Review: Matt Barbier: FACE|RESECTION
With a name like “FACE|RESECTION,” you know it’s going to mess with your head. The album title is a merging of the two track names, Facesplitter and Bowel Resection, performed by Matt Barbier and released on populist records. Both use extended techniques transform the trombone into much more than a mere instrument.
The first track, written by composer and guitarist Nicholas Deyoe for solo trombone, imitates machine noises. A lawnmower here, a band saw there, and an electric drill and sink disposal in between evoke a soundscape of quotidian noise as music. Rarely is there a sound produced by Nicholas which does not have some parallel which can be heard from your own kitchen. This catalogue of techniques moves the listener to appreciate these noises more as music than something to be ignored. In short, I would call this music by a human about inhuman subjects for humans.
Clint McCallum’s piece is another technically startling trombone solo called “bowel resection.” It emphasizes circular breathing and uses the sniffs to remind the listener of the human behind the mechanism, of the organic being in machine. Another set of extraordinary trombone techniques, this piece brings a new emotion with each listen, one of which is, as you may guess from the name, disgust. But, like spectacular gore in a horror film, you won’t want to turn away. To compare this track to gore seems both blasphemous and fitting. You’ll have to listen for yourself.
Interview: Nadia Shpachenko on her Piano Spheres debut
Dr. Nadia Shpachenko-Gottesman is associate professor of music at Cal Poly Pomona. Photo by Tom Zasadzonski.
Tomorrow (Tuesday) night, pianist Nadia Shpachenko has her Piano Spheres Satellite Series debut at REDCAT. Tickets are available at redcat.org/event/piano-spheres-nadia-shpachenko. We reviewed Nadia’s last album here a few months back, and are stoked both for this concert and the fact that she had a minute to answer some questions about the program via email. Here’s Nadia.
So tell me about your Satellite Series show.
Tomorrow I will be performing a recital that features music written for me by six very talented composers with whom I worked closely on the interpretation of the works. It is an incredibly personal program that I can’t wait to share with LA audiences! The second half of the program will present the world premieres of two architecture-inspired works commissioned by Piano Spheres. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Lewis Spratlan’s Bangladesh conveys the transformative hope of Louis Kahn’s National Assembly Buildings in Dhaka. Annie Gosfield, whom the New Yorker called “The Carl Nielsen of Second Avenue,” wrote The Dybbuk on Second Avenue for this recital. Annie’s piece reflects the changing mix of influences in one theater in the Lower East Side’s “Jewish Rialto” over the years: from Yiddish theater to burlesque, from Chekhov to William Burroughs. These are the first two works of a project I am completing, to commission and record works inspired by architectural settings. In 2016 I will premiere four more new works by Amy Beth Kirsten, Hannah Lash, James Matheson, and Harold Meltzer at the Piano Spheres series at Boston Court, all illuminating particular architectural phenomena. The first half of the program will include works written for my albumWoman at the New Piano by Tom Flaherty, James Matheson, Adam Schoenberg, and Peter Yates. I like to humorously call that program Music for a New B’ak’tun, that is music for a newly transformed world, the new 5,125 year cycle according to the Mayan Calendar, which began in 2013 when all those works were written. I will note that the pieces all touch on the themes of transformation, of resonances across time, of cycles of rebirth. Cretic Variations by James Matheson emphasizes lengthy resonances, how momentary events persist, shape new events, and how our memory of the past is revised by events of the now. Whereas Adam Schoenberg’s Picture Etudes take us through a variety of worlds, from placid to energetic, Peter Yates’ Finger Songs take us on a journey through time, playing on our sentiments with flashes and resonances of musics past. Whereas Tom Flaherty’s Airdancing (for which the wonderful Genevieve Feiwen Lee will join me on toy piano) and Adam’s Picture Etudes introduce novel combinations of sound sources, Peter’s Finger Songs feature novel combinations of musical forms and genres. A number of the pieces feature descent into true musical chaos, and emergence into the new – whether momentous, as in the thunder and dawn of Cretic Variations, or thrilling, as in whoops and swirls of Airdancing. I am very excited to perform this program tomorrow!
Here is a sneak peak into the first half repertoire:
Had you selected the In Full Sail piece to begin with, or does the theme really encompass the whole program?
In Full Sail to me means sailing towards my dreams, taking chances and going for it all the way. In Full Sail is also the title of a piece Harold Meltzer is writing for my architecture-inspired program. In Full Sail won’t be premiered until May 2016, but Harold was the first composer I approached for the project and the first one to come up with a title. And thoughIn Full Sail is a critic’s description in particular of the Frank Gehry building to which Harold is responding, the title seems to describe well the theme of the first concert that will feature works from this project (but will also feature works fromWoman at the New Piano), given its wide meaning.
What’s it like being a Satellite Series artist? I’ve heard there’s a bit of mentoring and support from the long-term Piano Spheres mainstays.
I am honored and excited to join Piano Spheres as a Satellite Artist! Vicki Ray has been a wonderful mentor, giving me great advice about programming and career building and I am looking forward to presenting a composition workshop with Vicki this afternoon at Boston Court, together with composers Lewis Spratlan (who just got into town from Massachusetts) and Adam Schoenberg. Vicki’s sparkly personality and infectious energy definitely have a way of rubbing off on me, and all the other Piano Spheres pianists and staff have been very supportive, making my Piano Spheres experience superb!
We’re lucky in LA to have a lot of fantastic pianists. Who else in town inspires you?
I agree, the Los Angeles new music (and older music) scene is thriving! When I go to concerts of new music, I see enthusiastic people of all ages in the audience. There is great appreciation in LA for all things avant-garde, outside the box, with too many wonderful new music ensembles and solo artists to list. Since my twin boys were born 5 years ago, my concert going experience slowed down a bit for a few years, but last year I was able to attend many incredible, inspiring concerts featuring adventurous, innovative music, much of which was actually written by local composers. Since I can’t list everyone who inspires me in town, I would like to focus on the Piano Spheres pianists, who inspire me beyond words. I was fortunate to be able to attend most Piano Spheres concerts last season (and of course the fantastic season opener with Gloria Cheng and Thomas Adès in September). Each of the principal artists, Gloria Cheng, Vicki Ray, Mark Robson and Susan Svrček, presented cohesive, exciting, beautifully-themed programs that featured their exceptional pianism and great imagination in interpreting new works. I was also very impressed by the inaugural Satellite Series last season and still remember vividly Nic Gerpe’s powerful Crumb performance and Aron Kallay’s unforgettable program, which included a piece for speaking pianist and electronics by Vykintas Baltakas, for which Aron recited a text in Lithuanian! I also frequently collaborate with the adventurous pianist Genevieve Feiwen Lee, with whom I recorded two works for my album (Airdancing by Tom Flaherty and Bounce by Adam Schoenberg), and who will be airdancing with me on Tuesdayat REDCAT. I would just like to mention one more pianist who to this day continues to inspire me, my wonderful teacher John Perry, with whom I completed my graduate studies during the late 1990s through mid 2000s. Perry is turning eighty in February and has not slowed down a bit with his teaching and performances, which are moving, powerful and deeply felt. And he just presented a recital at Carnegie Hall to celebrate his 80th birthday!
What’s next after this show?
I have a very exciting season planned, with numerous premieres and exciting collaborations! I will be focusing on two brand new solo programs this season, which I will touring and recording in the near future. One of the programs, which I will start calling The Poetry of Places once it starts presenting only the architecture-inspired works in one recital, will feature six new compositions written for my project mentioned above (two of which I will be premiering). I will be performing these works more than a dozen times this season in California, New York, and Baltimore. For this project I will also be recording Andrew Norman’s Frank’s House for two pianists and two percussionists. Andrew and I were classmates at USC and I am thrilled to collaborate with him on this project! My other program, which I like to call Quotations and Homages will feature new and very recent musical homages by Matthew Elgart, Daniel Felsenfeld, Tom Flaherty, Vera Ivanova, James Matheson, Missy Mazzoli, Nick Norton (you!) and Peter Yates, five of which I will be premiering at Spectrum in New York on December 13. I am also very excited about my upcoming collaborations with Los Angeles Philharmonic’s violinist Vijay Gupta, with whom I will be performing a few local concerts in January, and with Kathleen Supové, with whom I will be performing concerts in three states in December, January and February, including the premiere of Jack Van Zandt’s Regular Division of the Plane for two pianos and a piece selected from ACFLA’s call for scores.
Anything else to add?
For this concert I had the privilege of choosing a beautiful Steinway & Sons concert grand that will be delivered to REDCAT tomorrow! I became a Steinway Artist last February and this was the first time since becoming a Steinway Artist that I had the opportunity to choose an instrument for a specific performance, an instrument that I felt would be a great match for the program on Tuesday. Adam Borecki beautifully filmed the Steinway Selection process, during which I discussed the differences between the instruments and performed short sections from some of the pieces on each piano. You can watch the clip, which was just finished this morning, here:
Interview: Jodie Landau on you of all things
Composer, singer, and percussionist Jodie Landau‘s new record with wild Up is now out on Bedroom Community records. There was a great listening party at Pieter Space last weekend (photo below), and the official release concert is this Friday at 9 at the Bootleg. Jodie’s been busy. In addition to commissioning works from fellow composers for this album — guess that was a while ago now, actually — he’s been world hopping to perform with Valgeir Sigurðsson and other Bedroom Community musicians, re-arranging the record for live performance, getting ready for wild Up’s NY debut next week, and, thankfully, answering questions from me. Here’s Jodie.
So what’s happening this weekend?
This Friday, we’re celebrating the release of our new album you of all things at The Bootleg Theater presented by Live Arts Exchange. I’ll be joined by members of wild Up and four singers to perform my pieces from the album, other original compositions, arrangements of Bjork and My Brightest Diamond, and a piece written for me by Valgeir Sigurðsson.
Featured in this performance are Andrew Tholl, Adrianne Pope, Linnea Powell, Derek Stein, Brian Walsh, Archie Carey, Erin McKibben, Richard Valitutto, Alison Bjorkedal, Ivan Johnson, Sam KS, and singers Anna Schubert, Justine Aronson, Sarah Beaty, and Lacey Jo Benter. With sound by Nick Tipp.
About the record: can you share the backstory on how this multi-part collaboration came to be?
I met Graduale Nobili, the Icelandic choir featured on the album, in 2013 while they were performing with Bjork on her Biophilia residency in LA. We got to hang out after the shows, and even had a pool party, at which they performed, I performed, and we sang a little thing together.
After hearing their beautiful, unique sound, and getting to know them, started to think, what if I went to Iceland to work with them? A few months later I sent them a message asking if they’d be interested in doing a concert and/or recording. At the time I wasn’t sure what this could be. When I mentioned this possibility to Chris Rountree, he eagerly said “I’ll conduct!” and we then both agreed that we should bring members of wild Up. With Chris and wild Up on board suddenly this crazy idea was legitimate.
But then… where do we record? We thought of no one else but Valgeir and Greenhouse Studios. To our pleasant surprise, Valgeir had a few available days and was intrigued by this ambitious project.
In July 2013, we ran an Indiegogo campaign to help cover the costs of the recording, the choir and our travel. We are so forever grateful to all those who donated to help make this project come to fruition.
A lot of those supporters were on hand for the album listening party at Pieter Space.
You picked a diverse group of composers to write for you for this project, yet the album sounds very cohesive. Was that Valgeir’s doing? Or did you discuss a certain sound or direction with the composers you worked with?
Beyond the options of instrumentation/players, I actually made a point not to give Ellen, Marc, or Andrew any specifications regarding what they wrote. I wanted them to write anything their hearts desired.
The cohesiveness, I think, stems from a several things. For one, all of these pieces were written with these players in mind. They each have such a distinct sound and ways of interpreting the written material and moments of improvisation. And of course, the choir’s presence and unique sound throughout definitely helps to tie these all together. And then there’s all the exceptional work that Valgeir and his co-engineer Paul Evans did in capturing, editing, mixing this record.
I heard a bit about the choir learning everything by rote rather than reading parts. Can you talk a bit about working with them?
Working with them was unlike anything we’ve done before. Many of them have been singing together since they were very young and they have this impeccable unified, pure, and gorgeous sound. It was quite insane and wonderful teaching them an hour of new music… in a week. And some of this music is really hard. But they all pulled through so excellently. As group, they were fascinating. Some of them seemed to have perfect pitch, while others didn’t really read music, or at least music this complex and often polyrhythmic, but yet learned it all by ear.
There’s a certain androgyny in your singing voice, and some of the lyrics discuss gender – particularly striking is the line “I am neither boy nor girl.” We’ve been friends a while, yet gender or sexuality have never come up in our conversations. It’s not so much that I’m interested in your particular preference or identification, but I’m very interested in how whatever that may be influences your art making.
Ellen chose Mandy Kahn’s text for her piece based on one of the first conversations she and I had. We were talking about writing operas, and she asked what topics I was interested in. Ideas of gender, gender fluidity and transgender came up. And, I think, both she and I relate so heavily to these words “I am neither boy nor girl, I am a figure that has known and lost a love.”
Gender is definitely a major topic in my life, and yes I’m surprised it hasn’t come up in our conversations. So thanks for asking about it. And I’m happy to be quite open about it and give you a bit of my personal history.
To start, my parents tried to have a girl and they got me, “the boy with long eyelashes” as my mom says. Also, my name is Jodie. As a kid, I occasionally received girl’s trophies in sports leagues (I’m a little bummed I didn’t keep them). In high school, the class roster had an M or F next to each name, and mine mistakenly had an F next to it. Substitute teachers would get very confused when they called “Jodie” and I raised my hand. Their double takes were priceless. And, I’m occasionally asked if Jodie’s my real name, or if it’s a nickname or short for something.
Most Halloweens I dressed up in some combination of my mother’s clothing (which unfortunately doesn’t fit me any more). I even went to prom in a dress, because I wanted to go as a girl without a date, because it strongly upset me that a few friends hadn’t gone the year before because they didn’t have a date and/or a guy hadn’t asked them. Also, for whatever reason, I felt more comfortable and was able to have more fun going to prom in a purple dress and heels.
Last anecdote. From 8-13 years old I played hockey. My teammates listened to music together, often rock and rap. We’d sit in the back of the car and curse along with Eminem. But I also taught a few of them some choreography to dance and song “I’m gonna ruge my knees and role my stockings down…” and the rest of the Chicago musical soundtrack.
Anyway… all of this to say that I’ve never quite felt like “boy,” “guy,” “man,” or “male” accurately represents all of me, as I don’t always relate to meanings people associate with them, and I’ve received a lot of, let’s say, interesting, or maybe influential comments about my gender and/or sexuality based on the way that I behave and interact with the world, simply because of my name, or even my singing voice. (A youtube comment from several years ago reads “He sounds like a little gay girl”. I found this oddly flattering.)
These are all certainly a major part of my identity.
Now, I’ll stop myself from continuing with the anecdotes — I could go on forever — let’s talk about gender as it relates to my music.
All of my pieces on the album, are sung from the “I” perspective and sung to you. I, myself, never directly bring up gender or gendered pronouns. I hope that they can be sung, or heard, or felt from any one perspective to another. So I think this adds to the sense of androgyny, along with my own personal androgenic tendencies, and the fact that I’m quite often singing in my upper range.
Along with these ideas of gender and androgyny, sexuality is also certainly an influence. Though, by sexuality, I don’t quite mean sexual preference, especially not in relation to questions like “do you like men or women?” as the nature and structure of this type of question is quite limiting (and super binary). Rather, a lot of this music is about allowing for any type(s)—or maybe, my type(s)—of sexuality and sensuality.
You’ve been, from a career standpoint, on the up and up lately, and of course signing with Bedroom Community is going to be huge for both you and wild Up. Has anything changed in how you work as a result? Does music making feel any different to you now than it ever did?
What a great question. Certainly remains to be seen. But, thus far I certainly feel my music making beginning to enter the “professional realm,” whatever that means. In some ways, both in joining Bedroom Community and just in working with wild Up, there is a different sense of care and thought into what I’m presenting to the world and why.
I recently performed in London with Bedroom Community, and it was such a warm welcoming and a wonderful experience. It was so fascinating to thrown in the midst of this tight-knit group. They played new music, and older music, and new versions of older pieces that are in their BedCom “repertoire”. They way they engaged with the music and the charts, was some beautiful hybrid between an ensemble and a band. This made me feel right at home. So in regards to your question, maybe joining Bedroom Community is actually going to help keep music making that beautiful hybrid that I so enjoy… while of course elevating it quite a lot, as they are so wonderful and incredible!
What’s next for you?
This Sunday I head to the east coast with wild Up for our NY debut. Then, I go to Iceland to perform off venue shows during Iceland Airwaves with Bedroom Community. After that, we’ll just have to wait and see 🙂
Anything else you’d like to add?
Thank you!
Info on the release concert this Friday is up at liveartsexchange.org/event/jodie-landau-wildup-you-of-all-things. More on the record is up on Bedroom Community’s site, at bedroomcommunity.net/releases/you_of_all_things.
Review: Weston/Saxon Groove Assembly: Acceleration
Groovy. Every track on this record has a characteristic groove, mood, and personality. The album, which comes with a poem inspired by it by Steve Shelton, is about coming and going and changing and curving and accelerating. Such themes are scattered like so many constellations in the tracks, which seem to wander, march, or race.
A quartet comprised of drummer Grant Calvin Weston, percussionist Jonathan Saxon, bassist Steuart Liebig, and keyboardist Wayne Peet, Weston/Saxon Groove Assembly meld together a unique sound. Astoundingly, the four did not play all together; Grant recorded in Philadelphia, and the other three recorded in LA. The sound is so well mixed both as individual tracks and compared to the others that nothing ever feels missed, but each piece feels balanced.
The first track, “Take it to the streets,” is atmospheric at the beginning, then adds a tribal beat with a sci fi groove strongly reminiscent of N64 racing games. “Stutter step” is an upbeat, organ-strong piece with dissonant suspensions over constant cymbals, descending into madness and suddenly resolving back to its tonal, upbeat groove. “Third Floor” is relatively barebones, and again reminds me of N64 soundtracks, which lends it a nostalgia factor, though I somehow doubt that was really the intention. At track four we reach the title track: drones and claves build the Twilight Zone-esque atmosphere, and the emptiness of the sound makes it expansive in space, like a rift in reality. “Road trip to Downey” was the song that kicked off the idea for this album as a percussion duet – it starts with a pleasing groove and adds in more instruments until a sudden acceleration, and then instruments phase out, an effect deemed ‘classic’ for good reason.
“Juno” is perhaps my favorite track, opening with a piano solo reminiscent of Debussy’s style, and the stereo hocketting percussion throughout the piece quite simply made me feel happy. “All systems go” opens with an electric mbira solo and adds in other-worldly distortion. I’ve hinted at it and now I’ll say it: the album either evokes nostalgia for something it may not have thought to intend, or is very science fiction. The eighth and final track, “Observations at dawn,” is the most sci-fi of all. Drones, tapping percussion, and foley sound effects from Jonathan acutely evoke dawn as you’ve never seen or heard it before.
If you like jazz, atmospheric, or electronic music, this album is sure to tantalize and please. It gives a little something for everyone, and the eight unique songs blend into one exhilarating album.
Review: Missy Mazzoli/LA Opera: Song from the Uproar
I can imagine no better way to be introduced to the LA Opera than by this show. I had no idea what to expect, only hope that it might be a nice way to spend a Friday evening. Of all the shows in LA, I figured I might as well check out something brand new. I was in for a treat.
Isabelle Eberhardt, played by the incredibly talented Abigail Fischer, had several distinct lives and deaths, recollected through cobbled diary pages. Missy Mazzoli wanted to give her a proper homage through equally cobbled yet bleakly beautiful music. Using distorted guitars, stuttering electronic sounds, pure voices, and a wailing cello and flute tell Isabelle’s tragic stories. Videos on transparent scrims add further layers of emotion to the story, complementing the music. The chorus sometimes acted as a reflection of Isabelle, and other times sang duets with her. The musicians and their instruments were as much characters in the story as Isabelle. The cello cried, the flute sang, and clarinet drank coffee and the piano just drank.
One of my favorite moments was when Isabelle moved off her pillow in an opium den and sat with the pianist on his bench. He abandoned her there, and she carried on the tune the best she could. A melody usually implements small intervals for easy singing, but the song in the opium den had enormous intervals, which I imagined represented the highs and lows of drug use. My favorite song overall was “One Hundred Names for God,” when she goes through her religious phase near the beginning. The choreography was stunning, and the many different names dripped like glittering water from Isabelle’s mouth while the instruments lilted along deferentially.
Other songs featured amplified flute signaling a period of exploration, and guitar performing a heartbeat emulating blood rushing to one’s ears in a moment of high tension and fear. At the very end, when Isabelle dies in a flash flood, the guitar swells and grows like a physical presence, and cuts short the instant her life does. This perhaps sounds cliché, and rereading this review sheds light on what made the music so subtly effective in the moment. It’s a silken beauty like seeing the ocean in the moonlight that makes one wax poetic and at the same time fail to find the words. Through such a short but intense opera, the audience falls in love with Isabelle Eberhardt and our hearts break when the music ends her life.
In short, I cannot rave about this opera enough, especially the musicians. It only ran for the one weekend, but there will be many more performances by the LA Opera and from the Beth Morrison Projects this season. Buy your tickets early!
Sounds: Daniel Rosenboom Quintet: Tendrils
The Daniel Rosenboom Quintet plays at blue whale on Friday. Their album Fire Keeper, out on Orenda, is getting some good attention. That’s because it’s obscenely good. Here’s a live take of the Tendrils, from the record:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhN5i9Gfxns]See ya Friday.
Review: WasteLAnd’s Future of Terror
There’s something fitting about the fact there was a zoetrope of the Artic Circle upstairs above the stage during the performance. When the show is called the future of terror, the ensemble is named wasteLAnd, and there’s a stag head mounted on the wall staring at you the entire time, you know it’s going to be bleak and beautiful.
My initial thought on Emergence by Elise Roy for flute and soprano saxophone was, “I need this for my alarm clock!” Beginning literally and figuratively like a train pulling out of a station, Emergence features multiphonics, key clicks, vocal fry and hiccups from the flutist. There was even a section of vocal fry duet between Elise on flute and Elise on the recorded tape. Both the flutist and saxophonist exhibited more and more extended techniques over the course of the piece, seeming to emerge from their shells as mere instruments and becoming something more. Given the title, I constantly wondered what was emerging; sometimes it sounded like an egg hatching, and other times like a rift in time and space (I watch too much Dr. Who), and anything in between. The ending on a sustained vocal fry, no diminuendo or crescendo, left the piece feeling deliciously incomplete.
Multiplicities for solo flute by Jason Eckardt bounces off the walls like a game of registral tag. This piece sounded like an argument between different personalities, perhaps between a shoulder angel and shoulder devil. Or Smeagol and Gollum. After the last note fades out, there is one final tiny “I told you so” that made me laugh out loud. The sheer amount of energy and technique Elise put into this solo is superhuman. She exhibits superhuman control and stamina over every note, gliss, click and hum, and it was utterly spellbinding.
Elise Roy and Stephanie Aston premiere Kurt Isaacson’s “The Future of Terror”
I idly wondered who miscalculated that the concert would be almost two hours long, because I estimated the first two pieces to be approximately ten minutes each. Never underestimate the future of terror. Kurt Isaacson weaves a desolate wasteland with piccolo (and then flute), simple percussion, and soprano Stephanie Aston singing words by Matthea Harvey. The music of the piece lies not in the spoken words alone, or in fact in any one sound, but in the electronic artifacts on tape, the phonemes of the poem, the tapping of the snare like heartbeats or rainfall, and the whispering and tweeting of the piccolo. It seems to transcend melody and harmony, and only the rhythm and the sounds in each moment matter. It’s a tapestry of children’s chants, white noise and growling snare drum, screech owl imitation by piccolo, and thought-provoking lyrics. Almost a solid hour in length, the music was exhausting even for the audience. It never let up. The intensity of the sounds and intricate detail in motifs never allowed the mind to wander. We the audience existed on the Twilight Zone line between watching and participating, and the end felt like waking from a dream only to realize we had been awake all along.
Meet our newest writer, Elizabeth Hambleton
When I asked Elizabeth Hambleton for a short bio to post, she simply sent “Elz is the bees knees.” If you read her review of the American Composers Forum/wild Up show last Friday at REDCAT, you’ll see why. In all seriousness, it’s quite exciting to have Elizabeth’s voice joining the team. As she hails from the rainy land of Seattle, we’ll get to see how our scene looks and sounds to a fresh pair of ears. She’s here pursuing a doctoral degree in music theory. Whoa.
Elizabeth’s primary interests include microtonality, sonification, and video game soundtracks. In her spare time, she’s the music lead for Green Dot Games.
Glad to have you aboard, Elz.
Sounds: Fell Runner: Song of the Sun
Following last week’s release of Daniel Corral’s Diamond Pulses (awesome review/interview by Alicia Byer here), I’ve been going through the Orenda Records catalog and came across this band of Cal Arts grads called Fell Runner. And I fell in love.
As per their biography, their music began as a study of the application of West African rhythms to western song forms. The resulting music is all over the place in the most coherent way possible, and I think I’m gonna be listening to this one for a while.
Review: Southland Ensemble, Gerhard Stäbler and Kunsu Shim
While wild Up clattered, reoriented itself, and clattered again downtown on Friday night, a much quieter kind of recapitulation of materials took place at Curve Line Space in Eagle Rock: Southland Ensemble, known for their careful presentations of underrepresented composers, performed intimate works by composers Gerhard Stäbler and Kunsu Shim. The pieces titillated and occasionally challenged, and as violist Cassia Streb commented, consistently offered an “intellectual puzzle.”
A particular pleasure was the stark simplicity of In Zwei Teilen, or In Two Parts, by Shim. The Teils, or parts, bookended the concert, an appropriate metaphor for the concert overall; in music this purified, when materials are stripped to their essence, structure becomes content. Teil 1, conducted by the composer, consisted of two tableaus: rain-like pianissimo plinks from a thumb piano against a sustained tone in the cello, alternating multiple times with long, glassy dissonant chords through a dispersed ensemble of recorder, cello, violin, and viola. The same tableaus ended the concert, presented as Teil 2. When our ears are bombarded daily, it’s gently fulfilling to apprehend something as fundamental as binary form. One forgets, there is clarity and power in simply reconsidering an idea after another has been presented.
Another highlight was Southland Ensemble’s a playful interpretation of Hart Auf Hart by Stäbler, a graphic score comprised of a bar-coded grid with coordinates. Ensemble members turned handheld radios and cassette decks off and on to Battleship-style coordinates shouted over a megaphone, rewinding and piping in tinny AM radio, bringing to mind Cage. More like Cage, some grid squares contained nothing at all, and silence delimited the material with an uncomfortable objectivity.
]and on the eyes black sleep of night[ by Stäbler presented more thoughtful juxtapositions, for piccolo, clarinet, and violin, in which breath-like cadences on piercing intervals alternated with passages of dissonant activity. Piccolo amplified the higher partials of the clarinet, as overtones interacted in the beating atmosphere, and the piccolo seemed to take on aspects of the clarinet, its woodiness suddenly apparent in the lower dynamics. Violin, a mediating force, held these fast.
Shim’s luftrand for violin, viola and cello continued the theme of self-contained scenes, but in a darkened tone. While Stäbler explores a taut, considered objectivity, in Shim, things loosen, junctures come apart. Wavering sul pont harmonics and unsure gestures are suspended precariously in short, motivic units. Each scene is presented as an aphorism, but an apprehensive one, made by somebody lost on some bleak shore. The form occurs within these aphorisms, musical meaning leaping between lilypads, bounded by silence. The dual structure evokes an individual voice, weighing options, assessing alternatives, all with emotional intensity.
Happy for No Reason by Shim, in contrast, was a straightforward conceptual exploration of noise and quietude – buckets, boxes, and bags of bells were dropped and thrown at random intervals, before a B section in which players reconfigured with deft, tiny gestures, while the Stäbler slowly pulled a roll of masking tape from wall to wall, around various players. Again, the simplicity of the binary form was remarkably effective.
X (February ’94) by Stäbler, “for closures and fasteners” featured the ensemble working with ziplock bags, Velcro, tape, zippers, shoelaces, staplers, boxes and clamps, manipulating each according to dice rolls. All of these items can only exist in one of two states: open, or closed. As dry as the content and structure seemed to be here, this choice of materials, and their implied states, suggested a subtle poeticism.
There is plenty of academic work on Stäbler and Shim’s music, exploring its theoretical and political underpinnings, but for the average, curious concert-goer, this music more than speaks for itself, with its careful emphasis on form, expectations, and purity.