Reflections on my own concert, May 24th 2012

This was at the Good Shepherd Center, and featured three of my compositions. My apologies to anyone wanting to read this sooner.

Well, I guess it’s time that I face facts: I am a better composer of graphic scores and installations than I am of conventional through-composed material. This became obvious during this concert: the three “composed” piano pieces in my “Ukiyo-e” set sounded elementary, simplistic, forced, and simply not as interesting or beautiful as the fourth piece in the set (which is based on guided improvisation). However, in keeping with the general failure of this music, even my playing of this last piece was off. I thought it was okay at the time, but when I listened to my recording later, it was obvious that I was rushing the tempo for most of it. …And this is a quiet, slow piece, roughly in the manner of Morton Feldman…! It was all just very bad, and I’ll have to redo these pieces before attempting to perform them again.

The other part of the concert fared much better. These were two ensemble pieces based on graphic scores and instructions (none of which I actually played in…!). The first: “SoundScrolls VII”, played by Bruce Greeley (bass clarinet), Natalie Mai Hall (‘cello), and Mike Sentkewitz (string bass). Altogether they did a remarkable job on this; the “lugubrious tone-fog” that I’d mentioned in an earlier post was gone, replaced by a delicate landscape of quiet sustained drones, rain-like scatters, and quasi-impressionist melody. I can only say thanks to these players for their great performance (with a minimum of rehearsal time). I’ve posted a recording of the piece on my SoundCloud page.

The second: “Four Places on Planet Earth”, with Keith Eisenbrey and Matt Kocmierowski (found objects and percussion). This is a performance piece, where the percussionists play various objects (sorted by material) and consult field guides to determine what (and where in the performance space) to play next. The “four places” in the title refer both to the four places where the prerecorded tracks were made (the Olympic Peninsula, the Great Smokey Mountains, Israel, and Kisakata, Japan) and the four “playing stations” around the concert hall. These don’t particularly correspond to each other. The piece sets up an ever-changing cascade of environmental sounds; the prerecorded material was mostly originally recorded by Jonathon Storm (I edited, multi-tracked, and processed it) and the “live” players add their layers of “natural” sounds as well. “Natural”, that is, except for one of the playing stations, which contains brightly-colored plastic objects that wind up crowding out the sticks, stones, and seashells.

So that was it. I’m looking forward to working with these instrumentalists again, especially since they played so much better than I did…

Concert Review: Seattle Modern Orchestra plays Dufourt and Feldman; 5/19/2012

This concert presented two pieces based on visual art. The idea is familiar from Mussorgsky and Respighi and more recent pieces; I have used it myself (see the note at the end of this post).

The first half of the program was “L'Asie d'aprés Tiepolo” by Hugues Dufourt. This was my first chance to hear a French spectralist work “live”; the effect of the timbre-based music was nearly overwhelming. The piece was based on a chaotic depiction of “Asia” by Baroque painter Tiepolo. The first movement was indeed very chaotic, though chaotic in a familiar (if organized) way – the use of multiple layers of extreme complexity to give the impression of chaos is a frequent feature of various other European “modernisms” including works of Ligeti, Xenakis and Messiaen. All of those achieve their complexity/chaos in different manners (mathematical formulae and birdsong, among others); Dufourt’s use of timbre to “cause” composition was another twist on the concept, but in the end, the “newness” is purely academic. The overall effect, like that of Ligeti’s piano concerto or the wilder parts of Messiaen’s “Turangalila Symphony”, is mostly excitement; a driving force (like an action movie) beneath (or above) layers of noise. Whatever; it was fun and interesting music.

A sudden moment of silence and a piano cadenza led into the longer second section, which consisted mostly of unstable clusters of notes (too slow and quiet to be “chaotic” anymore) that faded into silence. It resembled music by Feldman, and of course set up the expectations for the next piece on the program.

Feldman’s “Rothko Chapel” (for chorus and small ensemble) is one of the seminal pieces of late twentieth-century music. Ambiguous “cluster chords” float above nothingness, blank sounds in imitation of Rothko’s “blank” canvasses. Through its several connected sections, the music gradually brings out melodic material: beginning nebulous, then with the barest hints of a “tune” in a simple timpani ostinato, then a soprano solo that keeps attempting to be diatonic but is foiled by stubborn off-key intervals, and finally with a modal (and very recognizable) melisma for viola. In the end, however, there is that ambiguity – the choral “cluster chords” return and the modality is obliterated. This use of sound symbolism and “traditional” melody is at odds with much of Feldman’s music; it may represent the ambiguity of the Rothko Chapel itself – if it is about all (or no) religions, and the paintings (and architecture) avoid any recognizable religious iconography, then who is the God at the center?

The playing of both pieces was excellent, both in technique and interpretation. Oddly, however, the performance space was less suitable for the Feldman than one would expect; the high ceilings create wonderful echoes for small instrumental ensembles, but somehow the chorus didn’t sound resonant enough. This was no fault of theirs; it may have been only because of where I was sitting (in the middle of the large audience) but it surprised me anyway. I’ll have to hear another Seattle Modern Orchestra concert with a chorus to see if this is the case.

Now for that comment about music based on art: I’ve often used the same idea in my own pieces, such as the Ukiyo-è piano pieces, and my set of “SoundScrolls” – both of which will be played in my concert tonight, 8:00, at Good Shepherd Center. The Seattle Weekly has already called one of the pieces “gorgeous”. I had to get in a plug there before I signed off…

Concert Review: New Music from the West Coast – Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, 5/5/2012

A varied concert, though generally tranquil; by three different composers.

Music for qin, by Christopher Roberts

The Chinese music for this ancient stringed instrument often emphasizes its twanging bass notes, which sound oddly akin to Mississippi delta blues, and save the airy, ringing harmonics for special moments of surprising beauty – something of an ethereal special effect. Christopher’s music was the inverse. He created most of the (freeform) melodic material from the overtones, with only occasionally venturing into the bass reverberations. The result was deeply affecting, meditative sounds that revealed their Chinese and “new music” roots equally. He played four pieces that seemed to form a set (they are also together on a CD), lasting a little longer than thirty minutes, and this half of the concert was far too short.

(...not played by Christopher Roberts in this picture.)


Trombones, found objects and found sound by Nat Evans

After the intermission, Jeremiah Cawley and Ken Pendergrass (both on trombones) played the only ensemble piece in the concert, Nat Evans’ “Still Life with Transmigration”. Nat had provided prerecorded electronic ambience: peaceful nature sounds mixed with unidentifiable, mysterious drones – both akin to my “StormSound” music – over which they began the piece with summonings on two conch shells. These had microtonal intonations, which set up harmonic beats throughout the hall – a portentous introduction to the trombones. The trombone music itself was melodic, tranquil, and overlapped heterophonically, furthering the “otherworldly but of this world” atmosphere. For the last third of the piece, they set down their trombones and played the various natural objects scattered around the stage as percussion instruments: sticks, stones, and leafy branches all became part of an orchestra of organic sounds. One can of course rub stones together to make a sound, as well as striking them, and breaking sticks provides a percussion sound somewhat different from striking them as well. My only negative reaction to the piece was that Nat has scooped me; my piece “Four Places on Planet Earth” (to be played in my May 24th concert) also uses prerecorded nature sounds and mysterious drones (derived electronically from the same nature sounds), and “live” percussionists playing natural objects – but of course this kind of thing has been done before (it seems to be part of a possible “greening” of music) so I can’t really complain. It was a beautiful piece anyway…

Jim Fox's Pleasure of Being Lost

The last piece was a piano solo, “The pleasure of being lost” by Jim Fox, as played by Cristina Valdes. This was in several movements played right together; however, none of them were complete by themselves so they formed a single, longer movement with pauses between sections. I described the piece later as “the melodic language of Peter Garland, the harmonic language or Takemitsu, and the time extension of Morton Feldman” – something of a fusion of the triumvirate of piano music of the late 20th century brought into the 21st. Cristina commented that Jim Fox had said it was something like Bill Evans as played by Feldman, which is much the same idea stylistically. Simple melodic figures with complex, ambiguous harmonies, floated dreamily over silence; each seemed “lost” by itself but lead inexorably forward into the next one – and for the duration of the piece, time was suspended. It was around ten minutes long, but seemed both far longer and far shorter. I am looking forward to hearing more music by this composer (and want to hear more of the delicate touch of this pianist as well).

Concert Review: Seattle Composers' Salon – Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, 5/4/2012

From the Composers' Salon website: “The Seattle Composers’ Salon fosters the development, performance and appreciation of new music by regional composers and performers.”

First up: Five one-minute pieces by Emily Doolittle, played by Keith Eisenbrey. These were little character pieces with a wide variety, including a Debussyesque haze of open fifths, a humorous start-and-stop cluster of “wrong notes”, and a birdchirpy dance in irregular meters. A fun opener.

Next, the Rubaiyat of Greek poet Stavros Melissinos as set to music by Yvonne Hoar. For baritone soloist and piano, this was difficult music that stretched monody into borderline atonality. A rubaiyat is a Persian poem where the poet discusses (at considerable length) his/her views of life, love, and philosophy. This particular setting was not particularly long (it was the shortest piece on the program) because Ms. Hoar had only set a couple of verses; I personally was just starting to like piece when it ended, and I’m waiting for another couple of verses.

The third piece was the last work with piano: a set of three pieces by Anne Cummings. Ann is a familiar performer at the Composers’ Salons; here she made her Salon debut as a composer (but still a performer; the piece was more performance art than piano solo). She announced beforehand that the piece was based on a deeply abstract concept, but she wouldn’t reveal what that concept was until after the performance so she could judge the audience’s reaction. “Broken and Not Broken” began with a sparkling minimalist figure, then its inversion, then the two of them in harmony – and was abruptly cut off as Ms. Cummings removed her hands from the keyboard and clapped a rhythm. Keyboard and clapping alternated until both were cut off by a third sound – dull thudding (with echoes) from the inside of the piano, bass strings (same rhythm). “Sound Reveals My Existence” began with a series of overtones, then presented (vocally) the philosophical conundrum that “I have already not existed before”, i.e., before one’s birth. What was my experience then? Shouting into the piano strings (for sympathetic vibrations) failed to answer the existential question, so the final piece (“Present Absent Time”) was entirely instrumental. A dissonant chord alternated with quick, running, pianistic figures in 7/8 time and then suddenly resolved into an unrelated key. The piece did not come to an end; an end came to it. It seems that we are left with the question and even the possibility that we can’t even really ask the question.

Last up: my own work-in-progress “SoundScrolls VII”; one of my few pieces that use no piano. Having not practiced it beforehand, Bruce Greeley (bass clarinet), Mike Sentkewitz (string bass), and Natalie Mai Hall (‘cello) showed up about an hour early and we went over it before the show. I made a couple of adjustments to the concept of the piece (my score said to repeat the melodic fragments up to three times, but this was far too long so I ditched the repeats) and then we gave it a shot. The Salons welcome “works in progress” (I’ve heard some unrehearsed pieces before) so it wasn’t really a problem, though I did announce beforehand that we’d only played through it once…

We did the first and third movements; both are graphic scores (the first looks like a landscape on “music paper” that only has four lines per staff – one for each string of a stringed instrument; the second is a set of melodic fragments to be played in order at one’s own pace). The first came off quite well as free jazz with a lot of spaces for silence and contemplation. I thought the third needed more work (Bruce, who played the bass clarinet, was with me on this); a lugubrious tonal mud – but audience members found it otherwise (such adjectives as “lovely” and “sensual” were tossed around). At any rate, I’m going to slightly revise it and it’ll be ready for the concert on the 24th.

Two Upcoming Concerts: May 4th and 24th

For fans of my compositions: I’ll be doing a concert in May and appearing at the Seattle Composers’ Salon. Both of these are at the Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford (Seattle). I will also play in another upcoming concert at Woodland Park Presbyterian Church (also in Seattle) sometime in September – more on that one in upcoming postings, though I know at this point that Wayne Lovegrove (guitar) will also be playing his original compositions too.

First, the Seattle Composers’ Salon, on May 4th (Fri.). This is “an informal presentation of new music by regional composers. The salon meets the first Friday of every other month, and features finished works, previews, and works-in-progress. It brings together composers, performers and audience members in a casual concert setting that allows for discussion and experimentation.” At this particular Salon, I’ll be presenting a selection from my extended piano piece “Ukiyo-e” (the name refers, technically, to various types of Japanese art, though it’s used mostly to mean woodblock prints). OR, a trio of Bruce Greeley (bass clarinet), Natalie Mai Hall (‘cello), and Mike Sentkewitz (string bass) will present an excerpt of my new (right now, unfinished) piece “SoundScrolls VII”. In either case, there will be a discussion of the music; and, of course, three other composers: Ann Cummings, Emily Doolittle, and Yvonne Hoar.

The Salon performance is mostly to promote the longer concert on May 24 (Thurs.). This will be three of my roughly half-hour pieces: “SoundScrolls VII” (with the above-mentioned trio); “Four Places on Planet Earth” (with Keith Eisenbrey and Matt Kocmierowski, percussion and found objects); and “Ukiyo-e”. It should be a good, if somewhat sparse, concert; all three of these pieces encourage the creation of silence (though in the case of “Four Places”, the “silence” is that of prerecorded ambient nature sounds and gongs).

Both concerts start at 8:00. Both are at the Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N., Seattle.
Be there or be an equilateral quadrangular parallelogram…!

Video/Sound Installation Review: CARTASONIC – Jack Straw Studios, Seattle

"CARTASONIC combines field recording, projection, and montage to convey the layered architectural history of Civita di Bagnoregio, a remote Italian hill town."

Having heard some of Perry Lunch’s work as a member of the Seattle Phonographers’ Union, I decided to have a look at the installation she put together with Lara Swimmer and Robert Zimmer, at Jack Straw Productions.












images projected onto the walls
shades of grey
one is always on the left wall
bells peal when it appears – a churchlike building under construction
other wall; small images fade in: a door, a brick wall, an enigmatic space
slowly missing bits appear, fit together, puzzle pieces
a façade
above the doors, pictures of walls are at a different angle
voices mumble, cough, pray, recite
mysterious place
where is it, exactly?
images disappear, leaving a white line or a void

This is both an art piece (not exactly a video installation) and a musique concrète composition. The images are projected (one of them is associated with loud bells ringing) while the recorded sounds shuffle in and out of reality – mostly voices in addition to the bells, and an occasional birdcall. The effect gives the impression of a historical documentary, though without narration. The pictures are all of fronts or sides of buildings in the remote Italian hill town, though their exact juxtaposition may or may not have anything to do with their layout in the “real” town. In the end it is up to the museum-goer to decide exactly what this documentary is about, and whether this is a real or imagined location.

Concert Review: Clifford Dunn & Anne Le Berge, with guests – Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, 4/6/2012

"Improvisations and compositions by Clifford Dunn, flute and electronics; Anne LaBerge, flute; Lisa Miller, piano; Tom Baker, guitar and Jessika Kenney, voice." - From Wayward Music Seattle

I missed the beginning of this concert due to a scheduling conflict. When I got there, about a half-hour after the beginning, Clifford Dunn (who also did a great performance in my “StormSound” concert last year) was playing the flute in an electronic environment created on his laptop.

Electronic “environments” seem to be a promising trend in experimental music and improvisation. I first encountered them on a CD of selected works of Pierre Boulez; there, amid the more-or-less classical ensembles, was a piece (“Dialogue de l'ombre double”) for clarinet and electronic environment. The clarinet part was not improvised, but a complex serialist composition with possible “detours” and alternate versions. The electronic sound “listened in” and reacted according to what the clarinet was doing. Fascinating. I’ve heard another recording of the same piece since then, and it’s as similar as two versions of the same jazz number would be (not as similar as two version of a standard classical piece), but at the same time, it seems completely different…

Obviously, such interactive “environments” work well for improvisation. In Mr. Dunn’s piece, the electronics processed the flute and returned it in various guises, some flutelike and some more percussive; some looped and some more linear. There were also prerecorded voices (usually not intelligible) that came and went without rhythm – a possible opposite of hip-hop vocals. Unfortunately I can’t comment more on the piece since I walked in partway through and I don’t really have a sense of how it developed or where it came from.


The next two pieces were by Anne La Berge, a guest flutist from Amsterdam. These were, again, for flute(s) plus interactive electronic environments. The first, for two flutes (Ms. La Berge plus Mr. Dunn) was a fragment of a memoir by Madame Curie, and included dissonances to create a tragic mood amid the sounds of triumph and obsession. As Ms. La Berge commented before playing, “scientists, like artists, are often in love with their work even though it’s killing them…”

“…And now for “Grunt Count”. This is a bit of fancy computer programming by English composer Martin Parker, and it can be very loud. So, if I see any of you with your hands over your ears, I’ll consider it a positive comment.” Ms. La Berge began her second piece, a tour-de-force “solo” that stretched the boundaries between music and noise, delicate beauty and fearsome, overwhelming ugliness. A description of the piece offers an intellectual analysis; however, this does not include the stage presence of Ms. La Berge – her performance was also a dance, using the microphone as an instrument to modify and stretch the sound of the flute. Quick motions brought the flute only millimeters away from the microphone (and the sound was correspondingly earsplitting); at other times she played several feet away from the mic, as if it wasn’t even there; delicate flute stylings amid numberless other sounds. Quite a piece!

The second half of the show was given over to one long improvisation, with both Clifford Dunn and Anne La Berge, and guests Eyvand Kang, violin, Lisa Miller, piano, Tom Baker, guitar and theremin, and Jessika Kenney, voice. This “band” produced one of the most atmospheric, mysterious, and luminous improvisations I’ve heard in a long time. It was difficult to distinguish the instruments (the flutes were, again, processed), as it was difficult to distinguish between dissonances and resolves. The sound was continuous, but created the effect of silence, and, unlike some free improvisations that take more than a half-hour, it did not seem to ramble. The time passed quickly, and the piece ended refreshed. This was a perfect example of how free improvisation should be done.

Concert Review: Waterbound – Woodland Park Presbyterian Church, Seattle, 3/11/2012

Readers of the blog will note a shift here: this is completely different from the music that I often review. That said, it had the other attributes of the music that I often write about: it was both interesting to listen to, and beautiful. It held my attention for the entire hour and a half…

Waterbound is a Celtic duet of Steve Akerman (mandolin) and Mimi Geibel (autoharp); both play occasional other instruments and sing when they decide to. The music? Celtic, obviously; but without fiddles or pipes; an ethereal kaleidoscope of shimmering plectra – it sounded like something I would expect to hear at a dinner and recital in Lothlórien or Cair Paravel. Each individual song was a beautifully-cut gem. Mr. Akerman stated that his musical roots include other types of music (including bluegrass, blues, and jazz) and that his improvisations within the Celtic framework would often stray into these idioms. At one point he announced that his octave-mandolin part had been derived from “Can’t Get No Satisfaction” (I hadn’t noticed, but then again, I seldom listen to the Stones because I’ve never liked what I’ve heard by them); at another point, they played a “vertical medley” (two songs at once) where the mandolin part was from a Vivaldi concerto. None of these “excursions” destroyed the continuity of the music; in fact were barely noticeable. They just contributed a little seasoning to the concert.

Another point that both performers often made (before playing a tune) was that “traditional” tunes of course had a composer – they’ve done some research and they often know who that composer was. …And some of the “old” traditional tunes were apparently written within the last twenty years. Some of the most affecting melodies were actually themes from NPR shows.

The gossamer quality of the music worked well in Woodland Park Presbyterian Church. This is a cavernous, reverberant space; I’ve often attended the open mic there (second Friday evening every month) and the acoustics are marvelous for both folk and experimental music, as well as classical. I might mention that Waterbound has played there (at the open mic), and that last week’s open mic had an interesting guest – an old friend of mine who has since moved to Chicago and plays the kaen (Thai mouth organ) – that full-bodied reedy instrument sounds like the grandfather of all accordions there.

So I have nothing bad to say about the concert? No, not really; there were a couple of obvious wrong notes (but no more than that!), but this is to be expected in an hour and a half of live music. All in all it was a satisfying concert.

Concert Review: Seattle Composers' Salon – Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, 3/2/2012

Actually I wrote this review last week (after seeing the concert); my apologies to anyone who was expecting to read it sooner...

From the Seattle Composers' Salon website: “The Seattle Composers’ Salon fosters the development, performance and appreciation of new music by regional composers and performers.”

The first piece was a string bass solo by John Teske. It consisted of a single note. A single note, that is, with infinite variations, and interplay with the ambient sound in the performance space. He began quietly. The single bowed note growled out of silence, then stopped, then resumed its growl, ever-so-slightly louder. It was the lowest open string on the instrument, tuned down a fifth. As it grew in volume, nuance, in seemingly in complexity, it began to take on something of a physical presence; one could feel it pulsating in the room from different directions. Sounds began to drift in from outside of the hall; there was a meeting of children or teens going on in another room in the building, and they were not aware of the concert. No problem – their voices mingled with the “live” sounds from the bass – now having peaked in volume and returning to the silence from whence it came – and provided an unpredictable counterpoint. Afterwards (there is always a question and answer session after each piece at a Composers’ Salon), Mr. Teske explained that he was not trying particularly to interact with the ambient sound, but the music was based on the sound and feel of the note on the instrument itself – he’d play the note, then wait until he could no longer hear it or feel it vibrating in the bass, then play it again, so the varying spaces between its iterations were a result of the physics of the instrument. Altogether a fascinating excursion into the variety available in a single note, and (along with Neal Meyers’ “Gradus” and lots of pieces by various drone-minimalists) ample proof that what would appear boring in theory is in reality anything but.

The second piece was by pianist and composer Terry Wergeland. Before beginning, he said that he didn’t need to explain the piece at all; since it came right after the John Teske piece, its intent should be obvious. It’s called “88”, he said. It joins two other pieces (“N” by Keith Eisenbrey and the supposed “World’s Ugliest Music”) as an exploration of the sonorities of each of the 88 notes available on a standard piano played only once. The aim of each of these pieces is different. Mr. Eisenbrey’s is something of a coda to Neal Meyer’s “Gradus”, which (over the course of years, apparently) explores each note in turn, then every possible combination of notes. Since Mr. Eisenbrey’s piece is a systematic presentation of the notes (beginning in the center of the keyboard and fanning out), interest comes from the repeated interactions of the notes and from unexpected differences in volume and duration. “The World’s Ugliest Music”, on the other hand, obviously attempts to create something unlistenable by using a mathematical formula to make sure that no patterns appear – and it fails utterly because parts of it are quite beautiful (the individual notes are sometimes reminiscent of cathedral bells), and, despite all the precautions, patters do appear. Mr. Wergeland’s “88” is somewhere between these two extremes. The notes are presented, with no discernible variation in timbre or volume, one at a time – but they add up, each appearing in an interesting and/or beautiful interval with the one before. It is as if it were a gigantic tone-row for an unusually meditative serialist composition. In the end, it (along with John Teske’s unnamed piece) presents theory that works beautifully in practice. Both are elegant statements of the beauty that can be coaxed out of what looks like dry academia; and both fly in the face of “mainstream” beautyphobia.

The Salon took a decidedly classical turn with the third piece. This was a trio by Clement Reid; I’d heard the violnist and violist practice it beforehand and made the comment that it sounded quite French. The observation stood when I heard it a second time (and all the way through) – beginning melodically with a theme that could have been my César Franck, it then proceeded through passages reminiscent of Debussy and Messiaen. It was as if I was hearing a century of French chamber music compressed into a luscious five minutes. Quite a feat! During the talkback session, however, it became obvious that Mr Reid’s intent had nothing whatsoever to do with French music (or music of any other particular country or region) – the piece had been written for students to play and he’d merely wanted to write something that was easy to understand but a little challenging to play. At this he’d succeeded, but of course it was a lot more than just easy to understand. The apparent “French” styles were probably a result of solving similar problems: French composers, from Franck through to Debussy to Messiaen, have often written music that is formally very difficult and esoteric but (on the surface) agreeable and easy to understand. I might add that some American composers, as different as Copland and Steve Reich, have done similar, though their harmonic language is somewhat different.

Extreme, austere minimalism, then lush classicism, what could follow? The answer came with the fourth (and longest) piece, a performance piece called “Who are you and how do you know?” by Jay Hamilton. Mr. Hamilton had played some of his homemade instruments in part of my “StormSound” cycle last year, and I’d heard him play a folk-inspired song cycle later in the year; this was closer to the latter. First, there were two “folk songs” with two guitars; one was actually in a jazz style and both included an improvised solo); then Mr. Hamilton sang and acted a capella (with a hand puppet) and a brief piano interlude (played by Anne Cummings). If that description sounds a little vague, I’ve left it so on purpose; much of the interest of the piece came from the stage presentation. The Mr. Hamilton dealt with deep religious and philosophical issues in the piece, presented under a veneer of comedy. One of the issues presented was how we (can) relate to God – though the character representing God refused to name Himself (he merely said he wasn’t this or that god – or God – from various religious traditions) – perhaps this was approaching the Hebrew scriptures of God merely saying “I Am Who I Am”. The character (represented by the hand puppet!) also stated that he God with neither an upper nor lower case “G”. This is a conundrum in writing (there is no “middle case G”, of course) and also in definition: God with an upper case “G” is of course a different concept than those various beings from various traditions that have a lower case “g”. And if this is neither… In the end, we (the audience) is left to decide what to make of the idea, and that is of course Mr. Hamiton’s intent. At any rate, he’s going to present the entire piece (with more performers) at the Chapel on April 7th.

Concert Review: Monktail Creative Music Concern – Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, 3/9/2012

Titled after Thelonious Monk and I don't know what else, this was a long (nearly three hours!) and varied concert in three sections (i.e. two intermissions).

Part One: Gust Burns Trio

Silent music, in the tradition of some of Gust’s earlier collaborations and the “Number Pieces” of John Cage. Barely audible harmonics and toneless sounds from the (almost) amplified viola; unidentifiable, quiet field recordings of hums and thumps on the edge of consciousness; individual notes from the piano or hushed echoing “percussion” from the piano pedals (without pitches); all started and stopped within a framework of stillness. I asked Gust after the performance if the piece had used time brackets; he said no, it was all composed. However, it appears to have been composed according to some kind of formula to create silence (as opposed to the “standard” method of creating tension and release). Very beautiful; it went on for 45 minutes (in three sections differentiated only by slight differences in the timbres chosen) but it could have gone on for much longer.

Part Two: Bill Monto Sextet

The opposite of Gust Burn’s music: loud, brazen, in your face. Strange otherworldly hums and drones began, then, after about thirty seconds, exploded. 1 trumpet, 3 saxophones of various sizes, and one bass clarinet alternated improvised solos and thunderous ostinatos with classically inspired piano interludes. This was a “free jazz” medley (and sometimes a free-for-all), but it also gave a rather different impression: somehow it remained melodic even in its most abandoned moments and never lapsed completely into the (intentional or not) cacophony that often marks the genre. Near the end, one of the piano patterns started sounding familiar (before the other players took off on another group improvisation), so the whole 35-minute set was obviously planned to be circular – ending somewhere near where it began.

Part Three: Compositions by Steve Paris

Piano pieces in the manner of Lou Harrison; a gamelan for piano that (in this case) was supposedly derived from chance operations. The “sound” of the music was in complete contrast to its origin; my guess is that the scales and melodic fragments (and their combinations) were what were derived by chance, not the individual pitches or durations. Quite pretty.

A raga with overtone singing, again derived by chance operations (in this case, the harmonium drone – a major second – and the scale, were made by throwing dice). Beautiful, meditative; something of a different spin on the extended musical silence that Gust Burns had presented to begin the program.

Two pieces written for (and performed by) “Crystal Beth”. This is one of several alter-egos of clarinetist Beth Fleenor (another is “MegaBeth” – I’m waiting for “AlphaBeth” and “AustraloBethecus”). In this case, the irony is in the drug reference; one certainly couldn’t play such intricate music while strung out on drugs. Both pieces used improvisations over loops (the part that was composed by Steve Paris); the first was entirely instrumental and the second added Ms. Fleenor’s signature vocal pyrotechnics: jazz vocals that looped over unexpected (and very subtle) beat-box. Sometimes pretty, sometimes charming, sometimes quirky, this was a new look at the (by now no longer experimental) style of looped minimalism.

Altogether an interesting, beautiful (and long!) program. I’m looking forward to seeing more by this Seattle experimental music collective.

CD Reviews: ONCE Festival, Dessa, John Luther Adams

I wrote this a month or so ago; a review of some CD's I'd picked up from the public library -- but didn't get around to posting it. It turns out that today is John Luther Adams' birthday, so here it is.







MUSIC FROM THE ONCE FESTIVAL (1960-1964)


I found this in the library while looking up music by a particular composer (I have forgotten whom). This is obscure in the extreme: badly recorded, sometimes badly played, but generally pretty interesting (though usually not beautiful) music from the now more or less defunct atonal avant-garde styles. This is truly music from a bygone era; even the aesthetics of “experimental” music were different back then. This was an era of loudness and harshness – an obnoxious squeak and honk was considered much more profound than a melody or a sonorous chord. Obviously this trend would soon bleed into mainstream popular music, where it still exists, if robotically, in the form of heavy metal. …All music is a little mellower now. (I have noted this change before, even in performances of the same piece: compare the first 1967 recording of Takemitsu’s “November Steps” with more recent versions.) Another curiosity is that the separate strands or sub-genres don’t seem to be as clear; I could not tell my listening whether I was hearing serialism, aleatory music, free improvisation, or something else. Nowadays these forms are quite distinct… Anyway, I would recommend this to anyone interested in the history or experimental music, mostly as a period piece. There are some astonishing instrumental sounds here (particularly some of the piano and electronic pieces) but don’t expect sound quality – the monaural recording (in an acoustically dead space) gets pretty oppressive by the end. At least the last three pieces on the last CD are in stereo…






DESSA: CASTOR, THE TWIN


This is the antithesis of the ONCE Festival music. One was music just learning to be loud and rough; this is music that is usually thought of as loud and rough being transformed into something beautiful and fairly still. Yes, this is hip-hop with an attitude of tranquility (!) It avoids the cliché’s of tranquil music that are so annoying in “new age” and easy listening, but is still mainstream enough to be given a spot on NPR’s “All Things Considered” (it probably won’t make it onto pop radio, though).

Dessa’s poetry consists of gritty (maybe fictional) slices of life, though with a notable absence of the negativity that pervades hip-hop. There is also an obvious lack of those juvenile shock techniques – the misogyny, racism, profanity, etc., that are so often found in rap lyrics. Probably some (younger) listeners will criticize this music as “weak” because it doesn’t include any of this (I’ve heard that concerning Mars Ill) but to me it signifies the realization that there’s music behind that stereotypical attention-getting.

And what of that music? On one level, it’s obviously of the hip-hop genre (even if its aesthetic is rather aberrant) – the beat is there, the samples are there, the rapping is there. On another level, though, it’s not hip-hop at all: Dessa’s soulful voice often wanders into jazzy melody in the middle of the rapping (in fact, the rap and jazz vocals are juxtaposed with such skill that it’s often nearly impossible to tell exactly when one ends and the other begins). But the curious difference comes from not only from the vocals but the choice of backgrounds – samples include harps, jazz vibraphones, frame drums, classical piano, and a tango band. It’s all quite pretty, a thousand miles away from edIT or M.I.A. Fortunately, though, it never quite crosses the line of becoming “just” pretty (as in Enya or Kitaro) – and therein lies the beauty. This is one genre leaving behind the worst of itself, and successfully experimenting with being something different, without lapsing into the worst of another genre.






JOHN LUTHER ADAMS: RED ARC, BLUE VEIL


I’d heard of John Luther Adams before; not to be confused with the other composer John Adams (or those other two John Adamses, the presidents…) Again, a spot on NPR helped me sort them out.

John (Luther) Adams is also called a minimalist, though that label has of course lost much of its meaning in recent years. One could also call him a composer of uncompromising, in-your-face ambient music (!), which I know is an oxymoron but it describes his compositions. The present CD, “Red Arc, Blue Veil” was, I assumed, a single large work in four movements, with the first two pieces for two pianos, the third for two percussionists, and the last for all four. The first piece is in the manner of Somei Satoh; trills and tremolos crossfade, possibly with the help of digital delay, creating a galaxy of harmonies. The second is a mathematically precise interplay of polyrhythms; for the most part it seems like four against five but there are also passages of five against six. Each piano plays a chord, for a specified number of times, in a certain rhythm, then moves on to the next – but the two pianos (intentionally) don’t match up. Interestingly, it doesn’t all become a jumble. The listener can clearly hear both parts and feel both rhythms as well as hearing their interactions. A fascinating piece, though perhaps a little long for what it does.

The third piece presents bass drums in a similar interplay of rhythms. The effect is like a giant abstract taiko improvisation; all I can say is that I can’t really follow the cross-fading of the thunderous rhythms but the whole thing is just a lot of fun (something that’s sometimes missing in experimental music). Lastly, the final piece returns to the “Satoh” music, though now augmented with a vibraphone and a glockenspiel. The end leaves the listener refreshed, having taken a voyage through the loudest possible interactions of rhythms, and then returned to the familiar sonority of ambient harmonies.

All four of these are “one idea pieces” (as Oliver Knussen had said of certain orchestral works), but they play off of similar ideas, so I had assumed that they were intended to be played together. I was surprised to discover, when reading online reviews of the CD, that these are in fact separate pieces written at different times during the composer’s life. Two things can be said about this (and they are two sides to the same coin): one, that the composer is stuck in the same vein and keeps repeating himself, and, two, that he shows a remarkable continuity of vision. A third possibility is, of course, that these are pieces from an extended cycle written over a long period of time, and that John Luther Adams has also written a number of completely different pieces. I’ll have to hear more before I decide which of these (or all of them) are true.

The Seattle Improvised Music Festival One-Minute Solos Concert has been rescheduled

This concert, originally scheduled for Thursday night (1/19/11), has run into snow problems and been rescheduled for February 2nd, still at 8:00, still at the Chapel performance space at Good Shepherd Center. There may be a change in a few musicians, though I will still be playing. My apologies if this messes with anyone's plans.

January 16th: Happy Birthday to Gavin Bryars and Brian Ferneyhough

A new feature in this blog: happy birthday to composers and other musicians whose music I’ve enjoyed, or been challenged by, or have personal stories about…

Jan 16 – Brian Ferneyhough and Gavin Bryars

I’ve no particular stories concerning Ferneyhough’s music, except to say that it’s worth a listen. I first encountered it on a “Perspectives of New Music” CD a couple of years ago from the Seattle Pacific University library, in the form of a piano piece called “Lemma-Icon-Epigram”. My first reaction was that it sounded just like Stockhausen (either a plus or a minus depending on one’s stylistic bent). That remains my impression, though the piece shows a progression into deeper resonances in a manner that is quite unlike what the older composer would have done. Perhaps more interesting to non-pianists: on the CD “Flutes without Borders” by Carin Levine, there’s a rendition of Ferneyhough’s Carceri d’Invenzione IIc (flor flute and tape) that shows that complex, dense serialism is definitely not dead. The tape part consists of a multitudinous barage of flutes of all shapes and sizes and sounds, and the result is scintilating clusters of jewel-like notes. (By the way, one used to say “for flute and tape”, but the “tape” parts are now usually digital, so what does one call it? A friend of mine, another musician, opts for “canned” sounds…)

On the other end from Ferneyhough’s concentrated mathematical music, Bryars’ pieces are extended, slow, ambient, and atmospheric. This would make sense, since apparently he studied with John Cage and Morton Feldman (or, of course, someone who studied with these two might rebel against their influence and do something entirely opposite!). Anyway, I first encountered “The Sinking of the Titanic” in the 1980’s on a now-defunct pirate radio station that was wont to play experimental music – this same piece has turned up remixed by Aphex Twin on the “24 Mixes for Cash” double CD. Looking up Bryars for this blog entry, I discovered another piece that I’d heard before but never knew was by him – the poignant “Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet”. I recommend reading the story behind it too…

Upcoming Concert: Seattle Improvised Music Festival One-Minute Solos, next Thursday (1/19/12), 8:00 PM

I’m going to be playing in this (thanx Bruce and John!). I’ll be playing the piano for sure, and maybe bring along my hammer dulcimer. Anyone interested in hearing my particular contribution (small as it is – only one minute) to this concert can check it out. Huh? Only one minute? What’s the point? It’s a mosaic of sound – if every piece is only one minute, then what you get is a collection of miniatures, a book of sonic haiku. And since it’s all improvised, some pieces will undoubtedly spin off of the previous pieces (and some won’t). Spontaneous, in the moment, and a lot of fun.







Here’s the vital info:

Thursday, January 19, 2012, 8 PM.
A number of local musicians improvise solos, each lasting one minute, in support of the 2012 Seattle Improvised Music Festival this February. There may also be duets, each also lasting one minute.

$10-25 suggested donation; $25 or more will get you a pass for the entire festival
(February 8-12)

Chapel Performance Space
Good Shepherd Center, fourth floor
4649 Sunnyside Ave. N, Seattle

Performers include:
Alex Guy, Andrew Olmstead, Begin Scaresth, Beth Fleenor, Brad Hawkins, Bruce Greeley, Colin Pulkrabek, Cynthia Marie, Emily Westman, Eric Rynes, Evan Flory-Barnes, Greg Campbell, Ivan Arteaga, Jim Knodle, John Teske, Kathryn Olson, Mara Sedlins, Maria Mannisto, Michael Owcharuk, Natalie Mai Hall, Neil Welch, Paul Hoskin, Robert Blatt, S. Eric Scribner (me), Schraepfer Harvey, Tamiko Terada, Wilson Shook, and more

We are still accepting musicians, so if you have an interest in performing a solo, please contact john [dot] teske [at] gmail.com


Portions of this posting from the Seattle Improvised Music Festival website.

January 12th: Happy Birthday to Morton Feldman

A new feature in this blog: happy birthday to composers and other musicians whose music I’ve enjoyed, or been challenged by, or have personal stories about…

Jan. 12 – Morton Feldman

A couple of days ago a message popped up on my Facebook page saying “Happy Birthday, Uncle Morty!” and a picture of Morton Feldman. I looked it up – yes, January 12th; two days late.

Feldman’s style has been called minimalism, though its aesthetic is a thousand miles away from Philip Glass or Steve Reich. My own experience with Feldman’s music (live) was at a concert in the Seattle Public Library some years back – a chamber ensemble played several of Feldman’s two-hour pieces in a room full of color-field paintings. The visual and auditory aspects of art were shown to be related here; Feldman’s slow, quiet musical gestures perfectly matched the expansive, quiet paintings. A group of music fans sat on provided chairs (though there weren’t enough; about half of the audience sat on the floor), listening intently. Other museum patrons, not aware that a concert was taking place, wandered around looking at the paintings, commenting to each other and occasionally glancing at the musicians with puzzled expressions. Many of these museumgoers, after walking around a while, sat down with the rest of the audience and listened to the music. In the end, the intense calm created its own atmosphere.

A couple of days later I happened to be teaching a high school music class and mentioned this concert – the students wouldn’t believe that there had been a concert in a museum…


PRIZE PACKAGE AT AN INFORMAL “SAYS-YOU” TOURNAMENT THAT I PLAYED IN: Michael Feldman “Whad’Ya Know” game kit, “Crippled Symmetry” CD by Morton Feldman, and a DVD of the movie “Young Frankenstein”, starring Marty Feldman.


I have a solo piece in the manner of Morton Feldman, the fourth in a set of pieces based on Japanese woodblock prints. It is the longest in the set, and consists of a series of phrases to be played 5 to 9 times, and improvisations (with or without meter) on given pitches. It is all very slow, very quiet, and does not present any recognizable harmonies or melodic material until the end. Like the way I perceive Feldman’s work, it is intended to be both intense and calm, and worth deep concentration. I don’t know whether I’ve succeeded (it is, after all, a piece derivative of another’s style) but readers of this blog can judge for themselves. Click this link and scroll down to "Ukiyo-e part 4" (under "Piano Solos") to hear it.

Eric Whitacre, Dana Reason, Dean Moore, and unexpected musical xenophobia

A new feature in this blog: happy birthday to composers and other musicians whose music I’ve enjoyed, or been challenged by, or have personal stories about…

Jan. 2nd: Eric Whitacre, Dana Reason, Dean Moore

(A disclaimer: I’m putting Dana Reason and Dean Moore in one paragraph at the end not because I consider them to be less important musicians – that is absolutely not the case! – but because I happen to have an anecdote about Eric Whitacre’s music…)

I first heard Mr. Whitacre’s music when I was assistant-teaching a high school symphonic band class. The regular teacher was gone to a meeting, and there was a student teacher who’d been given free reign what to do that day (the band had just finished a major concert, and more or less had a free day as well). He had decided to try a new piece by one of his favorite composers – Eric Whitacre.

He played me the piece first on iTunes. I was surprised because it was a choral piece, though I soon realized it was “symphonic” enough to have an orchestral arrangement as well. The piece was “Cloudburst”, and it was a bit of tone painting as descriptive as Smetana’s “Moldau” or Philip Glass’ “Train”. Partway through the piece, percussion suddenly came in, and the entire chorus (or band) started snapping their fingers randomly – the result sounded as much like rain as was possible indoors.

I listened as the band played the piece, and added my part in the percussion (tam-tam and bass drum) – the percussion parts were improvised. If the idea sounds like a cliché, it certainly could have been (and to be frank, Mr. Whitacre’s music borders on the commercial); but his writing was an interesting enough polyphonic interweaving of impressionistic chords to prevent this.

My enthusiastic response to the piece turned to shock and surprise, however, when one of the students (a girl who’d been playing the clarinet) approached both of us afterwards and said, “That was totally weird. Don’t make us play it again.” Both of us groaned a startled “huh???” but the other teacher recovered quick enough to inform her that it only sounded weird because she was unfamiliar with the style, and he gave her a quick overview of the history of late 20th / early 21st century classical music. I just gaped at her (the student) in disbelief…

The same occurred about ten minutes later. The band was putting away their instruments, and another student (this time a boy) approached me and asked if I’d like to hear one of his compositions. I said certainly, and he sat down at the piano and began to play a quick, heavy-handed, sharply dissonant piece that sounded much like some of Luigi Nono’s harsher works. Another boy came over and announced pointedly, “Give it up; nobody likes to hear your so-called music.” As the pianist immediately stopped playing, I again grunted an amazed “huh???”. I hadn’t particularly liked the piece up to the point where he’d stopped, but I certainly recognized at least this part to be the beginning of a surprisingly well-made composition for that of a high-school student. This time it was I who recovered quickly enough to tell the insulter that it only sounded like “so-called music” because he was probably unfamiliar with the style, and I gave him a quick lecture about Schönberg and Varèse (with examples from my iPod).

This story has no conclusion. I don’t know if these two students changed their minds or at least accepted modernism and post-modernism as legitimate types of music (the other students in the class didn’t seem to have any difficulty with either piece). I went to the public library and checked out a CD of Whitacre’s music (all of it choral music) and was rather entranced by its juxtaposition of jazz and impressionist chords with a timbre and texture reminiscent of Palestrina. Second or third listenings have dimmed this impression somewhat (some of the pieces are rather formulaic); but, this is a composer who just turned forty and so one can assume that his best music is yet to come.

Two other musicians of note (pardon the pun) have January 2nd birthdays: Dana Reason and Dean Moore. I don’t have any particular anecdotes regarding their music, but I’ve heard both in concert and both are among the most inventive of today’s improvising musicians. Ms. Reason plays the piano (I’ve written a review of one of her concerts and one of her CD’s). Mr. Moore plays percussion; specifically, gongs – a Dean Moore concert is a stage full of gongs of all sizes, sending ethereal resonances into all corners of the performance space. He doesn’t just strike them, of course; gongs make a variety of sounds when they are scraped, rubbed, or bowed, as well as being hit by different kinds of mallets or sticks. I had the privilege to play a concert with Dean, part of an early version of some of the “StormSound” pieces (also with Stuart Dempster, Mary Kantor, and Neal Kosaly-Meyer). Later I discovered that one of his recordings fit into another of my “StormSound” pieces as if he’d been listening to my piece while he played it. I have a version of it on my iPod with his recording added – but since I haven’t gotten his permission to use his part, I won’t let anyone else hear it, yet…

Phil Kline's "Unsilent Night" in Seattle, 12/21/11

In my older blog, I mentioned the possibility of “experimental” Christmas music. As shown on the video (probably taken by Steve Peters), this would be an example…! Along Seattle’s 45th Street, a procession of miscellaneous people: old, young, and in-between, in warm winter coats and sweatshirts; all carrying boom-boxes or MP3 players with speakers; all walking to the slightly uncertain rhythms of the same music…

Well, not exactly the same. Phil Kline’s composition, “Unsilent Night”, is four electronic parts that are downloaded and then played, in unison, by as many people as want to participate, on as many stereos as available, as they amble down the street. Of course the music can’t really be synchronized exactly; that’s part of the fun of it (earlier incarnations of the piece were often played on cassette recorders, which all play at slightly different speeds, so it would get quite “out of synch” by the end). So, ambient chords drift around, echoing from unexpected places; rhythms and “beats” double and triple themselves, resulting in complex overlays. And as everyone moves, these sound-drifts shift around, producing the always-unexpected juxtapositions.

I’d heard of this several years before (I think NPR’s “Studio 360” covered it) – and then, when given the chance, decided to participate (this version was sponsored by the Seattle Composers' Salon, among others). The part that I was supposed to play was to be downloaded but for some reason my computer didn’t like it. No problem; another participant had a computer and could download it to my iPod. Later, during the actual “performance”, the batteries on my stereo conked out. So, I guess I was just supposed to listen this time…

The “procession” went down 45th Street, a street lined with businesses and restaurants. Noticing a quizzical look from a shop owner, I informed him “It’s an audience participation project of avant-garde music…” “It’s not avant-garde! It’s new music! It’s contemporary right now music!” shouted another participant who obviously thought that avant-garde refers only to the old-school atonal and aleatory experimental music of the 1950’s through the 1970’s. This is not of those genres… The procession then turned a corner, retraced the same street from the other direction (and actually passed through a QFC supermarket!) before meeting again at the starting point.

The music itself? An electronic piece, obviously; in roughly four sections:
1.) Slow ambient chords with beautiful high ringing sounds; each chord forms a slight discord as it fades in through the others (and then quickly resolves).
2.) Quicker repetitive “minimalism” in the manner of Terry Riley’s “In C”. This gets quite intense by the end as it goes into some dissonant intervals that spread out as phase-shifts through the multiple slightly-out-of-synch stereos.
3.) More ambient sounds, now slightly more ominous. Low hums and rumbles, sometimes with massive crescendos (“Here we go!” I heard someone say behind me, just before a particularly thunderous wave of sound began – obviously this person had heard the piece before).
4.) Actual “Christmas” sounds: chimes, bells (no sleigh bells, though); and what sounded like a boy choir echoing in a cathedral (this part occurred just as we were entering the supermarket, and it prompted a man in a wheelchair just outside of the store to exclaim “Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry! Merry!” in a Santa Claus voice). These sounds gradually faded back into the ambient chords of the beginning.





A promotional picture for “Unsilent Night”. It’s more fun with more than one player with more than one boom box, though…


Comments? The piece is titled “Unsilent Night” and obviously refers to playing a lot of (loud? Not, particularly) music on a night that would otherwise be quiet. However, the title has more to say: an “unsilent night” needn’t be an unholy night. This music was is “about” holidays in the same way that the secular Christmas carols are, and perhaps it goes to a deeper level: it spreads both metaphorical light (as sound) for Hanukkah and radiates the joy of Christmas. It also makes a statement that there are other ways to make music than the way it has “always” been done, and it goes right with my idea of letting people (the public who happens to see or hear the processional) hear experimental music who otherwise have no access to it. I couldn’t have made a better statement myself.

…and then afterwards, there was a party while Tom Baker (curator of the Seattle Composers’ Salon) Dj’d, remixing Vince Guaraldi’s “Charlie Brown Christmas” music with Steve Reich.

Concert Review: Seattle Symphony plays Britten, Knussen, and Bedford; 11/17/11

This is the first of a couple of blog postings that are late being posted, due to my being busy over the Thanksgiving weekend...

Guest conductor (and composer) Oliver Knussen conducted this concert of 20th- and 21st-century British works.

First on the concert was the seldom-heard “Canadian Overture” by Benjamin Britten. This was a delightful, light opening piece, beginning and ending with a “special effect” of fragments of a melody over waves of suspended cymbals. It contained an off-kilter waltz and a racous semi-fugue on “Alouette”. Said Oliver Knussen during a post-concert talk, “Nobody evey does this piece, and I don’t know why… I like to call it ‘El Salon Montreal’”, obviously referring to Copland’s piece about Mexico (not an exact quote).

The orchestra shifted into artistic high gear with Knussen’s own violin concerto. The violinist Leila Josefowicz walked out on stage, looking rather glamorous; she proceeded to play the transparently textured modernist work with verve and emoting reminiscent more of a rock guitarist than classical violinist. It did not distract from the work. The piece itself began with a bell tone (tubular bells) that seemed to dissolve into the violin’s opening harmonics; from there, melodic materials were passed around and variously developed (or not); finally coalescing into a beautifully melodic slow movement and a gigue that retained its dance-like elements despite its atonality. All in all the orchestration and general “sound” of the piece reminded me of “post-Debussyism” as it has been developed by Asian composers (Toru Takemitsu, Isang Yun, even Tan Dun) more than other contemporary European composers – this was due to the ethereal, reverberant textures, bell-tones, sometimes startling use of the harp, and shimmering chords in the strings that seemed to be neither dissonant nor quite harmonious.

The bell-tones and shimmering strings were, however, a feature of this concert – and according to the pre-concert talk, represent a trend in 20th and 21st-century British classical music. Certainly they were there in the two Benjamin Britten pieces, and echoed in the other, more recent, works. (I had actually first noticed Britten’s use of strings on a recording of an “epic” ballet with the unfortunate title “The Prince of the Pagodas”, a little-known but exciting score.) The connections to Asia are probably more obvious to me because I’m more familiar with those particular composers – but in both cases, inspiration has been drawn from Debussy and Ravel.

After the intermission, Knussen presented a short piece by the young British composer Luke Bedford. “Outblaze the Sky” was a meditation on a single chord that grew and expanded (through portamenti, other string effects, and suggested rhythms) into a brief, brassy, “blazing” climax – and then abruptly ended. It was over far too soon, I thought. “It was one piece that was written for a young composers’ project,” Knussen commented in the after-concert talk, “the pieces were to be about six minutes long, and were to be played by a major orchestra. Most of the pieces were just a lot of notes played by all the instruments all the time and very loudly – a “THIS IS AN ORCHESTRAL PIECE!!!” kind of style. One can look over the written scores and see that most of the pieces are like that, and need more work. On the other hand, those that are really good and really bad, or really original in some way, stand out immediately. This is one that was really good, and original.” (Not exact quotes, again.)

(A little aside comment here, from me as a probably controversial critic: “just a lot of notes played by all the instruments all the time and very loudly” is my usual criticism of orchestral works by Johannes Brahms – thick orchestral mud, I call it – but few seem to share my sentiment there.)

The concert concluded with another Britten piece, the “Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia” from the opera “Peter Grimes”. These are too familiar to warrant much of a discussion here (though I always notice the extraordinary orchestrations, such as the use of tubular bells and trombones together to create what sounds like a new percussion instrument to imitate church bells in the “Sunday Morning” section, or the use of overlapping French horns for the same effect earlier in the same piece). Knussen’s particular version of these pieces was to put the Passacaglia in the middle (rather than at the end), as something of an extended development section. This alleviated the usual complaint about the piece that (being excerpts from a longer work) it doesn’t really come to any satisfying conclusion; though it made the following shorter movements sound rather incomplete and undeveloped. That said, the piece did conclude the concert with a blaze of color. An exciting concert, to say the least.

If the reader thinks this blog seems to be shifting away from its "experimental" roots and going too classical, the next postings should be welcome...

World's Ugliest Music – Not!

A friend sent me this link a couple of days ago. It’s supposed to be the “world’s ugliest music”, on purpose. But why isn’t it very ugly?

The idea seems to be that it will be ugly because it doesn’t have any pattern. The announcer goes into great detail about the mathematics used to generate these completely random notes before the pianist even plays the first note – and emphasizes over and over again that this lack of pattern will produce intensely ugly music. He states that the reason we perceive the Beethoven Fifth as “beautiful” is that is has that repeated four-note pattern…





Behind the announcer is the mathematical chart used to make the "ugliest music"...


Alas, the music fails. It simply isn’t very ugly. True, it isn’t “catchy”; one wouldn’t walk away from it singing one of its riffs. It would make a very bad pop tune. But it is rather meditative, and I can’t help hearing patterns emerging from the chaos – I can hear it as a slow movement in a piano sonata, surrounded by quicker pieces of more conventional structure. Or, quicker pieces structured in the same way: since it uses all 88 keys of the piano (each one played only once), it could be considered a serialist piece with a very long (88-note) tone-row; it could obviously be developed further. (Keith Eisenbrey has written another piece for all 88 keys of the piano, each played only one time, but with a different aim – his piece, called “N” after Neal Kosaly-Meyer, organizes the 88 keys in a definite pattern and is certainly not ugly, intentionally or not.)

What the composer/mathematician has failed to take into account, I believe, is the aesthetics of the sound. A piano is a resonant instrument, with rich overtones, and playing its notes one at a time and letting them ring, with spaces between them, simply will not produce something ugly (rather, it produces a sound not unlike church bells). Overlapping them with dissonant intervals and percussive attacks (as in the Stockhausen Klavierstück X) would work better if ugliness is your aim (though of course it isn’t the aim in the Stockhausen, which goes through a remarkable transformation by the end). Even “better” would be to use sounds that are intrinsically ugly to the human ear, such as the scraping strings in Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (probably one of the unloveliest pieces ever written, for obvious reasons).

In certain of my own pieces, I’ve used the idea of intrinsic ugliness and beauty of sounds – in the first of the four Ukiyo-è pieces, for example, the pianist is instructed to play the (serialist) tone-row one note at a time, with the fingers of the other hand pressed against the strings in random places, producing unexpected timbres – and to let the “prettier” sounds ring longer and to cover up the “uglier” sounds more quickly with the next notes. Obviously it depends on the opinion of the individual pianist…

But, in the end, what’s the point? Why make intentionally ugly music? My idea: apart from being a novelty, it does make one think about why certain sounds are beautiful and others are not, and perhaps it hints that the beauty and ugliness of certain vibrations goes deeper than merely the human perception of them…

“Modern Music” Weekend: Seattle Modern Orchestra 10/28/11 and Seattle Symphony plays Webern and Stravinsky (and Bach) 10/29/11

This has turned out to be a Modernist Music Weekend. I attended two concerts with works by composers from the Second Viennese School, along with other 20th-century pieces (and two by Bach).

The first of these concerts was the Seattle Modern Orchestra led by Julia Tai, at the Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center. This has become a well-known Seattle venue for experimental and classical music.

After a brief lecture about the history of the relationship between text and (instrumental) music and demonstration of Sprechstimme by soprano Maria Mannisto (both probably unnecessary for this audience), they played two song cycles; one by George Crumb and one by Schönberg. Crumb’s “Night Music I” was a reverberant, haunting, nocturnal soundscape of clanging metal percussion and silences (several times I heard echoes of flutes, which were not actually in the ensemble) interspersed with expressive recitations of Lorca’s mysterious poems. I used to criticize Crumb for being “only” effects; closer listening has revealed a great complexity and depth of feeling behind those sounds (and in fact I’ve been composing in a similar vein for several years now). Obviously the phantom flutes were one of the “effects” (created by close, microtonal resonances on the vibraphone and crotales); others were the extended piano techniques, the water gong, and the soprano’s sometimes startling intonations. Though this piece had more instrumental than vocal music, it affected me much the way other Crumb compositions have in the past: after seeing it performed, my impression is of having seen a play rather than having heard a piece of music. Crumb undoubtedly intended this; he has spoken of the relationship between music and theater, and it was supported by the singer’s Sprechstimme, the long (and precisely-timed) silences, and the instrumentalists all moving around the stage doing very strange things to their instruments.

Schönberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire” sounded positively conventional (or “classical”) in comparison. The vocal lines are again mostly Sprechstimme (here a way to make the rhythms of the poetry more deeply felt), though they were accompanied by tight chamber pieces that, despite their “atonality”, seemed to derive their gestures from Mahler and even Richard Strauss. Such are the currents of creativity. All in all this was an effective performance – and (as I commented to another audience member) a profound way to bring the poetry of the text to the front (and therefore related to more recent versions of text-based music such as Beatnik poetry and Rap). The instrumentation included piano, violin, cello, flute, and clarinet – a much more “classical” chamber ensemble than for “Night Music I”.

The second concert of the “modernist weekend” was by the (scaled down) Seattle Symphony under Andrew Manze. Not that it was all modern, of course – much of the concert was taken up by two relatively large-scale pieces by J. S. Bach. The highlight of the two of these was the last piece in the concert, the Brandenburg Concerto #5. This is instrumental Bach at its most scintillating: a trio of flute, violin and harpsichord create a kaleidoscope of interweaving parts over and against the string orchestra; all is based on different lengths of reiterations of the main themes. Sometimes the strings drop out entirely, leaving the soloists in extended cadenzas – the most obvious of these is of course the long harpsichord solo in the first movement, but there are others (such as the fact that the second movement doesn’t use the strings at all!). Harpsichordist Kristian Bezuidenhout played with a lot of verve (making the instrument actually appear to play crescendos – impossible on a harpsichord) and the conductor danced with infectious enthusiasm. It wasn’t entirely an “authentic” performance (whatever that really means) – these were of course modern instruments, in modern tuning, and they were amplified slightly to be heard in the large hall – but the sound was gorgeous. I’d like to hear the same group play the entire set of Brandenburgs…

The “modernist” part came in the form of the Symphony by Webern and Stravinsky’s “Dumbarton Oaks” Concerto. Again, the conductor felt it necessary to give a long talk introducing the Webern – and again, I don’t know if this was necessary, though in this case it served as the pre-concert talk that they usually do at Seattle Symphony concerts. He compared Webern’s dodecaphonic technique to Bach’s counterpoint, had the instrumentalists play examples, and stated that Bach would probably approve. Whether that’s the case, I wouldn’t know – to me at any rate they’re both “classical music” but in a quite different vein for a different century, and I don’t know how I at least would react to something that will be done two centuries in the future. At any rate the Symphony sounded sparse, bare, mysterious, as if carved in musical stone – as far as possible from the Bach while still being expressive and containing moments of exquisite beauty. There was even a little humor: at the end of the second (last) movement, after an intellectually challenging set of variations and dissonant extremes of pitch, all the instruments dropped out one by one, leaving the harp to give a final “ker-plink” – though I can’t be sure if this is an affirmation or negation of all that came before.

(An aside here: I happened to hear another audience member comment that the term for Webern’s style should be pronounced with the same stress pattern as pol-LYPH-o-ny, – so it should be do-de-CAPH-o-ny. I commented that, depending on one’s opinion, this could be close to ca-CAPH-o-ny, but that I don’t hear it as such – to me it’s just a more abstract style of classical – a Kandinsky painting as opposed to a Vermeer.)

Stravinsky’s “Dumbarton Oaks”, always a catchy piece, represented the other side of modernism. Again the conductor gave a little introduction, though in this case he merely talked about how he’d fallen in love with the piece when he’d first heard it as a teenager and that recently when he played it (on a CD player) for his toddler son, he’d started dancing around in approval as well. The piece is more like the Bach than the Webern – rhythmic, based on catchy tunes that dissolve into great complexities of counterpoint. It also adds a little dissonant “spice” here and there, and unexpectedly syncopates the melodies (delaying an occasional note by a full beat or more – a decidedly anti-jazz way to syncopate, though jazz was coming into its own around the time that Dumbarton Oaks was written). (The only jazzy use of this same type of syncopation I’ve heard is in a jazz/funk anime soundtrack by Yoko Kanno.) …Unfortunately the performance seemed to lack focus. The three movements were joined together into one long and somewhat unwieldy selection. Presented in this manner it seemed to lag behind itself somehow, as if it forgot where it was going and had to plug along to fill up some stretch of predetermined time. The musicians (and conductor) tried to battle the aimlessness by emphasizing certain parts of rhythms, but all in all it fell rather short. I found my mind wandering, and I waited for the Bach. Judging from the audience’s enthusiastic response, however, not many others felt this way.

A good couple of concerts, well worth seeing (and hearing). But, a question surfaces: what, exactly, is the significance of “modernism” now that it’s no longer modern…? To me, at any rate, it’s another form of classical, no more or less conventional or experimental than baroque or impressionism (all forms of “classical” were modern at one time, of course). One can say that a difference is that recent trends in symphonic and chamber music have tended to completely reverse the aesthetic presented by modernism – in a recent NPR interview, Steve Reich stated (this is not an exact quote) that “It was up to composers of my generation to say ENOUGH! to this kind of modern music…” But, of course modernism itself did the same to impressionism, which did the same to romanticism, and, etc. Presenting “modern” music along with Bach shows more similarities than differences anyway.