It's not everyday that I get to go hear a concert of music that I have never heard before, but last night I had the pleasure to hear a terrific performance of some great music . Sound/Vision's concert last night really surprised me. The program was made up of music composed by the members themselves, Brian Ferneyhough, Marc Mellits, and Steve Reich. I wasn't sure what to expect at first. I thought that roughly an hour and a half of new music would be somewhat hard to listen to. Would there be a melody? Would it be hard to listen to? I have to admit that there were parts of the concert that I didn't exactly understand, but it was so refreshing to watch these performers really enjoy the music they were creating. I should add that along with the music, Jason Corder provided images on a screen that were evocative and added a lot to the performance. The stage was dark with only the soft lights of random lamps to light the performers. The mood that they created was great to settle the audience into experiencing this music. The first piece was "American Flag Blindfolded Baptism." It was nice to hear music composed by UK students, who are also friends of mine. I envy the amount of creativity they have. The piece had spoken word "poetry" (I don't know if that is how they would interpret the dialogue) over the music being played on the piano, computer generated sounds, and riq. I couldn't follow all of the words, but they had a rhythm and a rhyme and a purpose. The somewhat political images showing behind the performers was highly effective. The next piece, "Bone Alphabet" was performed by Rya Nestor. I knew what to expect a little from this piece because I heard him practicing it all of the Christmas break, but it was a great experience to hear it live in a performance setting. I don't know how to describe it exactly so here are the program notes:
Bone Alphabet, composed in 1991, utilizes dense polyphonic and rhythmic material through a developmental structure of thirteen superimposed rythmic cycles. Bone Alphabet requires the simultaneous execution of up to four temporally independent voices, yeilding a sonice tapestry visually equivalent to that of a kaleidoscopically fragmented image. It was not composed for specific percussion instrumentation, but rather for specific attack and decay qualities. The score specifies that no two adjacent instruments may belong to the same family of timbres, thus maximizing sonic interest during the recurrent tremoli between neighboring instrument. The integration, and certainly, the manipulation of complex forms, ryhthms, dynamic, and articulations are not the defining qualities of a formidable complexity composition, however. This music finds its organicty through a performer's commitment to the exploration of the relationships between life and art, and subsequently hosting an interpreatation pivoting on the awareness that these two ideas, life and art, are not so unrelated after all.
I didn't read the notes before I heard the piece, but I wonder how I would have listened to the piece differently. To me, this was the most difficult piece for me to attempt to understand. I liked it, and it challenged me to stay focused on what was going on. I don't know if I could decipher the 13 superimposed cycles. I don't guess that I have to to listen to the piece, but I am always trying to understand what it is I am listening to. Nevertheless, it was nice to hear an instrument that wasn't the clarinet, and I think Ryan played it beautifully.
"Tight Sweater" was my favorite piece. It is a trio for piano, marimba, and cello. I try not to read program notes before I hear a piece for the first time because I want to make my own decisions. The moment that the piece began, it reminded me of Phillip Glass. (I'm glad that the program notes said it was a post-minimalist piece in the style of Glass and Reic.) This was probably one of the most accessible piece to me. I heard familiar chords, and obvious melodies. I wish I had written some of this down while it was fresh on my mind, because one of the movements was so poignant and moving to me. The images on the screen changed with the small changes in each movement, and added something to my experience.
Finally, the concert ended with Reich's "Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices, and Organ". After the presentation on Reich, I had some expectations of how I thought the music was going to sound, and I think that helped me understand while listening to the piece. It met my expectations, and was a great performance.
I was impressed with how great the performance was. I am not saying that I loved every sound I heard, and some of it was not within my comfort zone, and some of it I would have to listen to and look at scores to make sense of, but I am glad that I spent my night listening to such a great performance.
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I also attended the performance and loved it.
ReplyDeleteThe thing I got to thinking about was how much the video that Jason Corder made/performed/composed/showed helped to immerse me even more into the performance. Everything he ran was through his computer and acted with the audio. He had a small microphone that easily plugged into his computer using the microphone input. The software seemed complicated, but not as complicated as I would of imagine if I had not seen him using it with my own two eyes (of course, a professional always makes everything look simple), but effect of the images moving with the musing is just hypnotizing.
After the concert, I wanted to go up and ask Jason if he would be able to perform during my concert. I'm playing a piece by Fritz Hauser and here's some program notes to it:
Double Exposition (French expression for double exposure) is a piece with a strong ritualistic spirit. The never changing meter, the slow tempo, and long duration of the piece make it not easy to maintain an ongoing intensity. It may help to think of the piece as a sequence of moments: Every sound, every soundchord marks a new beginning. Consider Double Exposition to be a piece for one player with 8 arms.
You may ask, when double exposition means double exposure, where is the original photo?
The original piece was called Maeander, and was composed as a sound installation for the photography of Hans Danuser (Swiss photographer) for an exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zürich. The photo is titled “Frozen Embryo,” and shows a fetus in a block of ice. However, the energy that seems to radiate from the little dead body creates a feeling of timeless flow, of an expanding universe.
I tried to create a piece that basically slows down without loosing its energy. A somewhat audacious enterprise in a capitalistic world where only faster, louder, more seems to be the right choice.
Maeander was written and recorded for cymbals only, using multi-track recording as well as some specific recording techniques emphasizing the low end of the cymbals and a variety of sticks and mallets.
When I got the commission to write a piece for the CIP Centre International de Percussion in Geneva, the piece was still lingering in my system and I decided to create a version that could be played live.
An important element that came into play was sound and decay, dampening and ringing, long and short sustain. The playing techniques and choice of sticks and mallets become much more important to emphasize the different layers of the composition. I also added some sound colors to the cymbals such as Bass Drums, Tam tams and Wood blocks.
I kept the rhythmic structure of the piece and from that originates the, sometimes tricky, arrangements regarding stick handling. But everything is possible to play and the difficulty of the piece lies more in the sound production, in the dynamics, in the communication between the musicians, and the overall breath and musicality than in technical playing.
And here is what the compositional form indicates: the piece could have started earlier and it could go on longer, what we hear is only a part of the expansion. [ FH ]
Fritz Hauser develops solo programs for drums and percussion which he performs worldwide [and] cross-media works with dancer/choreographer Anna Huber, with architect Boa Baumann as well as with director Barbara Frey. Compositions for percussion ensembles and soloists, sound installations (a.o. Therme Vals), radio plays, music for films and readings. In the field of improvised music he has worked together with numerous musicians: Urs Leimgruber, Joëlle Léandre, Marilyn Crispell, Christy Doran, Pauline Oliveros, Lauren Newton, Patrick Demenga a.o. Since the Stockholm International Percussion Event 1998 he has been collaborating with different percussion groups and soloists around the world: Kroumata, Synergy Percussion, Nexus, Speak Percussion, Keiko Abe, Steven Schick, Bob Becker, Michael Askill a.o. [ FH ]
This piece last 30 minutes and doesn't have much "action." So at the end of the Sound/Vision concert, I was trying to work up the right thing to say to Jason to see if he's play my recital. But then I thought about how when I was in the concert, I was doing either listening or looking. Now, I know the stereotype is that women can multi-task and men can't. I'm a perfect example of a guy that can't multi-task.
This made me wonder that if I used Jason or a person like Jason at my recital, would people miss the point of the piece by not listening when they're looking and visa versa?
So, I guess my little rant is that, I love live audio/video concerts, but I think that it has to be used with a bit of discretion. I think that the concert was a success and that I would love to use live video during a concert, but after some thinking, I've chosen not to use any extra-musical at my recital. Hopefully in the future, I can get someone to do live video for a recital.
Which brings me to my next short topic.
I hope to next year play Riley's "In C" to celebrate Riley's 75th anniversary. It's my goal to get at least 50 people to play and at least 2 people to do live video. So, please do join in next year when I can hopefully coordinate this.