Tuesdays at MonkSpace preview: Trio Kobayashi and Contemporary Choral Collective of Los Angeles
This Tuesday, Tuesdays @ Monk Space presents an eclectic evening of new choral and brass music featuring a double bill with the Trio Kobayashi (Allen Fogle, Matt Barbier, and Luke Storm) and C3LA (Contemporary Choral Collective of Los Angeles). Cristina Lord, T@MS’ Social Media and Outreach Director, interviewed both ensembles ahead of the concert. This originally appeared on the T@MS site, and is reprinted here with permission.
After you read it, go grab a ticket to the show at brownpapertickets.com/event/2722927, and check out what else is up at MonkSpace at tuesdaysatmonkspace.org.
T@MS Interviews C3LA
The Contemporary Choral Collective of Los Angeles has no single director, and is instead collectively run by its members (all of which are talented new music singers, many composers themselves). What unique insights, opportunities, and/or challenges has this approach led to for the ensemble?
One of our main challenges has been scheduling. We are all busy students and/or professionals, so finding times when we can all meet to rehearse, perform, or discuss administrational business is often difficult. Finding a consensus takes time, which is of course not an issue in a traditional ensemble with a single director who makes all the decisions.
Since the conductors vary piece to piece and come from the group as well, adapting to varied conducting and rehearsing styles keeps things fresh. Composers do not conduct their own pieces, which encourages collective music making and an openness to various artistic interpretations and aesthetics. Everyone brings their own unique and formidable skill sets to our concerts, from the planning stages to the actual performances.
The program at Monk Space on December 20th includes ten diverse pieces written by composers within the last 25 years. How do you go about programming new works together? For example, can you speak a little about how the pieces on this program relate to one another?
In our concerts, our primary concern as a group is to program interesting, well crafted pieces. Thematic continuity seems secondary, but its consideration can often help shape a program and assist us in deciding which pieces will be on a given concert, and in what order. Stylistic variation is also important to us. “Passing Flight” has various interpretations; there are pieces that deal with literal flight, ephemeral moments in nature, and philosophic contemplations.
What about performing new music do you find most rewarding?
I can only speak for myself, but as a composer it is always satisfying and exciting to have one’s own music performed. As a singer, it is wonderfully challenging and stimulating to encompass such stylistic breadth within a single concert, as well as to tackle the various technical hurdles each piece presents. Our goal as an ensemble and as individuals is to show people how vital, inventive, and intellectually and emotionally gratifying music written in the last quarter century is. Introducing and being introduced to wonderful new repertoire and composers is incredibly rewarding.
T@MS Interviews Trio Kobayashi
Plainsound Brass Trio (2008) was written for your ensemble by the German composer Wolfgang von Schweinitz. It involves 18 microtonal variations, and explores the trombone’s trigger valve action at various tuned slide positions. What has been your experience learning and performing this piece?
This piece was the impetus for the creation of Trio Kobayashi and has been a major part of our repertoire for more than eight years. Wolfgang, Matt Barbier, and I all arrived at CalArts in the fall of 2007—Wolfgang as the James Tenney Chair of Composition and Matt and I as graduate students. Conversations about just intonation and brass technique planted the seeds of this collaboration. The first performance took place after nearly a year of rehearsals and meetings with Wolfgang, an intensive process of learning a new notation system and unfamiliar intervals. The Plainsound Brass Trio continues to be one of the most challenging yet rewarding pieces we have ever faced and occupies a special place in our repertoire.
Your trio specializes in just intonation for brass. What about just intonation (or microtonal music in general) is most interesting to you, and what do you see for the future of microtonal music?
Microtonality is often thought of as a means of creating extra dissonance, exoticism, or just a general sense of ‘weirdness.’ In just intonation, all intervals come from the harmonic series, the theoretical collection of pitches that comprise musical timbre. Among these intervals are familiar consonances, unexpectedly sonorous dissonances, and shadings of microtonality.
Non-tempered tuning has been a fascination of composers since the earliest writings of music theory. The broad acceptance of a single tuning system—as we have today with equal temperament—is really an exception in musical history, which has seen a nearly constant debate over various systems and practices. What the future of microtonal music holds is anyone’s guess. It will be limited only by the imagination and skill of composers and performers.
Besides microtonal works, you’ve also performed vocal music arranged for brass, and will be sharing the concert with vocalists at the upcoming performance at Monk Space. From your perspective, what similarities do you find between brass and voice?
Brass players and singers share the distinction of being the only musicians to produce sound with their own bodies and early brass instruments were often used to accompany singers and to strengthen the choir. We are thrilled to share this program with C3LA, as this pairing reflects the natural affinity between these two families.
Iannis Xenakis wrote three pieces involving Game Theory, a branch of probability theory, including Linaia-Agon (1972), which you will be performing at Monk Space as well. The piece also involves free choice as a central component. What unique challenges did this piece pose? Can you talk a bit about the process of learning and performing it?
Linaia-Agon is a depiction of a mythological battle between Linus, the famed musician, represented by the trombone, and Apollo, the god of music, represented by the horn and tuba. In this piece, we are asked to make in-the-moment decisions that shape the overall form of the piece, affect individual musical events, and determine who is the victor of the ‘combats.’ This seat-of-your-pants approach lends an intense energy to every performance, each of which is different from the last.
Areon Flutes: “Thrive”
As a fellow Miyazawa flutist, I could hardly contain my excitement about this review. Thrive is Areon Flutes’ third full album release and innova Recordings debut. The flute chamber music ensemble upholds a dogma of revitalizing chamber music for 21st-century audiences. In May 2008, Areon Flutes was awarded the Bronze Medal at the prestigious Fischoff Chamber Music Competition in Notre Dame, Indiana, the first flute chamber music ensemble to do so in thirty-five years. In 2015 they were hailed as one of the most memorable live performers by the San Francisco Examiner. This album Thrive features compositions by Elainie Lillios, Cornelius Boots, and Mike Sempert, and performances by the core trio of Areon Flutes: Jill Heinke, Kassey Plaha, and Sasha Launer.
Lillios’s Summer Sketches, the winner of Areon’s 2014 International Composition Competition, begins with a playful, wandering flute solo. Two more flutes join in and engage in an aural game of hide-and-seek. At times the music describes an action like skipping and diving, and other times seems more onomatopoetic. The two movements, “Skating on Discs of Light” and “Dry Wind,” follow ants running past a picnic, mosquitos buzzing past your ear, spiders creeping toward their prey, and dragonflies dive-bombing the lazy river. Unorthodox tone color, hums, trills, percussive tongue and finger slaps, flutters and growls used on the whole flute family evoke these quintessential insectoid summer sounds. This broad exploration of sounds and soundscape makes sense for an electroacoustic composer flexing her flute trio muscles. Lillios gives a voice to every insect, spider, and bug. Summer Sketches evokes a 21st-century variation of Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux combined with a modernized Das Jahr (Hensel), compacted into two movements.
Cornelius Boots’s Chthonic Flute Suite, commissioned by Areon Flutes, takes the listener on a journey through the underworld. The first movement, “Root of Ether,” begins with a calm, solo meditation. About a minute in, the player exhales poignantly; upon this ‘last breath,’ the tempo picks up and the listener approaches the allegorical rabbit hole. The next movement, “Enantiodromia,” kicks off with a loud chord, and then the three flutes move in and out of sync with each other, taking turns with the melody and turning counterpoint on its head. This middle movement of Chthonic Flute Suite suggests diving down the rabbit hole and finding the underworld. ‘Enantiodromia’ is the concept that any force inevitably produces its opposite, usually towards equilibrium. This is quite possibly my favorite piece on the album for the sheer amount of fun I had listening to the twists and turns. As the name suggests, the piece moves in cycles of turning, reversing, and toppling – on an unrelated note, I just found the perfect word to describe politics. The third movement of Boots’s journey, “Void of Day” opens with a wan panpipe solo. The anemic yet cheerful tune gives way as the trio volleys melodies between each other, forming a collage of scenes from the underworld. At the midpoint, the music suddenly becomes somber and churchlike. Boots changes the mood on a dime. A great gravity overcomes the prior mystique. This does not last until the end, for as the name suggests, the void is coming! After nearly a minute of frantic chordal chuffing, the flutes arpeggiate up and…nothing. Boots saw the opportunity and took it – the void swallows the piece before it can conclude.
The last piece on this album is Uncanny Valley by Mike Sempert, commissioned by Areon Flutes. This gentle three-part counterpoint in the beginning evokes relaxing video games like Journey, Flower, and Thomas Was Alone. I choose this comparison conscientiously. The video games listed are all simple stories concerning man versus machine and are renowned for their unique (and pleasant) soundtracks. When the synthesizer enters, the piece takes on its own soul. Stumbling rhythms, harmonious electronic dance sounds and waltz-like melodies in the flutes offer a glimpse into a halting conversation between artificial intelligence and organic beings. The two halves of this multi-sided duet (organic flutes vs artificial synthesizers seek and fail to find common musical ground. The synthesizers eventually cut out, and the three flutes come together more united than before. This is a track I put on repeat and imagine a different story for each playthrough. It feels like a science fiction story put into music, and I have the pleasure of deciphering it.
Thrive easily earns a spot in my top five albums of 2016. Every track is easy to listen to, and the more you listen, the more levels of appreciation you gain. There is very little showing off, which frankly is something of a relief. So many compositions and performances are downright acrobatic nowadays. Finding a composition without virtuosity for flashy virtuosity’s sake is becoming a rare treasure. It is said that a true master makes something difficult seem easy; Areon Flutes embodies this concept and makes modern compositions for chamber ensembles accessible and pleasurable to all.
Thrive is available from Innova Music at innova.mu/albums/areon-flutes/thrive, and from iTunes, Amazon, and other music retailers.
Akhnaten: Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Resurrected at LA Opera
The daughters of Akhnaten. (Photo: Craig T. Mathew / LA Opera)
Coinciding with a period of cooler, shorter days, and political change (even upheaval), the LA Opera staged a generous month-long run of Akhnaten, by Philip Glass, chronicling the subversive pharaoh who incited a religious revolution in ancient Egypt.
Third in a series of “portrait operas,” (the operatic equivalent of the biopic), Akhnaten, followed in the footsteps of Einstein and Gandhi, though three millennia their senior.
“So far I had covered science and politics. After that I was looking for a figure who influenced the religious side of society,” Glass told LA Opera.
Glass’s first opera, Einstein on the Beach (1976)—a collaboration with director Robert Wilson—was shocking in its originality, great length, and anti-narrative concept, but equally shocking in its success, effectively launching Glass’s career.
An experimental work, LA Opera revived it in 2013 for a terse single weekend run.
Akhnaten, by comparison, markets well: commanding yet vulnerable, approachable yet profound. The work hypnotizes in it visual impact, restrained musicality, spirituality, and the ring of historic authenticity.
Varieties of Minimialist Experience
Glass is counted among the foremost exponents of minimalism in music, and has been for some decades. What is surprising in Akhnaten is that an expansive genre like opera fits so spaciously in minimalist terrain, and integrates minimalist techniques continuously and convincingly.
A scene from “Akhnaten.” (Photo: Craig T. Mathew / LA Opera)
Akhnaten exemplifies minimalism in all its many forms—some often overlooked. Beyond the now trademark arpeggios and tremolos pervasive throughout the Glass output, an economy of means—musical, theatrical, and dramaturgical—guides the opera.
Vocal lines are simple and direct, with narrow tessituras, seeming to avoid any superfluous virtuosity. Texts (when comprehensible) are pithy, repetitive, and set syllabically, fostering clarity and understanding.
Scenes are few in number, and drawn out, but imbued only minimally with story-forwarding action. Atmosphere drives Akhnaten above all else. Drama is restricted by the judicious hand of a minimalist composer: Almost an anti-plot, the opera unfolds in a series of immersive vignettes that paint a portrait of the title figure and his legacy.
Arresting Stillness
Perhaps the clearest example of Akhnaten’s minimalism is its relentlessly slow, measured pace of physicality on stage. The cast moves with a ceremonious, unhurried composure, as if the characters of ancient Egyptian tomb paintings had come alive.
That stately concept of movement, traceable perhaps to Glass-collaborator Robert Wilson’s use of slow motion, distinguishes this production—by Phelim McDermott and the English National Opera—from the original, faster version of the Stuttgart State Opera.
At center, Frederick Ballentine as the High Priest of Amon in “Akhnaten.” (Photo: Craig T. Mathew / LA Opera)
The deliberate pace, which never fails to enchant, induces that present-moment awareness associated with the best of minimalist music. Intermittent juggling episodes course throughout the opera, accenting the palpably inert ambience with gravity-speed bursts of activity.
Adapting Musically
Commissioned by Stuttgart State Opera during a period of renovation, Glass was required to reduce the orchestral forces to accommodate a smaller pit. He adapted by omitting the violin section entirely, setting the highest string writing for the darkly shimmering violas, lending a fitting melancholy character to the orchestral tuttis.
Though stopping short of that classic operatic organizing principle—the leitmotif, recurring motives do provide a thread of comprehension, unifying the lengthy opera through the power of musical memory.
An exposed A natural minor scale, played as a bassoon solo, courses sedately upwards and downwards, sparsely accompanied by thin string writing and gentle woodwind chords, perhaps symbolizing the rise and fall of Akhnaten, his new capital city, and the monotheistic religion he founded centered on the Aten—the disk of the sun.
At the heart of the opera, rounding out Act II, Akhnaten sings a radiant hymn to the sun, in the warmly contrasting key of A major. The one and only aria in English, it is set syllabically to a simple melody of repeated notes and occasional, sparkling leaps.
A Dead Language Comes Alive
Librettist Sholom Goldman calls Akhnaten a form of “vocal archeology,” in the way texts were borrowed from original sources, including the Egyptian Book of the Dead, tomb inscriptions, and Akhnaten’s own poetry.
Most of the opera is sung in the Ancient Egyptian language, its resolute cadence imparting a distinguishing power that elevates text itself to a standing beyond the norm for opera. The first stanza of the choral setting which opens the opera immediately calls attention:
Anthony Roth Costanzo (center) in the title role of “Akhnaten.” (Photo: Craig T. Mathew / LA Opera)
Ankh ankh, en mitak
Yewk er heh en heh
Aha en heh
Live life, thou shalt not die
Thou shalt exist for millions
of millions of years
For millions of millions of years
The sole drawback to the textual treatment might be the use of anachronistic King’s James English translations in the “Hymn to the Sun” and the text of the Scribe (the narrator and tour guide of the whole opera), which in its distanced formality seems at odds with the otherwise contemporary, highly personal character of the opera.
A Transcendent Pharaoh
The strongest connector of audience to opera was Akhnaten himself, portrayed by countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, who at once seemed exempt from the boundaries of mortality and sexuality, yet closely related to his listeners.
Akhnaten first appears descending from an elevated platform in a lengthy procession scene, fully frontally nude. His leisurely, aimless gait, and bare, shaved body and scalp impart a newborn, androgynous, angelic quality to the character that endures continuously.
Costumes by Kevin Pollard also served to reduce clarity of gender: ornate, baroquely bejeweled ceremonial regalia enveloped Akhnaten like a newborn swathed in loincloth. His ceremonial robe was imprinted with a female breast insignia, fostering a dual-gender persona.
Akhnaten’s gender is negated further—and foremost—by the use of the countertenor vocal quality, a form of falsetto vocalizing, although more resonant and capable of vibrato.
“When you write an opera, you have a very limited time to tell a complicated story,” Glass said. “Any shortcut becomes important.”
Akhnaten is silent onstage for 40 minutes, and when he finally does sing, “they are all astonished by the sound that comes out of his mouth. It is a clever way of emphasizing him as different,” elaborated Glass.
Tom Pye’s set design was always visually stunning and often surreal, featuring a brilliant, blinding sun, a moon of shifting hues—by turns white, pink, and blue—and later several giant levitating luminous orbs, all pointing to a dream realm more than any actual past.
Anthony Roth Costanzo in the title role of “Akhnaten.” (Photo: Craig T. Mathew / LA Opera)
The Welcome Akhnaten
In the end, what is most striking about Akhnaten is its relevance: That an Egyptian pharaoh separated by three millennia of history could come alive to speak to contemporary audiences so intimately, in a dead language left largely untranslated, in a rare, almost artificial vocal type—that listeners should feel a sense of welcome and belonging—is the genius of this opera and production.
Despite courtyard protests that the original Akhnaten was black but Anthony Roth Costanzo is white, there was a mood of excitement and the sense of something important happening at LA Opera. And while some of the Italian opera regulars were conspicuously absent—replaced by new faces this round—at six performances, Akhnaten is firmly established in the mainstream operatic repertoire.
Glass has made a similar observation: “I always felt there was a public that would like this music, and over time, the audiences, so small in the beginning, have only gotten larger.”
Introducing Elliott Goldkind
You might have seen Elliott Goldkind’s wonderful review of the Synchromy/HOCKET concert last week (click here for that). That was his first article for New Classic LA, but it certainly won’t be the last. I’m stoked to introduce him to everyone. Here’s the bio Elliott sent me:
Elliott Goldkind
Elliott Goldkind has composed music for diverse media, ranging from orchestral and chamber music to film, television, and commercials.
Elliott’s classical/concert music has been performed throughout the United States and Western Europe. His film scoring work has led to collaborations with Jeff Buckley, David Mamet and many talented young directors.
Elliott received his B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, studied at Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris and the Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin. He received his Masters and Doctorate degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His teachers include Chester Biscardi, Meyer Kupferman, Stephen Dembksi and Joel Naumann. At the UW-Madison, he helped revive the UW-Madison Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, a group that is dedicated to performing the music of Wisconsin students/composers. Elliott is a MacDowell Colony fellow and the recipient of New York University’s Langley Fellowship.
Stylistically, Elliott’s music ranges from lyrical to nails-on-blackboard. Ideally, he writes with pen and paper, leaving it up to “real musicians” to perform. However, for film and commercial applications, various electronic/digital approaches rear their ugly heads as well.
Elliott was a founding member of the not-too-legendary New York rock bands “Bones Jones and the Jones Tones,” “Hodgepodge Lodge,” and “Freak of Nature.” Like too many others, Elliott is a native New Yorker living in Los Angeles.
Welcome to the team, underwater amigo.
Synchromy + HOCKET present Crusoe at LACC
Composer/pianist/HOCKET member Sarah Gibson emptying out a treasure chest during Synchromy’s performance of Rzewski’s Crusoe. Photo by Adam Borecki.
If there were any doubts that the LA new-music scene is in the midst of a surfeit of musical and aesthetic diversity, Synchromy and HOCKET’s evening of music, titled Crusoe, on November 5 should certainly quell them. The playing, centering on Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff of the piano duo HOCKET, and later adding a larger ensemble, was truly exceptional: precise, expressive, virtuosic where needed, yet playful, even comedic where possible.
The concert’s first half was comprised of four compositions for piano-four-hands by four local, living LA composers.
Alexander Elliott Miller’s Clock Smasher made for a striking and auspicious beginning. As its title might suggest, the opening motif, in four hands in ascent, burst open a vivid sonic palette that would traverse and transmogrify in interesting and musically satisfying ways.
Composer Alexander Elliott Miller, here playing guitar with Linnea Powell, viola, on Synchromy’s performance of Crusoe. Photo by Adam Borecki.
In his program note Miller makes mention of the “… polyrhythms, many of which do have a sort of ‘tick-tock’ quality, like a room full of out-of-sync clocks.” This is most certainly accurate but it only begins to suggest the variety and vitality of harmonic and gestural realms it creates and explores. Clock Smasher teases us at first with a metronomic, pulsed music which evolves into something ominously hovering, then interrupted by syncopated rhythms infused with quasi-jazz harmonies. Even the mention of the “J Word” is sometimes frowned upon – personally, I don’t frown upon it – but regardless of what that might suggest to you, this is certainly not a jazz composition. But that isn’t to say that it doesn’t flirt with tonality, some very lovely melodies and, at times, even hints at something Bill Evans might have mused about at the keyboard. This music, as Miller’s notes suggest, does subvert its own idiomatic tendencies with those irregular rhythms, to my ear something of a this-is-definitely-NOT-jazz insistence, which then somehow, artfully evolves into a spacious, airy coda, punctuated by big, long and spacious chords. A poignant, striking work.
The next piece on the program was Marc Evans’ One Wandering Night. This piece was for a slightly varied configuration of HOCKET in that Ms. Gibson remained on the piano while Mr. Kotcheff moved to an electric keyboard and they were augmented by the addition of two melodicas (played by the composer and Nick Norton).
Fun fact: I went to a Joe Jackson concert when I was a kid, probably around 1980. He whipped out a melodica and declared it “The Instrument of the Future!” Perhaps he was right. I do hear a lot of melodica at new music concerts these days.
Evans’ piece was inspired by Bartok and that came through clearly enough. There is always the danger of being on the wrong side of the line separating homage from uninspired imitation. Fortunately, One Wandering Night falls decidedly on the right side of that line. While the melodicas played a sort of wheezing Eastern European Bartokian ostinato, definitely and pleasantly reminiscent of Bartok’s own take on modal folk melody, the piano and electric keyboard sputtered and interjected their own contrasting bits. I found this particularly satisfying as it reminded me, on a simple level, of Bartok’s own 2-handed piano trickery, where the two hands remain, stubbornly, in their own domain (key, mode, register) despite any discord that stubborn autonomy might produce. And on a more complex level, it reminded me of one of my very favorite pieces of music, Messiaen’s jardin du sommeil d’amour, a movement from his Turangalîla-Symphonie. While the melodic and harmonic technique is quite different in Messiaen’s masterpiece, a similar bifurcation and their disorienting affect is in play.
L to R: Marc Evans, Sarah Gibson, Nick Norton, and Thomas Kotcheff perform Evans’ One Wandering Night.
And playful it is. As the piece progresses, the tempo of the melodicas’ pumping melody increases and the interjections become more intense until, like a tired Hungarian hiker on the banks of the Danube, all four instruments slow down until they reach total repose. I must admit to being completely unfamiliary with Evans’ work but if this piece is at all representative of his musical sensibilities, then I definitely want to hear more.
Nick Norton told us from the stage that his Mirror Smasher was a number of things. He said it was “minimalisty” (and as such, “easy to write”), loud, and a work in progress. This piece was, again, for the four deft hands of HOCKET, and in fact even the pitch material itself was produced and ordered by them. The unordered (or, to quote the program, “played about a zillion different ways, as if looking at it in a broken mirror”) pitch set is:
H O C K E T = B G C D E F#
Yet again, HOCKET played beautifully. The piece begins with a clear tonal center, pulsing along as “minimalisty” pieces often do. But not long into the playing, a pre-recorded track of electronic sounds makes its presence known.
Norton’s choice of electronic sounds – both their timbre and idiomatic qualities – were a highlight for me. The combination of the smooth, hypnotic four-handed piano combined with the somewhat Kraftwerky buzzes, gently evolving into higher pitched electronic sounds reminiscent of some of the organ work in Einstein on the Beach really made for a powerful electro-acoustic marriage.
About halfway into Mirror Smasher the volume cranks up significantly. (The composer warned us of this before the performance. There will be no lawsuits.) If there was a hint of Einstein before the knob was turned, now the Einsteinian character felt married to something more like Heavy Metal, even Rock Opera. (Norton’s program note says that the title is a nod to Alex Miller’s Clock Smasher but I couldn’t help wonder if it might, even subconsciously, have any connection to The Who’s Do I Smash The Mirror, from Tommy. OK, probably not, but still…) OK, Rock Opera is misleading at best, demeaning at worst. But Mirror Smasher’s loud second half is formidable, powerful, and I could easily imagine it, as the composer suggested, being extended into a much longer Minimalist work. While different in pitched/melodic material, it reminded me, in a very good way, of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music in its powerful, gyrating and relentless sonic attack.
The program’s first half concluded with Jason Barabba’s The Distance of the Moon. The piece takes its title from a story in Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics of the same name. Calvino’s work is a collection of clever, fanciful tales, sometimes mischievous, sometimes romantic and nostalgic, often subverting our expectations if not the laws of nature as we’ve come to understand them. Calvino’s Distance of the Moon is a story about the moon, which, once upon a time, existed but a hop away from the Earth, but is now gradually moving farther and farther away. As the two spheres continue to distance themselves from each other, the inhabitants abandon the moon for the Earth. All but one of them, who decides to remain, forever, stranded alone on the moon.
Barabba’s musical interpretation of the story is itself a clever, fanciful tale. But unlike the rather light quality of the short story, it is a significant, weighty work. This is not to say that it isn’t imbued with moments of lightness – it is! – but it is not a mere bagatelle, but rather a significant musical and pianistic undertaking. Distance of the Moon was originally composed for a single pianist (presumably the two-handed kind) but as such it was almost impossible to play. I can all too easily believe this. Even in its two-person version, it is quite challenging.
Stylistically, it manages to explore a number of moods and idiomatic gestures yet still most definitely feel like a coherent, unified work. Moments of romantic, almost tonal passages intermingle deftly with strong, almost Schoenbergian dissonances. Lugubrious night music passages transition into stumbling, irregular rhythms with almost-BeBop melodic lines.
In the end, analogous to the story on which its based, Distance makes us feel the separation, the yearning, the tension hoping, however in vain, for a resolution. It ends, fragile and sparse, in a delicate and beautiful diad. Two notes at either end of the piano keyboard. A deep work, and one that I suspect would definitely reward repeat hearings and analysis.
Then came an intermission. If this had been a meal, I would have felt not full but satisfied. This was a chunk of concert that delivered four works of diverse character yet not, as a whole, illogically incongruent. But wait, there’s more…
The second half began with Mayke Nas’ DiGiT #2. (For the curious, I don’t think there’s a DiGiT #1.) For those who don’t know (I didn’t), Ms. Nas is a Dutch composer, born in 1972. I don’t know how her work wound up on this program but it was a perfect palette cleanser. DiGiT is, to my ear, entirely devoid of a single specified pitch for any of the four hands, or four forearms, or two foreheads that activate the piano keys. It is, to be clear, a humorous bit of performance, perhaps a commentary on what we consider to be “high art.” It also allows a piano duo to highlight a different take on virtuosity.
DiGiT centers itself around a variation of our childhood schoolyard hand jive or clapping game that involves an intricate collaborative clapping between two people (usually young girls), while simultaneously singing a rhyme. (Shimmy Shimmy Cocoa Pop! was the one the Black girls bussed into my Queens elementary school taught me). DiGiT, however, is inspired by another favorite, Oh Little Playmate. It is not only a charming work – one that HOCKET obviously enjoyed immensely – but even a virtuosic one, albeit in a very different way. Piano keys are only played in clusters, but other sounds arise from the intricate interplay of the two pianists’ strikes against the palms, arms, and thighs of themselves and each other. The rhythms are at times satisfyingly smooth, even evoking soft shoe dance moves in their elegance and grace. It’s very much a performance piece, and, if you like, you can see an older performance of it (not by HOCKET, but by eighth blackbird, here:
The concert itself was billed under the title of CRUSOE. The grand finale, so to speak, was Frederic Rzewski’s composition of that name. Rzewski, born in 1938, is seen as a somewhat enigmatic figure of the 20th century avant-garde, someone who studied with “Uptown” and Princeton figures (Babbitt, et al.) yet whose own musical output butterflied effortlessly among genres widely, from serialism to minimalism. His works are coherent and easy to describe in and of themselves. But to describe what a “Rzewski piece” might be is near impossible.
Isaac Schankler, Thomas Kotcheff, and Nick Norton performing Rzewski’s Crusoe. Photo by Adam Borecki.
As for Crusoe, where to begin? First of all, it was a delight! Which is not to say that it was necessarily such a delight on the page, but Synchromy upped the dose for our viewing pleasure. The stage was adorned with a backdrop of a deserted island, inflatable palm trees and beach balls. A large ensemble adorned themselves a la Castaway, with everything from light headgear to a stuffed parrot on a shoulder to, in the case of one player (Mr. Norton, on guitar) a full-on shark suit! It was most definitely an aesthetic choice, not one dictated by the score, and I found it to be a wise one which bore much (tropical?) fruit.
Crusoe employs a performing force of unspecified instruments, requires its players to sing and chant various lines about Robinson Crusoe, play percussion instruments, and do other things that might make a Musicians Union bristle. The vocal sections are interspersed among bright, quite lovely pointillistic instrumental episodes. As such, Crusoe is reminiscent at times of some of Harry Partch’s better works, albeit without the microtonal schema.
Soprano Justine Aronson performing Rzewski’s Crusoe with Synchromy and HOCKET. Photo by Adam Borecki.
After various chants, instrumental interludes, spilling of doubloons, breaking of branches, dusting off of hands, tinkling of toy pianos, swords whirred as they are raised in the air, heads patted, feet stomped, the Narrator (sung by Justine Aronson) comes forth to chant the last line. At which point she is pelted by the ensemble with beach balls. The End! (I won’t call the Union if you don’t.)
As I said, Rzewski is enigmatic. And Crusoe is no less an enigma. Did this performance, and this piece, provide any insight into the tale of Robinson Crusoe? No, not really. Did it give me a sense of what Rzewski’s compositional voice was? Well, kinda sorta, inasmuch as only one of his pieces might. But more importantly, it was a perfect end to Synchromy’s ambitious concert, a perfect counterweight to an already diverse and profound selection of our community’s musical wealth.
The Lyris Quartet at Music and Conversations
On Saturday, November 12, 2016 Music and Conversations presented the Lyris Quartet in a concert of music ranging from Bach and Mozart to Shostakovich, along with new contemporary works by Jane Brockman and Billy Childs. The Jack Rutberg Fine Arts Gallery on La Brea was the venue and an overflow crowd filled every available seat for the occasion.
Timothy Loo, cellist for the Lyris Quartet was first, performing the Prelude from Suite No. 3 in C Major, BWV 1009 by J.S. Bach. This began with a lovely deep sound in the warm lower registers followed quickly by a series of ascending scales. The detailed ornamentation and the precise articulation was especially easy to follow in the cozy acoustics of the gallery. The tempo was brisk – almost urgent at times – but the optimism and elegance inherent in Suite No. 3 never faltered while under the care of Mr. Loo.
Duo No. 1 in G, K. 423 (version for viola and cello) by Mozart followed. Timothy Loo was joined by Luke Maurer, violist for the Lyris Quartet. By way of introduction, Maurer explained that Michael Haydn had been commissioned by the Archbishop of Salzburg in the summer of 1783 to write six duos, but Haydn fell ill and had only finished four. Mozart offered to complete the remaining two for his friend, and Duo No. 1 in G is the first of these. The piece begins with light, active passages in the viola with a nice counterpoint in the cello. The tempo was brisk and the resulting texture light and frothy – textbook Mozart. Maurer and Loo maintained good coordination as the quick melody alternated with more moderate sections, and they never let the pace slacken or drag.
The Adagio movement followed providing a slower, more relaxed contrast to the opening, but even here the delicate proportions and almost weightless feel of the harmonies carries the listener effortlessly along. The intonation was rock solid. The Rondo:Allegro movement finished the piece and returned to the rapid tempo and closely intertwined rhythms. The quick passages in the viola were particularly well played and the intimate acoustics complimented the overall balance. The bright and sunny feel of this movement persisted to the conclusion, prompting the audience to enthusiastically applaud a fine effort.
The Lyris Quartet at Music and Conversations
Unrequited, the new Billy Childs string quartet was next, with violinists Shalini Vijayan and Alyssa Park joining the others on stage. Unrequited is one of four new pieces commissioned by the Lyris Quartet, all written as a commentary or reflection on String Quartet No. 2 (1928) by Leoš Janáček. Janáček was inspired by his long and close friendship with Kamila Stösslová, a married woman some 38 years younger, with whom over 700 letters were exchanged over a span of 11 years. As Mr. Childs noted in his introductory remarks, this relationship never moved to the next level, and the tragedy of love unfulfilled was uppermost in the mind of the composer while writing this piece. Unrequited begins with long, sustained chords full of wistful sadness. The harmonies are very expressive and the inner details were brought out nicely by the gallery acoustics. This piece was performed at a recent Jacaranda event in a much larger hall and the difference is striking – the interior structure of this piece is well crafted and very beautiful. At times there were faster, more complex sections that suggested a sense of tension or anxiety, but Unrequited always returns to a feeling of achingly mournful disappointment. A final melancholy chord of sad acceptance completes this remarkable work.
beneath the surface of a sea of silence by Jane Brockman followed, based on two lines from the poem Fireflies by the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore:
“The world is the ever-changing foam
that floats on the surface of a sea of silence.”
This begins with high trills in the violins and an active melody that has a driving, rhythmic feel, although never overpowering. This sense of purposeful intent continues forward, with occasional hints of tension arising in the harmony. A nice series of tutti trills changes the texture to a mystical shimmering before returning to the more deliberate marcato. An elegant violin solo precedes another series of tutti trills. beneath the surface of a sea of silence proceeds in this way, with slower, more dramatic sections alternating with somewhat faster passages that move persistently ahead. All are interspersed with tutti pizzicato or trills that break into the moment and prepare the listener for the next sequence. beneath the surface of a sea of silence contains all of the mystery and restlessness of the sea, artfully capturing the contrasting relationship of contemplation and movement.
The final work of the concert was String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 110 by Dimitri Shostakovich. Written over just three days in July, 1960 it is dedicated to ‘the victims of fascism and the war’. Alyssa Park explained that rehearsals of this piece took on a cathartic dimension given recent political events here. The opening movement, Largo, begins with a solemn cello line, picked up, in turn, by the viola and violins. Soft, sustained chords add to the gloomy feel and a sad violin solo arose that was expressively played by Ms. Park. The reflective tempo abruptly ended and a series of frenetic passages of the Allegro molto movement ensued, intense and furious – almost like being under attack. The Lyris Quartet played this with resolute precision, and the close spaces of the gallery seemed barely able to contain the dynamic energy. The dance-like rhythms of the Allegretto movement relieved the tension somewhat and these were given just the right amount of airiness and lyricism. The anxiety and darkness reappeared, however, in the 4th movement with smooth, quietly powerful passages interspersed with short, rapid tutti strokes. The final Largo movement continued in this slower, dirge-like manner and the piece ended with a sad cello solo that faded quietly away. String Quartet No. 8 is a compact and impressively intense work, played with great emotion in this performance. The Lyris Quartet received a long standing ovation for their superb effort.
The next Music and Conversations concert is on March 18, 2017.
The Lyris Quartet has just released a new CD titled Intimate Letters, featuring the Billy Childs piece Unrequited.
Cellist Ashley Walters on Sweet, Sweet Anxiety
Cellist Ashley Walters. Photo by Todd H. Carlson.
Perhaps the title here is a hair misleading – as far as we know, Ashley Walters, cellist, does not have anxiety. We do know that she’s on of the most active cellists in the LA scene, specializing in microtonal music and repertoire featuring extended techniques and alternate tunings. Ashley, a member of the Formalist Quartet, has appeared as a soloist on concert series such as Green Umbrella, wasteLAnd music, San Diego New Music, Beyond Baroque, and many others. Tomorrow evening, she plays a solo set at Tuesdays at Monk Space, entitled A Sweet Anxiety.
T@MS’ Social Media and Outreach Director, Cristina Lord, interviewed Ashley ahead of the concert. The interview was sent out via email to their list, and I asked if we could reprint it here for our readers. Here are Cristina and Ashley:
The program contains a challenging list of works that explore the sonic possibilities of the cello. From your perspective, does the combination of these particular pieces affect their meanings as a whole?
The works on this program represent what I believe to be milestones of the recent cello repertoire. While there are parallels in this collection of pieces — four use microtonality, all use extended techniques, and all bear the imprint for the performer for whom it was written — the pieces, nevertheless, arrive at dramatically different expressive destinations as a result of their explorations in technique and timbre.
You’ve been praised for your performances of Liza Lim’s Invisibility, a dazzling, unpredictable work that is part of Lim’s ongoing investigation of Australian Aboriginal’s ‘aesthetics of presence.’ The piece has an overall shimmering quality, and uses two kinds of bows to offer different possibilities of friction that explore harmonic complexities within the instrument. What aesthetic qualities have you found most enrapturing about this piece, and how does the work speak to you?
Liza Lim has reimagined the personality and voice of the cello in an absolutely unique way. Although the modified “guiro” bow provides visual and timbral drama, it is the retuned strings that truly define the essence of this piece to me. Three of the four strings are tuned lower, darkening and obscuring the cello’s familiar, swan-like voice. The open and ringing perfect fifths of standard tuning are replaced with tense and unruly dissonances.
Also on the program is Berio’s Sequenza XIV, a work inspired by the Kandyan drum rhythms of Sri Lanka. As such, the piece utilizes the cello as a percussion instrument in addition to its traditional role as a string instrument. Given the diverse range of techniques required in this piece, what did you find most challenging or interesting?
As a kid, I grew up playing both cello and percussion and I think part of why I love this piece so much is because it allows me to play both! In many ways, Berio set the precedent for composer/performer collaboration making the unique characteristics and capabilities of each dedicatee a central theme in many of his Sequenzas. In the case of this final Sequenza, Berio incorporates these Kandayan drumming cycles, which were shown to him by the great Sri Lankan cellist, Rohan de Saram.
You’ve worked closely with multiple composers, including Nicholas Deyoe whose piece another anxiety will be opening the concert at Monk Space. What do you enjoy most about collaborating with composers? What was the process like for Another Anxiety?
Nicholas Deyoe has been a friend and collaborator for the past nine years, during which time I have premiered twelve of his works. Our first collaboration, developed in secret, was a piece performed as a surprise dedication to the great soprano, Stephanie Aston on her and Nicholas’ wedding day. The process of our collaboration continues to evolve, but risk-taking and honesty have been our anchors throughout. The inspiration for the opening of another anxiety, with its tiny microtonal intervals, came from Nicholas’ observation that I could easily divide a whole step into four notes in the lowest positions of the cello. To me, such collaboration, is the epitome of being a new music performer. I am so proud to be presenting the results of my collaboration with Nicholas Deyoe and Wadada Leo Smith as part of my program at Tuesdays @ Monk Space.
Tickets are available at asweetanxiety.brownpapertickets.com.
Alexander Noice: Music Made With Voices
“Is that 8-bit game music?” My boyfriend asked, overhearing the song Karina Kallas. His question was surprisingly apt. Alexander Noice’s Music Made With Voices, published by Orenda Records, features eight pieces created out of the same eight voices singing the same note. As there are exactly eight elements, it is indeed, in a sense, 8-bit. The songs showcase characterizing traits of eponymous friends and family through only their voices.
Noice manipulates the pitch, attack, decay, and so on, and layers these modifed sonic elements into melodies, harmonies, and rhythms. Human ears fail to recognize sound as a voice if it has been altered by more than a major third (the span of the first two notes in Kumbaya). Since most of the notes are indeed outside that range from the original pitch, it is nearly impossible to recognize the sounds as vocal. Depending on the timbre of the individual singer, and the manner in which Noice alters the voice, they can sound like an electronic beep, a shawm, a kazoo, or an electric bass. Noice orchestrates according to each voice’s unique properties, and presumably according to the singer’s personality.
Alexander Noice
Some works, like Frank Noice, sound relatively more acoustic; it could probably be done with a choir of shawms and sackbuts (if you don’t know what a sackbut is, it’s as funny as it sounds. Google it). In other words, though it does not sound like a choir, it does sound instrumental. Others, like Masatoshi Sato, sound more electronic. The third category is, of course, those that retain their voice. Ihui Wu is a clever mix of female voices whooping out a melody while other voices chirp and thrum like old-school synths.
This technique is ingenious in itself, but it requires a certain skill to pull off such intricate polyphony with it. Here, Noice’s expertise with ensemble work shines through. Every track exhibits novel rhythms, interesting harmonies, a clear and unique melody, and a variety of textures. This is especially impressive given his minimal source material of a single note. Then again, a single note in a digital audio workspace contains infinite potential. Making the right choices to concoct a series of engaging pieces is the real challenge, over which Noice triumphs.
Noice uses technology to chop, warp, bend, stop, drop, and roll, cha cha real smooth. You get the picture. Software turns the original sound clip into something almost-but-not-quite-completely different. And that was his inspiration. “[Music Made With Voices] parallels our modern relationships and interactions, both with communication, and the cherry-picking portrayal of our daily lives through texting, Facebook, Twitter, etc. At times it’s hard to get a fully realistic, honest view of people with our relationships are so filtered through digital outlets,” Noice explains. This is a keen insight to our 21st century culture. Many adults miss the days of communicating by voice instead of text, as many believe actual talking breeds deeper connection. Some people believe a voice is the most honest part of any person; some cultures believe the soul resides in the throat, not the heart or the brain, for exactly this reason. By digitally afflicting the voice, Noice transforms this human essence into art, thus destroying the very thing that made it human.
At the same time, he creates a community. The voices were recorded alone, and Noice joins them in an ensemble. Say what you will about technology filtering interaction, it does have the wonderful power to bring people and voices together. Though transformed, the essence remains, and now the voices interact. In continuing the parallel to cyber interactions, Noice succeeds in uniquely uniting eight people for the sake of art.
Noice has created a thought-provoking and aurally stimulating album. Each song proves again and again his prowess with intricate ensemble work, a sense of interesting melody, and his understanding of the subject’s personality. As reliant on digital effects as this album is, it exhibits a rare organicism. Music Made With Voices encapsulates creativity, humanity, and the digital age.
The album will be available for purchase on October 21st from the Orenda Records website and bandcamp, which is also taking pre-orders.
Ted Hearne on The Source
On Thursday night I went to the LA Opera/Beth Morrison Projects production of Ted Hearne’s The Source at REDCAT. This is an incredibly important work, and one that needs to be experienced with Daniel Fish’s staging if possible. The text is drawn from documents from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars released by Chelsea Manning via wikileaks, and ways material, both textual and musical, are crosscut, are an amazing reflection not only of the subject but of the way we view subjects today – fragmented, fast, and mediated by technology in occasionally problematic (this is a good thing, in this case) ways. The show continues tonight at tomorrow, and tickets are available at laopera.org/season/16-17-season/The-Source/.
I was able to talk to composer Ted Hearne ahead of the show, so some of the questions below reflect the fact that I hadn’t seen it yet, but deal with subjects that come up again and again in Ted’s work. He’s incredibly thoughtful and transparent in his approaches, and though this is a long read, what he considers and begs all of us to consider is absolutely worth your attention.
Ted Hearne, composer of The Source. Photo: Nathan Lee Bush.
Though The Source is an LA Opera project, you call the work an oratorio. What can listeners expect?
There are four singers who sing the piece entirely while embedded in the audience, and four giant screens surrounding the space playing video throughout (designed by Jim Findlay and Daniel Fish). None of the singers are traditional opera singers, and about half of the songs use live a type of live electronic vocal processing akin to auto-tune. The libretto is entirely primary-source material, drawn mostly from the 400,000+ Dept of Defense cables released by WikiLeaks and their media partners in 2010 (now known as the Iraq War Logs and Afghan War Diary) and from the “Chat Logs” between Adrian Lamo and Chelsea Manning, the US Army Private responsible for releasing those documents to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. There are no characters, no stage and the singers don’t move. (If any of those things disqualify the piece as being called an ‘opera’ than I guess it’s not an opera, but I like the idea that LA Opera is unfazed.)
I read in the LA Times that you began with a plot or narrative of sorts, and moved toward the oratorio/more open ended nature of the work as the libretto progressed. Could you talk about that a bit? Do you feel anything was lost in the process? What did the work gain by going in that direction?
We didn’t start with a plot or traditional narrative per se, just a completely different focus. I started working on the piece in early 2010 — back then I was interested in finding ways to explore the differences between (often sensationalized) media narratives surrounding the leaks. After working with Daniel Fish (director) and Mark Doten (librettist), the focus really shifted toward self-reflection, and asking questions about how we engage with the content of the leaks themselves.
I’m still interested in the idea of music that represents or confronts our current media culture, but in this context it felt like portraying the media hysteria wasn’t saying anything meaningful about it, but merely adding to the noise. We did end up keeping one media-centric piece in The Source, a movement called “Julian in a Nutshell” which sets a list of questions asked to Julian Assange by journalists in December 2010 (but none of his answers). Anne Lanzilotti wrote of this movement on her blog the other day, getting into ways genre/style signifiers are used to musically depict a narrative about the media.
About “plot” — David Shields writes this in his literary manifesto Reality Hunger (Actually this passage is an appropriation of writing by E.M. Cioran. Like all passages in Reality Hunger, Shields appropriated it from outside sources and weaved it into his book.):
There’s only one thing worse than boredom—the fear of boredom—and it’s this fear I experience every time I open a novel. I have no use for the hero’s life, don’t attend to it, don’t even believe in it. The genre, having squandered its substance, no longer has an object. The character is dying out; the plot, too. It’s no accident that the only novels deserving of interest today are those in which, once the universe is disbanded, nothing happens…
I tend to feel the same way about musical forms, especially opera. A traditional narrative/plot structure tends to keep me at a distance from the material instead of ushering me into it.
The REDCAT staging is, with audience members facing each other and unable to see all of the screens, supposed to reflect the fragmented nature of the The Source. Is this to highlight, for listeners, that their own judgements of the material are unique? Or is there a particular view of the topic that you hope to encourage?
It’s true that The Source is a patchwork of fragments, made up of shards of text (sometimes very small little pieces, sometimes larger passages that have been filtered through one arbitrary lens or another) and various sundry types of musical material. That comes in many ways from a desire to reflect the way we receive information now, or the structure of the information itself, and I also wanted to create unexpected overlays and juxtapositions and adjacencies that could help loosen text from our relationship to its original context.
Daniel Fish’s staging does reflect the fragmented and sometimes ambiguous nature of the text-setting in that there is a 4-channel video installation surrounding the audience, and of course nobody can see 360 degrees around them at one time, so some information will always be missed. However, I find the way he organizes and presents his visual material to be super different (spare at times, almost minimalist, economical and focused) than way I was thinking about organizing the music. And I love the way Daniel set up the audience in the space, sitting there manages to feel incredibly solitary and incredibly communal at the same time.
This certainly isn’t the first time you’ve engaged with sociopolitical issues, particularly systemic injustice, in your work. What you’re doing is absolutely admirable, and important, and clearly done with care and sensitivity. But it does beg a tricky question, one that I’ve also dealt with (perhaps unsuccessfully) as a composer. In some sense, what qualifies you to speak on behalf of the experiences of others? I don’t mean this in at all an accusatory way, but just this morning I was reading Ta Nehisi Coates’ account of growing up in Baltimore and realizing that, as much of an ally as I can be, I have absolutely no experience to relate to that kind of hardship. I’m thinking more of your Katrina Songs here – and don’t know exactly where in Chicago you are from – but do you ever worry about appropriation in your music? Or that you may misrepresent a group? Or is it more about drawing attention to issues?
You’re right, the question is both huge and tricky. And yes, I think about the ins and outs of appropriation all the time. (It would be irresponsible not to, since I use it so often as a creative strategy.) Responsible, attributed appropriation — be it from Chelsea Manning’s chat logs or the oral arguments to Citizens United or Kanye West’s diatribe on the NBC Katrina relief telethon — can be an incredibly honest vehicle for expression, pointing not only at how we process and reflect someone else’s words, but also at the impact of our current media landscape, which is one of decontextualization, fragmentation and sampling.
Katrina Ballads, a piece I wrote nine years ago, is a collection of songs, about an hour long, that sets primary-source texts from the week following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, all of which were heard on national media, the words of public figures (Barbara Bush, Anderson Cooper, Kanye West) as well as, in two cases, residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast who were interviewed about their experience. (One of them, Hardy Jackson, was interviewed the morning after the storm and had just lost his wife. Another, Ashley Nelson, was trapped in the Lafitte Projects in Treme, New Orleans for several days and spoke about her experience a few days later to an NPR reporter.)
One implication of your question, it seems, is that setting someone else’s words to music is the same thing as attempting to “speak on behalf” of them. That’s not always the case, and was never my intention in writing Katrina Ballads. Rather, the intention was to honor all the circumstances surrounding the origination of the text by never pretending to embody or characterize the speakers themselves, always respecting (and pointing to) that distance. When we put together productions of the piece in 2008 and 2010 we made sure to preserve and respect the identities of the singers too: I wanted to make it clear we were presenting a collection of songs where musicians who lived in Chicago, New York City and Charleston, SC were repeating and aestheticizing words spoken by other Americans in completely different circumstances. The tension between those two perspectives is integral to the piece.
That being said, there is one movement of Katrina Ballads that gnaws at me, which is the one that sets Hardy Jackson’s words. I know I would set those words differently now — actually I would probably choose not to set them — not necessarily because his circumstances are so much different from mine (they are) but because those words were spoken just as he had undergone a terrible life tragedy and he didn’t even really choose to sit for an interview (there just happened to be a roving reporter there). In some contexts – for instance, when the piece is being presented at a music school – the aestheticizing of his trauma seems immoral. Does this movement really bring that assembled audience closer to an understanding of the power and destruction of the storm that couldn’t be achieved with less invasive appropriation? Probably not. If I had been a more mature composer then, if I had been disciplined enough to ask myself some harder questions while writing the piece, I probably would have made different choices.
On the other hand, I have been present at forums where people really hadn’t grasped the impact of Katrina on actual humans, or the need for assistance that never came. There were performances for almost entirely affluent white audiences in Houston, and also for schoolchildren of all backgrounds, and for both of those groups I think the Hardy Jackson movement especially did actually provide a mix of decontextualization and documentation that served an educational function. (And of course for the most part today’s schoolchildren really know nothing about Katrina and its aftermath). And the ensuing conversations (even this one) are also in a way part of the point — who am I to appropriate that man’s words? How sick is it that we’re sitting here receiving this bourgie art piece that steals the words of people living such vastly different lives? Does the music highlight or gloss over those differences?
The implication you took from my question there about setting other people’s words – I’d like to talk a little more about that. This is something I’ve struggled with as a composer. I’ve always had trouble setting other peoples’ texts, because – without their explicit collaboration – I often feel that I’m adding something to the text that the author or speaker might not have intended. I’ve always had an interest in socially conscious music, and certainly love the written word, but this often stops me writing pieces that I might otherwise like to. Unless, of course, I can do something with the text so far from the original that there’s no way a listener might mistake it for the speaker’s intention. Perhaps this is too dogmatic of a question, are there any guiding principles you follow in your use of text? How do you make it clear that you’re not writing on behalf of the original speaker?
Well, if text is attributed, there shouldn’t be any confusion that it originated from another person, right? And it should be obvious that the composer is setting the text, not speaking it. So for me the question about using text is the really same as using any other musical material: are you as a composer using them in a particularly evocative way?
One question I’m interested in asking now: Can you get closer to understanding the difference between yourself and someone else by repeating their words in your own voice?
Last year I wrote a piece for Roomful of Teeth that was related to that idea. I set (among other things) two small chunks of text from Zora Neale Hurston’s classic essay How it feels to be colored me. The idea was not to pretend to any authoritative take on her perspective, but rather to a) understand it better by speaking it and b) understand my own perspective — my own relationship to whiteness and the construct of race in America — by studying and reinterpreting the words that describe hers.
One of the chunks was:
[The position of my white neighbor is much more difficult.]
No brown specter pulls up a chair beside me when I sit down to eat.
No dark ghost thrusts its leg against mine in bed.
[The game of keeping what one has is never so exciting as the game of getting.]
I only set the middle two sentences but include the outer ones in program notes for context. I realized that if it were me writing/speaking these words, their meaning might be completely the opposite to Hurston’s; it would be a denial of my white privilege, perhaps a defensive one. I tried to set the words so the specter existed in the music even as the words denied their existence.
I also set the words of another section, in which Hurston tells the story of sitting next to a white person while hearing a performance by jazz musicians in an otherwise all-black club. After describing an ecstatic experience with the music itself, she says:
I creep back slowly to the veneer we call civilization with the last tone and find the white friend sitting motionless in his seat, smoking calmly.
“Good music they have here,” he remarks, drumming the table with his fingertips.
Music. The great blobs of purple and red emotion have not touched him. He has only heard what I felt. He is far away and I see him but dimly across the ocean and the continent that have fallen between us. He is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored.
For whatever reason, the gulf of understanding Hurston described made me think of my relationship with my father, in the distance that grew between us and which continues to grow, provoked by conversations surrounding racism and politics and art. I started to see my experience alongside the one she was describing, totally different but also totally real. I called the piece “Letter to My Father,” and reformatted the text so the words would stay in the same sequence but each line would begin and end with a pronoun:
Him. He
He has only heard what I
I felt. He
He is far away but I
I see him.
Him but dimly across the ocean and the continent that have fallen between us.
Us. He
He is so pale with his whiteness then and I
I am so colored.
Music. The great blobs of purple and red emotion have not touched him.
He is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored.
I don’t know what it means exactly, and the more specific I try to get with an explanation the less sense it makes, but setting this text in this way did help me connect with it strongly. And I don’t think it disrespects the text or the author at all to apply changes as long as the identity and context of the original is clear.
Also I just wanna say: I think it’s OK, even preferable, for art to be problematic. We live in a problematic world. Artists should own that. It’s the loose ends and unanswered questions, and even the misfires and unintended consequences, that provoke the best questions about what art is doing in the first place.
Yes! This is actually something that bothers me quite a bit about certain traditional classical concerts: it seems like there is very little risk. When a performer has studied a piece for their whole life, rehearsed it to “perfection,” and will be playing it in a hall with great sound, I often ask myself why I’d drive and pay money to hear that when awesome recordings are available, though I’m lucky to have a great set of speakers and a comfy couch. With other genres, or even other sociomusical situations, sometimes things go wrong. With new music, you might not know how it’s going to go, and that, to me, makes the live experience so much more thrilling. Is there a way, that you as a composer (and now fellow concert series producer), can encourage artistic question-asking like this?
Well I don’t have any problem with musicians rehearsing a lot if they think it’ll make their performance better!
Personally, I start asking a lot of questions when similar musical gestures or ideas are used in super different musical contexts, or when very different musics exist on top of each other or next to each other in the same framework. Basically, looking to difference as much as possible. Endlessly inspired by this Audre Lorde quote: “Difference must not be merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which creativity can spark like a dialectic.”
How does that make it into your musical material? I once heard you use the phrase “genre counterpoint” in passing, and always wanted to hear more about it.
I don’t remember using that phrase but I like it and am going to steal it from you starting now.
I’m pretty sure it’s yours, so certainly feel free! It’s a kind of rad term. I’d heard rumors you were shaking things up at USC and trying to reduce the amount of traditional counterpoint composers had to take. I think – and this was after a show and beer was involved – I asked something like “isn’t that actually kind of important?” and you said something like “yes, but maybe we should use those semesters to teach other approaches to counterpoint, what might genre counterpoint be…”
I wrote a little essay about my feelings re: genre and “craft” which I put on my website a few months ago. I don’t know if ‘genre counterpoint’ makes any sense but I do think that when musical signifiers are used outside of their expected context a sometimes-interesting counterpoint of ideas and expectations occurs. There are some people for whom it seems that the inclusion of nonclassical stylistic elements (e.g. a drumset player hitting the snare drum a certain way, or a singer accessing an R&B vocal tradition) in a classical/concert-music context automatically constitutes an impurity, or pandering, or an example of inauthentic cultural appropriation. This type of thinking is pretty weak because it avoids dealing with lots of potential complexities, and it tends to keep the field pretty segregated.
Ted’s work certainly helps to fight segregation in our field. Hear it for yourself at REDCAT tonight and tomorrow, of via bandcamp at https://tedhearne.bandcamp.com/album/The-Source.
Review: wasteLAnd’s “Tout Orgeuil” at ArtShare LA
WasteLAnd continues to impress audiences with a program of new music, most of it from LA-based composers. Each performer has their respective claim to fame in LA and is closely associated with wasteLAnd, and each composer is a long-time favorite of wasteLAnd’s. New to the scene, however, is Allison Carter, a poet whose words found their way into Deyoe’s new piece. Her work made quite the stir among the audience members, and I have a feeling we will begin to hear her name more in the future.
Before I review the concert itself, I find something worth mentioning: the gender representation. It was an even split. In my day job, I currently have my students writing a paper on 19th century gender roles and women composers in the Romantic era, so this has been on my mind a lot. One hundred years ago, women could not vote in the United States, and it was nearly impossible to earn respect as a composer or performer. Nowadays, female representation in the music scene is gaining. It is not yet even, but progress is happening. WasteLAnd’s October concert featured six composers; three were women and two were men (Erik Ulman had two pieces, so the ratio of compositions is 3:3). There were seven performers (including Allison Carter reading aloud), and four were women. The best part was that I didn’t notice until afterwards. I have come to recognize that gender equality is already quite common in the LA new music scene. So much so that this is the first time I put it together. I looked back over some old programs I’ve reviewed, and every concert has women as composers, performers, directors or all three.
Ok. Feminist aside complete. Moving on, because there is so much good about this concert to discuss.
The night opened with Kaija Saariaho’s Folia, performed by Scott Worthington on double bass and electronics. Like many compositions from the end of the 20th century, this piece focuses on dynamics and timbre over pitch and harmony. Sometimes the bass whistles like an icy wind, other times it rumbles like an earthquake, putting palpable pressure on your ears. Scott saws out some kind of textural melody, phrases build and climax and fade – textural intensity carries the musical line. The electronic aspect augments and echoes the timbres. It overlays overtones, resulting in both a more ‘open’-sounding composition and greater complexity overall.
Next on the docket was the duet Tout Orgeuil… by Erik Ulman. Stephanie Aston and Elise Roy are always an amazing team, and their performance on this piece was no exception. It begins with a piccolo solo, and Roy gradually descended down the flute family to alto flute. Aston sang sleepily about pride smoking in the night. Given that the text is from a Stephan Mallarmé poem, my mind turned to Debussy. Ulman is no Impressionist, but I feel Debussy would have approved of the modern counterpoint and expressive extended techniques. The pitches bent down, down, down into sleep, and the flutes became larger and the words grew heavier. Erik captured the good sinking feeling, the kind you feel in a cozy armchair while drifting to sleep.
Third up was Matt Barbier on trombone and electronics performing puddles and crumbs by Katherine Young. For me, this piece created a very specific soundscape: I, the listener, am a koi in the pond on a rainy day and the daily miracle of food raining from heaven is happening. Three of the major elements that contribute to this soundscape are 1. Sharply sucking air through the trombone, 2. Sharp plosives into the mouthpiece that are amplified by the electronics, 3. Dynamic tempi. Matt’s deep breathing combined with the electronic influence reminded me of snorkeling, the plosive pops like rain on water’s surface when I swim underwater. These are instinctive memories, of course, and it may be a coincidence that they play so well together. Now you understand my watery theme. The push and pull of the tempo took me a while to incorporate into my soundscape idea. At first I thought it felt like seasickness, but I eventually concluded it was more like watching fish dart in a pond. They sprint only a few inches or feet, depending on the size of the fish, and then hesitate. The tempo seemed to do exactly that. And then it all became clear, that the soundscape was from the point of view of a koi in a pond in the rain during feeding time. I’m sure many will disagree, whether they had another idea or didn’t find it so blatantly programmatic at all; one of the wonders of music is how everyone experiences things differently. For what it’s worth, I did come up with a secondary interpretation that involves heavy breathing, plosive pops, and sprinting-and-stopping: Darth Vader playing basketball. So really it’s all relative. Regardless of the loftiness or pop art-iness of my personal experience, Barbier proved yet again that the trombone is more than just a brass instrument in a marching band. He played every color in the palette, and demonstrated rigorous control over his body and his instrument to perform such a demanding piece.
Fittingly the 100th piece wasteLAnd has programmed, Erik Ulman’s this until is a flute solo, and Elise Roy absolutely nailed it. I’ve said before that she has superhuman control of her instrument, and she proved it again with this piece. She made her flute sing, speak, howl, wail and whisper. Though a solo composition, I could sometimes here a ghost of counterpoint when she effected heavy harmonics. I honestly couldn’t say if that was Ulman’s intention or Roy’s execution, but every so often a particularly turgid note would quietly sound the octave or fourth below, creating a beautiful, haunting harmony. this until was the only solo acoustic musical composition of the night and it was right in the middle of the program; Elise managed to keep up the energy on her own, and carried us into the final pieces of the evening.
The program ends with a sort of binary piece. First, Allison Carter read her Poems from A Fixed, Formal Arrangement; Nicholas Deyoe used the text for his piece Finally, the cylindrical voids tapping along, a line from the poem. I can’t say I have ever attended another concert that had the poet read their work first before the musical product, and I wish this would become the norm everywhere. As a general rule, increased understanding leads to increased appreciation, so knowing the text ahead of time (and from the author herself, no less) helped Deyoe’s work succeed. The instrumentation sounded like speech slowed down by a factor of ten. The melodies felt like they wanted to resolve up to a tonic, but they kept bending downwards, defying expectations. One thing I love about Deyoe’s style is that it’s always interesting and it never fulfills your expectations. Once you think you have it figured out, he changes it again. This piece feels like your mind wandering and getting lost – when it’s 4am and you have to wake up in two hours but you’re caught up in the twilight zone that is four in the morning. Knowing composers, that is probably the mindset he was in while writing. Also, knowing composers, that is a hard composition to pull off. I commend Nicholas Deyoe for a well-constructed and evocative ensemble composition.
WasteLAnd concerts are on the first Friday of every month at ArtShare. Check out Weights and Measures on November 4.
Editor’s note: WasteLAnd is currently running their annual fundraiser. Take a minute to support them at https://squareup.com/store/wasteland/