rubbing on the head of a bass drum, with wood knocks & sounds of bowed cymbals scattered all across. As a fearless multidisciplinary artist, Tiesenga has this uncanny ability to turn something as mundane as a branch into a motif, a bush into a concept, a biome into a hand-sketched graphic score, and an intangible feeling into a masterclass in chance music.
Growing up in a place like Taiwan, I was surrounded by nature that was incredibly vivid & larger than life. The landscape was luxuriously saturated from rain, forests as dense as the weather, with delicious tropical fruits found in abundance. So when I moved to the states, I too had my reservations on the biodiversity of California’s chaparral landscape, one that I have now come to love. It is true that these bushes of great variety, seemingly ordinary, are the ones that protect us from the constant threat of wildfires and preserve the delicate balance going as we struggle with climate change going forward. As Kaziboni calmly takes us through numbered sections of the graphic score like a wise steward of the land, we are offered glimpses of the multifaceted character of the chaparral biome through the deliberate choices of each individual sound maker. I can think of no better way to highlight California Festival than this heartwarming homage to nature and the indigenous land that provide us all with everything we could possibly need and so much more.
Perhaps the most interesting component of this experience is the pleasant coexistence of aleatoric gestures with beautifully written solo melodies that hint at the cultivators of this land. Though conflict is natural, we can really feel the harmonious relationship between living beings and their respective surrounding through expressivity of solos from Bing Wang on the violin, Robert deMaine on cello, to Catherine Karoly on flute. While these solos were played in a virtuosic manner, they were still highly attuned to the sounds & gestures of the environment around them, never to disturb or disrupt. This is a masterful reflection that is seldom offered in a place like this. From the stillness of the desert to the magic of the night, the turmoil of our climate to the contemplative nature of California’s history, Tiesenga wears their heart on their sleeve with an exquisite premiere of Sketches of Chaparral.
Writing this has been nothing less than transformative for me as I embark on a new journey of healing. Through the lessons of intention & care from Tiesenga to the wisdoms of life & embrace from Mattingly, I can only hope to see the many truths that will reveal a path forward. And for you, not only do I wish you could hear the sounds that remain, I hope you will have the chance to say all there is to say to those you love dearly. these are the tears of things…
Chaparral and Interstates: New Music from California
LA Phil New Music Group
Nov 14, 2023
Walt Disney Concert Hall (111 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012)