How Stephanie Aston learns music by Ferneyhough
On February 27, WasteLAnd presents a concert titled Terrain at ArtShare. It’s a heavy-duty program of music by Brian Ferneyhough, Elizabeth Lutyens, and Brian Griffeath-Loeb, featuring Mark Menzies as violin soloist on Ferneyhough’s Terrain (see concert title) and soprano Stephanie Aston singing Etudes Transcendantales. I was lucky to be invited to a rehearsal, and the ensemble (which also includes Rachel Beetz, Ashley Walters, Richard Valitutto, and Paul Sherman, conducted by Nick Deyoe), let me film a few snippets of them preparing.
Nick had an extra copy of the score for me. If you’ve never seen Ferneyhough’s music, well, here’s a photo I took:
One measure of Ferneyhough’s Etudes Transcendentales
The whole score – all of his scores, really – is similarly difficult. I asked Stephanie how she approaches music like this (in this case, the measure above) and her answer was enlightening:
Here’s a copy of the same section, this time with Stephanie’s markings:
And now the part you’ve all been waiting for, this excerpt with the ensemble. The measure in question hits at 0:06:
Want to hear to the rest? Come to the concert at ArtShare on February 27. Details are available at wastelandmusic.org/concert-archive/february-27-2015.
Interview: Jeffrey Holmes on YMIR
This Friday night at 8, the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet and Los Angeles Guitar Quartet are joining forces to premiere YMIR, a new work from Jeffrey Holmes, at the Laguna Beach Music Festival. Jeffrey had a moment to answer a few questions about the piece.
The idea originated between Nick Terry of LAPQ and Bill Kanengiser of LAGQ. They had the idea to collaborate at the Laguna Beach Music Festival, but since it is a unique ensemble (four guitars and four percussion players), repertoire for this instrumentation was non-existent. Since I have worked with LAPQ several times in the past, and I have personally known all the members of LAGQ for literally decades, it seemed like the right fit for me to compose a new piece for this collaboration. I’d also like to add that Brian Head, who will be conducting the premiere on Friday, mediated between everyone involved, and was instrumental in getting this whole project to happen.
What about the music? What is the piece about?
I wanted to write an ancient, savage, and primitive piece, and that inspiration, combined with the source of the project coming from the Laguna Beach Music Festival, led me to look towards the origin of the ocean. YMIR is the primordial being in the indigenous Scandinavian religion…and from his blood, all of the seas were formed. This programmatic idea manifests in the music is several ways…most notably in the instrumentation and the treatment of the instruments. The guitar quartet is tuned in a complex microtonal scordatura, that enables multiple levels of overtone tunings to occur, thus through intonation imitates the timbre of an ancient lyre or plucked string instrument. There are several types of percussion instruments used in the piece, all of which could be ancient primordial instruments, such as skinned drums, a cow horn, the clashing of simple stones that imitate the sounds that would be made as a warrior chisels away at a spear tip or arrow or knife, bull roarers, metal sticks and gongs, even a large sledge hammer…but there are almost no “modern” percussion instruments (such as a marimba or vibraphone or cymbals, etc.). The music itself is divided into nine sections with a coda, each of which bear titles that depict a violent state of the ocean and imply a spiritual transcendence. YMIR was inspired by the following quote from the Eddic poem Skáldskaparmál:
“Útan gnýr á eyri Ymis blóð fara góðra.”
[Out on the sea-bank of good vessels Ymir’s blood roars.]
Did you actively work on it with the performers, or deliver a score flat out?
No, after discussing the general duration and the microtonal tuning I was planning to use, I just wrote the piece that I had in my head, and delivered a finished score. Though there has been much interesting and enjoyable discussion since, mainly about finding the right percussion sounds to create the effect that I envisioned.
I actually haven’t been down to Laguna for a concert. Are they receptive to new music there?
Being and LA native I know Laguna and the surrounding beach and mountain areas well, but in regards to new music I have no idea…we”ll see! As with all my music YMIR is extreme and uncompromising, and does not attempt to please anyone who is not willing to listen to it on its terms. So if there is any resistance of any kind to new music in Laguna, YMIR will challenge those audience members to their core.
What else are you working on?
I am currently composing a big piece (ca. 30-minutes in duration) for chamber orchestra for the TALEA Ensemble…to be premiered in New York and at festivals in Europe, including Wien Modern, Darmstadt, and others during the 2016 season.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Laguna Beach is a beautiful part of California, and is surrounded by protected nature reserves. So come down for the concert as well as the beach and mountains!
Here’s another sample of Jeff’s music, in the form of his second string quartet:
For tickets and more information, visit lagunabeachmusicfestival.com. More about Jeffrey Holmes is up at jeffrey-holmes.com.
Review: Doron Sadja and Byron Westbrook at the wulf
On Saturday, February 7, 2015 the wulf presented works by Byron Westbrook and Doron Sadja. The friendly confines of the wulf were nicely filled with a crowd that heard an evening of field recordings from Westbrook and selections from Doron Sadja’s electronic work, In Slow Motions.
According to the program notes, the recordings of Brooklyn-based Byron Westbrook explore “…listening, space, perception and awareness, often pursuing routes with social engagement. His electronic sound interventions play with dynamics of perception of space, sometimes as multi-channel sound performances or as installation work using video or lighting.”
The first group of recordings presented were monophonic and captured a single happening outdoors with the microphone acting as a sort of aural camera. Walking a path near a power plant produced a loud 60 cycle hum that alternately increased in volume or faded into the background. There was the low roar of machinery at times, and also the sound of people talking. When the hum predominated there was the opportunity to focus on the pitch itself – removed from its visual power plant context – creating a sort of La Monte Young moment. In another recording at the same place, the soft rumbling of machinery contrasted with the loud chirping of a flock of birds and this served to even the balance of nature in the listeners ear for what must have been an overwhelmingly industrial location.
In another recording, a speaker issuing white noise was placed near the microphone and this was heard along with crickets and other natural background sounds. As the white noise came into the hearing it took on an ambiguous character in the listener’s mind. Sounding at times like a waterfall or maybe a hissing steam pipe, the listener had to decide if it was part of the natural environment or not.
A recording of a violin being played under a freeway produced another interesting effect – as the violin predominated, the familiar image of a musical instrument came to mind. When the freeway noise was dominant, it naturally produced an image of cars passing overhead. But as these sounds cross-faded in and out there were times when the listener conflated the sounds: the freeway was music and the violin part of the traffic. This is a technique that has been effectively employed by John Luther Adams in his outdoor works songbirdsongs and Inuksuit – the periods of silence in these pieces allow the natural environment to become part of the music.
Other Westbrook recordings explored spatial relationships by incorporating two microphones. One involved a power transformer and street noise, another a tambura simulator in two locations. There was also a recording of natural ambient sounds – and the ubiquitous traffic noise – from a local canyon. Another recording had four guitars playing sustained pitches, and as the piece progressed the listener heard, variously, musical harmonies, simple drone hums and somewhat more mysterious, alien sounds. Perhaps the most striking field recording that was presented was a viola playing on a roof top near an exhaust fan. The viola played a sustained note at about the same pitch as the fan – and as the two sounds faded in and out it became difficult to tell where one started and the other left off. Lacking any visual clues, this piece offered elegant evidence of how just much the listener’s brain improvises when descriptive details are missing.
The field recordings presented by Byron Westbrook invite the listener to examine what is being heard, and to question – or at least try to understand – the factors at work influencing our aural perceptions.
Doron Sadja followed with his electronic composition In Slow Motions and this was realized by a table full of computers, synthesizers and mixers. A projector was included that added a video display to the mix. The piece began with a series of deep rumblings that were effectively amplified by the sound system. This was a low, primal roar – like being inside a volcano and hearing massive tectonic stresses groaning deep within the earth. At one point there was an explosive sound that made everyone jump in their seat and this was followed by even more powerful rumbles – the kind you feel more than hear. The combination of the darkness, the powerful sound system and synthesized booming were just on the edge of producing real anxiety.
As the piece progressed the sounds became somewhat more industrial – metallic grinding and something that might be a train horn. These remained very strong but slowly evolved into something more mournful. The projections on the wall were not controlled directly by the sounds, but consisted of a series of precise patterns and colors that gave a welcome sense of order and purpose. As the piece progressed the sounds evolved from earthly and organic to more industrial and civilized. There were sirens, the squeal of brakes, a series of clicks and taps that all pointed towards a more technical environment. Towards the end there were musical sounds along with a sunny yellow projection that seemed to hint at optimism.
In Slow Motions was improvised by Sadja as it unfolded – there was no programming element to the sequence of sounds and projections. There did seem be an arc to it, from an earthy, violent beginning towards a post-civilized future. In Slow Motions is a power-filled electronic realization combining sound and image.
The next activity at the wulf will be Saturday, February 14 at 8:00 PM and will feature
Lisa Truttmann and Guido Spannocchi who will present Elsewhere Lands, a multi-layered media project about theme parks and their audio-visual abstractions.
On February 28 at 8:00 PM Colin Wambsgans will appear.
The poster for Synchromy’s next concert is great
I am incredibly biased (I curated this concert), but I do love the poster, and hope to see you there.
WasteLAnd announces call for scores
Are you a composer? Want to have a piece performed on one of LA’s best music series? WasteLAnd just announced a call for scores on their site. Composers can anonymously submit up to two pieces for consideration. The deadline is February 28.
Full details at wastelandmusic.org/call-for-scores.
Interview: Joel Feigin on Twelfth Night
On January 30 and February 1, UCSB’s Department of Music will present the West Coast Premiere of Joel Feigin‘s opera Twelfth Night, based on the play by Shakespeare. The opera will be produced by Benjamin Brecher and directed by David Grabarkewitz, with Brent Wilson as music director. Full disclosure: Joel is a good friend of mine, and I study composition with him. With that in mind, I felt we could dig a little deeper into his work than the usual “what’s this piece about?” I heard the opera in Chicago in October, and it’s definitely worth driving out to Santa Barbara for, especially if you’re a fan of the play.
Tickets and event details are on UCSB’s website at http://www.music.ucsb.edu/news/event/532. Here’s our conversation:
Composer Joel Feigin
Of all of Shakespeare’s works, what attracted you to Twelfth Night to opera-tize?
Any play beginning “If music be the food of love, play on—give me excess of it…” is just begging to be turned into an opera! What more could you ask for? “music”… “love”… “excess”…
And I love the play and I love Illyria, and I love all the gender-bending—women and men falling in love with a girl dressed as a boy—and in Shakespeare’s time, it was even more extreme: a boy dressed as a girl disguised as a boy in a love scene with a boy dressed as a girl—
Auden said that “a credible situation in an opera is a situation in which it’s credible for the characters to break into song as frequently as possible.” By that standard, Twelfth Night is perfect—it’s in a place we’ve never heard of, and the only half-sane person in it is a Fool.
How much did you need to alter the source material?
The difficulty in converting a play into an operatic libretto is that it takes at least three times as long to sing something as to say it, quite apart from fun stuff using long notes or melismas. But the time it takes to effectively unfold a story acted before an audience is likely to be fairly similar no matter what the medium.
As result, the libretto of a two hour opera needs to be something like a tenth the length of the play, a mere scaffolding. I was very lucky to work with Elizabeth Harr, a contralto who had sung with New York City Opera, and who had had dramatic training in England. My first attempt to turn Twelfth Night into an opera libretto would have taken twelve hours to perform and would have been horrible! With Elizabeth’s help, I cut the text mercilessly: the hardest aspect of writing the work was destroying some of the greatest poetry ever written in any language. After lots of cutting, I realized that my draft of the first act was a third longer than I wanted. Shortening it to an hour demanded sacrificing still more wonderful poetry—and it turned out that almost all the compositional problems I had encountered arose out of unnecessary words in the libretto.
Could you talk a bit about your love of the opera genre?
Music has special powers that affect the structure of the drama. Action tends to split up the ongoing flow of music, as the characters react to different events unfolding onstage. But music develops its full power through a more continuous flow, which has tremendous power to express the feelings of the characters. Therefore dramas with music tend to lead up toward sections in which the music can flow continuously for a while, as the emotions of the characters are expressed with a passion difficult to achieve on the spoken stage: for sheer visceral impact, the most magnificent speaking voice pales compared to a great soprano singing over an orchestra. Music also allows characters singing simultaneously to be understood, whereas speaking actors can speak only one at a time if they are to be understood.
For example, the climax of Twelfth Night is the reunion of the twin brother and sister. Many people are on stage, and several of these have had complex relations with one or both of the twins. In the spoken play they can only speak one at a time, but in an opera, they can all sing at once, and their varied reactions can be expressed both simultaneously and with more completeness.
After a recent conversation with a dear composer friend, I realized that what I love about opera is precisely what he disliked about it: the sheer power with which feelings can be expressed by the operatic voice. For me, this power was a much-needed reassurance that we indeed could assert our needs and desires in spite of everything. For my friend, this assertion was simply false: for him we have no such power. Some reassurance that we can have this kind of power is what I love.
This opera has been through enough challenging situations in its short history to write another opera about. Could you talk about some of the challenges of getting an opera produced?
When people say to me “it must be very hard to write an opera”, I always answer, “No, it’s easy. What’s hard is getting it produced.” The reason is money—opera is the most expensive art form using music, and is therefore most susceptible to fluctuations in the state of the economy and to the tastes of patrons. The less money there is, the more opera companies just want to do Traviata, Boheme, and Carmen, and absolutely nothing else! I know a fine music director of an opera company who had to fight with his board to do Rigoletto and Cosi. For composers, the smaller the orchestra you have the better. The fewer singers you have the better. It’s better to have a predominance of female singers—there are a lot more of them around.
Twelfth Night is really bad on all those counts. Shakespeare is a mixed bag—he’s classy and prestigious, which can be good on big anniversaries of his birth and death, but it can also drive people away. Doing Shakespeare also prompts the concern that operas in familiar, contemporary settings are likely to be more successful and “relevant” and therefore bring in more people. Actually, I think they’re much harder to pull off. It is more credible for characters to break into song in a time and place that’s strange than a time and place that are familiar, since we know perfectly well that the people we know usually don’t break into song.
The greatest commentary that has ever been done on the art form is the Marx Brothers’s Night at the Opera. It’s when it’s ridiculous that opera becomes sublime. I have a fantasy of doing The Trojan Women and being asked why I wanted to do a play that’s 2500 years old. I’d answer, “I want to be sure I’m up-to-date.”
You’ve spoken before about being pressured to write in a modernist style while you were in school, and finally, when studying with Roger Sessions, deciding to write for yourself instead of doing what your other teachers were saying. Do you think that that pressure to write in a certain way still exists?
I think that this was the experience of my whole generation of composers. The problem here is that it wasn’t exactly that I “decided to write for myself”— that doesn’t quite say it. What many of us rejected was the rigid ideology that there’s any one “right” way to compose music at any particular time.
The idea that only one kind of music should be written still exists to some extent in some places, but much less than it did. But the problem that confronted my generation is something that arises all the time in different guises– we all want security, none of us have it or can have it, and it’s very comforting to feel that what we’re doing is exactly what “history” demands to be done. Modernism began as a rebellion but then it became ossified—it became the “only way to go”, which is the exact opposite of rebellion. But “new or old” is something little and “music” is something big; “new” isn’t the essence of what music is: the essence of music is silence—and part of silence is vibration, every vibration—old or new doesn’t matter. What does matter, for the kind of music I’m interested in writing, is that the music we make needs to come from the center of who we are, or from as close to that center as we can get. And this center is neither old nor new.
I think it’s important to consider the very real differences between science and political science on the one hand, and some kinds of art on the other, especially since, starting around the beginning of the twentieth century, science assumed a prestige that “art” didn’t have any more, and part of the reason is that it was very clear why science or political science needed to be done. If the best measurements of the perihelion of Mercury don’t accord with your best theory, it’s clear that you need to figure out what the problem is. If the disparity of wealth and poverty becomes very wide, something needs to be done to prevent very dangerous problems from arising in that society.
There are a lot of good reasons to write music, and what “needs” to be written will be quite different depending on its motivation. Some kinds of art are fairly analogous to science or political science. It’s necessary and wonderful to explore new sounds or new ways of organizing sounds. That becomes closer to a scientific or technological model: here’s something new—what is it? What can be done with it? Or, if your motivation is to change the direction of society, you need to make music that will be effective in helping reduce the gap for rich and poor, or to end war, or whatever you hope to do.
But to write music only to write music is less clear, less familiar to our present world. What do music do any of us, personally, with all the causes and conditions of our life—need to write?
Sometimes what you need to write makes some kind of historical sense—for example, young composers using their experience of rock and other genres of so-called popular music. You play in rock bands—for your music not to be influenced by that would be crazy, and for you to deliberately deny that experience would be suicidal for you as an artist.
But for someone else, depending on the causes and conditions of their lives, if they grew up on Beethoven, it might be suicidal for them as an artist to feel that they had to use rock, let alone only rock, in their pieces. Very few people today grow up on Beethoven, so very few young artists are likely to have that experience. But if they do, they need to be true to their experience. The point is to be true to your own individual experience, the causes and conditions of your own life; that is where you’ll be able to connect with the center of other people’s lives; that is where your music might come to be important to them—how they might come to love it—however few there might be.
With all that in mind, why do you write music?
All the things we’ve been discussing are excellent reasons to write music. But to make any one particular reason the “best” reason, let alone the “only reason” is a big trap.
What happened with Sessions was not exactly that I “decided to write for myself”—I’m not clear that I “write for myself.” I write what I hear in my head—that’s all.
Mario Davidovsky tells a wonderful story from the early days of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. One day a woman came and said that “she heard sounds in her head” and everyone said “wonderful! You’re in the right place”. Half an hour later, they had to take her to the mental hospital.
The best answer I ever got to the question “why do you write music?”—which I ask my students—is that “it’s a mental disease.”
Where did the sounds in this woman’s mind come from? Where do any sounds come from? Where does anything at all come from? They’re just there—there’s no answer for it. That is to say, they are the tao—they are an offering of the tao.
If someone is crazy enough to feel that a sound inside their head is worthy of offering to others, and if they are crazy enough to undertake the strenuous training without which it is impossible to offer it at least somewhat undistorted, then they are undertaking the business of being a maker of musical offerings. A maker of offerings can only “just offer”—for me, an offering is made in the hope that it will be of value to others, but there’s no way you can be sure of it, and to be concerned about pleasing any particular audience—such as a subscription audience, or a composition professor, or a self-appointed new music guru—is just a distraction from the task of doing a good job. Talking to Sessions, it became clear that, at least for me, it just didn’t make sense—it was crazy.
The offering someone might need to make from the center of his or her being could very well be an offering of a new sound or a new method. The offering someone might need to make from the center of his or her being might very well be an offering of bearing witness to injustice. As long as it comes from the center of their being it seems to me akin to what I am trying to do.
How does this affect your teaching?
It influences my teaching a lot, in that I don’t want to pressure my students to write any particular way at all. I want them to write what they want to write. It’s hard, for the teacher, because students sometimes do ask what to write, (and sometimes, even as they’re rebelling, they’re asking what to write), and as a prof you’re always supposed to have an answer for everything. But it’s impossible for the prof to know—only the student might be able to answer the question of what they need to write—and then it’s the koan of their life.
I’m often surprised by how many composers and performers in our area practice meditation – and was thankful for the lesson in it you gave me. From what you’ve already said, it would seem that your Zen practice is a huge influence on your composing.
I spoke of music coming from “the center of your being.” What is this “center?”
We can only find the center of our being within the causes and conditions of our own lives, and it is only when we know our stories so intimately that they fall away that the “center” is clarified.
And when the center is clarified, weird things become possible. Stravinsky can say that he was “the vessel through which the Rite came.” Homer can ask the Muse to “sing to him of the man of many ways…”
When composing is actually happening, it is Zen practice. I could never have continued composing without Zen—it would be too hard and too painful.
The only sensible reason to make anything is that it fills a useful purpose.
So what is the purpose of music that is there only to be itself?
There is silence. Within the silence there are vibrations. That is music. Just music, just itself.
Music that is there only to be itself must be listened to in silence. This “silence” is an openness and readiness of the mind. The sounds of shuffling and snoring and yawning that pervade most concert halls are not silence. Spontaneous applause, even as the music is being played, does not necessarily spoil silence.
Silence is simply “just this” vibration at “just this” moment.
There are 84,000 moments in a second.
“Just this” vibration at “just this moment” …
“just this” totally new vibration at “just this” totally new moment…
“just this” …
“just this”…
That is music.
That is music as an offering.
There is no reason for it.
It just is.
What do you hope listeners will come away from Twelfth Night with?
I hope they’ll love it.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Thank you!
More info on Joel is available at joelfeigin.com.
Sounds: Marc Evans: Romance?
Composer Marc Evans recently posted a video of his piece Romance?, and I love it. The piece keeps me hooked all the way through, and seems to draw from quite a few different musical languages, including jazz (which is neat to hear on viola). Jordan Warmath is the violist, and Marc himself is on piano. Enjoy!
(If you see a blank space above this line, the video might be taking a while to load. Try refreshing. Vimeo can do that sometimes. It’s worth the wait.)
Happy Holidays ya’ll
You might notice that the calendar at the right side of the site doesn’t show much coming up in the next week. That’s probably because not a lot of people book shows between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. What people do do is go hang out with family and friends, reflect on the year, celebrate their various holidays, and stuff like that. This isn’t news, but it is the reason that I want to post a sincere thanks and wishes for the best possible new year for all of our readers, contributors, and community members.
Since getting the site going again in September we’ve been averaging over 500 visits a month. The calendar, which is admittedly still a little buggy, has become the go-to source for concert listings for a lot of people. I am humbled and honored that you’re coming here to find shows and for news about our scene. Quite a few people have come up to me and said, “I never would have known about this concert if it weren’t for the calendar on New Classic LA.” Hearing stuff like that makes keeping it up absolutely worth it, and I hope that the site continues to help our scene grow and thrive.
Seriously, thank you for reading. There’s big stuff on the way for us (and thus for you) in 2015. Here’s a non-denominational picture of a tauntaun catching snowflakes to wish you happy holidays, whatever yours might be.
New Music Gathering schedule posted
Many of you may have heard about The New Music Gathering, which is running from January 15 to 17 up in San Francisco. If not, get on that! It’s a sort of conference/festival/party/event/thing for people involved in new music from anywhere, but it definitely has a west coast focus. They announced the schedule today. Here it is:
There are rather a lot of LA names on the program (many of whom you’ve seen on this site), alongside some Bay Area greats like Kronos and The Living Earth Show, and a few east coasters as well.
Tickets are still available, and pretty cheaply for something like this, at newmusicgathering.org.
They’ve also set up a couch- and ride-sharing thing on their site. I’ll make a post about that on New Classic LA’s facebook forum, so people going up from LA can help each other out.
See you there!
Review: Inoo/Kallay Duo: Five Conversations About Two Things
Editor’s note: Aron Kallay will be performing on Piano Spheres’ Satellite Series at REDCAT this Tuesday, December 16, at 8:30. GO!
Inoo/Kallay Duo – Five Conversations About Two Things
Aron Kallay, Piano Yuri Inoo, Percussion
From populist records comes an inaugural CD by the Los Angeles-based Inoo/Kallay Duo, that includes seven varied pieces from five different composers. Together with versatile percussionist Yuri Inoo, Aron Kallay explores an amazing variety of textures and timbres through premiere recordings of contemporary Southern California composers.
The first track is Like Still Water by Thomas Osborne and this begins with a series of solitary piano notes followed by periods of silence that allow the overtones to hang incandescently in the air. The vibraphone joins in with a series of solid, syncopated chords that at first counterbalances the airy lightness, but this evolves into series of delicate tones that mix and hover overhead. The ensemble of piano and vibraphone here is nicely done, producing just the right conditions for a ghostly interplay. Like Still Water is precisely descriptive of the liquid feel in this piece – it is like hearing the ripples you see when a stone drops into a quiet pond.
The Question Mark’s Black Ink by Bill Alves follows and this has an entirely different feel – cool, remote and with a soft whirring sound like some alien machinery running in the basement. The sound steadily increases, as if we are approaching the source, and the crescendo builds to a single strong piano chord. A series of syncopated rhythms in the vibraphone and piano follow and these mix to form a lovely melody while a warm, sustained pedal tone rises from underneath. This develops a nice groove that is soon dominated by a powerful piano line – the texture here turns bolder and more percussive. Quiet introspection follows, with solitary piano notes heard over a warm wash. In it’s quieter moments The Question Mark’s Black Ink is beautiful music and the playing has just the right sensitivity and touch.
Cantilena III by Karl Kohn is next and this begins with a low sounding marimba trill that immediately creates an exotic feel. A strong piano entrance follows, providing some nice riffs that seem to bounce off the marimba in a mix of the sophisticated and the relaxed. The interplay produces some interesting textures, combining the soft mallets and the slightly harder edge of the piano. Cantilena III suggests a visit by an American to a rural Mexican cantina – there seems to be a gentle clash of cultures occurring and by the end of the piece the marimba and piano, interestingly, seem to be on completely different wavelengths. Cantilena III is an intriguing exploration of contrasting sensibilities and the playing is carefully balanced.
Tracks 4 through 6 comprise the three movements of Elliptic by Caroline Louise Miller. The first of these, Distorted Sundown – Golden Moonrise, begins with a low, almost inaudible hum that crescendos into a series of sharp piano notes. A soft metallic clang is heard along with the sounds of gentle waves – like standing on a distant lake shore at sunset. The piano soon predominates with a series of slow arpeggios that add to the introspective feel. The piano fades softly away, followed by a short silence, and then re-emerges in a stronger, brighter line as the moon rises. There is just enough that is strange and unnatural here to evoke a certain alien remoteness, as if we are experiencing a natural phenomena in an unusual way.
The middle movement, Earthrise – Anarchy, begins with a more pensive feel – with tentative piano flourishes and light, bell-like percussion – we seem to be hovering in space. A sudden piano crash and a series of bass drum rolls add a burst of drama and energy that suggests a chaotic process unleashed. A rapid snare drum solo gives the sense of standing in the center of a battle. This is followed by an ominous rumbling by the piano in the lower registers that explodes upward into a series of crashing chords and thunderous waves of percussion. The movement concludes with a massive chord that recedes like a distant explosion.
The final movement, Exodus, is just a little over two minutes and has an ominous start, continuing the decrescendo from the the middle movement as if rolling outward in the distance. Soft piano notes follow, like watching a ship slowly sailing off towards a horizon. Elliptic is dealing with big, planetary issues and embraces a wide range of dynamics and textures. The playing here is well-matched to the moods as the story unfolds.
The last track is Wagon Wheeling by Tom Flaherty and this starts off softly with a syncopated repeating melody in the piano followed by a dramatic buildup in the percussion. The intensity increases with a good sense of balance in the percussion – always building but always under control. A smoother section follows with the piano and marimba weaving in and around each other with remarkable precision. This piece is quiet at times and at other time boisterous, but with a sound that is always carefully contained and shaped. The percussion especially stands out – so many notes and passages but always finding the right feel. The ending is a crescendo that comes to a sudden halt. Wagon Wheeling is a complex piece with a lot of moving parts produced by just two players.
Five Conversations About Two Things brings together a wide range of composers and compositions performed by two excellent musicians who are ideally suited for each other.
Aron Kallay will perform in the Piano Spheres Satellite Concert Series at RedCat on December 16, 2014.
Five Conversations About Two Things is available from populist records.