Review: Turnage: Passchendaele at Walt Disney Concert Hall
From July to November of 1917, some five hundred thousand troops slaughtered each other over a scrappy Belgian ridge in the Battle of Passchendaele in World War One. The stated goal of the Allied attack was to break through the German lines and clear a path to the coast to disrupt Axis naval operations. But mistaken assumptions about German morale and heavy rains that reduced the already decimated battlefield to a wasteland of clinging mud dashed these plans, and by the campaign’s bitter end five months after it started, the battle lines remained almost unchanged — the deepest incursion into German-held territory was less than five miles from the starting point. While other battles of the War had higher death rates, few compare to Passchendaele for sheer futility and misery of conditions.
This is the landscape that Mark-Anthony Turnage turns to in his new work, Passchendaele, which was given its US première at Walt Disney Hall this past Sunday, January 10, by the Orange County Youth Symphony and Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestras under the baton of Daniel Alfred Wachs. And it truly is the landscape specifically he has in mind: In his program note, Turnage describes his work as “an orchestral essay exploring the memory of the landscape” rather than a programmatic depiction of the conflict itself. As such, the work begins not with an analogy to the actual battle’s opening artillery barrage but instead with a solo trombone singing out sad fragments of an almost familiar melody. Nudge a few notes here and there and it could be the Dies Irae or an old American bugle call, but it remains stubbornly warped beyond any one singular reference point. Between each of these fragments, the full orchestra interjects with shriekingly amplified echoes, suggesting the sounds of metal being rent asunder.
The last of these echoes is more subdued, and decays into a tumultuous, seething field of activity. Despite Passchendaele’s bitter nickname “The Battle of Mud”, the music is never heavy or sodden, but remains taut and wiry as it obsessively develops and passes around a two-note descending half-step motive shorn from one of the opening trombone fragments. At times, the result could be mistaken for a cut passage from Leonard Bernstein’s score to On the Waterfront, but for all the frenetic activity, the music retains a sense of stasis, of being trapped endlessly retreading the same ground over and over again in search of an escape that does not come.
Eventually, this undirected striving ebbs in exhaustion, and the brass instrument pick out gleaming chords with stacks of bell tones (calling to mind, perhaps, Jennifer Higdon’s Concerto for Orchestra), but this quickly boils away to leave the trombone alone once more to pick out another sequence of scattered fragments. The woodwinds sneak back in with a few plaintive chords to bring the piece to a close, but the progressions are crumpled and painful, casting a pall over the otherwise conciliatory sonorities. The overall effect is a glimpse into the memory of an old soldier, desperate to salvage some scrap of meaning or purpose from the endless futile miles of shell craters and corpses, shying away from reckoning with the bleak and utter pointlessness of the entire endeavor. (Both of Turnage’s grandfathers fought in the War.)
The young musicians of the OCYSO and YMFDO handled this grim music easily. The program opened with Charles Ives’s Unanswered Question, which set the bar high — the first entry of the strings was ethereally subtle and perfectly together, as if there really were some eternal, ineffable background music to the cosmos and we were just hearing someone turn the volume knob up slightly in the middle of a phrase. Next to Carl Nielsen’s fourth symphony (which closed the program), Passchendaele was a cakewalk, seemingly presenting few challenges of solo dexterity or ensemble cohesion. Still, when the music offered opportunities to shine, the musicians rose to the occasion admirably, especially in the case of the solo trombonist, whose name is not clear from the program listing. On the whole, the evening was an impressive showing; these young musicians clearly have bright futures in front of them.
Sounds: Similar Fashion: Words Aren’t Things
We recently reviewed a killer new record/project/thing from Desert Magic, and their saxophonist Logan Hone has already sent me a new recording from his own band, Similar Fashion. And it rocks! Give it a listen here:
The full album is available from pfMENTUM records, on bandcamp at loganhone.bandcamp.com/album/logan-hones-similar-fashion
Similar Fashion will be on tour up and down the west coast in January. Not all the details are locked yet, but here are cities and what’s available so far.
Jan 21: Bakersfield, CA: Dagny’s
Jan 22: Oakland, CA: Studio Grand w/Weiner Kids
Jan 23: Arcata, CA: The Sanctuary w/Jonathan Kipp
Jan 24: Seattle, WA: Cafe Racer Cry & Roar 6
Jan 25: Portland, OR
Jan 26: Boise, ID
Jan 27: Provo, UT: Writ & Vision w/It Foot It Ears
Jan 28: Ephraim, UT: Snow College, Clinic + Concert
Jan 29: Las Vegas, NV: The Dispensary Lounge
Jan 30: Los Angeles, CA
More info at LoganHone.com
Review: String Quartets at the wulf
On Friday, January 8, 2015 String Quartets, a concert of new music, was presented at the wulf in downtown Los Angeles. A capacity crowd turned out to hear two new pieces composed by Aaron Foster Bresley and Luke Martin.
The first piece on the program was barrier – bend/erect, by Aaron Foster Bresley. The players were situated in the four corners of the performance space and the sound filled the room, coming at the listener from all directions. The piece began with a rough, scratchy sound from each player; distortion produced by applying extra bow pressure on certain strings. At the same time, more familiar pitches and tones could be heard coming from strings bowed conventionally. The overall texture was very rough and mostly unchanging, and yet the tones that fought their way through the scratchy distortion served to focus the concentration of the listener. The brain worked on these tonal fragments to fashion virtual melodies, and after a few minutes the piece acquired its own musical syntax and vocabulary.
The score for barrier – bend/erect runs to about a dozen pages for each player, with each staff line showing the strings to be played with distortion and those to be heard as pitches. A stopwatch timer was placed on each music stand, and the pages were played for a certain duration before moving on. The players randomize the score pages prior to the start of the piece so that each performance becomes a unique experience. The various instruments entered or went tacet in changing combinations as the score required, providing some dynamic changes – but the consistency of the texture was remarkable given the intonation specified. Barrier – bend/erect is a deceptively simple piece that rewards the careful listener with an impressive scope of expression in the absence of conventional musical landmarks.
After a short intermission, three sections residues by Luke Martin were heard. Residues is a collection of five graphic scores for string quartet recorded in January of 2015 and there were lines of associated poetry included in the program. The players assumed a more conventional seating arrangement for this, clustered together in the center of the space. Movement 1, remembrances, began with a series of soft, airy sounds produced by a continuous feathering motion of the bows on the strings. This was very quiet and carefully played by the quartet, just at the edge of intonation and audibility. A few bursts solitary higher notes were heard at times coming from the violin, and these stood out clearly against the pianissimo background. The evocative power of this simple combination was notable – taking the listener deep into a forest, a slight breeze rustling the trees and the occasional bird call breaking the silence.
Movement 3 of residues followed and began with low tones in the cello and quiet tones in the violin that produced an air of mystery mixed with tension. The players began whispering, and although unintelligible, this added to cryptic feeling. The dynamic was a bit louder than the first movement, if still on the quiet side, and the tension increased to include a sense of menace as the piece progressed. There were stretches of complete silence at times – on one occasion this continued for what seemed like several minutes, building an intense curiosity in the audience. When the whispering and playing finally resumed, it was as if we observing some strange and secret ritual.
Movement 5, titled unfoldings, consisted of a sustained tutti chord lacking in any sort of beat or rhythm. The players kept this tightly under control, producing an impressively steady sound. Despite the consistent texture, the feeling in this piece was unsettled and apprehensive – like hearing a distant siren. At times the players sang long vocal pitches, adding to the anxious feel. Although there is little obvious variation in unfoldings, the artfully understated changes in tonal color effectively held the interest of the listener.
Residues is a remarkable exploration of the limits of musical perception; its quiet passages and subtle textures creating a space for the mind to focus and the sound to inform.
The performers for this concert were:
Jonathan Tang – violin
Yvette Holtzwarth – violin
Joy Yi – viola
Thea Mesirow – cello
Sounds: Jason Barabba: Lettere da Triggiano
Composer Jason Barabba just posted a video of the premiere of his huge piece Lettere da Triggiano, and it’s great. What’s Next? Ensemble, joined by actor Kalean Ung and singers Elissa Johnson, Anna Schubert, Amy Fogerson, and Sarah Lynch, put on a semi-staged performance directed by Doug Oliphant.
Of the piece, Jason says,
I inherited a small stack of handwritten letters that grandmother had kept until she died. They were from her sister-in-law, written between 1948 and 1951 and are half of a conversation between my grandmother in Los Angeles and my Great Aunt in Triggiano, Italy. The letters cover a period of time when my grandfather was dying and end about a year after his death. They are very personal and heartfelt missives from a woman who was not able to make the trip to visit her brother as he was dying on the other side of the ocean. I felt there was a good piece in there, so I’ve taken Carmela’s letters and broken them up. They are not presented complete, nor in order. I cannot even begin to know how to summarize the narrative. I never met Carmela, but I feel like I’ve gotten to know her through these letters. I cannot overstate how grateful I am to everyone that had a hand in getting this piece to the stage in October. I am in awe of the performance presented in this recording. I feel like a very lucky composer.
Round and Around and Around We Go
Desert Magic is an LA-based collective comprised of the talents of Alex Wand, Steven Van Betten and Logan Hone, all alumni of Cal Arts. With backgrounds in composition, folk, jazz, songwriting, and world music, they manage to succeed in creating genre-bending sound world that honors not only their musical pedigrees, but also our human histories as well.
A Round the Sun consists of a collection of songs and rounds that were have been “released piecemeal” on the equinoxes and solstices of this year. The album coalesces upon a shared middle ground that is earthy, wholesome and honest: a world that can be difficult to inhabit while also maintaining experimentalism and a sense of the mystic. From inclusion of samples from NASA’s sound archive to the weightless quality of the trios voices, the album doesn’t try to hide the joy and haunting beauty with which it appreciates our time on earth, and the passing thereof.
With such a large set of rounds, there is always the chance of a form getting stale, but A Round the Sun plays with formal elements, tonalities and instrumentation plenty enough that the old counterpoint feels new and interesting each time it is presented. The most power parts of the album are the points when the processes used to create the pieces are dished out to us the listener. On Venus Takes Jupiter, a round is introduced with text that wanders from a more whimsical metaphoric take on the orbits of the titular planets to a mathematical/musical explanation of the phasing loops that follow.
While the core instrumentation could seem folk-ish or even poppy, usually hovers about guitar based groves with floating vocal lines above, guitar preparations, an expansive array of guitars, and Logan Hone’s multi-instrumentalism throw in new timbral (and at times tuning system) choices just before the color pallet gets stale. What I can only assume is Erhu on The Other String Theory and a carefully tasteful sax solo in the middle of Commonly Observed Phenomenon expand complement the loops that permeate the album.
While this exact brand of zodiac contrapuntal songwriting seems like it might have a hard time finding a home in a concert hall or a club, the grey-area-ness of its classification will lead to a rewarding listen for anyone who is looking for an album that exists in the cracks of classification, and will pay off with melody lines that can circle through one’s head for days after listening, begging to be rewound and re-listened and timbres and layers that are supremely joyful and poignant and at times absolutely laid bare in their sincerity.
Listen to The U and I off of A Round the Sun below:
Review: Meerenai Shim: Pheromone
Meerenai Shim, contemporary flautist, describes herself as “[committed] to the advancement of the flute repertory.” Pheromone, the third of her solo recordings, doesn’t disappoint on this count. While Shim’s execution displays an appealing directness throughout, the album is thankfully much more than a virtuoso showcase. This album is about new pieces by exciting composers.
What is most effective here is the theme: the album is a collection of electroacoustic commissions, all in reaction to Eli Fieldsteels’ Fractus III: Aerophoneme, originally written in 2011, which is included as the first track. The piece is an extended exploration of flute and Supercollider dialogue, alternately spacey and pulsing, aggressive and reticent. Shim’s flurried runs are occasionally executed with less precision than her sharp attacks, flutter-tongue, and other effects, but not to the point of distraction. Eventually, familiar harmonic progressions appear in an extended pop language that is thoroughly enjoyable in context. Why feel guilty? Materials here are complex enough, no brain cells are being lost; might as well enjoy the scenery.
The score to Fractus itself is worth investigating, and is available as a video that can be watched along with the piece. What is really innovative is the care with which Supercollider has been scored with the same blend of traditional and extended notation as the flute. Supercollider is an expressive equal here, its potentials managed and planned with the deliberation of traditional compositional approach, creating a subtle “phonemic” dialogue with the flute. Originally intended for four-channel speakers, the piece occasionally loses a bit of strength in sections where four channels may have enhanced the experience – but there is something attractive about the flatness that results.
When composers can start with such a highly developed palette as a starting point for inspiration, pieces of real depth can emerge – the focus here yields a whole new expressive realm. Whether or not these works may be properly considered new “repertoire” is dependent on the performability of these pieces independently of the live electronic noodling of the original composers. Still, it’s a worthy goal.
Track 2, Huge Blank Canvas Neck Tattoo by Gregory C. Brown is for alto flute and digital delay and starts, as one might expect, purified of some of Fractus III’s excess. Predictable additive gestures quickly build, however, into a thicket of stimulating activity. Harmonic progressions loop and the texture becomes so homophonic at times, medieval texture is suggested, especially considering the rhythmic repetitions. While the soloist-plus-delay formula is not particularly complex in concept, in execution these layers are sophisticated and fulfilling. A particular pleasure is the lethargic, slowed loop of a flute attack, which showcases the uniquely wild partials of a flute attack in detail. Attacks are taut, microtonal descents are layered with an eventual lyrical alto flute lushness over pop harmonic language.
Track 3, Pencilled Wings by Emma O’Halloran is a pleasant respite, as shimmering filtered electronics surround crystalline leaping partials in the flute, with whistle tones lending the right kind of strained beauty. The texture shifts, here sparse, there heavy and modal, as piano plunks out ambiguous harmonic poles. Again, pop influences and “dated” electronic sounds are somehow completely welcome, as they are part of a larger vision. Tinkling piano octave samples mix with roasty electronic pads, and the effect is more than a little new aged, but who cares? There is real love for electronics as an idiom here, and we would be boorish not to be swept along. Besides, it’s not all butterflies. There is grounded ferocity behind all the cock-eyed ornament.
60.8% by Douglas Laustsen presents a number of puzzles: exaggerated Middle-Eastern melodies slide over ethnic percussion samples used in isolation and quirky electronic blips. Is it Orientalist or not? Melodies dive in and out of sincerity and the grotesque, alto tone gorgeous throughout. Probably it’s 60.8% serious. Toy piano and bobbling electronics belie an authentically intoxicating drone and 7/8 groove. Slithering zither samples wink over a dead serious bass drum. Shim seems particularly at home here, digging joyfully into the alto flute’s territory of haunted lyricism. I’d go to this party, just to see how it ends.
LA’s own Isaac Schankler contributed title track 5, Pheromone, the brightest on the recording. Sly coarseness is left behind and thought returns. Schankler’s interpretation of Fractus III clings to a few relevant concepts but mostly he explores his own interests in depth. Piano samples surround a delayed flute texture, bobbing in rhythm. Schankler is happy to retrace his steps for effect: something is being described, rather than experienced, or declaimed. The delight of the first section soon gives way to a pensive landscape, however. Repeated flute tones swell and fade, piano presents crisp chords and rumbling low intervals, and crackling electronics quietly recede. Schankler’s work on the video games Depression Quest and Analogue comes to mind here. Possibilities seem endless – we could choose any direction, be any character. This texture swells and transitions quickly back into driving rhythms, repeated flute leaps and runs bounded by low piano aggression. Like other tracks, the rhythm can be driving, but unlike the others, rhythm pulls, occasionally veering off-course with a real vulnerability. This gives way to even more low piano rumbling and arpeggiation, and finally into a more direct, dangerous texture, exploring darker themes and harmonies. Schankler’s strength is the range here – from light to forceful.
The final track is a one-minute and 41-second etude for contrabass flute and TI83+ calculator, and it is exactly what you think it is. As for me, this sort of shamelessness is just my cup of tea. Completely fun, and totally bizarre, musical complexity isn’t really the focus here. The form consists of some basic call-and-response binary sections of weird contrabass clarinet over a rather stupid calculator-generated groove, with hocketing syncopation. The composer, Matthew Joseph Payne, runs a “chiptune-folk-doom-jazz band” with Shim, and this ridiculousness is in full effect. Contrabass hoots with hauntingly bizarre gestures over a noxious square-waved electronic calculus. Higher harmonics in the contrabass flute are actually quite gorgeous in their whispering richness. Calculator music, yes please!
Overall, Shim and the composers have presented a stunning, and valuable vision of the flute’s capabilities. These pieces all engage with a raw earthiness not typically associated with the instrument, and one which could easily be more fully explored. Pheromone, with its connotation of intense humanness and connection to the natural world, seems an apt title. Materials are simultaneously in close contact and pulled apart. Narrative is abandoned as compulsion takes hold. I, for one, am looking forward to the next installment.
Welcoming Brin Solomon to the team
I’m pleased to announce that writer, composer, and bassoonist Brin Solomon will be joining the team here at New Classic LA. Here’s Brin’s bio:
Brin Solomon
Brin Solomon is a Los Angeles-based bassoonist and composer with an interest in music theatre. A recent graduate from Yale University — where they studied with Joshua Rosenblum and Kathryn Alexander, among others — they write music full of metric vigor, open harmonies, and flowing, lyrical melodies. Their original full-length musical, Window Full of Moths, has been praised by reviewers for its “extraordinary soul stirring songs” that “add magic to otherwise common lives”. They are an active believer in the ideal of the performer-composer, and recently gave the première of his bassoon sonata, Rotational Games in the fall of 2015. Their works have been performed by the Yale Concert Band, the Harkness Tower Guild of Carillonneurs, and members of Chicago’s Fifth House Ensemble, among others. They currently work as an assistant to Michael Feinstein, and have arranged several American standards for Mr. Feinstein to sing in concert at Carnegie Hall.
Welcome to the team, Brin. Glad to have you aboard.
Sounds: Isaac Schankler: Pheromone
Flutist Meerenai Shim recently released the first album on new label Aerocade Music, and title track honors have gone to LA composer/musician/electronics guru Isaac Schankler. We’ll have a review of the full record up soon, but in the meantime you can enjoy the aforementioned title track below.
Review: WasteLAnd presents Richard Valitutto
The final wasteLAnd concert of 2015, Nocturnes and Lullabies, featured Richard Valitutto at the piano and was presented on Friday evening, December 11, 2015 at Los Angeles City College’s Clausen Hall in Hollywood. An enthusiastic crowd turned out on a chilly night to hear piano music by Wolfgang von Schweinitz, Bunita Marcus, Nicholas Deyoe, Timo Andres, Helmut Lachenmann, Salvatore Sciarrino, and Linda Caitlin Smith.
NCTRN (2014) by Nicholas Deyoe started things off, opening with a sharp rap followed by a sudden, crashing chord. The piece immediately turned quiet and a series of dense, atmospheric chords drifted up, creating a shimmering undercurrent of anxiety. This continued and soon a quiet rapping was heard, as realized by several prepared keys in the uppermost notes of the keyboard. The rapping became more insistent as the piece progressed, adding another level of tension that contrasted nicely with the dark chords coming from the lower registers. The persistent knocking became louder – like a ghost trapped in a closet – ceasing suddenly at the finish.
Notturno crudelo no. 1 (2000), by Salvatore Sciarrino was next with a march-like rhythm dominating, almost mechanical in its repetition and regularity. Complex passages consisting of rapid runs and skips intervened – less strident and at times even tentative – but the forceful marcato texture invariably returned. Valitutto managed all of this with high efficiency, effectively portraying the vivid contrast between the sections.
Three pieces were then played continuously: Wiegenmusik (1963) by Helmut Lachenmann, Lullaby (2000) by Bunita Marcus and Plainsound Lullaby (2014) by Wolfgang von Schweinitz. The Lachenmann piece felt restrained, full of quiet notes and short stretches of silence. Some sharp, rapid figures were heard in the upper registers at times, but the overall feel was remote, tentative and mysterious. Lullaby by Bunita Marcus had an altogether more settled sound and featured repeating phrases combined with conventional chords, producing a more introspective feel.
The von Schweinitz piece called for Valitutto to play from the keyboard while depressing the sustain pedal and reaching inside the piano to pluck several of the strings in the lower registers. This required an awkward posture, but the results were amazing. A series of bell-like tones – almost electronic in timbre – issued out from the piano in a pleasant sonority, complimenting a quiet melody of conventional notes. This combination was both unusual and engaging and Plainsound Lullaby received sustained applause from the audience at the conclusion.
After intermission Heavy Sleep (2013) by Timo Andres began with a singular series of deep, questioning chords that were answered similarly in the higher registers. As the piece continued it became, by turns, warm, reaffirming, settled and connected until it arrived at an expansively grand sound. At times, Heavy Sleep exhibited great power, like a piano concerto without an orchestra. The playing here was accurate and the changing dynamics were negotiated effectively.
The final two pieces of the concert, A Nocturne (1995) by Linda Caitlin Smith and Lullaby 2 by Nicholas Deyoe were performed continuously. A Nocturne started quietly and there were long stretches of silence between the phrases that let the notes ring out and slowly die away. Familiar chords followed, producing a questioning, introspective feel. The stillness and quiet of this work made for a good segue to the Deyoe piece, and this began with deep, solemn chords in the lowest registers of the keyboard. Answering chords followed with higher pitches and the low chord returned again with added mystery and power. The fine touch by Valitutto brought out the delicate contrast here.
The prepared keys again made an appearance in the form of a rhythmic knocking that held the attention of the listener. This knocking dominated as the piece progressed and the supporting chords built up a dreamy atmosphere that terminated in a series of roiling runs up and down the keyboard and a sharp thunder clap. At one point the keyboard cover was closed and a soft rapping sound was made upon it. A dreamy fragment of a romantic melody appeared, conjured up so quietly and mysteriously that it seemed to be coming out of the mist in the far distance. A sudden closing of the keyboard cover brought Lullaby 2 to a final, satisfactory finish.
Richard Valitutto brought his many talents to bear on the wide variety of contemporary pieces in Nocturnes and Lullabies, consistently delivering just the right blend of passion and artful technique.
Go to this: People Inside Electronics present Accordant Commons
Almost a year ago Isaac Schankler and I — and a bunch of other LA composers — were up in San Francisco for the New Music Gathering, when we experienced David Coll’s piece/sound installation/thing Position, influence. Immediately after hearing it Isaac said he wanted to find a way to do it in LA. Thankfully he co-directs People Inside Electronics, who have the power to get things like that done here. Here’s a video of the piece:
So, this Saturday, come hear the new vocal group Accordant Commons perform this piece, alongside works for voice and electronics by Michael Edward Edgerton, Chen-Hui Jen, Jon Christopher Nelson, and Pauline Oliveros, and a world premiere from Odeya Nini.
Full details and tickets are at brownpapertickets.com/ref/1184466/event/2273118. See you there.