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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!
WILD UP x 24 —> 24 x ARTHUR RUSSELL
FULL DISCLAIMER : This was not a classical concert. This was a disco party. And what a party it was – fully equipped with an open dance floor, a hefty disco ball shimmering above, and of course, complete with sweaty bodies. So instead of the usual stuffy review with complicated lexicon foreign to your typical household (written by yours truly), I will now attempt to do something never done before. I will craft the most serious of reviews for you by sharing some pictures from my phone, in hopes you may embody the revolutionary spirit of disco as you indulge with me (you’re welcome).
PS: This was the second sold-out performance of this show, and the first in a series of what looks to be an intriguing exploration into the many lives (and names) of Arthur Russell. I cannot wait to go back for more. Away we go!
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
Smother My Ears: Kevin Drumm, Daniel Menche, Carlos Giffoni + Alex Pelly, and Peter Kolovos at 2220 Arts and Archives
Experimental music series/labels, Carlos Giffoni’s “No Fun Productions” and Peter Kolovos’ “Black Editions Group,” teamed up to present four sets at 2220 Arts and Archives on March 23rd, 2024 (with rare Southern California appearances from Kevin Drumm and Daniel Menche). Capricious, intoxicating, glacial, and prickling: the curation provided something for anyone willing to risk their ears succumbing to pummeling sheets of sound.
Peter Kolovos
Kolovos runs Black Editions Group, condensing the music of three previous label projects under a single roof and organizing concerts for Los Angeles based and The Rest of the World based experimental musicians. He also rips on the guitar. The ideas move in rapid fire: a timbral terrarium explodes into being only to collapse onto itself as Kolovos assembles another. These ecosystems last only for seconds, but are rich in texture, gesture, and color. Moments of immense sustained drones lull us into a sense of safety, only for Kolovos to rip them away and slingshot us elsewhere. This is uncompromisingly blazing music in its display of integrated guitar-pedal virtuosity. And damn was that tone delicious…
Carlos Giffoni + Alex Pelly
Giffoni has been active as an electronic musician and curator on both coasts since the early 2000s and Pelly is a Los Angeles-based live music visualization performer and longtime dublab affiliate. Tonight, they teamed up for easily the most convincing non-narrative audio-visual performance I’ve seen. Giffoni’s modular synth and Pelly’s modular video systems gelled so effortlessly that for the first half of the set, I couldn’t tell who was making sound and who was controlling the visuals. Pulsing overdriven oscillators informed dancing geometric streaks, but Pelly has clearly set up a largely autonomous system not limited by its musical input. As Giffoni and Pelly performed, I experienced a genuine counterpoint between video and music with my attention moving back and forth between the two. The form felt like a series of short stories, each held together by a short wobbly rope bridge: an immediate, but still substantive transition. Giffoni plays his modular brilliantly, and it was a delight to have his throbbing bitcrushed melodic clouds dance around my eardrums.
Daniel Menche
Menche, like all of the night’s performers, is a musical polyglot. Portland-based and active since the late 80’s, he has made sounds in just about any way imaginable over the past 35 years. Whereas Giffoni’s and Pelly’s set was the Calvino collection of semi-related stories, Menche’s set was the epic novel condensed into 25 minutes. It felt like something in the air had changed, as a glacial wind had fully rolled in. Metallic tones folded onto themselves to create a glimmering sonic tapestry, growing rusty as a distortion slowly kicked in over the course of the set. Each knob turn gently sailed us elsewhere, but not too far away as we traversed over Menche’s sonic topography. By the end, the distortion had morphed into a full enveloping wall until receding into a final gust of wind. In the distance, I swear I could hear a melody.
Kevin Drumm
Drumm is the only artist on the show whose work I was previously familiar with. He’s a long-time Chicago-based computer musician, tabletop guitarist, and modular synth player, so I was ready for a sonic tidal wave in whatever form deemed necessary. Today it was two laptops, in front of Drumm on an elevated stage a good 10 feet behind where the other performers had been. I didn’t realize my brain was itchy until the opening laser point 12+ kHz tones gave it the scratch that it craved. As Drumm massaged my nervous system, the audio spectrum slowly began to fill out until these pinpoint tones enwrapped my entire being. This fullness of the sound left me with the wisdom that there are many ways to saturate the audio spectrum and that noise does not necessarily imply a timbral monolith. And we sat in this fullness, with small changes jostling the texture. These modulations never appeared to threaten the soundscape’s structural integrity, but as Drumm slowly replaced part by part, I came to the realization that he’s rebuilding his sonic Ship of Theseus. I truly could have marinated in any moment of this performance for hours. And then suddenly, with a swipe of a fader and a slap of the hands on the table, it’s over. I love when pieces end like this: no coda, no spoon feeding, no bullshit. With Drumm’s facetious “booooo” at an encore chant, 3 hours of sonic smothering had come to a close.
The show reminded me that “noise music” is not an easily connotable aesthetic signifier, but rather a community: adorned with lofi scuba tanks made of pedals, synths, patches, and contact mics and committed to diving into the depths of the fully saturated audio spectrum. They’re off the deep end, but that’s because the shallows are so boring.
Kevin Drumm, Daniel Menche, Carlos Giffoni + Alex Pelly, and Peter Kolovos at 2220 Arts and Archives
No Fun Productions + Black Editions Group
March 23, 2023
Dave Longstreth on composition, Song of the Earth, and playing Dirty Projectors shows again
It’s been a while since I sat down with a composer to talk about an upcoming LA Phil premiere, but when I saw that one of my favorite artists, Dirty Projectors’ founder and leader Dave Longstreth, was premiering a massive piece for the orchestra at Disney Hall on March 2, I thought it was a good time to jump back in. Dave and I had a lovely and wide ranging talk via Zoom about his processes and how he’s developed as an artist in the twenty years he’s spent with his band, and of course dug into the new piece, Song of the Earth. Enjoy our talk below.
I heard the Song Exploder interview on Up In Hudson a really long time ago, in which you mentioned that you had come up with a beat by trying to remember another beat without checking to see how close you were. And then I found out you had done the same thing, in a sense, for the Black Flag record, so I’ve got a two-parter based on that. First, if you could just talk about what attracts you to that process because you’ve done it more than once, and second, if creating compositional challenges for yourself to generate material or drive what you’re doing is also something you dig. If so, do you have any others that you use regularly?
Yeah, wow, great question. And thank you. We’re just diving in. So yeah, I mean, I think that memory is such an interesting part of creating. The way that our memories are subjective, the way our memories are imperfect, the way over time our memories become imbued with, you know, with our sensibility, with our… world view, maybe, makes writing that way compelling to me.
First of all, I have what feels like a vivid memory of this thing, maybe this beat that I heard on the radio in 2003, or this Black Flag album that I loved when I was in middle school. I have a vivid memory of it because it made such a strong impression on me in the first place, and in a way, maybe both of these things were sort of formative for my worldview, for my outlook, for my sensibility. And what has happened since then in the sort of internal mechanisms of my emotional brain? That sort of distortion is really compelling to me.
Actually, I don’t think I had really connected how similar those two sort of prompts were.
Oh, that jumped right out at me!
Well, yeah, and then the second part of your question. Can you remind me what it was?
Yeah, it’s just whether creating prompts or challenges or restrictions for yourself is a way that you like to generate material, or force yourself to come up with ideas or anything like that when composing.
Yeah, I could think it’s less of a prompt and more like just a game, or even just something that starts circling around in your head and you just get a desire to explore it, to go further. It arrives, maybe as you’re saying, in the form of a question. Yeah. Exploring things I can’t quite figure out is one of the things I love about writing music.
I think we agree about that actually. So as far as getting into being a composer, slash artist, slash et cetera. I saw that you briefly went to Yale, which is known as an elite classical music kind of school. I wondered about your decision to leave. Was it an artistic thing?
Well, I did finish school. I lived for a while with every intention of not returning and then when I was gone was when I released the first Dirty Projectors records. It became sort of popular lore that I had left. But I did go back.
Oh? Gotta update your Wikipedia…
Oh man! So yeah, it’s funny. I love…I love the music, you know? I love the music of the classical canon. And I love the textures. And I love the melodies. I think it’s just such a rich sort of history and such a rich tradition. And there’s just such an unbelievable amount of just amazing music. I think when I was in school I had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder about it being a closed canon, about that history having elapsed… that history having finished, and I was very eager to go out and get started.
I consider the university a place where things are sort of dissected and autopsied as opposed to being a place for something more living. More alive. So I was just eager to get out of there. I think I was essentially unteachable, but I am grateful to have actually learned a lot about orchestration when I was there.
What do you think made you unteachable?
Well, just what I’m saying. I had a chip on my shoulder. I was ready to go out there and play shows in Greenpoint in a basement to eight people. That’s what I wanted. That’s what I was ready to do. And I was just very eager to do that.
I think, though, maybe I’m underselling my reverence for… certainly the rules of counterpoint. I was passionate about it. At the same time I held it with a deep grain of salt. The study of music theory, the study of orchestration, the study of counterpoint, I took everything with a big grain of salt.
That makes a ton of sense. Since you mentioned basement shows and the whole DIY world…a lot of people refer to your earlier stuff as lo fi. I get into a little trouble around this with my own music because some of it exists in that lo fi sound world but I really, really care about clarity at the production level. Stereo image is important! Anyway, since you produce your own music, and the sound world is incredibly clear and direct, I wonder if you see a kind of path from the DIY basement vibe to the more sonically refined work you do now, or if that’s a conscious contrast, or…
Yeah, I mean, that’s an interesting question. I think of it as a continuum. And I agree with, I think, one of the things that you just said, which is that it’s a very detailed stereo image!
You can make choices about fidelity. You can make textures that are a little bit ambiguous. Those are colors. Those are beautiful colors, especially when you’re using them as it sounds like you are, thoughtfully and with intention. Then we’re just using a very wide canvas, and can aim at textures that are less defined, or hazier, and have more ambiguity in them, or we can aim at textures that are very clear and very recognizable. Why not use that whole range, that whole spectrum?
I think with some of those earlier records I just had what was available to me, and so that’s a bit lower fi than what I have available to me now, but it is also what it was.
You know? I love it. I love it. That tradition of indie rock too, you know. Guided by Voices and Pavement, and home recording artists I love. I think those early Dirty Projectors records were in dialogue with them. I considered myself in that sort of tradition, in dialogue with that music.
So as you’ve kinda gotten—I don’t know if the right word is resources or access or fancier gear, or more production skill, or—
Not being such a punk about it?
Yeah, that’s it. What I wondered is if your approach to writing has changed much as you’ve had access to more resources.
One way or another, every album, every body of work that you make is just different. It’s a different moment in your life. It’s a different moment in our culture’s relationship with technology. One way or another, the tools have ended up being different every time. And you’re a different person, of course.
Every record is just a different thing. I’ve actually been marveling a little bit at what feels like a moment of cyclical return for me on Song of the Earth [Dave’s piece with the LA Phil]. I feel really connected now to the way I thought about songs and the possibilities of music when I was starting out in my teens and twenties, and it feels interesting.
Was there something that kind of removed you from that feeling in the interim? I mean, you’ve been in a touring band for a long time…
Since I became a professional musician? Of course considerations of what works on stage, or even passive or unconscious considerations of an audience’s expectation, begin to sit there in the room with you.
Because Song of the Earth began in a pandemic moment, and also in a moment when I had just had my daughter, it really just felt like some of those edges were softer. Some of those lines had dissolved, and I made something that surprised me, and confounded me a lot. And so it’s been really rewarding to make this piece.
It’s gotta be exciting. Since we talked about memory earlier, is a similar process sort of going on here with Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde?
Absolutely. As I’ve continued to write and revise the piece, the connections between the Mahler and this one have become softer and, in a way, other aspects or connections to that piece have become stronger.
In a conscious way?
No, unconsciously. I really love the Mahler orchestral songs, the Rükert-Lieder and Kindertotenlieder, particularly with Janet Baker singing. I love those recordings so much. And those orchestrations, too, are so, so wonderful, so beautiful.
Two or three years ago I hadn’t really spent that much time with Das Lied von der Erde. I found it imposing and just so dense that it was difficult to have it open for me. And then it did, and I got super into it. And I love that. It’s this meditation on the impermanence of all things. On a very simple, basic level. I just like that. And I like that phrase, “the song of the earth.”
I think honestly just that simple aesthetic appeal is what kept bringing me back to Song of the Earth, to Das Lied von der Erde for a while. And then, there’s something with that title. What is that title? It’s grand, even grandiose. It’s portentous. And then this huge work with this big title ends up being so much about fragility and the passages of things from growth and bloom into a sort of wispy autumnal character. And then passing. I just thought it was really beautiful.
It seems like the medium in which you’ve been creating has included chamber and orchestral music more and more often, at least over the last decade. Was getting back into the classical world a deliberate decision?
I think that I’ve always been interested in writing scored music, and I think that for most of my professional life I’ve been so focused on Dirty Projectors, that everything I’ve written has gone through the prism of the band. There are a fair number of string arrangements and that sort of thing all over the Projectors records. But they’re tucked into a strong fabric. You might notice them less. And so I think in the last couple of years I’ve really…been changed. My attitude is a bit about just allowing things to live outside of the band, to do other things and have more streams open to me, and to write dedicated concert music seems so fun to me. And so this is that.
Does that feel freeing?
Yeah. Or it’s certainly a new challenge, a different thing than what I have been doing.
So regarding doing band stuff then, how do your bandmates learn your parts? Dirty Projectors songs are often super hocketed and extremely technical. I wondered if you have had to notate it for people to learn it.
No, we don’t do any scored stuff in the band. And you know Olga [Bell], who’s playing in Song of the Earth and was in the band on the Swing Lo [Magellan] tour cycle is a virtuosic classical pianist. So she’s very comfortable in and familiar with the notated page. And Maia [Friedman] is to some extent as well. But no, with the band it’s always just listening. Listening and practicing.
You start slow. You speed up over time. And it’s just a lot of rehearsal, people practicing individually, then us coming together and rehearsing for a long time.
That makes sense. I mean, I find when you learn stuff by rote, it’s the best way to lock in a group.
For sure. And for hocketing specifically. I just think there’s nothing like muscle memory.
So for the show with the LA Phil, they’re billing it as songs from across the entire Projectors discography. Since you’re focused on newer pieces, what’s your relationship like with those older songs when you play them live?
We’re gonna play a set of music from all different eras of Projectors. It’s great to go back to the older material. It always feels different. I think, particularly in this context, it’s going to feel really fresh. I’m really looking forward to it because between having kids and the pandemic and everything, it’s really been a minute since the Projectors played. So I’m really excited to go back to play material from across the records.
That’s awesome. I just have a couple of quick questions left, because I know you’ve gotta get back to mixing. One of my best friends—this might seem weird—you’re his favorite musician/producer. He even commissioned a portrait for his studio—
Whoa! I wanna see that.
I will send it over!
I asked my friend what I should ask, and he wanted to know when we might hear the Alarm Will Sound live recordings of your piece The Getty Address.
Oh, it’s on a hard drive! When I’ve shown Song of the Earth work in progress to my brother, he’s like “dude, this is Getty Address part 2.” So this stuff is very connected to that piece.
I think what happened is that I just got impatient by the time we had done those shows. We did get the recordings of them, but by the time we had done it I was ready to move on to the next thing. And they’re just sitting on a hard drive. They’re beautiful performances. Maybe we’ll reissue the record at some point and include those as sort of additional material. That would be cool… thanks for asking. Thank your friend for the idea.
What’s your musical obsession as of late?
Oh, wow! Well, let’s think here. I listen to different music at different times of day. [long pause] If I think about what I’ve listened to a lot recently, the gagaku music from the court of Imperial Japan has been really resonant with me. I’ve been pretty obsessed with Parsifal, the Wagner opera. And then this earlier Reich piece, from the 70s, one for mallets, women voices, and Farfisa [Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices, and Organ]. I’ve been listening to that because it’s just such an insane recording. I never spent that much time with that one, but it’s just really, really amazing. And then 70s Brazilian music as well. That’s fun to listen to with my daughter.
Same question, but about gear.
Oh, dear. We have got a 1969 Yamaha baby grand piano in our living room, and that’s really changed my relationship with music. I love to play that thing. I like to write on it—a lot of the music I’ve written lately has been on it.
And to close: what’s a musical love of yours that you wish more people knew about or listened to?
Oh, that’s an interesting one. Perennially underrated. Okay, I would say Little Wings. He’s a songwriter, lives down here in Southern California. Just such an amazing lyricist, and it’s such an incredible kind of universe he’s continuing to spin out for everyone. I wish more people knew his music.
Well, thank you! I’m really excited for the show.
Thank you so much. I know, me too. Yeah, I can’t wait.
The March 2 show also features opener Mount Eerie. Info at laphil.com/events/performances/2879/2024-03-02/dirty-projectors-with-the-la-phil.
On Patience and Sustenance: Microtonal Brass Works by Ellen Arkbro and Sarah Davachi
Slow, barebones music engenders highly attentive listening. Each breath becomes a gesture and every compositional decision bears immense responsibility. In this music, details do not support a gesture: they are the gesture. So on Sunday December 17th, 2023, I was delighted to hear many of Los Angeles’ finest brass players perform a program of patiently glacial chamber works in just-intonation at Automata Theater in Chinatown.
The program began with Ellen Arkbro’s clouds, originally premiered in 2022 by the tuba trio Microtub. The audience encircled an ensemble donning the slightly altered instrumentation of Mattie Barbier on euphonium, Luke Storm on tuba, and Mason Moy on tuba. From the first chord, the immense resonance of the two tubas and euphonium, amplified by Automata’s reverberant interior, shook my organs like Jell-O. The richness of the low brass amplified the quivering beating patterns of Arkbro’s precise overtone-derived harmonies to epic levels. For the duration of the work, it was as if I was inside of a colossal church organ.
As compared to the pieces of Arkbro’s with which I am familiar, often based in sustenance of a single idea, clouds has a more dynamic narrative structure. Three blocky structures define the 20 minute performance: unison chords, layered harmonies with delayed entrances, and a concluding sustained drone with a shifting bassline. This coda is unique: in much of the piece, the upper two voices shift over a sustained bass pedal-point, while here, Arkbro reverses those roles. Barbier’s and Moy’s superb circular breathing brings this culminating drone to stillness, as Storm delicately places and replaces the bass. Here, Arkbro brings attention to the ability of a singular voice to recontextualize and reimagine a static harmony. A drone is perhaps less fixed than we might imagine.
After a short break, we resituated our chairs into a multi-directional tangle to orient ourselves towards the spatially organized ensemble for Sarah Davachi’s Long Gradus (brass). Situated in the four corners of the room, the ensemble now surrounded the audience. Davachi offers some insights into the piece in her liner notes on Bandcamp. She originally composed Long Gradus for the microtonal string quartet specialists Quatuor Bozzini for the 2020 Gaudeamus Muziekweek in Utrecht. COVID delayed the premiere, which allowed Davachi the time to expand the work into its patient hour-long form. Although originally composed for string quartet, Davachi opens the instrumentation to any quartet of instruments with the ability to alter their intonation. This rendition of the piece was performed by the newly formed Diapason Brass Quartet of Nev Wendell on trumpet, Nick Ginsburg on horn, Mattie Barbier on trombone, and Mason Moy on tuba.
Throughout the work, the slowly pulsing lights in Automata cast a sequence of shifting shadows on the floor: a dynamic tapestry of ghostly limbs fading into and out of existence. This seemingly inconsequential detail serendipitously focused my listening towards shadows and patterns as an essential element of Davachi’s piece. The successive repetitions constituted a cubist rendering of a phrase’s shadow, until five minutes passed and I suddenly realized that I was no longer listening to the same shadow. Breath was equally vital. An undulating textural density of sustained tones created a pointillistic tessellation: fragmented, as if by four phantom asynchronous delay pedals. Unisions felt like a happy treat, as did silences. This allochronic meter allowed this brass-quartet version to differentiate itself from the sustained string quartet version beyond timbre (as I suppose bows do not need to breathe). The ensemble’s steadfast stability in their non-vibrato longtones over the course of the hour constituted a remarkable feat of musical/physical endurance. The resonance of the space allowed for the combination tones to tickle my eardrums, especially when Moy brought in a cavernous bass note. Davachi’s commitment to deliberate change did not lead my ear to a clear resting point, but rather demonstrated a devotion to metamorphosis. There is no “home” or V-I, but rather a diasporic wandering to elsewhere. A piece like this reminds me of one of my favorite literary quotes, from Octavia Butler’s’ Parable of the Sower: “God is Change.”
Davachi and Arkbro show us that work employing the harmonies of the overtone series need not to obsess with the harmonies themselves, but rather engage the altered processes of listening that such tunings beget. These are trans-temporal works: drawing from the non-metric monophony and hocketing polyphony of plainchant, Renaissance and Baroque temperament, and the stripped down non-expressive minimalism of Wandelweiser. The night’s expert brass performers brought out every detail from this ostensibly simple music, highlighting the underlying complexity of a long-tone. I am grateful that such investigative and patient art exists to grant me the curiosity to examine the details of our world. Maybe through such thorough investigation, can we begin to rearrange those details into something new and more just.
these are the tears of things…
It was merely a week ago that I made another visit to a Green Umbrella show with my husband at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. I was gleaming with excitement at the prospect of being able to review the LA Phil New Music Group for the first time, especially with the traction that California Festival has gained in recent months. However, two days later, I received word that my grandmother had passed away, merely a week before I was planning to visit her in rural Taiwan. And so, I find myself writing to you from an empty cafe in Taipei, set to a gentle drizzle near my childhood home. Right now, my heart is heavy with love & sorrow, my mind racing with core memories. Everywhere I look I see her smile, I hear her voice. As an immigrant child, I cannot help but share a sliver of what I feel after missing every one of my grandparents in their final moments. Though many of you have never met her, I can only hope you will remember her as you remember your own.
As I begin to process everything these past two weeks have offered, I am having a hard time forgetting the glistening sounds of heaven in Sunt Lacrimae Rerum (these are the tears of things) written by Dylan Mattingly. From classic literary passages of The Aeneid, Mattingly was able to capture the totality of human experience through the universality of tears, illustrating the beginnings & ends of life through a palette unlike any other composer I have encountered. Written for two prepared pianos & two harps slightly detuned and estranged from one another, one could hear a powerful semblance of traditional Gamelan music through the ancient metals of gangsa & kemanak and the transcendental strings of siter & rebab. The piece began with the two pianists, Joanne Pearce Martin & Vicky Ray tiptoeing in pointillistic, Ravel-like fashion, only to be joined by Emily Levin & Julie Smith Phillips strumming low, pentatonic chords on their bright red harps, inviting us to let go of all of our inhibitions and to feel everything we are capable of ever feeling. In Mattingly’s own words, “these are not tears of sorrow – or at least not sorrow alone. These are the tears of everything, of the everythingness present in each moment, the superabundance of life’s experience, an understanding which we fear overwhelming us should we turn towards it too often. These are the tears of life’s entirety…”.
And as these tears continue to unfold & unravel, more of our collective experience continues to reveal itself through the organic fraying of microtonality found in nature. Our bodies gently ascend into the twilight, while our ears quietly submerge into a toy piano lullaby. Martin & Ray do a marvelous job at hypnotizing & pacifying the crowd like the dream mobile I once had under my crib, only to be awakened by a sudden recall of the very beginning, a reminder of the inevitability of death and the promise of peace in the afterlife. As Levin & Phillips renter the scene, they build into an immovable mass of sound, steadying with lifting volume yet tangling itself with polyrhythmic complexity. Finally, the last chord strikes, as if we have reached the end of time, a new beginning, and our ears are coated with the everlasting reverberation of heaven’s gates, a moment of nirvana that can only be experienced in the acoustic & visual spectacle that is Disney Hall.
Before the audience has long to think, our ears perk up as like meerkats to the sound of little branches splitting in the quiet. Like most pieces, our percussionists Matthew Howard & Joseph Pereira are placed in the back of the ensemble for Sketches of Chaparral, composed by my wonderful colleague M.A. Tiesenga, but it is no coincidence they are the first & last to be heard in this piece. We see Vimbayi Kaziboni on the podium motion to them with not much else happening, encouraging us to the edge of our seats. Though I’m well acquainted with this music (Tiesenga has composed a piece for me in the past) I truly did not know what to expect. We start to hear those same ordinary branches ruminating, coalescing with metal, accompanied by gristly sul ponticello gestures from Ted Botsford on the bass. Our attention is redirected to indeterminate wind gusts in the form of air shooting through woodwind instruments, a recall of the psithurism I used to experience on long picturesque walks with my grandmother. We are treated to fleeting overtone glimmers, like morning sunlight peaking through leaves, brushes rubbing on the head of a bass drum, with wood knocks & sounds of bowed cymbals scattered all across. As a fearless multidisciplinary artist, Tiesenga has this uncanny ability to turn something as mundane as a branch into a motif, a bush into a concept, a biome into a hand-sketched graphic score, and an intangible feeling into a masterclass in chance music.
Growing up in a place like Taiwan, I was surrounded by nature that was incredibly vivid & larger than life. The landscape was luxuriously saturated from rain, forests as dense as the weather, with delicious tropical fruits found in abundance. So when I moved to the states, I too had my reservations on the biodiversity of California’s chaparral landscape, one that I have now come to love. It is true that these bushes of great variety, seemingly ordinary, are the ones that protect us from the constant threat of wildfires and preserve the delicate balance going as we struggle with climate change going forward. As Kaziboni calmly takes us through numbered sections of the graphic score like a wise steward of the land, we are offered glimpses of the multifaceted character of the chaparral biome through the deliberate choices of each individual sound maker. I can think of no better way to highlight California Festival than this heartwarming homage to nature and the indigenous land that provide us all with everything we could possibly need and so much more.
Perhaps the most interesting component of this experience is the pleasant coexistence of aleatoric gestures with beautifully written solo melodies that hint at the cultivators of this land. Though conflict is natural, we can really feel the harmonious relationship between living beings and their respective surrounding through expressivity of solos from Bing Wang on the violin, Robert deMaine on cello, to Catherine Karoly on flute. While these solos were played in a virtuosic manner, they were still highly attuned to the sounds & gestures of the environment around them, never to disturb or disrupt. This is a masterful reflection that is seldom offered in a place like this. From the stillness of the desert to the magic of the night, the turmoil of our climate to the contemplative nature of California’s history, Tiesenga wears their heart on their sleeve with an exquisite premiere of Sketches of Chaparral.
Writing this has been nothing less than transformative for me as I embark on a new journey of healing. Through the lessons of intention & care from Tiesenga to the wisdoms of life & embrace from Mattingly, I can only hope to see the many truths that will reveal a path forward. And for you, not only do I wish you could hear the sounds that remain, I hope you will have the chance to say all there is to say to those you love dearly. these are the tears of things…
Chaparral and Interstates: New Music from California
LA Phil New Music Group
Nov 14, 2023
Walt Disney Concert Hall (111 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012)
LIFE CYCLES – Friday Night at High Desert Soundings
Living and working in Los Angeles is no easy feat for anyone, especially for young musicians like myself. This fall, it has been incredibly difficult for me to find any time for a small change of pace, so I decided to look elsewhere, well beyond the city. Friday the 13th had been circled on my calendar for a while – it was meant to be a weekend I could escape the routine with my husband & my girlfriends, but instead, the world saw a steep and frightening descent into darkness as we journeyed into High Desert.
Suddenly, with horrors of genocide looming over our heads, music became secondary. The four of us were reminded of how privileged we are, to be traveling in love & safety at a time like this. We felt a sudden wave of helplessness, being so far removed from the dire situation in Gaza. Seeing many of my colleagues gather in modest comfort, in a place like Twentynine Palms, and seeing artists from all walks of life come together at The Palms for High Desert Soundings to experiment with the healing powers of silence & noise gave me a sense of (re)new(ed) purpose. I have put this review off for far too long, having recently been perturbed with waves of grave inhumanity and sternly occupied with my personal, unrelenting activism against the ongoing apartheid. I have finally decided – this is the only way forward for me.
I shall begin with Life Cycles, by Stephanie Cheng Smith, one of the headliners of Friday night, and certainly the most appropriate set for the long days our civilization faces ahead. Part of an ongoing sound installation, Stephanie has amassed in her own words “eighty-four cicada apparati separated into seven broods, installed long term as an accelerated representation of overlapping periodical life cycles of different broods and species of cicadas.” And to High Desert, she carried only less than a handful cicadas with her. Accompanied by the faint crackle of firewood and the lovely smell of sand & smoke, her cicadas were as cryptic as the desert animals themselves, joining the little grey moths dancing above our tables in glistening twilight. It was truly a quiet meditation, a gentle reminder for us all to breathe deeply with love & intention. A contrast to some of the more provocative noises we have heard tonight, Stephanie’s work gave us a glimpse at how interconnected we are with the environment around us, and how everything we know is precious simply because it is impermanent. Indeed, it is true that annual cicadas are species that emerge asynchronously every year. Before emerging from darkness to find their mates with song, their life cycles can vary from one to seventeen years living as underground nymphs. We must remember, as the limits of music technology continue to defy all odds in a post-Cageian, postmodern musical landscape, nature will only continue to journey alongside us, surprising us with an honest reflection of our own organismic values and behaviors.
To send us off into the stars of the night, Technical Reserve returned us to a jarring, industrialized reality. A trio of two laptops & one pedaled-up cello, Hunter Brown, Dominic Coles, and TJ Borden threw an eclectic & original vernacular at us – one that no one was ready for. With shades of Morton Feldman’s late cello works and the subtle foreshadowing of the implications of artificial intelligence, Technical Reserve tautly flexed their outstanding expertise in an astonishing, semi-improvised set. Around midnight, it seemed as if we were launched into an immersive historical survey, illustrated by paradoxically paired genres of structureless free jazz and rigid serialism. Through jurassic growls, explosive feedback, silences of space, and instruments of war, the trio suggested that what makes us unique as human beings is our unwavering curiosity. At this point, the outdoor classroom that is the quaint courtyard of The Palms were now littered with stimulated, engaged minds, with Bach, Coltrane, and Stockhausen acting as our instructors on behalf of the trio sitting in front of us.
The road ahead is long, and our humanity is being put on full display. We must continue to lead with hope & fight urgently for freedom. Our resiliency will show not only through activism, but also through the thread of all humanities – in literature & the arts. High Desert Soundings has given me an important moment to breathe and a second chance to do what is right in fighting with courage for human rights. I am most certain many of those in attendance returned home feeling the very same.