Review: Equal Sound presents M83: Digital Shades [vol. 1]
We found the place all right, though it took a minute to find the door. It’s frankly genius, using a dance studio as a concert venue at night, since it functions like a blackbox theater. It even had a balcony, with squishy sofas to view the performance. It was completely sold out, standing room only. The lights dimmed and Nick Norton, one of Equal Sound‘s directors, ran up to the stage to make an announcement: the Michael Gordon piece, originally written as a reaction to 9/11, was moved to the beginning of the set as tribute for the recent attacks on Paris and Beirut. This simple and meaningful gesture hushed the audience, and the piece began.
Light Is Calling is pure and beautiful, just a solo violin and electronic sounds. It began with the thump of a slow heart, a tiny ray of hope in light of a tragedy. It sounded like music heard through pounding ears, muffled and throbbing like there’s too much adrenaline to calm down enough to pay attention. The violin cut through the pulsating track, the only pure and uninterrupted sound, singing, like glass rubbing on glass. At the end of the song, the sounds through the speakers were clearly manipulated synths, and yet they sounded human, like a choir singing underwater and far away. It was both an elegy for the lost and a paean for the survivors.
John Cage’s Radio Music is a (relative) oldie but a goodie. Oddly enough, it carried over the mood from Gordon’s song. The trick with Cage music is that one often hears what one wants; aleatoric music is more or less a blank slate, the most famous example being 4’33” of silence. I like to say that Cage’s music lets the listener put in more of themselves, sort of like paint by number rather than a filled in piece. Radio Music had the performers holding radios and taking turns twiddling the dial on AM and FM stations and turning up and down the volume. There were commercials for car dealerships, live reports on various sports games, a few pop songs, and a talk radio segment. More than half the piece was static. At the best of times, static and white noise have a kind of mystery, a potentiality to become or be imagined as anything else. Coming immediately after Light Is Calling, the static seemed like a metaphor for waiting to hear from people at the sites of the attacks, or the silence of the fallen.
Next up was Missy Mazzoli’s Harp and Altar. Having first been introduced to her work through her opera the LA Opera put on a month or so ago, it was affirming to hear a quartet piece that solidifies what I now recognize as her style of strident strings, tasteful pitch bends and slides, highly motivic, pounding syncopation in exciting sections, and recorded sounds blending and sometimes overtaking the live sounds. At first I thought the recorded voices were an illusion from open strings from the quartet. After a segment of minimalism in the middle, the voices crescendoed until it all but set the quartet in the background. The ending was absolutely turgid with the quartet grinding on their strings and the voices growing ever louder, and one could practically hear the grain in the wood of the cello. It ended suddenly, like inhaling after holding your breath for almost too long, just a cut and ringing out to nothing. I say here again that my mind was still on Paris and Beirut, and the fading resonance at the end was to me another reminder.
One cannot remain sad forever and the show will go on. I would describe Fog Tropes II by Ingram Marshall as if Stephen Sondheim wrote Lark Ascending as a track for use in the movie Pan’s Labyrinth during the rain scenes. The recorded sounds became windy, dissonant, and haunting; the strings gradually caught up from pastoral air to grim dirge, as if it only slowly dawned on them to change. Chattering birds added to the foggy forest mood, followed by didjeridoo and scratchy strings to make it more foreboding. A woman’s voice in the recorded sounds turned into an unreal animal. Near the end was a kind of double duet, with the violin and viola hocketting pitches and the other violin and cello intertwining melodies. The sound as a whole is how I always imagined a cursed forest would sound. Being from Seattle where the landscape is vastly dim forests, it felt weirdly like a slice of home.
You have probably heard M83‘s Grammy-nominated Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, which contains their hit “Midnight City,” one of their more danceable songs. A French electronic band now local to LA, their niche lies in chill grooves and ephemeral minimalism, often similar to Sigur Rós or Balmorhea. There were ten tracks in total, and given the seamless flow from one piece to another I inevitably got off in keeping track of where I was in the program. That said, Digital Shades is decidedly an album that ought to be heard together in one sitting, so maybe it is even better this way.
My notes from the performance stand as testament to the distinct sonority M83 possesses in each of their songs. It started with ocean waves, synth waves, and string quartet waves. It moved on to vocals moving softly like a stream, drops in the water, over tremolo cello, in the form of a passacaglia; the vocals never change, but the strings move around them. The performance featured a viola plucked like a ukulele, bird song, and white noise, and always sounded natural. Certain sections strongly reminded me of Iceland. Others sounded like people bumping into each other on a New York sidewalk.
An essential takeaway from this concert is that modern music is not inaccessible. While writing this, several people implored me to make this clear, for even they were surprised. It seems that many stereotype new music to be constantly unyieldingly harsh. Yes, I am one who enjoys hearing extended trombone technique solos and experimental jazz. I will be the first to admit that much modern music is an acquired taste. That said, a substantial corps of music in general, from Perotin from the Medieval era to Buxtehude from the Baroque to Milhaud at the turn of the century, can sound alien to our ears attuned to Nirvana and Taylor Swift, when all we listen to from ‘Classical music’ is Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. There is so much more. Live performers can play tonally and in tandem with recorded sounds and it can sound simply beautiful, no qualifiers attached. Some composers push the limits of possibility with sound, and they are, quite literally, the fringes. Equal Sound reminded everyone in the audience that modern music is not dissonant, just new.
HOCKET Interviews Composers, round 4: Alex Weiser
HOCKET
On November 21, HOCKET will be presenting a FREE concert of new commissions at the Brand Library & Art Center in Glendale, CA (concert information available at www.HOCKET.org). Leading up to the performance, HOCKET has been interviewing the four commissioned composers of this concert and discussing their newly written works. Here is HOCKET’s final interview with Alex Weiser where they discuss his piece water hollows stone.
Tell us about water hollows stone.
water hollows stone is a three movement work for four hand piano. The four hand piano repertoire is largely known for modest pieces, often written for amateurs, but for this work (in no small part inspired by the virtuosity you guys, HOCKET, bring to the table), I went for something much more ambitious. I thought of having four hands instead of two as magnifying the possibilities of the solo piano, almost akin to having a player piano. The result is some incredibly challenging and intricately interlocking passagework. The first movement explores the resonance of the piano with huge waves of sound, bell-like interjections, and harmonies and textures emerging from misty resonance, the second movement saturates the keyboard in a breakneck scherzo of cascading canons, and the final movement offers a wistful goodbye song exploring the sonic world inside decaying resonance.
What does the title mean and what is its significance in the piece?
The name water hollows stone comes from an ancient Latin proverb found in Ovid’s Epistulae ex Ponto, which reads “gutta cavat lapidem” – “a drop of water hollows a stone.” Later it was expanded: “non vi, sed saepe cadendo” – “not by force, but by continuously dripping.” Through its quiet persistence water does the seemingly impossible. My piece seeks to work in the same way, building up its material through insistent waves of sound, changing gradually but ultimately, I hope, making a big impact.
The second movement of water hollows stone, is a series of complex interlocking canons that literally covers the entire range of the piano. What was the inspiration for this movement?
Michael Gordon, one of my favorite composers and one of my teachers, wrote an incredible solo piano piece called, “Sonatra” which is built out of these incessant arpeggios up and down the whole piano. In the program note he said, “I wanted to use all of the keys on the piano and use them often,” and I just love this idea of maximizing the sonic possibilities by using all of the keys. Along those lines I was also inspired by the genre of “black midi” wherein popular songs are arranged for midi piano to use the maximum number of notes possible, saturating the score and turning it black. With these ideas in the back of my mind I revisited Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and was totally floored by this incredible canonic arpeggio that bursts out in the 19th variation. For the second movement of water hollows stone I took this material as a launching pad, changed the harmony, expanded the canon from two voices to four, and then hit the ground running, leaving Beethoven behind and developing the material as if it were my own.
The third movement explores dissipating resonances in the piano. What drew you to this technique?
I first encountered this technique when I heard Helmut Lachenmann’s delightful set of pieces Kinderspiel, and I loved it as a way of reimagining the sounds possible with the piano. In the final movement of water hollows stone I use this technique as a metaphor for fading away. After having built up a big mass of sound in the first movement and played with super saturated interlocking canons in the second movement, the piece bids a farewell song as its sound evaporates, and fades away with each successive chord.
We spent time together in residence at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute workshopping and putting this piece together. Can you talk about our collaborative process, and how it affected the piece?
We workshopped the piece at Avaloch making dozens of fine-tuned adjustments to get all of the pacing just right, and to finesse the intricate choreography of the four hand interplay. The opportunity to tweak details like this over the course of a week together is something I have never experienced before, but I can’t imagine how we could have put this piece together without it. I’m very grateful to Avaloch for allowing us to have that time together.
As a New York based composer, do feel that this piece is a representative of the kind of music coming out the New York right now?
One of the things I love about New York City is the incredible diversity of activity – people here are writing complex music, simple music, music that looks forward imagining a new future, music that looks backward reimagining the past. I’d like to think that my music does a bit of all that.
Anything else you would like to add?
I’m coming out for this show and it’ll be my first time in Los Angeles. Come say hello and tell me where I should visit! I hope this is my first trip of many; there seems to be a lot of exciting new music happening in LA.
[editor’s note: damn right there is!]
Review: Aron Kallay: Beyond 12: Volume II
Microtonality is often quipped at as “the cracks between the piano keys.” It is tradition in our Western art culture to have the smallest interval be what is called a half step, or semitone; but why do we divide the octave into twelve semitones, why not eight or thirteen? In the live preview last week at Harvey Mudd College of the second volume of his Beyond Twelve series, Aron Kallay used an electronic keyboard to realize a six different composers’ takes on alternate tuning and temperament.
The program kicked off with I’m Worried Now by Monroe Golden. The first thing that struck me was the schizophonia – Aron would strike a key in what ought to be the lower register of the piano, and it would sound a note from a higher register. He would sweep his hand up and down the keys in a glissando and it seemed a crapshoot whether the notes would rise or fall. One of the notes I scribbled during the performance reads: “Vince Guaraldi on an ancient piano in a thunderstorm.” The piece is jazzy and tipsy. The thunderous low notes set apart from the tip-toeing upper melody. The retuning sometimes sounds intentional and other times not, to the intriguing effect that it would set my teeth on edge and then resolve into tonality, though no longer equal temperament; yes, during the performance I was certainly worried. All in all, music that moves your emotions and mind in such a rollercoaster is surely a triumph by Golden.
Alex Miller’s composition The Blur of Time and Memory used 1/10th (instead of ½, or half) steps. The result was that chords in which one or two notes move chromatically upwards seemed to peel away from the original chord identity to glide into another, like a chameleon shifting its coloring. The piece was meditative overall, intensified in sections by shifting harmonies and tugging the listener’s ear through tonal areas it is not used to visiting. It ended with an uncanny resemblance to wailing wind in a drafty room, like a ghost had haunted the keys to take the tuning out of whack.
Underbelly, by Stephen Cohn, utilized notes above and below the standard piano range, in which a dance fitting for the Mad Hatter’s tea party plays and the Jabberwocky thumps below in the bass region. The unfamiliar overtones from the bottom register give an otherworldly twist. The other parts of the piece resembled water music, but with more finesse and realism thanks to the microtonality at play. The smaller intervals gave an ultra-realistic fluidity to the cascade of notes winding through the recital hall.
The last work before intermission was Paths of the Wind by Bill Alves. It began as a wall of sound, like standing atop a windy mountain straining to hear the rumbling bass melody in the distance. The clusters of notes washed together and averaged into a drone which became a musical line unto itself. Like the Cohn piece’s effectiveness in using microintervals to enhance fluidity, Alves glided through notes like a bird on the wind, seemingly continuously rather than discretely. Without microtonality, there is no way a piano could sound so natural; it’s as if wind were transported directly into the hall and pitched to a melody, but still unfettered by tonality. A truly spellbinding work by Alves.
Post-intermission we were treated to two more pieces, the first of which, Involuntary Bohlen Piercing, was composed by Nick Norton. This used temperament in an even more unorthodox manner, by cutting up a perfect twelfth instead of a perfect octave into segments. The twelfth is divided into thirteen even segments, each slightly less than a quarter-tone larger than our equal-tempered half step. The first scribble I have for this one reads: “Drunken tip-toeing complete with running into things.” In other words, the piece begins hesitant and gentle, even a little uncertain, but is soon brought out of its nascent stages by magnificent Rachmaninoff-esque crashes. Reminiscent of Schoenberg’s Six Small Pieces for Piano, minimalists like Terry Riley, and a peppering of Impressionism, this piece was never dissonant, but always pleasant even when alien. The pacing was slower than the other composers’, but worked within the frame of the hesitant beginning and end. The tolling bells near the end seemed to be a clock announcing the end of the piece, or perhaps, in Norton’s case, the nearing completion of his PhD.
The concert ended with Clouds of Clarification by Robert Carl. Given my adoration for the book and movie “Cloud Atlas,” it was difficult to extract my mind from that world. Carl explained before the performance that the piece included four movements played without break: water, earth, wind and fire. After a stately opening, the first high note not belonging to the equal temperament was jarring like a shard of glass. The aquatic movement came off like water dripping from stalactites, and had a distinctly crystalline feel. The music split the difference between pentatonic and whole tone scales as it moved into the earth movement, lumbering across the keys. Upon reaching the air movement, Aron’s hands looked like birds flitting on the keyboard, and it was reminiscent of Olivier Messiaen’s bird pieces. Nearing the end, each low thwomp in the bass was ear cleansing relief between microtonal clusters, like healing a burn from the fire movement. My favorite part of the piece was watching the composer react to Aron’s portrayal. He knew every note he wrote; this piece, like everything he has written, is his child, and he was infectiously joyous hearing it realized. I believe most of audience felt his enthusiasm, and I hope all may be as enthusiastic as microtonal music when they encounter it.
Review: Experimental Music Yearbook Concert at the wulf
On Friday, November 6, 2015 the wulf presented a concert by members of the Experimental Music Yearbook. A full house turned out to hear three pieces by Katherine Young, Brian Harnetty and Jennifer Walshe, all connected by a common theatrical thread.
Graveled crumbled strewn by Katherine Young was first up and performed by a large group that included strings, winds, guitar, electronics and a video. This began with a single pitch from the soprano sax, matched in the violin whose tone quickly broke down into a rough, scratchy sound, like a cable under tension. Breathy sounds came from the flute while the lower strings produced a calm, welcoming chord and it was as if we were standing outside on some open, windswept hill. Meanwhile, the video showed construction equipment in the distance with the sounds of heavy, mechanical clanking. The instruments picked up this theme and began to issue a series of industrial sounds – the snap of a cello string and some humming in the horns. This portrayal – aided by the images in the video – proved very convincing, as if we were in the middle of a construction site, surrounded by powerful mechanical activity. With a steady siren blast from the horns, as might be heard for a shift change, the sounds ceased. Graveled crumbled strewn is a convincing realization of forceful earth moving processes experienced in close proximity.
Liam Mooney next performed “Could I Tell You a Little Story About That?” by Brian Harnetty, on the vibraphone. This began in retro fashion with a vintage cassette tape recorder playing soundtracks from old TV shows. The dialogue was definitely dated – perhaps mid-20th century – with a distinctly rural character. Soft, solitary tones came from the vibraphone and this added a warm, nostalgic feel to words heard from the tape track. One could almost imagine a black and white TV set with the family gathered around. The archival recordings created a powerful empathy and the soothing sounds from the vibraphone perfectly complimented the scene. “Could I Tell You a Little Story About That?” is imaginatively conceived and was beautifully played.
An ensemble of strings, saxophones, flute and guitar performed the final piece on the program, Zusammen I by Jennifer Walshe. Complete silence began this piece, followed by breathy sounds from the winds and a light set of notes from the guitar. The strings joined in, with cello laying down a solid foundation that gave this section a prelude-like feel. Another minute of silence with a similar sequence followed. A bowed bowl produced a lovely high pitch that seemed to float above the listeners, adding a sense of mystery. Ms Walshe lives in Ireland and this music brought to mind a dark moor far out in the country. Another spell of silence and then one of the performers stood up and began walking among the players with a purposeful stride. Low tones in the cello deepened this riddle as the other strings joined in quietly. More silence and then two of the performers retired to a corner of the space, embraced, and began a slow dance. The horns gave out a solid tutti passage full of warm and welcoming chords as if we were in a familiar place – perhaps a local pub. Another player began to stagger about, perhaps drunk, as the dancers continued their slow-motion rocking. More sweet sounds from the ensemble completed the vignette as the piece concluded in silence. Zusammen I is an affectionate, intimate look at the customs of lesser-known society.
Performers for The Experimental Music Yearbook were Casey Anderson, Jennifer Bewerse, Casey Butler, Scott Cazan, Morgan Gerstmar, Josh Gerowitz, John P. Hastings, Todd Lerew, Liam Mooney, Stephanie Smith, and Christine Tavolacci.
the wulf’s Santa Fe street location
Added Note: It was announced at this concert that the building on Sante Fe Street that has been the home of the wulf for the last seven years is being sold. The plan is to move the wulf to a new site, but the details are still being worked out. For the latest information please visit their website: http://www.thewulf.org/
HOCKET Interviews Composers, round 3: Ryan Harper
HOCKET
On November 21, HOCKET will be presenting a FREE concert of new commissions at the Brand Library & Art Center in Glendale, CA (concert information available at www.HOCKET.org). Leading up to the performance, HOCKET will be interviewing the four commissioned composers of this concert and discussing their newly written works. Here is HOCKET’s interview with Ryan Harper where they discuss his piece A 19.
Tell us about A 19.
A 19, for two toy pianos, takes its name from a work by the artist László Moholy-NagyThe piece explores a sustained gesture in which the melodic range and rhythmic structures are gradually constricted, leading both the performers and audience inexorably toward a single point.
László Moholy-Nagy: A 19
What about the painting by László Moholy-Nagy inspired you?
I was intrigued by the fact that no matter how I looked at A 19, I found my eyes drawn to a point of convergence. There’s a translucent circle hovering over the intersecting lines, but like the audience it seems to be a spectator to the events occurring below it.
How do you feel this painting is represented in your piece?
The painting and the piece both maintain a formal detachment to the depicted gesture that nevertheless is the reason for the work’s being. I think structure is paramount in both.
What drew you to two toy pianos as the instrumentation for this piece?
In addition to the fact that it’s not everyday you get to write for a group like you guys on the Schoenhut Piano Company Artist Roster, I looked at the limited melodic and tonal range of the toy piano as a kind of challenge. I was interested in exploring how to portray extremes within a narrow set of parameters.
You have lived in both New York and Los Angeles, two major cities with very different musical scenes right now, how has this affected your music?
I think the longer I spend in New York the more I become drawn to the idea of an economy of means. It’s impossible to yell longer or louder than the city, so you have to figure out how to make what you say count in some other way. There’s definitely some great music happening in both cities right now though.
Anything else you would like to add?
Have a good concert! I wish I could be there.
Sounds: Tholl/Fogel/Hoff: reasonable strategies for tense conjugation
Populist records just posted a new record from Andrew Tholl, Corey Fogel, and Devon Hoff, entitled CONDITIONAL TENSION. As populist points out on their site, the record is a great step forward for them, as it’s their first release of entirely improvised music. It’s also their 10th record (congrats!), and they just got a great review and profile by Will Robin on Bandcamp, which you can read at blog.bandcamp.com/2015/11/10/creating-a-wide-platform
The record is available for pre-order now, and comes out on November 20. The track above is my favorite of the two extended improvisations, but the whole thing is just fantastic.
HOCKET Interviews Composers, round 2: Emily Cooley
HOCKET
On November 21, HOCKET will be presenting a FREE concert of new commissions at the Brand Library & Art Center in Glendale, CA (concert information available at www.HOCKET.org). Leading up to the performance, HOCKET will be interviewing the four commissioned composers of this concert and discussing their newly written works. Here is HOCKET’s interview with Emily Cooley where they discuss her piece Phoria.
Tell us about Phoria.
It’s a single-movement piece that is about seven minutes long and commissioned by you guys, HOCKET, who are great friends and colleagues of mine. It contains a little nugget of musical material that has appeared in several of my recent pieces. You can hear it most clearly at the end of the piece, when it’s repeated over and over by Sarah on the piano 1 part. The whole piece basically grew out of that singsong-y, music-box-like melody. But the way it appears in the piece, I ended up putting everything else first – every variation on that little idea occurs before the original idea, which is only heard towards the end. So in a sense, the events of the piece reveal what the piece is actually about.
“Phoria” is when two eyes are unable to look at the same object. How is this represented in your piece?
That’s the technical definition of the word, and it plays out in my piece in the sense that the two players are often doing slightly different things. The musical material they play is related, but in an unbalanced, off-kilter way; during the fast music in the middle of the piece, they’re literally playing in two different keys. But beyond the word “phoria” as a noun, I was also thinking of it as a suffix – as in the words “euphoria” and “dysphoria.” To me, different moments in my piece embody each of those words. There is some joy, but also some deep unease. And at the end of the piece, maybe some sadness at the fact that joy is often inhibited by unease. A lot of my work has to do with language and identity, and with trying to musically express some of the emotions surrounding those things.
How does writing for piano-four hands differ from writing for solo piano or any other chamber ensemble at that?
This was my first piece for piano-four hands, and actually my first piece in a while that involves piano at all. I had been writing mostly for strings, so it was fun to dive back into keyboard writing. Obviously there are some technical challenges, in the sense that the keyboard can get pretty crowded with four hands on it. You guys helped me work through some of that by finding really ingenious ways to avoid hand collisions in what I had written – so I was very lucky in this collaboration.
We spent time together in residence at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute workshopping and putting this piece together. Can you talk about our collaborative process and how it affected the piece.
I loved our time together at Avaloch – what a perfect working environment! It allowed us to workshop and experiment with the really fine details of the piece. I remember us doing a ton of work with pedaling – not the first element of the music a listener might notice, but in four-hands writing and in this piece I think it was really critical. You guys had so many useful things to suggest and contribute, and I loved that all of us in the room were both composers and pianists (although I’m a very bad pianist).
You, Alex Weiser, and Ryan Harper are three of the five composers of Kettle Corn New Music. How do these colleagues inspire your music and is there a unifying element to the music you guys compose?
I don’t think there’s one unifying element to our music, although I know we all have some common influences. I think we all produce very distinct music from one another. The great thing about Kettle Corn New Music is that although we’re primarily a presenting organization, we’re also all composers and we have certain common perspectives. As the youngest in the group, I feel as though I’ve literally come of age, musically, with the other members of Kettle Corn by my side. Alex and I have been trading music and giving each other feedback for almost 7 years now. It’s incredibly rewarding. We have such vastly different musical tastes and sensibilities, and yet we’re able to help each other too.
HOCKET Interviews Composers, round 1: Aaron Holloway-Nahum
HOCKET
On November 21, HOCKET will be presenting a FREE concert of new commissions at the Brand Library & Art Center in Glendale, CA (concert information available at www.HOCKET.org). Leading up to the performance, HOCKET will be interviewing the four commissioned composers of this concert and discussing their newly written works. Here is HOCKET’s interview with London based composer Aaron Holloway-Nahum where they discuss his piece Remember Me?.
Tell us about Remember Me?
Remember Me? is a forty-minute extravaganza for two pianists, one piano, two toy pianos and an array of other toys and props. It’s a set of variations on Dido’s Lament, broken up into four parts that can each be played individually, or together in one sweep as half of a concert. The first part takes place entirely on the keys of the piano, ending with the slamming of the piano lid. The second part is played on and in the piano, but the pianists never touch the keys. The third part is a kind of mirror set of variations to the first part, but here its distorted because the music is played on one piano and one toy piano. The fourth part (which was the first to be performed, as is the part you can currently hear on HOCKET’s Soundcloud page) is for two toy pianos.
What lead you towards Dido’s Lament from Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas as the source material for this large-scale variations?
There are some technical things about the piece that make it very good source material (the passacaglia, the familiarity, the rich variety within the already repetitive structure, etc…) but it’s hard to say exactly what drew me to this music because I wasn’t really thinking about those things at the time. I think I just found I’d often get the music stuck in my head and had found myself daydreaming variations on it in the past.
The history of the large-scale variations for piano is such a strong tradition – – Bach’s Goldberg Variations,
I’ve heard from a lot of composers that when they’re composing a certain kind of work (like a string quartet, say) they avoid listening to any other pieces like that because it makes it impossible for them to work. I’m exactly the opposite of this. It’s more like a writer who, when writing an essay on a particular topic will read loads of other things on that topic, looking for interesting tidbits, seeing what people have said already, etc…
I include score study in my daily routine of composing and I literally had all three of the scores you mention here (along with many others) on my desk while I was writing Remember Me? Another book that lives (always) on my composing desk is Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist. One of my favourite quotes in it is this:
“If you have one person you’re influenced by, everyone will say you’re the next whoever. But if you rip off a hundred people, everyone say you’re so original!” (Attributed to cartoonist Gary Panter)
So all this score study is about soaking in the sum-total of what’s been made and said in this genre so far. Sometimes this leads to something like a direct homage (there is one in Remember Me? to Rzewski, and one to Beethoven) but more often I’m trying to steal loads and loads of little things that I stack up in new ways that are interesting to me.
Part II of Remember Me? doesn’t touch a note of the piano and is an incredible exploration of extended techniques. How did you go about discovering and creating the sound world for this section of the piece?
So part of this is wrapped up in the previous question. I listened to a lot of music that used a lot of really varied extended techniques. When I heard things I liked, I would find a score and make a note in my notebook of how the composer had done this. Many of these sounds, though, are now found in contemporary piano music so often that they really sound like cliches to my ears. So I’d try layering up two or three ideas together, or to reimagine how I could get a similar sound in a different way. I think the most unusual thing to know about the second movement – for me as a composer anyway – is that I wrote it without ever actually going to a piano and trying to make these sounds myself. I wanted to be led by my imagination rather than what I could physically accomplish on the instrument.
Part III and Part IV or your piece feature the toy pianos and push these instruments to previously unexplored areas. What drew you to the toy piano?
To be honest it was your passion for the instruments that did this. All of my music is really inspired by and about specific musicians whom I respect and adore, and many of my pieces just begin as conversations where I’m asking “what do you like to play?” and “what do you wish composers would do more often?” We were putting on a sort of “extra-curricular” concert at the Aspen Music Festival where we played Rzewski’s Coming Together and Thomas brought along a toy piano (and a melodica, which also makes an appearance in Remember Me?) And I saw the instrument there through his eyes and the possibilities were so wonderful I just felt I would be foolish to leave it out.
We have worked very closely with you on putting this piece together, can you talk about the process of collaboration with us.
Well, what I’d really say is that working with the two of you has firstly been a lot of fun: you’ve been so open to any idea, and so helpful in thinking about how to accomplish something. Let me give you a really specific example: I had been in NYC working with ICE Ensemble and seen them perform with Pauline Oliveros, and there was this great concert filled with great music but there was this one thing that totally blew me away: at one point as she was improvising she let all the music die down and was just running her hands over the keys of the accordion. And I thought: that is a sound I have to put into the piece. But I had no idea how to write it down, or even how to describe it. So I wrote something approximate and then ended up sending Thomas a video and literally just said this is the sort of sound I want, what is the best way to make it on the Toy Piano?
And there’s loads of things like that in this piece. From working out the best place to make a sound, or how long the resonance of the toy piano lasts, or whatever. The collaboration has been totally built on this joy we all share in making music and the piece is so much stronger for that.
Anything else you would like to add?
Well I’d just like to say thank you to both of you for the countless hours of practice you’ve put in on the piece. I’m so, so sorry I won’t be there for these premieres because I just know how wonderfully you play every single bar of it and I can’t wait to get together and work on the recording in June. All power to your fingers, HOCKET!
Review: Los Angeles Composers Collective: Wind Quintets
On Friday, October 23, the Los Angeles Composers Collective presented a concert at Ross Chapel in Pasadena, featuring seven new wind quintets by the collective’s seven members. CLAW, the Los Angeles-based contemporary wind quintet, was on hand to perform. Linda L. Rife, LACC Artistic Director, gave some opening remarks and introduced each piece, all premieres.
The concert opened with Spring From Night Into The Sun by Gregory Lenczycki, a piece that was inspired by Help On The Way by the Grateful Dead. A tuba was substituted in the CLAW wind ensemble for the usual bassoon and the opening flute arpeggios were soon joined by a booming bass line. The other instruments entered with alternately jagged lines and smoother stretches, with the combinations constantly changing. This produced a complex texture that was occasionally broken by more fluid sections. At one point a lovely horn solo rose up with a solemn, introspective feel. At other times a light, bouncy groove emerged, dominated by the horns. Spring From Night Into The Sun featured excellent coordination among the players passing around the complicated rhythms and provided an engaging contrast by the artful placement of the more soothing stretches.
Out of Time by Ryan Lester was based on a sort of biological metaphor, as three musical cells were introduced and evolved in different directions. The piece began actively, with repeating rhythms and syncopated lines, the bassoon, flute and clarinet closely interwoven with the horn, producing a complex, constantly-changing pattern of eighth notes. This had the feel of classic minimalism – with the three repeating cells – but as the rhythmic variations radiated outward there was a sense of ever-expanding complexity.
Wind Quintet No. 1 by Tu Nguyen followed and was inspired by that most agreeable of diversions: daydreaming. This piece began in a series of lush, sustained chords with a particularly lovely blend in the clarinet and bassoon. There was a more leisurely and relaxing feel to this as compared to the previous pieces, and the horn part added a particularly welcoming touch. The pleasant harmony and slower pace gave an earthy, organic feel – like lying in the sunshine of a summer day. Occasionally there would be a touch of drama or the exotic, but always followed by a return to the familiar. Wind Quintet No. 1 is a deftly charming sketch of genial reverie.
The first half of the concert concluded with Story of the Tree Seed by Danielle Rosaria. This is a story that Ms. Rosaria imagined for her unborn child involving a tree seed given by an old woman to be planted by a young girl from a mountain village high above the timber line that knew no trees. Story of the Tree Seed proceeds in four movements; the first opens with a lovely horn and clarinet duo, followed by the bassoon and horn. There is a sense of noble grandeur here – and mountainous terrain – that sets the scene. The second movement is slower and more deliberate and the bassoon solo paints a convincing portrait of the old woman – long flowing passages and an elegant counterpoint complete the picture. The orchestration of the wind instruments is precisely on target here. Movement three is active and bustling, exactly like a child full of energy. The melody lines are rapid and short, especially in the flute solo. The other woodwinds add counterpoint and the feeling is optimistic and hopeful. The final movement has a monumental feeling, especially in the horn, as the tree seed is planted with a spirit of idealism and hopefulness. Story of the Tree Seed features excellent writing for the wind quintet as applied to storytelling – you can almost see the animation unfold in your mind’s eye.
The second half started with A Buck For The Organ Grinder by Derek Dobbs, with the wind quintet augmented by electric guitar, bass guitar and the composer at the electronic keyboard. This piece was inspired by the mistreatment of the old organ grinder street musicians who were often insulted or physically chased from the street corners where they would busk for small change. Given the nature of the title and the addition of the amplified instrumentation, I anticipated a high intensity sonic barrage would ensue. This proved to be incorrect, as the guitar and keyboard began with a bright, sunny opening chord that set a buoyant tone for the rest of the piece. The bass joined in, lending an Asian feel and as the woodwinds and brass entered there were some splendid harmonies as well as an engaging counterpoint. There was a terracing effect as each instrument entered in its turn, adding to the rhythmic texture and sweet sensibility of this piece. A Buck For The Organ Grinder is a gentle and unhurried piece that is full of warmth and optimism.
Ouroboros by Nicholas White was next, and this was based on the self-devouring snake myth that is common to many cultures. Dark chords and deep notes opened this piece, giving a somewhat sinister feeling. The english horn gave a rather exotic feel and the piece became more dramatic and uncertain with the addition of some discordant tones. The exotic feeling was increased by an oboe entrance that weaved a mysterious melody, reminiscent of an early passage in The Pines of Rome. The bass clarinet added to the ominous feel and the piece turned dark and menacing, perhaps a metaphor for the completion of the circle of life as symbolized by the self-devouring snake. Ouroboros is a fine musical expression of the ancient myth, nicely captured for the wind quintet.
The final piece in the program was In passing by Jon Brenner. This began with a syncopated tutti line that quickly broke down into complex counterpoint. There was a busy, active feel of motion and movement to this. A theme emerged and was handed off to different players as the others combined in a nicely ornamented counterpoint, as if commenting on the theme. The texture was animated, with many parts emerging and then falling back again; it almost seemed as if a fugue would break out. In passing is a complex assembly with intricately moving parts, pleasing to hear and well played.
The playing by CLAW was precise throughout the concert, with good ensemble despite the wide variety of works on the program. The Los Angeles Composers Collective, formed in 2011, continues to showcase new music and emerging composers with concerts such as this.
CLAW is:
Sammi Lee – flute, alto flute
Claire Brazeau – oboe, english horn
Brian Walsh – clarinet, bass clarinet
Kat Nockels – tuba, bassoon
Annie Bosler – french horn
Review: Ray-Kallay Duo at Boston Court
Writing reviews as a composer can be a delicate business, in that the needs of one – being friends with performers – sometimes conflict with the needs of honest, unbiased writing. Every now and then, however, you come across a concert so good that it blows away any concern for that conflict, because in lauding the performers with accolades you are merely speaking the truth. Ray-Kallay Duo‘s concert at Boston Court last week was one such show.
Ray-Kallay Duo at Boston Court. Photo by Adam Borecki.
As the name implies, Ray-Kallay Duo is the four-hands project of pianists Aron Kallay and Vicki Ray. Just saying four-hands undersells it, though, as Friday’s concert had them awash in four-hands, four-feet, laptop, ankle-shakers, microtonal vs. equal-tempered keyboard rep. The show opened with Kevin Volans’ Matepe, with the pianists hocketing changing rhythms back and forth while beating out time with legs covered in seed pods. This contrasted nicely with Kyle Gann’s gorgeous and calming Romance Postmoderne, which was written for the duo.
You might expect stage changes galore, what with the unstrapping of seed pods and moving between instruments. While some ensembles get awkwardly silent during these times, Ray-Kallay has the insight to use them to their advantage, as Vicki Ray delivers affable program notes about each piece from the stage while Aron resets. The friendly vibe of the event helped out pieces like Frank Oteri’s Oasis, written for Yamaha DX7s and intended to make fun of the ridiculousness of early FM synth instrument modeling. In a “serious” recital such a piece may have felt out of place, but here it fit right in.
Composers in attendance visited the stage as well, with Isaac Schankler explaining how his piece Because Patterns (the title an answer to Morton Feldeman’s Why Patterns?) uses preparations to an acoustic piano to try to conjure the feel of electronic sounds.
Boy, did he succeed. The minimalist, groove-based piece was the highlight of the night. Extremely transparent, it not only showed off Schankler’s feel for phrase and musical structure and attention to sound (almost like a friendlier Tristan Perich), and the non-pandering influence of electronic artists like Matmos and Aphex Twin, but highlighted just how tightly the pianists were synced. It would be easy to convince a listener that it was one musician sitting at the piano.
Dylan Mattingly’s piece The Rest is Silence also benefitted from the cohesion of Ray and Kallay, this time with one at the piano and the other at a just-intoned keyboard. This piece is strikingly lush and beautiful, and calls into question the idea that JI music is music for specialists. It’s my favorite Mattingly piece I’ve heard yet.
When writing for four hands, I’m often thinking about chord voicings and contrapuntal writing that one pianist couldn’t achieve within their span. The range of things that Ray-Kallay demonstrated are possible with two performers of this caliber was inspiring. I hope they continue to build a rep for their infinitely-malleable setup and concertize everywhere, not just as two pianists, but as two extremely versatile musicians.