Posts by Richard An
nc.la at Noon 2 Midnight
As luck would have it, at least three of our writers independently ended up at the LA Phil Noon 2 Midnight marathon festival last weekend, and a fourth (Violet Dream) performed as part of the Isaura Quartet (my favorite complete set of the day). Huge congrats to Violet, and here are some of our highlights:
Richard An: Vicki Ray has known and worked with Annea Lockwood for decades, and it is perhaps due to that familiarity that produces an intense, fiery performance of Lockwood’s Jitterbug, with a skillful combination of intention and ease. Wesley Sumpter was once a Resident Fellow at the LA Phil and now performs regularly with the orchestra as a de-facto member of the percussion section; at scarcely 30 years old, Sumpter steps up to the task of matching up with these two fixtures of new music in Lockwood and Ray. A luxurious field recording of natural sounds provide a bed of material on top of which Ray and Sumpter are free to trade gestures. A masterful performance, and my favorite of the roughly 6 hour span that I was present.
Jack Herscowitz: Among the highlights of the day was saxophonist, composer, and producer Josh Johnson’s solo set for saxophone and electronics, Unusual Object: which shares the same name as his most recent solo album. Johnson’s prodigious playing and pedalboard mastery commanded the attention of the entire lobby, stopping departing concert goers (from the recently finished Doug Aitken, Lightscape premiere) dead in their tracks. The smile and awe painted on my face throughout Johnson’s set is a testament to the magic that everyone in that room surely felt. And that delicious harmonizer pedal…
Anuj Bhutani: I’ve wanted to see Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra for a long time, and seeing them close out the main stage felt like the perfect first experience, as their very presence on the stage felt poetic after the day’s programming. From the very first solo to the riotous ending with the entire audience clapping along with the on-stage dancers, PAPA had the audience totally enraptured.
newclassic monthly #5: november 2024 – the “scene”
The “scene” I’m referring to is the one directly served by this website; the contemporary classical / experimental new music community of Los Angeles. It is the scene in which I found many of my friends, which produces the music I’m most passionate about, both of which I’m trying to serve with my work, including this website, my new music series, my ensemble, my studio, and my non-profit organization.
In order to better understand my place in the community, I’m reading a couple things about “the scene;” Michael Matsuno’s “New Music Ambassadors to the World: A Biography of the California E.A.R. Unit”, Andrew Kluth’s “A Study of the Los Angeles DIY Experimental Music Scene: Reflections on the Promise of the Possible” and the book pictured, Dorothy Lamb Crawford’s biography on the series formerly called Evenings on the Roof, now named “Monday Evening Concerts.” The thoughts below reflect an incomplete reading of the material, yet were/are crucial in shaping these thoughts into, ideally, something actionable. As I keep reading, I find myself thinking about certain aspects of “the scene.”
This calendar directly serves the visibility of events in the contemporary classical / experimental sphere in order to, in broad strokes, get more people to these shows. Given the ad hoc, DIY, underfunded and volunteer nature of these events, there is no central repository or database for these kinds of things in Los Angeles. Most new music series don’t have 10 month “seasons” laid out by August. This calendar is not and can not be a perfectly updated source of all these events, especially given the “rhizomatic” nature of the communities of Los Angeles (this word is used by Kluth in his dissertation and I quite like it).
Los Angeles sprawls, and the venues which host these events are spread apart and can be difficult to get to. Even those on the east side that are relatively well served by the Metro are difficult to find; the original building which housed the wulf had patrons “buzz unit 203” to enter, a similar sign you’ll now see taped to the lobby entrance of Oracle Egg, a space which serves a similar function, crowd and location since the wulf‘s closing (less than two miles as the crow flies).
2220 Arts & Archives, one of the larger and better funded venues of this type has no signage on the outside; its main parking lot still references the Bootleg Theatre, a previous venue at the same location which closed in 2021. Betalevel is infamous for its directions asking patrons “to take a right at the dumpster” to find the venue. My own studio doesn’t do much better; despite the label on the door, the address you type into GPS takes you to the taqueria it shares the building with, leading many patrons to knock on their kitchen access door instead of mine. Koreatown’s Monkspace, the Arts District’s FRANKIE and DTLA’s Coaxial have no signage at all. At least half of these venues have no designated parking lots. Non Plus Ultra doesn’t even have an address.
Some of this is, undoubtedly, pragmatic; Automata fits 50 if you’re lucky, Betalevel is a basement, and I cap attendance in events in my studio at 35. Keeping the active community small means that the events will likely never need to relocate from their current small, inexpensive homes and can continue to present events at a low cost. It also means that the people who do attend will be kept safer. Introducing friction, or at least, not taking steps to alleviate the difficulty of getting to, finding, and attending these events, seems to intentionally cap the active community at a certain amount.
There are very valid criticisms to this; we joke amongst ourselves about playing to the same room of 20 people, and so many new pieces are played once and never again. We believe in this music, but documenting and archiving these events are a low priority for many of those who run it, so the only people who will hear a spectacular piece of music are the 30 people who were there.
But at the same time, is this something that needs a solution at all? The often inaccessible (read: noisy) aesthetics of this music itself eschews broader commercial appeal, so certainly no one’s going to get rich off of ticket sales. An underground scene, by definition, doesn’t attempt to appeal to the widest audience, it serves a counter-culture. This music historically functions outside of (American) university and institutional oversight, though 50 years of CalArts musicians and recent Noons tos Midnights might argue otherwise. And the standout music of an underground scene will find its broader audience anyway; you can listen to Hanatarash on Spotify, for fuck’s sake.
There are other things we should undoubtedly improve first (not all venues are ADA compliant, and most of the music is, to put it one way, Eurological). The very purpose of this calendar seem to point towards inviting broader audiences, but I am just as complicit in “gatekeeping” as much as anyone. Last month, a musician rented my studio for a (private) event and asked why I didn’t put out a sandwich board so that people could find the studio easier. I felt the instinctive pull towards saying “the people who want to find it, will” and that didn’t really sit right with me.
To be clear, I love playing in living rooms, or in venues where there are more people on stage than there are in the audience. The fact that most of these people are my friends mean that I always have someone to talk to at these events. But as someone who is, like all of you, a person in this community, I feel like I have a duty to make sure new people hear this music. I am continually trying to make that happen; to that effect, check out the calendar and attend events in November and bring a friend. 🙂
Further (related) reading in Marianna Ritchey’s “Composing Capital,” Michael C Heller’s “Loft Jazz,” and more.
newclassic monthly #4: october 2024 – what we’ve been listening to
Jeremy Rosenstock’s anti-crystalline (2024, Falt)
Jeremy Rosenstock’s anti-crystalline, released digitally and on tape via Falt, amplifies the ghostly static hidden within deceptively voiceless volcanic materials. The tape features a composition on each side: “anti-crystalline,” a three-movement percussion trio for snare drums and obsidian as the A-side, and “post-crystalline,” a patient and coarse electronic track as its B-side. In “anti-crystalline,” Rosenstock employs the snare drum for what it is: a resonator. Yet, this transparent approach begets a beautifully opaque result, clouding scraped obsidian in a gossamer mist reminiscent of electronic processing. These electro-acoustic phantoms float naturally into the record’s electronic B-side, a brain-massaging realization of where our imaginations had wandered during “anti-crystalline.” The silences throughout the A-side remind us to listen just a little bit closer to the ostensibly static materials around us. So hold up that rock a little closer to your ear; you might be surprised with what you can hear.
Jack Herscowitz
Cassia Streb and Tim Feeney – Betwixt (2024, Harmonic Ooze Records)
I’ve heard Tim and Cassia perform together a number of times in LA, scraping and bowing and stacking and activating small objects on a table. This record is a culmination/combination/realization of their continued work together over a year or so, and I’m excited to hear that my favorite material (throwing keys on the floor) made the cut. Very lowercase (RIP Steve Roden) but that doesn’t mean it’s quiet; once you’ve acclimated to a single scraping sound, a box of ball bearings rattling feels gigantic.
Richard An
Marnie Stern – This Is It & I Am It & You Are It & So Is That & He Is It & She Is It & It Is It & That Is That
Not exactly a new release, but someone recently recommended going through Zach Hill’s enormous discography and clicking a random thing to listen to, which is how I landed on this album. Since then (two days ago) I’ve worked through nearly her entire excellent discography but there’s nothing quite like how this album opens. Comparisons to Deerhoof and the ILYs are obvious but true; also Melt-Banana and Pom Poko.
Shreddy, mathy, guitary.
Richard An
newclassic monthly #3 (2024-25 Los Angeles season preview!): september 2024
the monthlies will be bi- until richard’s morale work ethic improves (sorry!!)
it’s press release season! i’ve asked the nc.la writers to talk about of some of the upcoming concerts they’re excited about. L.A.’s social and cultural diversity extends to the kinds of music you can hear, even within the relatively narrow genre specializations of nc.la, so there’s something for everyone’s brand of “weird” music.
Jack Herscowitz: Los Angeles always provides in its breadth of musical offerings. Among my most anticipated concerts are: the legendary composer Annea Lockwood at Zebulon 9/13/24, psychedelic noise duo Yellow Swans at Zebulon 9/29/24, Chicago-based composer/sound artist Olivia Block at 2220 Arts and Archives 10/12/24, Tuesdays at Monk Space presenting the music of composer/trumpet Wadada Leo Smith on 2/11/25, and rumours of a to be announced performance of Sarah Hennies’ Thought Sectors via Monday Evening Concerts. (note from the editor: keep your eyes peeled, this information is out soon)
Anuj Bhutani: I can’t wait for LA Phil’s “Noon to Midnight: Field Recordings” curated by Pulitzer-Prize winner Ellen Reid, which is also part of the Getty’s landmark PST Art festival happening all year long. The festival promises “live performances and art installations activating every corner of the Walt Disney Concert Hall campus” with an emphasis on field recordings, along with food trucks and a beer garden! (note from the editor: Anuj is being humble, he has a show on Tuesdays at Monk Space coming up in April!)
Mason Moy: The last time I was at 2220 Arts was to see Baltimore-based justly-intuned math-rock hyphen-friendly band Horse Lords. I will be returning on October 12 to see Olivia Block perform music from her most recent release, The Mountains Pass. I’ve been lucky to experience some of her multi-channel work, but excited to see her perform live with Jon Meuller and Paige Naylor.
Richard An: It goes without saying that I’m stoked for Monday Evening Concerts‘ 85th and Piano Spheres‘ 30th seasons, both of which are celebrating their milestones with big concerts, commissions, and guest artists. High Desert Soundings always deserves some attention (their opening/fundraising event is tonight). The LA Phil’s Noon to Midnight is back, as mentioned by Anuj, and is also hosting an Unsuk Chin-curated “Seoul Festival;” I myself only recognize a few names on this list, so it’ll be good to become acquainted with a community of composers and new music performers that I’m not familiar with.
thanks for reading! here are some cats i hung out with recently
newclassic monthly #2 (a letter from the editor): july 2024
i like setting expectations at an achievable level; i think i did that here by starting a monthly series then promptly forgetting to do the second month. sorry!
i just flew back from new york where I attended a music educator conference, and in 10 days I’m heading back out to massachusetts to attend the Bang on a Can Summer Festival; it’s an unusual amount of summer activity for me, since the last time i flew on a plane was in 2019. since i spent a lot of time on planes and in airports, I’ve been checking out a lot of new releases, so I decided to write up a series of mini reviews; new-ish releases in the contemporary-classical/improvised/experimental sphere that you should be aware of. not strictly ordered but the ones at the top are great.
Tashi Wada – What is Not Strange?
instrumental, art pop/post rock, slowly evolving textures while somehow largely inhabiting the 4-5 minute “song” track length. the synth work is awesome, particularly on track 2 “Grand Trine.”
Yarnwire – Currents Vol. 9
the yarnwire currents series showcases their incredible body of commissions over more than a decade, including and especially the layered textures in “Pitiless as the Sun” by Jordan Dykstra, which draws comparisons to the yarnwire commissions from Klaus Lang and Øyvind Torvund, which are also personal favorites. nothing is bad on this album, nothing is less than great, even.
Leilehua Lanzilotti – the sky in our hands, our hands in the sky
wollschleger’s on my mind since i just performed’s scott’s “american dream” last month but the parts i love about these pieces remind of the writing in “american dream;” repeated gestures at varying tempi, pitch bent percussion, teasing unisons with strings, and glacially paced piano. the muted flowerpot(?) on “sending messages” is incredibly captivating; i could listen to that alone for 45 minutes.
Scott Wollschleger – Between Breath
tasty string writing and terrifying trombone sounds. after living inside his “american dream” i’ve come to know scott’s musical language pretty well, “Between Breath” seems to “run” more, with fewer interruptions between sections
Caroline Shaw / Sō Percussion – Rectangles and Circumstance
pretty nice; scratches the ‘tigue’ itch (i miss you tigue)
tristan perich – Open Symmetry
it does what you’d expect a tristan perich piece for 3 vibraphones and 20-channel 1-bit electronics to do. if you’re not into it, it can feel same-y. if you’re into it like i am, it’s exactly what you want.
and here are some releases i didn’t get to, but will this coming month; i do have at least another 12 hours on planes to look forward to
Sarah Hennies – Motor Tapes
fuubutsushi – meridians
rhodri davies – Telyn Wrachïod
lucy liyou – +82 K-Pop Star
SAWYER’s newest batch
chris cohen – paint a room
thanks for reading!
newclassic monthly #1: may 2024
dear nc.la readers,
hello! trying out a new monthly write-up of some of our favorite listens for the previous month; some are new releases, some not.
Leslie Ting – What Brings You In (2024, People Places Records)
a dutiful introspection of self through a vicious swirl of suspension & outpour, pressed in a rare format of both stereo & binaural versions; eventually, it paralyzes into a stasis of vulnerability & honesty, which we could all use a little more of in this moment…this album isn’t quite a substitute for therapy, but it’s close.
Violet Tang
Alessandro Rovegno – Everything Loose is Traveling (2024, self released)
Alessandro Rovegno’s, Everything Loose is Traveling re-appropriates nostalgia as a tender ephemerality: forgoing romanticized mush for glitchy field recordings, stuttering synths, and fragmented melodies. The past is neither idealized nor lost, but a phantom stream flowing alongside the present. Rovegno invites us to take a dip under a mid-September’s sun.
Jack Herscowitz
Shuttle358 – Field (2018, 12k)
Recently, I’ve been relistening to an old favorite of mine that I hadn’t spent time with in a long while. I first discovered “Field” by Shuttle358 (aka Dan Abrams) while working a summer job at the UT Austin library back in 2018, just by chance. It’s one of my all time favorites. Each track sounds quite simple at first blush, but every time I sit down and really listen closely, there’s always something new to discover. He creates these simple yet intricate worlds of sound that you can dive into and get completely lost in if you wish. My favorite track from the album is “edule”. It’s a bit of an oddball, because Shuttle358 takes a synth solo about halfway through. An interesting oddity that doesn’t really occur much in the rest of his body of work.
Eric Lennartson
Erykah Badu – But You Caint Use My Phone (2015, Motown and Control Freaq)
I’ve been hooked on “but you caint use my phone” (mixtape) by erykah badu ever since I saw it in a Kyle Abraham piece last month at the Music Center. It’s such a fascinating, fun, and groovy concept album.
Anuj Bhutani
I recently met the producer who did the Atmos upmixes for a bunch of Frank Sinatra recordings, and they are unbelievable sounding. I was into Sinatra as a teenager, and it’s been rad to revisit these songs. Start with Come Fly With Me, and get yourself a pair of headphones that can handle binaural properly before you do.
Nick Norton
WildUp and LACO explore the composer-curator model in a weekend of performances
Last Friday, I drove through a brisk Beverly Hills evening to get to TreePeople, an environmentalist center located deep in the Hollywood Hills. Later I would learn that TreePeople had existed for fifty years in Los Angeles, planting thousands of trees in fire-stricken areas in southern California, but it was my, and many others’ first time there. Not unlike WildUp’s previous co-productions with floating at the Audubon Center, this event placed a chamber-sized configuration of WildUp in an atypical concert setting; the audience set up chairs, blankets and yoga mats beneath trees surrounding a performance space, two chairs and a table staged against a now pitch black Los Angeles skyline. I claimed a spot on the dirt as Mattie Barbier and Ashley Walters began playing Barbier’s no dirt to call for prepared brass and cello. Alternating long tones from both instrumentalists dovetailed into one another, reveling in the delicate composite texture of hair-on-string and reed-on-brass; I hope I mentioned that Barbier outfitted their euphonium with (what looks like) a saxophone mouthpiece in place of the standard euphonium mouthpiece. Barbier’s score explored the limits of this construction, dancing on the razor’s edge of playability, each sound seemingly a Herculean task of balance as the two halves of the instrument, built without considering the other, were coerced to play together. Walters provided a dependable but equally considered counterpoint, an anchor for the more delicate brass tones to blend into.
Mattie Barbier performed the other two pieces on the program solo: Ellen Arkbro’s Chords for brass and fixed media electronics, and a performance of Phil Niblock’s A Trombone Piece which was presented for solo trombone and pre-recorded trombone choir. The latter was offered as a tribute to the composer, as Niblock had passed earlier this month, and had had a large impact on Barbier’s music making from an early age. Both pieces were singular, loud, encompassing, and unrelenting; I (admiringly) use the word “indulgent” for this music, pieces which pick a compelling musical idea and insist on it for its entire duration. After the show a light rain started to fall, and I listened to its continuous thrum on the roof of my car as I drove home.
By Saturday, the drizzle had evolved into a downpour as I fought Long Beach traffic to get to the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) for CURRENT: [INTI]MATE, an evening of chamber music curated by inti figgis-vizueta, a composer whose recent music has Carnegie, Spoleto and REDCAT under the hands of the Attacca Quartet, American Composers Orchestra, and Andrew Yee. The program weaves together music from composers of the Latine diaspora, including arrangements of Violeta Parra’s Anticuecas, culminating in a new work from the curator herself. These were the highlights of the program; a clear love of melody is evident in the folkloric Anticuecas, and an equally strong affinity for texture and timbre are present in figgis-vizeuta, Negrón and Balter’s selections. The arrangements were clever, and the program’s structure (loosely alternating older and newer pieces) worked well.
The presentation was marred by some other circumstances; the guitar was curiously unamplified, and the pieces with electronics were imaged oddly (they were played through small pre-installed speakers in the gallery drop ceiling). Half-concert and half-gala, quiet sections of music were interrupted by attendees getting up to get food and wine, rain-soaked shoes squeaking across the slick floor. These are perhaps the necessary growing pains of a new series foregrounding contemporary music in new curatorial models, in untraditional venues which eschew the admittedly sometimes-stifling, sometimes-confusing standard concert etiquette. Though I know I’m comparatively sensitive to extraneous noises, and some hiccups are bound to happen in any concert environment, it’s just a bit of a shame when they affect how the music is presented.
That said, both events are demonstrative of a curatorial model that I enjoy; an organization putting time and resources behind a young contemporary musician in untraditional ways. Other Los Angeles new music organizations like Synchromy and Monday Evening Concerts have done the same, to recent successes, and I hope others continue to follow suit.
For more information about these events:
https://endless-season.wildup.org/2023-24/event/barbier-arkbro/
this may be the most ethically compromised review you’ll ever read: Yarn/Wire at FRANKIE presented by Monday Evening Concerts
Yarn/Wire is a quartet composed of two percussionists (Sae Hashimoto and Russell Greenberg) and two pianists (Laura Barger and Julia Den Boer). They presented two beautiful concerts earlier this month in large warehouse space FRANKIE in the Arts District, presented by Jonathan Hepfer and Monday Evening Concerts.
Yarn/Wire is also my favorite chamber ensemble. I have attended their summer Institute twice. I have my own 2pno/2perc ensemble based largely on the work they’ve done, taking advantage of their large commissioned body of work. I have another mostly-piano ensemble in which ALL of the members have attended the Institute. They have played my music, and I have played theirs.
I also work (as Associate Producer) for Monday Evening Concerts, the longest running new music ensemble in Los Angeles, about to enter its 85th year, and helped produce these programs (and run live sound). I’ve known Jonathan Hepfer from our overlapping stays at CalArts, since 2017.
Though I’ve never made any claims otherwise, I feel like it’s only right that I tell you that this may be the most ethically compromised review you’ll ever read. I tend to get involved with lots of new music orgs here in Los Angeles, so to find a concert that I’m completely agnostic to is a bit of a challenge. But even so, it’s almost funny to find myself this intertwined in a production.
So, in order to ease any (assuredly mostly self-directed) claims of unfair bias, the format of this review will need to change. Instead of offering an opinion, I’ll take you through a bit of my day as I work through the two concerts.
The audience were seated in a round, surrounding the ensemble, with speakers at the perimeter of the room facing inward, and around the ensemble facing outward. The first concert began with a work by Tyondai Braxton in which (in its recorded version) it is difficult to discern who is playing what, when, and where. Its title gives you hints (“music for ensemble and pitch shifter/delay”) and when seen live (here in a rare performance and its West Coast premiere), you can see how much the electronics are playing with the ensemble – not under, or against. The program notes (which hilariously are written by me) note how the live processing fills in the gaps horizontally (hocketing against the instrumentalists) and vertically (filling in registers, especially low ones, that the musicians themselves are not playing). I love the ambiguity of what is “played” and what is processed in the recorded version of this piece, and my goal as the live sound engineer in presenting it was to try to replicate that experience for the audience that would most likely be hearing it for the first time.
After a moment for applause, the piano lids were closed with small microphones placed inside; Sarah Davachi’s “Feedback Studies for Percussion” relies on the performers’ ability to manually balance their own sounds constructed by overtone reinforcement and acoustic feedback, aided secondarily by the microphones at each instrument. The closed piano lids create an acoustic chamber, in which certain resonant frequencies are encouraged to gather by the size and shape of the open space in the pianos. This, combined with the ringing metals played by the percussionists, creates a composite mass of sound that, at its best, is just on the edge of spilling over into “too much.” The performance functions on multiple parameters of this feeling of “spilling over”; I was told, as the live sound engineer, to push the sound as loud as I could before feeding back. The performers are doing this ‘manually’ as well, using their ears and pacing sensibilities to keep the machine whirring without letting the built up energy expire or crest too quickly. There is even a physical analogue to this in the ringing metals; gongs and some other large metal idiophones have a kinetic actuation point; you hit it a little too hard, and overtones spill out of the instrument and the quality of the sound changes drastically. There is a feeling of control, balance and sustain, coupled somehow non-paradoxically with a sense of “leaning forward” through its roughly 20-minute run time.
Andrew McIntosh’s “Little Jimmy” closes the program, a delicately constructed piece obituarizing the trees in and around the Little Jimmy campsite in the Angeles National Forest on Mt. Islip. The field recordings used in the piece are part of the collective memory of Little Jimmy which burned in the 2020 Bobcat Fire; the psithurism here is one of few ways left to experience the trees (that word is “the sound of the wind through leaves”, a word I must have picked up from from McIntosh himself). “Little Jimmy” loves high metals and scraped stones, pairing them alternatingly with a marching 16th note piano statement, and bowed metals. The piece exists in a mirror form, at the heart of which sits a slowly-unfolding hum of bowed piano which grows over ten minutes into a roar, with Yarn/Wire wailing on bell plates and the lowest notes on the piano. After the dust settles, we think we hear birds and the wind through the trees again. The field recordings exist sometimes at the edge of audibility; before the concert, I asked McIntosh how I should balance the field recordings to the quartet, to which he said “like it’s a quintet” and walked away.
The second concert began two hours after the sunlight had left the room; the large globe lights above the audience were dimmed, the centre lights completely shut off, with four paper lanterns added surrounding the ensemble to provide local light. The atmosphere seemed to pull the audience in closer to listen to the first piece of the second program, Klaus Lang’s “Molten Trees.” This is a favorite Yarn/Wire commission of mine; superballed bass drums punctuated by antiphonal claves is just somehow a perfect sound. It begins the piece, which then gives way to a forest of triangles, then a continual exploration of sustained sounds. The warbling of a vibraphone motor, the hum of an e-bow on piano string, the hammering chords on a piano all work to create a cloth of different textures; the sections of “Molten Trees” change slowly enough to draw your attention into the details, how the rhythm of one sustain is just barely faster than the other. How the chime attacks blend together smoothly while the drier piano material continues to run on top. Somehow, in glacially moving chunks of sound, each interaction between instrumentalists creates a vibrant composite inner rhythm. Then, click, claves return. It is an unbelievably effective marker of a recapitulation; it is a little baffling at how much like “home” that material feels after listening to sound masses of different densities and textures for twenty minutes.
Sarah Hennies’ “Primers” closes both the program, and Yarn/Wire’s residency in Los Angeles. The program note, which, again, sorry, was written by me, explains: “Primers, like much of Sarah Hennies’ music of this time, is constructed in clean, discrete durational blocks which intersect, overlap, interrupt and dovetail. A hocketing musical gesture in one half of the ensemble persists, unchangingly, yet somehow still feels vibrant when the other half interrupts three minutes later. Frankly a masterwork in pacing and structure, Primers is simultaneously placid and rapid, slow and frenetic, unchanging yet continuously evolving. Primers invites both detailed listening and zoning out, and delivers a musical line which simultaneously intrigues, perplexes and captivates the listener.“ Yet another West Coast premiere (the fourth of the night), this piece was foundational to the programming of the evening since the very beginning of the production cycle; other pieces were added and stricken from the list, but Hennies was included since day one, months ago. My program note gives away some of my incredulity at the effective simplicity of the material, the piece works remarkably well; perhaps because of its simple construction, not in spite of it. The same musical material persists unchangingly for minutes at a time, giving you just enough time to wonder what’s coming next, yet still shock when it does.
I heard a few concert-goers expound afterwards, with the recurring thought that putting Hennies and Lang on the same program may have been a programming error, and may have taxed the audience with its similarities. To me, this pairing was brilliant; both pieces share an affection for long stretches of material, registral extremes, and love of dry, percussive events. However, its shared characteristics may cloud each piece’s strong individual identities; where one stays on a single sound for minutes at a time, the other constantly morphs through added layers. Where one revels in continuous gridded rhythm, the other explores motion through dovetailing lines of music. The friction in this juxtaposition shows you how different two pieces with the same ingredients could be; the push of two opposing magnets that you know should belong together, I mean they look the same, don’t they?
YARN / WIRE – ‘MOLTEN TREES’
GUEST ENSEMBLE RESIDENCY
TWO PROGRAMS :
DECEMBER 9, 2023 | 4PM and 8PM
at FRANKIE, LOS ANGELES | 300 S MISSION RD, 90033
https://www.mondayeveningconcerts.org/
https://www.yarnwire.org/
An interview with Aperture Duo (Adrianne Pope and Linnea Powell)
Ahead of their August 22 concert at Monk Space, premiering pieces by Jessie Marino and Thomas Kotcheff, I asked Pope and Powell a few “why” questions about the music, themselves, and what it means to play everything but your instrument.
Richard: Why Jessie Marino?
One of the most enjoyable performances I’ve seen in the last couple of years is your performance of ‘Rot Blau’ by Jessie Marino, which I can’t imagine many people have performed besides Marino’s own ‘On Structure’ duo with Natacha Diels. You’ve performed this piece several times, and notably, you don’t play any instruments in it. There is something captivating enough about this piece that compels you two to eschew your traditional instrumental practice, and to pick up red and blue wigs instead.
Indoctrinate the reader into the Church of Marino!
Aperture Duo: (on Rot Blau and taking risks)
We’re so glad you enjoyed it! Some of our favorite memories on stage have been during Rot Blau performances. It’s a feat to learn the piece, and so unbelievably fun to perform it.
We decided to learn Rot Blau at a time when we were in between commissions and looking to find pre-existing repertoire for our upcoming season. But there was (and still is!) only a limited amount of rep for the violin and viola duo ensemble, and we were ready to think outside the box. We were no strangers to pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones – we regularly perform new works that utilize tons of extended techniques – so we were excited to take the leap and learn a piece that was completely off of our instruments. Not only does Rot Blau utilize props, lights, wigs, and gloves, it is written in an entirely new musical notation for body percussion and choreography.
And through learning Rot Blau, we became better chamber musicians. Back on our instruments everything from cueing, to our internal pulse, to body communication, to rehearsal techniques was all incredibly strengthened. It’s amazing what happens when you strip away the instrument that you’ve played for 25ish years!
AD: (on Jessie Marino, Murder Ballads, and commissioning new works)
What we love about Jessie as a composer is not only her creative musical language, but the way she throws herself fully into her conceptual ideas. So it was a no-brainer to ask her if she’d like to write us a piece. We had no idea that she’d write anything like Murder Ballads – you really never know what you’re going to get with a commission, the mystery is part of the fun!
Murder Ballads is a song cycle that combines experimental soundscapes, traditional Sacred Harp hymns, and Appalachian folk ballads. It’s by far the most singing while playing that we’ve ever done. And in a way, Murder Ballads feels like a perfect evolution from Rot Blau. Where Rot Blau requires perfection for its choreography and timing, Murder Ballads is written to be imperfect. We are not trained singers, as Jessie knows, and singing while playing is not a perfect science. So, just the way the piece is written requires us to trust each other, to listen like we’ve never listened before, to be vulnerable, and to catch each other in performance. To us, these are the epitome of chamber music skills.
AD: (on Thomas Kotcheff)
Interestingly, when we commissioned Thomas Kotcheff to write us a piece for this concert we specifically asked for an off-instrument piece. Thomas writes fantastic percussion music, so we thought this would be a fun fit. As it turned out, Thomas had something entirely else in mind for us that he was excited to dig into. The piece that he wrote us is not like anything we could have imagined. Not only is it specifically for our instruments, it also has playback, amplification, and has us playing around (literally!) with a few pop culture themes that everyone will know. It’s nostalgic, dreamy, weird, and wild, and we can’t wait to premiere it.
R: Why a duo? Why this duo?
There’s something about playing with exactly one other person that is special; there’s a simplicity of social hierarchy, a direct communication of ideas, and a clear intimacy and immediacy that is lost even when you add even, simply, a third person. In seemingly every aspect of performance, planning, collaborating and rehearsing, I’ve always noticed that you just get shit done as a duo.
Can you describe if and how the dynamic of a “duo” shapes the way you make art together as Aperture?
AD:
We always say that a duo is a conversation. Every moment playing together is an opportunity for listening, reacting, agreeing, disagreeing, questioning, or supporting each other. It’s like having a conversation with your closest friend, and it’s unbelievably rewarding! Performing in a duo requires being present in a way that we haven’t experienced in other chamber ensemble configurations. We each have to bring 50% to the table at all times.
This accountability also spreads to every other aspect of the ensemble, from rehearsal strategies, to concert preparations, programming logistics, and all the nitty gritty details that go into running a chamber group. We each have different strengths – both in performance and on the administrative side – which compliment each other really well. Utilizing our strengths and different skills allows us to divide and conquer in a very compatible way that makes our ensemble sustainable.
R: Why this duo? (violin/viola)
Essentially every chamber ensemble has to reckon with “the past,” a body of work that will always loom over your decision-making in programming, commissioning, the ensembles of your type that exist. This is most true for string quartets, which now has three hundred years of repertoire to reckon with, but this exists even for newer configurations; a group like Yarn/Wire (two pianists and two percussionists), which has a repertoire list almost entirely commissioned and created by themselves, still has Berio, Bartok and Crumb as part of its early canon.
How has the history of violin + viola music affected the way that Aperture operates?
AD: (on Mozart and the duo universe he created)
At first glance, a violin and viola duo seems like it would have a very homogenous sound. The instruments themselves are very similar, so how interesting can a violin and viola duo really be?
When we first began to make music together, we read through the Mozart violin and viola duos. The pieces are well known and well loved, but we didn’t expect them to be so inspiring. As two new music string players who also love traditional repertoire, we thought it would just be a fun experience to read them together. But what we learned is that inside of each of the Mozart duos is an entire string quartet, written for just two people! Nothing is missing, it’s like a compositional magic trick.
Working on the Mozart duos made us realize that anything is possible for two instruments, and made us excited to commission and expand the repertoire for the ensemble. Nine years later we’ve commissioned over fifteen new works that do exactly just that. Not only are they new works for violin and viola, but all of the pieces expand the expectations of what a violin and viola duo can be. Sometimes that means sounding like one instrument, sometimes two, and sometimes four (especially when including our voices!) It’s been a very fun ride and we can’t wait for more new sounds.
Join Aperture Duo (Adrianne Pope, violin and Linnea Powell, viola) in an evening of boundary-pushing new music featuring world premieres by Berlin-based composer Jessie Marino and LA-based composer/pianist Thomas Kotcheff. Join LA’s own Aperture Duo as they explore the shiny, surreal, and sometimes scary depths of chamber music for violin and viola.
7:00pm. Tuesday Aug 22, 2023 at Monk Space (4414 W 2nd St, Los Angeles, CA 90004)
On Maura Tuffy and singers’ “Path of Miracles” by Joby Talbot: “This is about as tight as a non-static choral group of this size could possibly be, performing a work of this size and complexity”
On May 26, 2023, Maura Tuffy led a choir of 17 singers in a full performance of Joby Talbot’s Path of Miracles at All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills.
Joby Talbot’s musical output is eccentric; scores for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Sing adorn his resume, right next to a large number of music for dance, arrangements for pop stars Paul McCartney and Charlotte Gainsbourg, as well as purely ‘concert’ works such as Path of Miracles. Visiting his website, his landing page simply reads “Joby Talbot is a composer of music for concert, stage and screen,” the brevity of which seems to belie the depth at which he is involved with all three.
A single, low, unison note begins in the tenors and basses – who are the only singers seen on stage – its resonance shifting through changes in vowel shape. Another pitch coming from below, then rising through it, begins a pattern that will become clear in just a moment; Talbot is evoking a Shepard tone, an auditory illusion which seems to continually rise without ever ending. From the BBC’s Bang Goes the Theory, “it’s like a barber’s pole of sound.”
The sopranos and altos proclaim from the balcony behind the audience. The crotales, performed by Yuri Inoo, signal the higher voices to join the lower. They walk through the aisles, flanking left and right, until they find their marks. This (and all future) transitions are tightly choreographed; the ensemble occasionally loosens their rigid lines to flex into a slightly different configuration. Without cues, singers depart from the group to form solo quartets, and, at the very end, the singers flank left and right once again, beginning the piece as it started.
On the way, Path of Miracles visits Roncesvalles, Burgos, León and Santiago along the Camino de Santiago, an (in)famous pilgrimage route in the Roman Catholic tradition; some members of the choir and the audience, in a brief pre-concert talk, raised their hands when asked who had made the trek themselves. In some moments, parallel whole tone and octatonic scales evoke Debussy; in others, you can hear a “Dies Irae” melody snuck in.
I must praise Maura Tuffy’s conducting here; full disclosure, Maura and I met in the choral department at USC, and are friends. In a few words, choral conducting is difficult; you need to show clear beats and gestures while making sure singers don’t disengage their breath support, an issue which is usually not present conducting instrumentalists; choral conductors often don’t use batons, seemingly to prioritize the nuance of the hands at the expense of visibility and the “resolution” of beat that the pointed tip of a baton can provide. Compound that with the fact that Maura is often cueing singers she can’t see, behind her head (in the balcony, or flanking the sides of the sanctuary), and you can get an idea of the immensity of the achievement.
In speaking with the singers after the performance, I found that this group put together the nearly-70 minute work in just four rehearsals. This is about as tight as a non-static choral group of this size could possibly be, performing a work of this size and complexity. Maura’s work with the singers is monumental, and readers should look forward to when this group will perform this work next.
Maura Tuffy and Kiyono McDaniel met last year while working together for the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus. With Maura’s affinity for choral conducting, and Kiyono’s ambition for arts development, they have combined their skills to make this performance possible. From fundraising and marketing, to recruiting and rehearsing, Maura and Kiyono have self produced this performance to highlight the beauty that is Path of Miracles.
7:30pm. Friday May 26, 2023