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EXCLUSIVE STREAM: Ian Dicke’s Isla, on A/B Duo’s new record
A/B Duo‘s next album, Variety Show is dropping on October 7, and includes LA composer (okay, we’ll count Riverside because the Outpost Concert Series is awesome) Ian Dicke‘s piece Isla, which has its origin in he and his wife’s old band. And guess what? We’ve got an interview with Ian, and an exclusive stream. Here’s that.
Tell me a bit about the piece on the new A/B Duo record.
When I lived in Austin, I played bass in a band with my wife Elisa Ferrari. We played fairly frequently and were usually paid in all-you-can-drink Lone Stars. We recorded two albums and my piece Isla is a remix of our song “Isla de Niños.” The electronic part includes Elisa’s singing, as well as some of the other instrument parts that pop in sporadically. Much of my work incorporates source material and I really enjoyed writing a new piece around the core of this song.
Composer Ian Dicke
What was it like collaborating with them?
A/B Duo are so much fun to work with! Besides being kickass performers, they are very comfortable with technology and were able to navigate the piece’s intricate setup with ease.
A lot of your works deal with sociopolitical issues. Despite how disheartening recent months have been politically, are you finding a lot to drive your work? Does that ever get tiring for you?
Yes, unfortunately I don’t think I’ll ever run out of abysmal political topics to work with. I suppose part of my attraction to writing programmatic music is cathartic. But as a composer, I believe there are countless artistic impulses hidden within our daily lives and my work focuses on finding new modes of musical expression within these experiences.
In addition to composing, you’re a director of both Fast Forward Austin and UCR’s Outpost Concert Series. How do these roles inform each other?
I actually retired this as a director of FFA this past spring, but…
A composer must be a strong advocate for fellow composers and the musicians who support our work. We cannot simply write pieces and wait for the next commission (well, not me at least!). When we develop projects that do not directly serve ourselves, we discovery a whole new world of things. New audiences, new performer friends, new artists in other disciplines, and so on. Directing a concert series certainly requires a different set of skills, and I have learned a tremendous amount over the years. New music is still (and perhaps will always be) a relatively small community. We all prosper when we create opportunities for each other.
I’m always curious about Austin – what’s the scene there like? Can you compare it with LA a bit?
There is a definite kinship between the two cities. Austin has a vibrant new music scene, but it isn’t over saturated and cliquish like other larger cities. I think LA’s scene also has a welcoming atmosphere and is strangely accessible, even when the city itself often feels like an endless labyrinth of freeways and concrete.
Anything else you’d like to add?
If A/B Duo are coming to your town…go see them! And pick up their new record!
You can do just that at abduomusic.bandcamp.com/album/variety-show.
Review: New Ovation Music presents David Arbury’s Alchemy
Record label New Ovation Music has just completed a modern classical recording project with the Formalist Quartet, nationally acclaimed tenor Kerry Jennings, and other Los Angeles locals on the music of LA-based composer David Arbury. From bottom to top, this showcases the excellence of the Los Angeles music scene. This record features beautiful melodies and lush harmonies. I absolutely recommend headphones and minimal distractions. The recording feels intimate and magical, but you won’t turn iron to gold if you don’t put down your phone.
David Arbury’s aesthetic lies somewhere between Arnold Schoenberg, Franz Schubert, and Iannis Xenakis. This makes sense given his background in music technology, choral composition, and bass and percussion performance. In the notes, Arbury writes, “Alchemy is a collection of music written for different performers in different styles at different times in my life but all of which tries to express a similar idea: that transformation and change are an inherent part of our being no matter our course through life.” This idea of alchemy is evident between works and also within movements of pieces. With each listen, you hear more and deeper connections between the motifs.
The record begins with his second string quartet, performed by the Formalist Quartet. The first movement initially struck me as reminiscent of Schoenberg’s string quartets, but the way the notes ebbed and flowed was unique to Arbury. The second movement is a pleasant change of pace from the push and pull of the first movement. You can almost touch the lush texture of the strings. The third movement features harmonics in a way I have come to expect from John Luther Adams. You can hear the scratching of the bow on the string, making it feel like you the listener are inches from the performer. Everything suddenly changes for the final movement, which sounds like a page from an old Western soundtrack. The notes chase each other up and down, and the performers tap out percussion on the hollow bodies of their instruments. Overall, the full quartet feels like a series of vignettes. Alone they are good. Together they create an unexpected dish better than the sum of its parts.
The next set of the pieces is a song cycle titled “If I Shall Ever Return Home: Seven Chinese Poems” written specifically for tenor Kerry Jennings. Jennings is garnering a lot of attention right now on the international circuit because of his focused energy on performing new works. I admire this work for its Neoromantic feel; Arbury was surely channeling Schubert, Schumann, and Liszt when writing this one. Kerry Jennings’s dulcet voice and Andria Fennig’s expressive piano skills bring the score to life and transport the listener to a simpler, more pastoral world apart from the hustle and bustle of busy LA.
The eponymous track is something different altogether. Two percussionists, Douglas Nottingham and Brett Reed, create strings of motives on various percussion instruments and quilt them together into a tapestry. The enchanting piece is 20 minutes long, but it goes by quickly. This piece is one of the few times words fail me – I want to go on and on about how I hear something different every time I listen, and how the space between the notes is the real music, and how the interplay between timbres makes for a unique sound, but everything I say sounds flat in comparison to what I mean. This is one I will just take the easy way out and say you need to hear it for yourself.
Wrapping up the album, Arbury’s third string quartet sounds like a blend of Ralph Vaughn Williams and Elliott Carter. There’s something about the way Arbury expresses and moves time that can only come from an accomplished percussionist, the rumbling low end plays tribute to his knowledge of double bass, and the thick textures move from polyphonic to homophonic and everywhere in between. The final notes lift and drift away. There is no resolution, no conclusion, just beautiful dissipation.
I was struck by the carefully curated variety of composition and performance on one record. Arbury doesn’t let himself get pigeon-holed in one genre. The performers are not robotic perfectionists, but artists breathing life into the music. This is the kind of record that earns New Ovation’s place as the center of progressive music-making. The next project you can look forward to from David Arbury, collaborating with Kerry Jennings, Andria Fennig, and Charles Stanton is a multi-sensory presentation of many these works in cities across the country. Such an experience seeks to engage new and diverse audiences, and Arbury’s cinematic feeling cultivates successful execution. Before they come to your city, check out “Alchemy” for yourself.
Alchemy is available from most online music retailers, but CD Baby pays artists more than most, so buy it here: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/davidarbury.
wasteLAnd Opens Run at Art Share LA
wasteLAnd opened their first Friday concert, U/L, at Art Share LA on September 2, 2016. For the coming season, wasteLAnd will perform there on the first Friday of the month. An overflow crowd turned out on the start of the long Labor Day weekend to hear the music of Todd Lerew and wasteLand featured composer Erik Ulman.
Reading the Dictionaries, by Todd Lerew, began the proceedings with Movement Q and Movement V. Five performers stood in a semicircle on stage, each holding a copy of a different dictionary. Given a starting signal, they began reading the entries from each dictionary in unison, starting with those for the letter Q. At first the words were identical and the slight differences in pronunciation made for ragged, but intelligible speech. Soon the words in each dictionary began to vary – as might be expected for several different editions – and the words became less understandable. Those listening focused their attention, but was soon possible to hear and comprehend only a single word at a time. Eventually the words differed to the point that what was perceived was not language but the overall shape of the sound. The Q words from each performer came in and out of synchronization, as it were, and your brain was constantly hopping back and forth between comprehending the words as speech or simply hearing the texture and colors of the sound. About three-quarters of the way through Q, one of the performers – Matt Barbier – simply ceased speaking as the abridged edition of the dictionary he was given apparently ran out of words. The others finished as each dictionary dictated, and soon just a single voice was heard finishing up.
Movement V proceeded in the same way, each of the words spoken simultaneously at intervals of about one second. The initial sound of a word beginning with V has a sharper attack, and this made for more dramatic intonation. The V words also seemed to have a greater variety of letters and lengths so that the arc of their soundings was richer in sonic detail. All of this worked to sharpen the listener’s hearing so that by the end of the piece the ear became sensitized to even minute variations. Several of the dictionaries contained long lists of vitamins – Vitamin A, Vitamin B, Vitamin C, etc – and when these were encountered there were invariably some giggles from the audience. Matt Barbier once again finished first and stoically awaited the conclusion of the piece some minutes later.
Reading the Dictionaries proved to be an insightful experience, transforming a seemingly dry recitation of words into an engaging exercise in perception, language and comprehension.
The Formalist Quartet performing featured composer Erik Ulman’s string quartet at Art Share
String Quartet No. 3, by Erik Ulman, followed, performed by the Formalist Quartet. Ulman is the featured composer for wasteLAnd and will contribute works throughout the current season. String Quartet No. 3 began with a series of high squeaks and chirps followed by an energetic burst of sound in all the parts. The phrases seemed to alternate between sustained tones in one part and a flurry of complex sounds by the others. There was an underlying feeling of tension in all of this, but there were also smoother and more placid stretches. Most of the activity seemed to be centered in the middle registers with the cello typically blending into the texture. Midway through, a series of high, syncopated pitches were followed by sustained tones creating a sort of ebb and flow to the rhythm that made for a good contrast with the more complex passages. Towards the finish a low growling tutti effectively escalated the sense of tension and suspense – this music has a mysterious feel, like walking in an alien landscape. String Quartet No. 3 constantly challenges the listener and performer with its intricate and independently moving lines. The Formalist Quartet delivered to their usual high standard, and the audience responded with strong applause.
After an intermission, Spherical Harmonics, by Todd Lerew, was performed by six singers and conducted by Matt Barbier. This began with a low unison humming tone that soon broke into various related harmonics. The singers then began whistling their tones while humming – something we have all idly done at one time or another – and this combination added a convincing perception of depth. The humming gradually diminished, leaving mostly whistling sounds turning the feeling somewhat desolate and a bit lonely. All of this was reminiscent of the Rhyolite sound installation in the Nevada desert where the sound of the wind blowing across dozens of old glass bottles was recorded by Chris Kallmyer and Andrew McIntosh. At times Matt Barbier could be seen striking a tuning fork and holding it close to his ear as he set the pitch for the other singers. The group repeated this sequence with different several tones before quietly finishing. Spherical Harmonics artfully mixes the simple acts of humming and whistling to fashion an intriguing amalgamation of harmonic possibilities.
Andrew Tholl, literally shredding on Todd Lerew’s Bowing to Pressure
The final piece on the program was Bowing to Pressure, also by Todd Lerew, and this was a solo piece for violin performed by Andrew Tholl. As the title suggests, Andrew applied the maximum amount of pressure as he began a vigorous bowing action across the violin strings. This produced an active, muscular set of tones that were reminiscent of the more primal country music pieces sometimes heard from historical archives. The pressure began to take a toll and strands of hair could be seen streaming from the bow. The tone coarsened, settling into a drone-like sound and the audience held its collective breath as if waiting for the violin bow, strings or bridge to self-destruct. Andrew Tholl powered on, the sounds becoming rougher and almost desperately violent. The forcefully crude intonation carried the audience into uncharted violin territory, completely removed from the delicacy and smoothness normally expected from this instrument. At the end, the bow was in tatters and Tholl was clearly fatigued by the effort. Bowing to Pressure might be a metaphor for the stress of contemporary life, but it is surely a vivid demonstration of the powerful feelings a violin can convey when pushed to its physical limit.
The next appearance of wasteLAnd will be at the Green Umbrella Noon to Midnight concert, Disney Hall, on October 1, 2016.
Performers for the this concert were:
Reading the Dictionaries:
Matt Barbier, Nicholas Deyoe, Brian Griffeath-Loeb, Todd Lerew, Élise Roy
String Quartet No. 3 – The Formalist Quartet:
Andrew Tholl, Mark Menzies, Andrew McIntosh, Ashley Walters
Spherical Harmonics:
Nicholas Deyoe, Brian Griffeath-Loeb, Andrew McIntosh, Cody Putnam, Élise Roy
Matthew Barbier, conductor
Bowing to Pressure:
Andrew Tholl
Write for the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet
The Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, who we have interviewed before, just wrote and asked for a bit of help spreading the word about their call for works/opportunity for composers to work with them. Here’s what they said:
Next Wave is free! Applicants need to submit a completed score, which we will use to judge. The piece does not need to be a percussion score; rather, we want applicants to submit pieces that show their voice and their aesthetic direction.
We are looking for young students to push the boundaries and work with us to create new pieces for percussion quartet. In short, we will select four composers to write us pieces and join us for an intensive rehearsal in January. Two composers will be selected as winners, receive $500 each, and be performed on a spring concert. Everything will be documented so all composers will end up with good quality audio and video.
The application deadline is September 30th, and we hope you will post information on your site. We feel that this is a great way to collaborate with young composers, as well as develop new and exciting repertoire for percussion quartet.
Complete details are up at lapq.org/next-wave.
Guest Post: Ludovico Einaudi To Play in Los Angeles This October
This October world-renowned Italian musician Ludovico Einaudi will be returning to California to once again wow audiences. The great composer has been on tour supporting his latest studio album Elements, which was released in October 2015. He will begin his Californian leg in San Francisco, then move on to Davis before finishing in Los Angeles at Royce Hall, UCLA on October 8.
In an interview with Never Enough Notes, Einaudi explained that the music in Elements came from a collection of ideas and themes. These included “creation myths, the periodic table, Euclid’s geometry, Kandinsky’s writings, the matter of sound and color, the stems of wild grass in a meadow, the shapes of a landscape.” Within the first week of its release it reached number 1 in the classical charts across the globe.
Einaudi has transcended classical music to become famous for his beautiful melodies. Einaudi was born in Turin Italy in 1955. He started composing when he was young and trained at the prestigious Conservatorio Verdi in Milan. His compositions are famous for having been used in films such as ‘Insidious’ and Shane Meadows’s ‘This is England’ film and subsequent television series.
Einaudi’s music is also well known to the public for its presence in many television adverts. Procter & Gamble (P&G) have used Einaudi’s music twice for their well received Olympic adverts ‘Thank You Mum’. The track used for this year’s games was Experience from Einaudi’s album In a Time Lapse. And it is not just used in adverts, Einaudi’s music has been used on Top Gear too as his music has a very filmic quality to it.
Reality television shows such as the X Factor recycle songs and sometimes have the unexpected effect of creating sales for the original artist. In 2014 Bob Dylan returned to number 1 in the charts after X Factor Winner Louisa Johnson covered his song in the finale. Shows such as X Factor are often used across entertainment platforms as focal points to some pop culture relevant games to increase revenues like the soon-to-be released X Factor Games so that the show can appeal to a whole new demographic. Music and musicians travel far in popular culture and it is very common for songs and brands to be recycled. So with such a diverse repertoire, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Einaudi’s work across new mediums in the future.
This year, Ludovico Einaudi has been supporting the protection of the Arctic. In June this year Einaudi performed an original piece titled Elegy for the Arctic. He performed the composition on a floating platform in the ocean in front of the Wahlenbergbreen glacier in Svalbard Norway. He was quoted as saying, “It is important we understand the importance of the Arctic, stop the process of destruction and protect it.”
This is a guest-contributed post from Norman Williams.
Review: WasteLAnd presents Berglind Tómasdóttir
A question I hear often is “why should people go to concerts?” It can be expensive,* it takes time out of your busy evening,** and high fidelity recordings make it easy to pipe music directly to your own headphones.*** If you have ever asked this question, this review is for you.
*Big symphonies in big venues can be upwards of $100, especially famous orchestras on tour. Small ensembles in smaller venues, especially doing contemporary music, can be $5-$20, which is comparable to buying a CD.
**In light of a certain app that came out on July 6, I am inclined to believe anyone can be convinced to go outside if they have enough of a reward. Every concert is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. For me, that’s a pretty good reward.
***Don’t get me started.
WasteLAnd is run by five SoCal-based composers (all of whom I have reviewed in some regard at some point in the past year). Alex Ross calls it “one of the country’s most far-sighted new-music series.” The music is performed mostly by LA-based performers, but also brings in internationally renowned players and composers. WasteLAnd programs 21st century music, generally for soloists or small ensembles. This is the first show of their fourth season, featuring internationally acclaimed Icelandic flutist Berglind Tómasdóttir.
Berglind Tómasdóttir is a flutist and interdisciplinary artist living in Reykjavik, Iceland, and has ties to the SoCal music scene through her time achieving a DMA from UCSD and working with LA- and SD-based composers. She is now an associate professor in contemporary music performance at the Iceland Academy of the Arts, and her music has been featured in festivals and conventions across the northern hemisphere. Her performance for WasteLAnd featured her own recent flute pieces, played with minimal break so they blend into one hour-long piece.
After taking my seat, I noticed an array of flutes on a table. The lights dimmed. Berglind picked up the headjoint of a bass flute, and began to whisper. Behind her shone a projection of a camera inside a flute. Or maybe it was an esophagus. Or rain, incredibly close up. It was impossible to make out the shapes on the screen, just as it was difficult to grasp the sounds coming out of Berglind. What Berglind made with the headjoint was not dulcet music, but rather a soundscape. She wheezed and sucked and whispered into the aperture. I keenly remember a moment when it sounded like animalistic slurping, right as the projector showed something that looked vaguely organic. It was a completely spell-binding moment, but was whisked away as Berglind relentlessly squeezed and squeaked. There was an electroacoustic element, and a ghostly amplified flute generated by processing Berglind’s original sound accompanied her like a duet partner. She eventually put the headjoint on the bass flute and had a wider range of notes. She didn’t need them; I would have been content to hear her headjoint-only timbral play for hours. But applying pitches added a new element to the music. She eventually picked up a C flute for the finale, the standard size with a higher register than the bass flute, and the opportunities increased yet again. Between the two flutes, a video played on the projector of her in a grassy field playing her C flute. She was attacking the music vigorously, jerking her head emphatically, but it was silent. It is a curious thing to watch music without sound. I could almost hear it. I could see what she was doing with her fingers and mouth, and having just watched and listened for half an hour, I had become attuned to her style. But even the wind was silent. When the video faded out, the real her faded back in on flute, and the audibility was startling.
All that would be an impressive performance by itself, but Berglind wasn’t out of tricks yet. It took me completely by surprise when I realized the echoes surrounding me were not just her amplified flute on the speakers, but flutes and voices coming from performers hiding in the shadows. I had never experienced anything like it before, and I am not sure if I ever will again. The precision of blending multiple flutes and voices, matching and blurring microtones and timbres like they did, was unreal. The realization came when they started to spread; they no longer matched, but they took on their own identities. Out of one came many, and in ways the listener wouldn’t expect. The performers landed together on a sweet chord and faded away. Now, you know a performance is amazing when people don’t want to clap and break the spell. The stunned silence is the best compliment to give a performer. Berglind took a timid bow and we finally broke out in applause.
This concert was not an album you can put in the background while reading the new Harry Potter book. This was an experience that only happened once. Nothing can ever replace the wonderment of being there enveloped by sounds from another reality. And that, dear readers, is why you should go to concerts.
Redcat’s NOW Festival Concludes Impressively with Eclectic Final Program
The 13th annual New Original Works (NOW) festival, presented at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theatre (better known as REDCAT), drew to a convincing close last weekend in a diverse program of Body Demonstration, Music, and Dance.
The hotly anticipated summer festival is a local oasis of artistic innovation in the creatively dry months of the year. The festival of three interdisciplinary programs over as many weeks featured works by early career artists, selected with an eye to new projects in development.
REDCAT Directors Mark Murphy and Edgar Miramontes opened the program with contextualizing remarks, citing the festival’s mandate and methods. “The NOW Festival allows emerging artists to use this theater as a laboratory for taking risks,” Miramontes articulated.
Filling the house to its 200 seat capacity, a decidedly risk-on audience had no objection to being subjects in tests that proved largely successful.
Energetically bounding into view, self-styled performance art ensemble I AM A BOYS CHOIR took the stage for the first, longest, most outrageous work of the program, Demonstrating the Imaginary Body or How I Became an Ice Princess.
Oddly coinciding with the current Summer Olympic games, Ice Princess chronicles the enmeshed paths of three figure skaters competing in the 1992 Winter Olympics through film and the art of “body demonstration,” an experimental genre blurring the boundaries of dance, theater, and spoken word.
The piece unfolds through a series of vignettes, each named and modeled after steps on Kristi Yamaguchi’s checklist for success: “beauty, stamina, fearlessness,” and others. Through funny, rambling stories, neatly choreographed fitness routines, and mock auditions, all reinforced by gender-bending costumes and driving 90s-era disco music, a clear sense of an ice princess culture begins to emerge, “without a narrative” as collective member Adam Rigg stated upfront.
I AM A BOYS CHOIR at REDCAT’s New Original Works festival
Emotional intensity mounted throughout the work, moving from the cerebral to the emotional in a kind of exploration of Chakras. Communication evolved from ordinary speech, to body language, to sense-defying videography, followed by a hedonistic frenzy of activity complete with animal costumes, nudity, and other-worldly lighting.
Strongly camp informed, the three-member, queer-identified collective knowingly disregards conventional notions of artistic territory. Banal, self-critical chatter punctuated by an intermittent “what time is it now?” among other seeming trivialities, challenged observers to accept a new standard of artistic merit. “Our goal is to present the truth above all, at all times,” recited member Kate D’Arcus Attwell at one juncture in the performance. Audaciously direct, natural, and unrestrained, I AM A BOYS CHOIR convinces on a visceral level, even as it befuddles logically.
Audience analyses percolated up along the pilgrimage for half-time restoratives. A view proliferated that “much did not make sense,” but the collective clearly delivered on its opening claim to “blow your minds.”
Following a leisurely intermission (and extensive cleanup), composer Daniel Corral arrived on stage to perform his new work Comma in an innovative usage of existing technology.
Presenting the only expressly musical work of the festival, Corral faced the dual duty of satisfying artistically, as well as representing the art of music before the NOW audience.
Daniel Corral
A darkened hall suddenly flared with iridescent swatches, pulsing and changing with each note in streams of electronic sound reinforced by vigorous minimalist rhythms.
Congruent in purpose with the foregoing Ice Princess, Corral’s Comma reverses traditional musical priorities in a celebration of the Pythagorean comma, the bane of tuning systems since the middle ages.
Pythagoras gets the credit for codifying an intonation based on just fifths, pure and without “beats” (a canceling out of soundwave crest and trough). Beatless fifths are gentle, euphonious harmonies, but the sum of such intervals is greater than their parts, leading to a small but significant inequity in the tuning system. That hair’s breadth of dissonance is the comma (“hair” in Latin), and for centuries, the question was what to do about it.
Today’s intrepid listener accepts the comma, enjoying the dissonant crunch of “wolf intervals,” originally named for the howling of wolves. Comma draws on a pitch vocabulary derived from just-tuned fifths, exploiting their inherent beauty, and cognitively reframes dissonances as sumptuous umami flavors.
Striving for “something that could be experienced on multiple levels,” as Corral notes, a whimsical light show of shifting colors and shapes complements beguiling harmonies and timbres for a “total work of art.” Building on accordion-playing chops, Corral dispatched a dizzyingly intricate drum machine part on Novation’s Launchpad Pro, triggering sound and light with agility and speed.
Comma’s multiple paths of engagement and balanced blend of cooperative elements worked to hold audience attention consistently, slowing time against a steady stream of activity. Enthusiasm for the concluded piece reverberated palpably, as a sense of music’s abiding power to enchant and challenge was affirmed once again.
In the moving finish of both program and festival, dancer and choreographer Wilfried Souly integrated disparate movement traditions and original music in On Becoming, an exploration of identity-evolution.
“Reflecting the way physical history shapes Self across life,” writes Souly, On Becoming reflects influences on Souly’s own history, including African traditional dance, contemporary dance, and Taekwondo, fluidly fusing them for a new, unique genre.
An ensemble of musician from at least three countries collaborated in creating new music through shared improvisation: Boubacar Djiga, from Souly’s West African homeland of Burkina Faso, arranged and recorded traditional Burkinan music. Composers Tom Moose and Julio Montero later created new jazz, blues, and Latin folk-inspired music, taking the original African music as an impetus. A mosaic of styles crystalized, each element retaining its identity while harmoniously supporting the others.
The diverse musical backdrop both drove and reflected movement content on stage. An upbeat swing melody accompanied by shimmering tremolos served as springboard for bouncy gaits and playful turns.
Wilfried Souly: On Becoming
A lyrical ballad for violin, guitar, and recorded media supported a tender episode, featuring intimate close embrace and expressive undulatory gestures. Afro-Blues fusion music pulsed rhythmically in a play on space and number: Dancers merged densely then diffused apart, then bifurcated the stage along a striking diagonal. A later number featured Souly in isolation, divided from the ensemble as soloist, as if satellite reflecting ensemble action. “While the others shared a tender moment together, I preferred to stand apart, on my own,” Souly explained in post-performance conversation. A plaintive soliloquy in spoken word, followed by an episode of descriptive facial expressions and subtle hand gestures brought the piece to an ending point, with ensemble exiting unobtrusively into the audience.
An apt closing number for the evening and season, On Becoming acknowledges the evolving of individual identity and the diversity that shapes it. NOW guests witnessed a moment in that flow of impermanence this season, and can expect new, original works of another variety next summer and beyond.
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 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 Debussy—parodies 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.
People Inside Electronics Contacts Minds and Hearts at Boston Court
Minimum and maximum shared the stage at Boston Court last Friday, their point of contact being People Inside Electronics—the leading presenter of music involving electronics in Los Angeles. Presenting a program of electroacoustic music by three generations of composers called “Points of Contact,” the PIE team once again demonstrated the vital, transformative power of electricity in music.
“Why use electronics…?” an attendee queried in the populous, enlightening pre-concert talk. Theories, each satisfying in their own right, ranged from an expeditious “because it’s there,” to the discretionary “we need not use it,” settling finally on a more deliberate “to create sounds that could never be heard otherwise.”
“Points of Contact” refers to the centerpiece and concluding work of the program, Kontakte (Contacts), by legendary electroacoustic pioneer, Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007). PIE’s riveting rendition by pianist Todd Mollenberg, percussionist Ryan Nestor, and sound engineer Scott Worthington proved a pan-sensorial, full body delight, captivating listeners and reaffirming Stockhausen’s place alongside the greats.
Kontakte, composed 1958-60, was among Stockhausen’s first space pieces, whereby the element of space plays an integral role in audience perception. “Sit in the middle of the hall for the full experience, as the piece is quadraphonic,” advised PIE director Aron Kallay pre-concert when there were still a few seats left.
Stereophonic sound was used as early as 1940 in the Disney film Fantasia, where Rimsky-Korsakoff’s bumblebee is heard buzzing to-and-fro among increasingly nervous viewers. Such is the effect of a moving sound source on listener perception. Sound takes on dimension, becoming tangible, corporeal.
Kontakte, among other space pieces by Stockhausen, offers a boosted listener experience by multiplying all the usual effects of music—pitch, timbre (itself highly original in Kontakte), rhythm, volume—with the element of sonic rotation, promoting that sense of absorption and self-forgetfulness induced by all great music.
To ensure optimal success, Stockhausen called for specially built halls ideally suited to the demands of space music—something approaching Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome. Fortuitously, Boston Court’s Main Stage, site of the Summer Music Series, approximates an egg shape and met Stockhausen’s requirements satisfactorily.
The beautiful configuration of instruments on stage, a Western Gamelan of sorts, was prescribed by Stockhausen and is used in all renditions of the piece. The pianist—really a percussionist with piano abilities—begins by striking a gong, dramatically placed center stage, then wades through an obstacle course of percussion instruments to take up temporary residence at the piano. Pianist Todd Mollenberg handily met the extraordinary demands of his role, juggling a virtuoso piano part while nimbly navigating among an extensive collection of percussion instruments (inadvertently enlarged by percussive footwear) with both control and abandon.
Ryan Nestor, dedicated percussionist, glided discretely and efficiently among his instruments, often approaching them at the last moment as if to avoid spoiling the surprise.
Sound engineer Scott Worthington, working from a station in the back row, adjusted levels of each channel independently, continuously adjusting outputs to achieve the ideal balance.
With keen rhythmic sense, Mollenberg and Nestor coordinated the numerous points of contact between electronics and acoustics, articulating sonic hand-offs precisely. Such stretto effects added an additional source of meaning, promoting listener endurance throughout the objectively lengthy piece.
Climactic moments seemed to be followed by additional high points, without loss of impact or credibility. Treats for the listener abounded in every moment, quite by design.
“The piece was conceived in Moment form,” noted Todd Mollenberg in post-concert remarks. “Each moment is self-contained and separate from its neighbors to create an antinarrative,” elaborated Mollenberg.
The completion of each moment—the unforeseeable evaporation of sound followed by fresh sonic germination, a kind of ongoing death and resurrection of sound itself—induced a timeless state, an eternal (or at least 35 minute) present, in listeners.
Far from mere theory, this all happened. There was an atmosphere of excitement in the air that abstract music such as this—undeniably bizarre, space-age music for electronics and acoustic noise-makers—could be so thrilling.
Contrasting so sharply from Kontakte as to be linked only by the use of electronics, the pre-intermission lineup featured a minimalist tasting menu of three pieces by three generations of composers sympathetic to the cause of less being more in music.
If Kontakte drew on the maximum means to induce focus in listeners, the minimalist first half subsisted in narrower bands, allowing space for meanderings of free-association, leaving free rein to the imagination.
Scott Worthington, before donning sound engineer’s hat, took the stage for the opening number as contrabass soloist in Julia Wolfe’s Stronghold.
“I am always thinking about the physical effort involved and what it takes to make sound,” Wolfe (born 1958) has said of her compositional process. The term “stronghold” should refer to the bassist’s bow grip, which is thoroughly tested throughout the ambitious, extensive exploration of bass terrain. A stronghold of musical devices, each finding safe haven in the towering presence of the contrabass, king of strings, the piece unfolds in a steady flow of events including abrupt changes in volume and textural density, microtonal moanings of marine mammals, and crab canons (where a melody is accompanied by itself played backwards) reminiscent of Bach.
Throughout, the work is unified by a disciplined self-referential process, where each idea grows from an initial germ stated in the solo bass, then taken up by additional basses in a recording. The resulting effect is a musical kaleidoscope, with one event type subtly giving way to the next. The piece halts suddenly following powerful, characteristically deep bass tones, bowed on the bridge.
In proper new music form, lights were dimmed to pitch black for the next work, The Light Gleams an Instant, by PIE director Colin Horrocks (born 1992). Horrocks himself performed the work, scored for solo saxophone and live electronics. The title, borrowed from Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, refers to the impermanence of life and music. “Music is a temporary art form; the ephemeral nature of sound allows it to exist only in the moment,” explained Horrocks in program notes. Beckett’s “light” is, for Horrocks a metaphor for sound.
Horrocks’s sounds did not merely fade away, however, gleaming an instant only to disappear into oblivion. They were all recorded, electronically reworked with Max, the industry standard for live musical processing, and played back in self-referential accompaniments. “The live notes are transposed, and in some cases the upper partials are played back,” clarified Horrocks in post-concert discussion.
As expressive saxophone tones and their musical fractals emerged from the lights-out backdrop, a surreal calm descended on the hall, calling listeners together in a moment of reflection and recollection.
Steve Reich’s (born 1936) Electric Counterpoint, a contrastingly bright, light piece befitting the season in its carefree summery bounce, drew the program to the halftime mark and off to a busy intermission.
Brian Head, noted guitar leader, performed the piece with refreshing vitality and jazzy flair. Head played the work’s 1987 premiere, thus bringing seasoned insight to the current performance.
Electric Counterpoint, like so much of Reich’s music, is the quintessential minimalist example. Terse, spare motives intermingle with each other, delicately phasing in and out of synch to form mosaics of scintillating mist. Discrete notes, while extremely few in number, seem to interlock in ornate braids of extraordinary richness and complexity, much as a DNA molecule or spiral galaxy.
Amidst the simplicity of musical means, otherwise banal devices like crescendos and modal shifts take on striking impact and purpose, inspiring listeners and lightening spirits.
A satisfied audience departed the hall for intermission amusement—a caption writing contest on a photo of Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Later, a generous post-concert reception included beer and sake (potentially worth the price of admission itself). Artists and audience mingled in enthused conversation, their own electric counterpoint, as another original evening at Boston Court drew to a charged close.
Dale Trumbore tells us How to Go On
Dale Trumbore is about to have a huge secular requiem premiered by Choral Arts Initiative. We thought that merited an interview about the work, and what she’s been up to since last time we talked to her. Given that the piece deals with death
Composer Dale Trumbore
So you’ve got a big piece being premiered by Choral Arts Initiative on July 16 and 17. Talk to me about that.
Yes! That piece, How to Go On, is a secular requiem for virtuosic a cappella chorus. It’s 35 minutes long with eight movements. The piece treats the chorus like an orchestra in many ways; texture is every bit as important as text here, and soloists constantly weave in and out of the greater blend of voices.
The text is by three contemporary writers I’ve worked with in the past: Barbara Crooker, Amy Fleury, and Laura Foley. Together, the seven poems—one text is set twice—address grieving over the loss of a loved one, confronting one’s own mortality, and learning to live with the painful uncertainty and beauty of everyday life.
On the same program, we’re doing five of my other choral pieces that tie in thematically. We’ll be recording the same program in early August for CAI’s debut commercial recording, also called How to Go On.
What attracted you to this secular requiem idea? Were you dealing with mortality in some way in your personal life, or noting a lack of pieces for comfort to those of us with non-Judeo-Christian spiritual lives? Or was this something CAI gave you the impetus for?
When Brandon Elliott [CAI’s Artistic Director] and I were discussing the possibility of my writing a larger piece for CAI, the secular requiem idea seemed like an obvious fit. I knew CAI could handle a technically challenging piece, and I’d been mulling over this idea in a vague way for a long time, something like six years. I’ve been struggling for a while with the idea that there might be no afterlife; I’m agnostic, and I find the thought of my own death and that of those I love absolutely terrifying. I’ve found that I have to consciously avoid thinking about it at all, because when I do, it’s almost paralyzing.
How to Go On is an attempt to make peace with that. If music can accomplish such a thing, then this is an effort to do exactly what you said: provide comfort for those grieving a loss, but without the lens of religion. Though obviously this piece doesn’t have all of the answers, I do think the secular poetry here deals with these questions beautifully, in a way that still feels spiritually fulfilling.
Have the poets heard the work yet?
They haven’t! That’s the one downside to working with collaborators who live far away. We can discuss everything else over email, but they can’t just pop over to rehearsals if they live in Vermont (Laura Foley), Pennsylvania (Barbara Crooker), or Louisiana (Amy Fleury). I’m looking forward to sharing the performance and album recordings with them very soon, though!
Choral Arts Initiative, led by Brandon Elliott
What’s your artistic relationship with CAI like?
I’ve been working with CAI and Brandon since 2014, when they commissioned a piece of mine called I am Music. This project happening now—a new, big piece to be recorded alongside some of my other choral works on CAI’s debut album—has been in the works almost as long as that commission.
I adore CAI. They only perform new music, and everything and everyone involved in the group operates at such a high level of professionalism and musicality. How to Go On can get very rhythmically complex and texturally dense, and CAI’s Choral Artists have really risen to the occasion. Their rehearsals are sounding spot-on to what I’d envisioned when I was writing the piece with this ensemble in mind a year ago.
I hope this isn’t touchy, but I imagine you’ve heard yourself described as a “choral composer.” I remember when we spoke a long time back you saying that you planned to make the bulk of your work about voice. Is this still something you embrace and/or pursue, or do you at times feel pigeonholed?
Not touchy at all. I’ve always been drawn to writing music with text, regardless of instrumentation; it’s what I naturally gravitate to if left to my own devices. That’s not to say that I don’t like writing straight-up chamber or orchestral music—I do—but I think I used to view that tendency toward composing music with words as a weakness or a crutch. Lately, I’ve been embracing that and the fact that I usually work with texts by living poets as something that sets my music apart.
You’ve been big on going to residencies – in fact a few of my own as a composer have followed seeing what you do. Could you talk about that a bit?
I love artist residencies; I’ve been to four now, with another planned next spring. At a residency, I’ve realized, I’m almost certain to experience two things: getting a tremendous amount of work done in a short time, and doubting everything about my work and my creative process. The latter is never pleasant to go through in the moment, but I’ve learned a lot about the way that I work and how I work best. Ultimately, that’s a wonderful thing, which may be why I keep going back.
What’s next after this? Finishing that record with Dr. Ian Malcolm, perhaps?
Ha—I was just talking to Dennis Tobenski on his new Music Publishing Podcast about how that project has been more or less a complete failure. I’m still hoping to do something else to fulfill that project and provide something beyond the two tracks we did release to the people who contributed to it. This has been a long process, but hopefully we’ll get some sense of closure on that project by the end of this year.
In the more immediate future, I’m about to start writing a piece for soprano & chamber ensemble. Soprano Gillian Hollis, who I made an album of art-songs with five years ago, will premiere it with a Chicago-based new music ensemble called CHAI Collaborative Ensemble. That’s going to be around 15-20 minutes, another big-ish piece. I’m eager to start that, but it’s going to have to wait until after How to Go On has gone on.
Full info on the premiere this weekend is up at choralartsinitiative.org/july-16–17–how-to-go-on.html. More about Dale is up at daletrumbore.com.