Concert Review: Seattle Chamber Players and On The Boards Present: Icebreaker VII: Open Source Day Two

After getting drenched by rain the previous night, and because I had other errands to run, I drove to On The Boards this night (February 17, 2014). On a day with beautiful weather, I made sure I would spend the least amount of time enjoying it as possible.

The Icebreaker VII: Open Source concert number two featured three compositions: open source by Michael Beil, Karaoke Etudes by Yannis Kyriakides, and Up-close by Michel van der Aa. This whole festival featured work exclusively by European composers.

This concert even more than the previous night reminded me of times in Amsterdam. This may be because two of the three composers have deeply lived in the Dutch new music scene for a long time, and the third (Michael Beil) is very close by in Germany. I find that while the Dutch new music scene is unique and exciting, because it's such a small country it often becomes conglomerated by Germany and its vast scene pretty easily.

I have to vent a little at Mikhail Shmidt. He gave an introduction to the concert, but he committed a microphone crime by blowing into the mic in order to make sure it was working. We see people do this a lot and I think people believe it's a benign issue and that I am over reacting. However, this can damage microphones beyond repair, and a musician should be aware and never do this. From my vantage point, the microphone was a Sennheiser G3 series wireless microphone with probably an 845 head on it (I do know a bit about this stuff). This microphone is a rugged dynamic microphone, so in all likelihood it can handle some tapping or blowing. Tapping is not good for mics (if you have a nice ribbon mic, you can render it useless with a simple tap), but blowing can be catastrophic because you will actually hit the element that moves to capture the sound. The movement of this element can easily make it break, or the moisture from your breath can actually stick to the element and cause corrosion to the microphone. Again, as an A/V technician, I almost expect this sort of thing to happen from a layperson, but a musician should really know not to do this.

Sorry for the criticism Mikhail...I do think you're quite a wonderful violinist! On to the review!

The first piece of this concert was also the theme for the festival, open source. The open source culture is where I find myself deeply involved. I believe the future of our technological progress is (and very much should be) within the realm of open source software (and hardware!). I personally use exclusively free and open source software (my computer runs Linux, I do my typesetting now in LilyPond, my musical performance is with Supercollider, and my recording/mixing is with Ardour). It really thrills me to see more and more individuals embracing the culture of open source (which is a culture of freedom) and applying it to the creation of original art and music. One could write a great deal on just the merits and difficulties of open source, but this blog is more concerned with the music that is presented.

open source is originally a piece for flute, violin, viola, and cello. Maybe because of the title, which implies the freedom to modify the original material, the Seattle Chamber Players replaced the viola section with the very capable Laura DeLuca on clarinet instead. This piece is billed as a flute solo and Paul Taub again expertly succeeds in his role. This is the first and only piece in the festival that features just the Seattle Chamber Players for the performance with Paul Taub as the flute soloist, Mikhail schmidt on violin, Laura DeLuca on clarinet, and David Sabee on cello. One thing I think an audience will inevitably hear while listening to a performance of the Seattle Chamber Players is a great deal of precision. No exception here as the SCP expertly handled the very interesting Michael Beil score.

This piece opens with an image of three elderly men sitting on a bench rocking back and forth. The three players (violin, clarinet, and cello) mirror this motion on one side of the stage while the flutist stands at the other side. While the flute is featured more than the other instruments, the piece is really a fully encompassing work with electronic sounds playing just as important of a role as acoustic instruments. Throughout the piece, warped distortions of Offenbach's famous barcarolle are heard. My understanding is that this composition (and specifically performances from youtube) makes up the entirety of the electronic sound. I do hope that open source software (supercollider, pd, or csound perhaps) was utilized to create the computer track. At some point during the video, a woman appears and “sings”. The singing that she does is more warped versions of the barcarolle, but it's synced nicely so it looks like these strange sounds are coming from the woman’s mouth. Quite often, the flute is in a microtonally distanced unison from the melody. The continuous pileup of multiple sources of the same material also creates a cool microtonal texture.

This piece was a highlight of the festival to me. The video was humorous and fit in quite well with the music. This time it was a rear projection video, and I still wish for a brighter image and higher color quality. This evening, I was sitting several rows back, so I had probably a better placement in relation to the speaker setup. However, I was still a bit disappointed. I think overall, this performance might have been better at the Chapel in Wallingford, but that venue would not have been able to hold as many people.

Second on the concert was Yannis Kyriakides' composition, Karaoke Etudes. This piece WAS the highlight of the entire festival to me. Even more exciting than Romitelli's An Index of Metals the previous night, I found Karaoke Etudes to be the most interesting and exciting of all music in the festival.

Karaoke Etudes featured the entire Seattle Chamber Players members with the addition of both Cristina Valdez on piano and I think it was Robert Tucker playing vibraphone (percussionist was not listed in the program). The structure of this piece has five movements with a different soloist each movement. The soloist plays a complex written solo that Yannis instructs may be interpreted in a variety of ways. While the soloist is playing, the rest of the ensemble takes cues based on the video projected which gives pitch and timing cues based on note names and colors. Each movement has a familiar pop song as the fundamental compositional force, but as the piece moves on, the original pop tune gets harder and harder to comprehend.

The first movement featured Laura DeLuca on bass clarinet as she played along with Marvin Gaye's I Heard it Through the Grapevine. As the entire audience understood the background for this piece, I think it forced DeLuca to throw a lot of crazy into the solo as she fought for attention while we tried to hear as much of the familiar song as we could. The bass clarinet was wonderful, and it put me right back to an earlier review where I listened to two other bass clarinet players (Jesse Canterbury and Greg Sinibaldi) play some great music. Laura DeLuca is not a performer I typically associate with improvisation, and indeed she may have completely read her part, but her playing was outstanding and certainly worthy of the highest praise whether or not it was improvised. DeLuca’s performance felt confident and off-the-cuff, and I think  it fit the nature of the piece tremendously.

The second movement featured Paul Taub on the bass flute. The underground song for this was Bob Marley's Sun is Shining. Already it became more difficult to determine which song was being played. Paul executed some great noisy flute techniques (my favorite) and the ensemble did some great listening and supportive performance.

Movement three had Mikhail Schmidt playing violin and I think some percussion solo during Gil Scott Heron's Fast Lane. The playing in this movement was great, but it didn't stand out to me quite as much as the other movements.

The fourth movement featured David Sabee on cello while Leonard Cohen's Everybody Knows was behind him. This movement was very dark and brooding (much like Leonard Cohen's personality I suppose). The cello and ensemble got some great textural sound as they were grinding in the lower frequencies and being influenced by dubstep perhaps. This particular movement makes me think that Yannis, who is a great electronic music improviser, was exploring his own methods of electronic music improvisation with acoustic instruments that don't typically improvise in the same fashion. This movement in particular was reminiscent of the Dutch improvisation scene, and Sabee did a wonderful job pushing the sound to the limits.

Finally, the final movement featured Cristina Valdez on piano with Nina Simone's Sinnerman. Cristina was forced to play a perpetual motion piano piece that was relentless. The rhythmic drive and percussive precision required for this movement would require a great deal of concentration. The very nature of this piano part was so exposed and precise that any mistake would have been very clear. Cristina, of course, made no mistakes. Her power and precision behind the piano is unmatched, and it is always exciting to listen to her play. I was certainly not alone in this thought as Cristina received more applause than any other soloist for this piece.

The video material for Karaoke Etudes was the most original looking material in the entire festival. The video was crisp and clean, and it was easy to figure out what was going to happen musically based on the visuals. Each movement had a unique video representation of the music, and it was still reminiscent of the strange scenic images that are present in a typical karaoke bar's screen. I was enamored with this piece and so excited when it was over that I couldn't help congratulating Yannis (someone I worked with while living in Amsterdam) via Facebook. This was a performance that had the Seattle Chamber Players at their very best.

The final performance of the evening and the two day festival was Up-close by Michel van der Aa. Up-close is a cello concerto/live-action film. I've worked briefly with Michel van der Aa, and I assume he doesn't remember me, but this composition is pretty representative of his work in general. He comes from the tradition of Dutch composers who studied with Louis Andriessen (side note, Yannis Kyriakides is a Greek Cypriot, but he also studied with Andriessen and could probably be considered a young Dutch composer). Van der Aa is probably the most recognized and esteemed of the young composers in the Dutch scene.

Up-close was clearly supposed to be a highlight of the festival. It featured a highly polished video featuring an older woman alternating between a stage, forest, and house. The scenery looked incredibly Dutch to me. The woman acting was expressive and displayed a great range of emotion without ever speaking. The cello soloist, Julie Albers, was involved throughout in a dramatic way. There are many moments in which the cellist interacts with the video projection duplicating the movements of the actress on screen. Throughout the piece, Albers would stand with dramatic flair, move across the stage, carry a lamp, and show drama with her facial expressions.

I'm not convinced with the effectiveness of using a concerto soloist in the capacity utilized for this piece. I felt that the live moments of dramatization were infrequent and merely served as distraction and break up the musical performance into segments. These dramatic moments weren't bad, but I didn't feel particularly moved by them. Overall, everything that happened on the stage (and screen) was inferior to the music presented. I know this might be tempted to be another showing of gesamtkunstwerk, but it seemed clear to me that music was the most integral portion and most concentrated upon art form for this piece. This is certainly not a bad thing, because the music is why we were there. I believe all the video work was intended to enhance the music, but was not necessarily integral to the performance. Karaoke Etudes video was probably the most important as instructions to performers were included in the video. An Index of Metals had a video that enhanced the overall experience, but didn't necessarily need to be included for the experience to be what it was. open source had an entertaining video that was a great addition to the performance. The video for Spam! was the only one that really detracted from my experience. Close-up had video that was probably supposed to be the most important of all, but it really fell far from that experience.

The cello work of Julie Albers was certainly polished and exquisite. Her delicate appearance did nothing to portray the ferocity with which she approached van der Aa’s music. Her moments of movement did betray a lack of theatrical performance, but her musical skills were astounding. With cello music reminiscent of the Kodaly sonata or the Shostakovich concerti, Albers played with conviction and without struggle. Her performance was very fantastic, and it was really enjoyable to hear her play.

The string ensemble, again led by Alastair Willis, accompanied the soloist and video nicely. Their playing was certainly up to the challenge of the music, and they nicely fit in during moments of accompaniment and background. Most of the time, the string section was of tertiary importance, but the experience was dependent on a solid string orchestra.

Michel van der Aa is certainly a good composer. He knows structure, form, and all the important compositional tools as well as any other famous living composer. However, his music has never really struck me with excitement. If I were to rank my favorite compositions of the festival, Up-close would be second to last. I didn’t really feel much excitement listening to this piece. It’s not a composition of experimental nature like open source. It doesn’t have the creativity and musical variety of Karaoke Etudes. And it was lacking in the intensity and power of An Index of Metals. Though I understand the desire to place van der Aa in the position of festival closer, I found it more of a wind down experience than an exciting one. The first night, I left the program more excited to be a new music performer/composer than I have in a long time. This night, I was just happy to head home.

Do we have fans of the Dutch composer scene? It’s certainly a cool scene. Did I offend your thoughts on Michel van der Aa? I’d love to hear about it!

Concert Review: Seattle Chamber Players and On The Boards present Icebreaker VII: Open Source Day One

Thanks to my friend, Paul Taub, the flutist with the Seattle Chamber Players, I found myself walking through a Seattle monsoon past closed sidewalks in order to get to On The Boards in the Queen Anne neighborhood. February 16, 2014 I witnessed the first night in their Icebreaker VII: Open Source concert. The Icebreaker is a little festival that the Seattle Chamber Players put together to support “emerging music”. I must say I have to question that statement. Emerging music implies a program of composers that aren't established, but rather relatively new and unknown to the world of new music. At the very least, I would expect the music itself to be emerging and new. Of the two pieces on the first show one composer has been dead for ten years and his piece is eleven years old; the other is a well-established Portugese composer with a piece five years old.

My criticism of this is mostly light-hearted. How the festival is labeled doesn't have anything to do with the quality of the music or the performance. However, I do have a personal mission to push the boundaries and not accept the typical way we view art progression. If we were to look at other areas of our daily life and accept ten year old versions, would we be satisfied? How many people are happy with a ten year old car (mine is almost twenty)? How about a ten year old cell phone? Or five years for that matter? I really hate the cell phone I have that was new circa 2012! Yet we can accept music that was written ten or twenty years ago as avant-garde and cutting edge. People today still view John Cage or Stravinsky as avant-garde experimental composers. I think I can say that they are not avant-garde by today's standards any more than Mozart should be considered. John Cage, Stravinsky, and Mozart are all phenomenal composers (three of my favorite), and they were all very avant-garde for the time they were alive and working. I think we should certainly appreciate their music and stand upon their shoulders as we move forward, but new and experimental music is not within their realm anymore.

I do realize that art and science are unrelated in certain capacities (while being very much related in others). While scientific progress is quantifiable (we can see that there are faster processors and higher density screens in cell phones), art is certainly more challenging to compare. If we were to compare the Rite of Spring by Stravinsky premiered in 1913 and the soundtrack to the movie Iron Man 3 composed by Bryan Tyler released one hundred years later, we would have a hard time seeing the progress. I believe most audiences would still struggle with listening to Stravinsky's masterpiece and question the harsh sounds and awkward progression, but they will find the movie soundtrack more pleasing. Avant-gardeism and experimentality when applied to art and music are simply harder to qualify than when applied to science. I don’t believe we can even use the term avant-garde when looking at science. The very nature of scientific research is to focus on what is new and unknown.

That was a long rant, but it is intended to reveal the nature of this blog and my continual search for new and exciting music. Seeing the Icebreaker festival in Seattle got me thinking this way. These two concerts really impressed me. I'll be honest and say that for a long time, I have been disappointed by the prospect of living in Seattle because I inherently compare it to the time I lived in Amsterdam and London. While living in these two cities, I was regularly exposed to fantastic new music by great composers and performers. The Han Bennink performance at the Royal Room (see second blog post) and this festival completely turned me around and made me realize that Seattle has the potential to be as great of a city for new music as Amsterdam, London, New York, Berlin, or any other great international city. The dedication to new music that the Seattle Chamber Players have is essential to keeping Seattle on the map for great new music.

On to the first concert!

The first concert in the series featured two compositions: Spam! by Luis Tinoco and An Index of Metals by Fausto Romitelli. Each piece featured a vocal soloist and a larger ensemble than the typical Seattle Chamber Players quartet. Both pieces also incorporated video and electronic sound.

The first piece, Spam!, featured Jared Michael Brown as narrator and baritone singer. While the history of the word, “spam” is interesting enough (it's a canned meat we are all familiar with that got its fame after the Second World War), Tinoco has broadened the definition applied to internet email to now mean garbage. The five movements of this piece take the form of electronic garbage. Because of Tinoco’s broader definition for spam, only two movements of the five are derived directly from spam email. The first movement, A Human Metaphor Flying Over, is an actual news story about a family of human cannonballs. David Smith and his family are human cannonballs who have performed many times, and had a famous experience when being shot from cannon in the United States and landing in Mexico. I found the story to be pretty fascinating actually. The movement itself opens with The Star Spangled Banner which was performed quite beautifully. I don't think I'm alone in my general distaste for this musical work as it bombards us everywhere. Often sung with a great deal of soulful mellisma, or with a great deal of pomp and delusions of grandeur, we've probably all heard this song performed more times than we can count. When Jimi Hendrix did a famously cool performance of the tune at Woodstock, guitarists started performing their own renditions (for a laugh, go to youtube and search for Zakk Wylde playing this one). As soon as we realized what was being played, I felt the audience relax and chuckle. But when this ensemble played the national anthem, I was floored by the artistry of the performance. With a rather typical orchestration you would probably hear from a concert band, I was really impressed with the dynamic control and beautiful tone of the trumpet player, Tony DiLorenzo. Most trumpet players I've heard play this will turn it up to eleven, but DiLorenzo played with beautiful grace. I'm going on about the use of this song, but I think it's important because it highlights an important memory for me: I was sitting in a bar in Amsterdam with Ned McGowan and Robert Dick. Robert talked about working with the famous composer, Brian Fernyhough, and his music of hypercomplexity. The story is that Robert asked why Fernyhough would notate in a certain way while a simpler notation could have the same effect. Fernyhough told Robert that this is to insure that the performer will take the music seriously and work hard to play it well. At this, Robert has an exasperated reaction and states that if you give “Happy Birthday” to an artist to play, you will get a beautiful rendition because an artist will take any performance seriously and put their entire self into the act regardless of what the music is. This ensemble did the same thing with the national anthem. It set the stage up for a night of incredible musical performance.

However, I feel that this composition as a whole fell a bit flat. The age of the internet has proliferated a plethora of music based on emails, Facebook posts, forum trolls, and other types of crazes. It is probably the next evolution of Andy Warhol's term, “Pop Art.” The music created from this internet influence is humorous, and certainly the textual material that comes out is entertaining. However, I just couldn't get into this composition. It was my least favorite of the festival. The orchestration didn't utilize the variety of sonic possibilities with the ensemble that was used. The instruments that I felt were really used well were the trumpet, flute, and piano. As I've already stated, Tony DiLorenzo blew me away with his trumpet playing. Cristina Valdez is certainly my favorite pianist in the city to hear play new music, and again I could hear some of the typical idiosyncrasies of her playing in this piece. Cristina is able to take a relatively simple and rhythmic line and apply a shape that most pianists wouldn't think of doing. The way she can phrase individual moments within a longer phrase is very cool. The flute will always stand out in my ears (after 26 years of playing the instrument, I just can't help it) and Paul Taub executed his part perfectly. While switching to the various types of flute, Paul always displays a great deal of professionalism and respect of the role of a flutist realizing a composers vision. The ensemble as a whole performed tremendously, but these instruments more than any other seemed to be crucial to the composition itself. This piece had a lot of rhythmic material and a strong metric pulse that was fun to listen to. It called for very precise placement and the conductor, Alastair Willis, was required to listen to a click track while conducting in order to make sure that everything was precisely performed. Willis did a phenomenal job of keeping the ensemble together. And of course, Jared Michael Brown was the star of this performance as narrator and singer. Using the text that he had, Brown drew the audience into this world of junk and captivated our minds as he spoke of human cannonballs, the destruction of public art in Frankfurt, an email ensuring a sizable percentage of a multimillion dollar entitlement, whether or not God commanded George W. Bush to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, and of course the infamous email guaranteeing increased sexual potency for men. Brown never shied away from of the material. His background as an actor is very clear and his ability as a singer is great. The composition ends at a climax while informing us of the benefits of the penis pill. Jared Michael Brown expertly led us all to this climax.

Spam! included visual projection and electronics. I have to take this point to say that I was a little disappointed in On The Boards audio/visual equipment. The standard definition Panasonic projectors look antiquated to my audio/visual technician eyes. While most venues are upgrading to high definition projectors with greater color contrast, the projectors in this venue left a lot to be desired. I also wasn't blown away by the venue's powered QSC speakers. Sure, they were able to put out a lot of sound, but it was without much character. I would hope the venue would have something more in line with Genelec or even KRK speakers (KRK make some of the best active speakers I've heard, but I don't think there are any out there with as much sound output as QSC). It struck me both evenings that the sound output was on the bland side from the equipment. I imagine the sound system works much better for theatre productions, and maybe a rock concert, but not quite as splendid for experimental electronic music.

I found the visuals in Spam! to be a bit cheesy and probably more of an afterthought. During the first movement, there was video footage of the human cannonball family, and that was nice, but after this the projection should have been turned off as it didn't add, but rather retracted from the overall experience.

I find that my review of the composition may seem harsh, but it really was a piece that just didn't hit any spots of passion within me. What did blow me away is how the performers made this piece great. The dedication with which they approached this, and indeed all the music of the two days, is outstanding. We do need to be aware that there probably is more uninteresting music than real gems. Finding performers who will treat everything they play as if it is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is essential to presenting new music. If we don't take this music as seriously as we would a piece of such monumental caliber, how will we ever continue to have great music? So what my thought comes down to is that the piece itself was pretty unforgettable, but the performance was quite stellar.

For a very different reaction of the composition, Fausto Romitelli's piece An Index of Metals, is one of my new favorite pieces. I can't believe I've gone so long without hearing it. Anyone who was not at this performance needs to find a recording and listen to it. I'm looking for one myself!

Romitelli tragically died in 2004 in his early 40's, and if his body of work is anything like An Index of Metals (I'm working at absorbing his collection), I've discovered a new favorite composer. He was a student of Tristan Murail, Gérard Grisey, Michael Lévinas, and Hugues Dufourt. But what is possibly the main catalyst to his unique composition and approach to sound creation was an influence and desire to break down barriers between art music and pop music.

The influence of psychedelic rock and roll is very clear in this composition. The title itself, An Index of Metals, is fitting because there are many moments of heavy metal. I heard influences of Led Zepplin and Black Sabbath throughout and the use of electric guitar (plugged into the glorious Marshall amplifier) really made the piece seem like a 1960’s or 1970’s underground rock concert.

Throughout the intermission before the piece, there was a recording playing over the sound system. It was like an old organ sound track to a silent film. There would be silence and then the organ sounds and a sudden stop as if a needle was pulled off a record. This lasted the length of the intermission and was present in the beginning of the performance letting everyone become aware that it was actually part of the piece.

The electronic sounds used throughout the piece were cool, but I again felt that a better speaker system would have made them seem even more alive. I also wish there had been more spatialized movement with the sound, because I think the audio was primarily in two channels. If the piece were realized with an octophonic system, we could have been much more immersed in sound. With the entire ensemble also amplified through the system, there could have been a great deal of possibilities created with more sound movement.

An Index of Metals also had video projection. All visual material was metal. Often the image was so close up, I would wonder if I was looking at some porous organic substance. The three projectors had different images, but they were always with the same source material. Again, a higher lumen count projector, and higher resolution could have really made this sparkle. This piece had a much more necessary video portion. While the previous piece felt unnecessary with its video choice, Romitelli had a piece that was very much a gesamtkunstwerk (to bring Wagner into this) that featured collaboration between a librettist (Kenka Lèkovich) and two video artists (Paolo Pachini and Léonardo Romoli). With the diligence brought by each of these artists, the work stood on its own as a fantastic piece of art.

With a great deal of interesting orchestration choices and dedicated performers, the musical ensemble played this piece with as much great attention to detail as Luis Tinoco’s earlier piece. The ensemble could reflect a very dark ambience, a generic movie score, and an underground dance club. While the electronic sounds played a great role in this atmosphere, I felt that if they had been removed, the ensemble could have reflected the same feel with all the classical instruments. Of course, I must mention both Jon Green playing electric bass and Michael Nicolella playing electric guitar. The way these two could add a heavy metal rock element to the ensemble in a very controlled and very strong way was one of the highlights of the composition.

The vocalist, Polish soprano Agata Zubel, was phenomenal. The composer leaves no real information about how the piece is supposed to be performed apart from text and pitch material. Zubel made some wonderful choices with her tone quality, use of vibrato, and dynamic control. Because of all the loud music, she had a microphone, but unfortunately, her voice was still lost at times. I’m not sure if this was intentional, but I like vocals to be more present than I heard at times. Zubel has a very passionate approach to new music because of her background as a composer. Being a composer, in my opinion, helps a performer appreciate and understand the performance of contemporary music.

The libretto used seemed unrelated to the concept of metals, but it follows a three part poem called, Metalsushi. This libretto has titles of hallucinations, and it is rather experimental in its own right as prose or poetry. What is probably most interesting to me about the libretto is that it was originally written in a different language (maybe Croatian?) but translated for this composition into English. Composers usually want to work with text written in the original language with the original intent and inflections that come with working with a writer’s original words. The choice for English is interesting, but the end result is undeniable.

I should also note that Marcin Pączkowski was present through the night as a cue man controlling the electronic sounds. I don’t know if I’ve been criticizing his work as a sound engineer, but I don’t think he had much to do with the actual sound mixing. The use of the electronic sounds was very nice and integral to Romitelli’s piece in particular, and they were executed very competently.

Alastair Willis was the conductor for the entire night. I learned that he was placed well outside his comfort zone. Willis is a conductor more accustomed to traditional orchestral music, but he did a wonderful job keeping the ensemble together for this music. As a conductor, one has to lead and really take the credit (or blame) for the resultant music. In this instance, Willis can be proud that the music presented was performed extremely well and with a lot of clear passion and love.

I left this concert completely blown away by An Index of Metals. This first evening of the Icebreaker festival was wonderful. This was the sort of performance one would easily find in the famous venues of New York, London, Berlin, or any famous city for experimental new music. I have very little critical words to say about the performance of the music presented. While I could name the performers that I felt were the strongest (Cristina Valdez on piano, Paul Taub on flute, Tony DiLorenzo on trumpet, Michael Nicolella on guitar, Jon Green on bass, and Jared Michael Brown as well as Agata Zubel as vocal soloists), I would not say that any other musician was a weak link. The reason why these performers stick out to me is more because of the way the instruments were used during the compositions as opposed to “better” playing by these performers.

Where I find the most critical of my thoughts are beyond the control of typical musicians performance. I did have an expectation that On The Boards would have better equipment. I work professionally as an audio/visual technician, so I am working daily with data projectors and audio equipment. My time working in this field has probably made me a bit of a snob, but if a musician is going to spend thousands of dollars on a high quality instrument and thousands of hours perfecting their skills on that instrument, I feel that a venue should also be willing to invest in the highest quality instruments. I was probably alone in my critique of the projectors, but if their image was compared with a Barco or Christie projector, I think the difference would be instantly clear. I would think my thoughts may not necessarily be my own as far as the audio quality (I assume there were many musicians in the audience). Location is vital when listening to electronic music, and I may have been in a bad location. I was in the second row from the stage, so I may have been non-ideally placed for the speakers. Had I had more time, I would have liked to speak with the sound engineer to hear his or her thoughts on mixing this performance. On The Boards does almost entirely experimental art, but I think the focus is more on theatre, and the venue could benefit from an electronic musician acting as a consultant for an equipment upgrade.

Overall, this was a fantastic performance that I was delighted to attend. Did you see the concert? What do you think?

Album review: Ascendant by Greg Sinibaldi and Jesse Canterbury

I intended this review to be published days earlier. However, an illness that really left me out of it delayed me.



Greg Sinibaldi is the first experimental musician from Seattle I ever met. We were both artists in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts about seven years ago. At the time, I was living in Amsterdam. At the ACA, we joined several other musicians and worked with the flute master, Robert Dick. There were also painters and poets working with other masters of their crafts. I made some great friends at this place, and when I moved to Seattle, Greg was the first person I made contact with in order to get into the music scene. In my time living in Seattle, I've really come to see that Greg is my favorite saxophone player in town, and probably one of my favorite alive. In Ascendant, Greg alternates between playing bass clarinet and tenor saxophone.



I actually met Jesse Canterbury in Ellensburg, Washington while I happened to be passing through in the early days of moving to the state after being in Europe. He was playing with the Tom Baker Quartet, and that was a show I found to be quite inspiring. I've seen Jesse play many times since then, and we've had the chance to play together on occasion before he moved to the San Francisco area. He's a very fine clarinetist with a great ear and feel for improvisation as well as written music. In Ascendant, Jesse alternates between bass clarinet and clarinet..



Ascendant was recorded in the Dan Harpole cistern at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, Washington. The cistern was used while Fort Worden was an active military base and drained sometime in the 1950's. Since then it has regularly been used to record music because it has a unique architecture and a forty-five second reverb.



Reverb is in essence, an echo. The actual physics and nature of reverb is more complex, but a succinct way to say it is that reverberation is created as sound bounces off a surface and travels back to your ears. With large spaces and a variety of surfaces, the resulting reverberation can vary greatly. Musicians have been taking advantage of their performance space and natural reverb since the beginnings of music. Cathedrals, large buildings, caves...these places all can have very interesting architectural characteristics and varying reverb times. Computer musicians often artificially emulate these sorts of spaces in order to create their synthesized reverbs. There are also hardware built devices that create reverb. These are commonly used by rock bands and in recording studios. Reverb is so vital that many recording studios keep their recording space acoustically devoid of reverb so it can be created and added to each new album that is to be recorded.



For this album review, I will give a brief review track by track and conclude with an overall review of the album.
Wade
This track has a simple melody and counterpoint that really transforms because of the space. Two bass clarinets play a melody that might not be so memorable when played in a regular concert venue, but the added reverb makes it much more interesting. I actually find the melody to be reminiscent of Percy Grainger. I'm not certain, but I assume both Greg and Jesse are familiar with his music and have played it in many concert bands. Grainger's music is also intended to be played in concert halls with a nice reverberating space. The way this melody builds and the way the counterpoint compliments it is exquisite. With a lot of widely spaced open harmonies, this slow melody is soothing and pastoral.
Second Thoughts
Opening with a series of trills that create a wash of sound, Greg's tenor sax seems to come out of nowhere. The saxophone tone is extraordinary. Starting lower in the register and moving higher, Greg's instrument captures a full range of sound possibilities in this space. By playing in a style somewhere in between a classical saxophonist and a jazz saxophonist, Greg's saxophone tone is unique and interesting. This is a fresh sound to my ears that are more familiar with hearing the saxophone in a jazz combo situation. Greg is always looking for different ways to incorporate his saxophone, and I actually don't think I've ever heard him play in a traditional jazz setting.
Two or Three Back and Around
A powerful opening that can only be Jesse Canterbury and his clarinet(s). By playing two clarinets simultaneously, Jesse creates great dissonances and harmonies with himself. Harsh strong attacks with strikingly loud dynamics permeate through this track. This more than any other track sounds like a duet (trio?) between Jesse and the cistern. The use of two clarinets throughout this piece thrills me. Because they are both being played by the same player, blend and intonation is flawless between the two. The harmonies and dissonances that Jesse creates sound more like very clear multiphonics from a single instrument. With a soft ending akin to a continuous drone, this track ends leaving me with a desire for more.
Beside Ourselves
Back to duets, this time with tenor saxophone and bass clarinet. This is the first piece on the album that has a real strong sense of rhythmic drive, the two instruments compliment each other well. Both Greg and Jesse have an uncanny knack for blend so their ensemble playing is like listening to an organ with many different stops open. This track more than any other is played as a jazz standard. The driving melody is played together, and then one player plays an accompaniment part while the other plays what I assume is an improvised solo. The strong bass notes that recur really fill the recording and the space.
Ugly Beauty
Again, Greg's sax tone is spectacular as the opening for this track. When I listen to Greg play, I hear George Garzone (one of his mentors) of course, but I also hear a strong mix of John Coltrane and Stan Getz. Of course Greg isn't the only tenor player to be influenced by these giants of the instrument, but the effortless way he can call up their sound and influence is fascinating. This track is one that would play well in a concert hall, and it is also reminiscent of what one might hear a saxophone busker playing on the street. The reverb, which does add some nice color isn't particularly necessary in this piece.
If You Look too Close
With an almost jolting contrast to the previous track, Greg plays a tune that reminds me more of the Berio flute sequenza than a Stan Getz inspired saxophone solo. I can picture someone playing this in a concert hall with a computer generated reverb and creating a lot of excitement from the audience. The fact that this is performed inside of a water tower only enhances the experience. Computer programmers and engineers work hard at creating reverb effects that sound this good with a live performer.
Not Forever, Just for Now
This track is a bit infamous to me. When I originally downloaded the album from Bandcamp, I ended up with a track that cut off about a minute early. After contacting Paul Kikuchi, the owner of Prefecture Music, everything got squared away and I got the complete track.
Anyway, the two bass clarinets are haunting in this piece. Greg and Jesse have a great feel for each other's playing. In this track, some of the melodic material does seem a bit stagnant. There's a motif of quickly running notes that gets repeated, but it feels out of place with the slower and more deliberate material. I think if these motifs would have been played more along the tempo of the other material, it wouldn't have jumped out at me so much and drawn me out of the moment.
Web of Lies
This piece really shows off Jesse's dynamic control. As woodwind players, it's much easier to play loudly than it is to play softly. So Jesse's capability to come in at a whisper and keep his dynamics low for so long before bringing up the volume highlights incredible restraint and confidence. At about the halfway mark, he really takes off and plays a cluster of loud repeated notes with the occasional accented note outside of the cluster. The high frequencies really resonate in this space and the amount of sound bouncing from the high register of the clarinet really pleases my ear.
Hold This
The open chordal sound is very Americana. Again, Jesse is playing solo clarinet and using the space and its reverb to create widely spaced and beautiful chords. This reminds me of composers like Aaron Copland (Americana), Benjamin Britten (widely spaced chords), or Erik Satie (ambient). As easy as it would be to make this album one of ambient atmospheric sound, I find it rather astounding that this is the only piece that I could even consider labeling as ambient. It's refreshing to hear long beautiful tone as the penultimate piece on this album. If Jesse is anything like me, I think this would have been the hardest piece on the album to play because of the sparse and open nature of the composition.
Dreaming in Two Million

Finishing the track is a bass clarinet duo. Beginning in the low register of the instrument, the two clarinets really rumble in the cistern. With a very linear motion and strict one to one counterpoint, a high point is reached and the two clarinets branch out to more individual lines in the high register. The pitch material in the high register is nice, but the bass clarinet doesn't resonate as well in this register as the clarinet or tenor saxophone do. Perhaps it's because the contrast with the low register bass clarinet is too great. As the track and album end in the low register, the resonance comes back, but I would have liked to hear that rumble that was at the beginning of the track one more time.

Overall, this album is one of my new favorites. I have always been very impressed with Greg and Jesse and their musicianship. With such a prominent space and sound, it really should be labeled as a trio for the two woodwind players and the cistern. Greg and Jesse took this space, and instead of doing something easy like creating an album of ambient sustained sound, they really pushed the limits of sound production in the space. Certain times in the album, this experimentation isn't particularly succesful. The bass clarinet doesn't resonate through this space as it gets higher. Sometimes the material is unnecessary for a 45 second reverb. But with this experimentation, the listener will get a really great sense of what the capabilities of this space and some great wind players can do. The high range of the clarinet is thrilling. The tenor saxophone is astonishing and unique. The rumble that the low bass clarinets create will excite you.

In the end, I can't recommend this album enough. If you have a turntable, you should get it on vinyl (I wish I had a turntable!). If not, you should head to bandcamp and name your own price (!) and download this album today.

As always, feel free to give me your input in the comments section.

Links:

Bandcamp - https://sinibaldi-canterbury.bandcamp.com/

Greg Sinibaldi - http://www.gregsinibaldi.com/

Jesse Canterbury - http://www.jessecanterbury.net/

Prefecture Music - http://prefecturemusic.org/

Dan Harpole Cistern - http://centrum.org/dan-harpole-cistern-at-fort-worden-state-park/

Concert Review: Han Bennink and Mary Oliver with Wayne Horvitz, Jacob Zimmerman, and Geoff Harper

Is it fair to review the concert with a headliner from the Netherlands? I first heard Han Bennink play in Amsterdam with Cor Fuhler and Wilbert de Joode. The creativity of the free improvisation between these three musicians was astounding. It's still a gig that stands out in my memory as one of my most definitive moments in my European musical adventure.

Han Bennink is a drumming legend. He plays on the last recorded performance of my favorite jazz musician, Eric Dolphy. "Last Date" is such a wonderful album (though the recording quality could be better) that showcases Eric Dolphy at the height of his creativity with a young Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg doing what they can to keep up (they do a stellar job by the way, but Dolphy was playing ahead of his time). "The Topography of the Lungs" is one of the most regular albums on my record spinner (tablet/phone). In this album, Bennink plays with Derek Bailey on guitar and Evan Parker on alto saxophone as the three great improvisors create wonderfully textured music that has inspired me for many years. With plenty of other recordings of Han Bennink out there, you should really do yourself a favor and check him out. Any opportunity to listen to his playing should not be missed.

Joining Bennink in Seattle was the American violinist (who also lives in Holland), Mary Oliver. I met and listened to many performances of Mary Oliver while I was listening to Amsterdam, and she is unquestionably a master of experimental violin performance. Her regular use of extended techniques always makes me giddy (I really love it when people have mastered playing their instrument in unconventional ways). Most other times I've seen Oliver perform has been with dancers. Between her and Anne LaBerge (my mentor from Amsterdam), the two of them opened my brain up to interdisciplinary collaboration.

The first set of this performance at the Royal Room in Columbia City was just a duet with the two traveling players. This set included free improvisation as well as compositions by Misha Mengelberg (who I think was originally supposed to be part of their tour but was very ill). The Royal Room is a great venue with great sound...but for some reason I couldn't hear the speaking between pieces, so I can't name specific titles or composers apart from Misha Mengelberg.

This first set was magical. Mary Oliver and Han Bennink have clearly been playing together quite frequently. Oliver commands a mastery of violin/viola technique to create sometimes ambient and sometimes chaotic sound environments. She uses false harmonics, pressure bowing, pizzicato, vocal harmonizations, and other techniques for this wide sonic range. Han Bennink is very precise with his attacks, very focused on timbre, and has a melodic approach to the use of a drum set. To Bennink, the instrument is not just the drum set, but also his own body, the walls, tables, or anything that can be hit with a stick. The energy that emits from his playing is palpable. Often, a performer will have moments of uncertainty...particularly during free improvisation and while playing with performers who are unfamiliar. Everything Han Bennink plays is intentional,and it is played with conviction.

For the second set, the two headliners were joined by three local players in Jacob Zimmerman on the Altro saxophone, Geoff Harper on the bass, and Wayne Horvitz on piano and electronics. Though these three players are each great musicians, I did feel as if this set was almost an afterthought. The nature of this instrumentation is very reminiscent of a bebop era jazz combo. Indeed, if Mary Oliver were playing trumpet, it could almost be a Charlie Parker tribute (the playing was a bit out there compared to Bird). The pieces for this set were primarily written by Misha Mengelberg again. The melodies were nice and a little esoteric. Cord progressions had lots of extensions and rich harmonic context. It kind of sounded like a sixties jazz jam. Considering Misha Mengelberg was one of the prominent Dutch jazz musicians of the 1960's, that's probably not too surprising.

Even though Mary Oliver is probably among the best and most creative violinists alive today, the sound of a violin in this context wasn't working for me. Let me add that I've spent a significant portion of my life trying to convince people that the flute can be just as great of a jazz instrument as a saxophone and it's very frustrating how much more seriously sax players are respected in this particular idiom. Jazz with all its talk of freedom and creativity can be extremely limiting. All that being said, I found myself struggling with the violin in the traditional jazz setting. It's not just Oliver...I find it difficult when I listen to Stephan Grappelli, Regina Carter, and Jean-Luc Ponty too. But, Jerry Goodman is probably my single favorite musician in the Mahavishnu Orchestra, so I can attest that I love violin in some rocking moments. Playing swing with a violin always sounds strange to my ears...and to be honest playing swing on the flute also does. Traditional jazz musicians take swing very seriously, and it kind of baffles me I admit. Though the violin stood out to my ears as a bit awkward in this context, Oliver played some really cool stuff. 

The second set had some fantastically beautiful moments. Those of us in the city are well aware of how great it is that Wayne Horvitz chooses to live here instead of New York or some other huge international city. Geoff Harper and Jacob Zimmerman are also highly skilled musicians capable of putting on a great show. At one point, Zimmerman and Bennink played a percussion and saxophone duet....and how could anyone not think of Interstellar Space? The smiles on Zimmerman's face afterwards revealed a giddyness to have the opportunity to perform with such a great musician. He held his own and made some killer music with Bennink.

There were some problems it seemed with the audio system. I was sitting at the bar, so I wasn't in an ideal space for the speaker placement...but there were multiple times Wayne Horvitz tried to speak into a microphone and it was never on. I also had difficulty hearing Horvitz at the electronic instruments. I assume this was frustrating to him as well because he never used the electronic keyboard after that first piece. The microphone may not have been turned on at the mic itself, but my hunch is that the engineer never unmuted the mic. Quality electronics are something I'm particularly picky about. I've been working heavily in audio at two high profile event venues ever since moving to Seattle, and I have spent a great deal of time in studios behind the desk as well as behind the mic.
Even though there were these issues with the audio (I would make recommendations to the Royal Room for some consideration for speaker placement in the bar area), the performance was fantastic! It was a great first show to see after so much time out of the scene working and taking care of my daughter. Was anyone else there? Care to add any more insight? 

First Post

Welcome to The Seattle Experimental Music Review. This is a blog that's starting because of a post I saw on Facebook by local composer/sound artist, Steve Peters. With a simple question, Steve pointed out a significant lack of writing about the experimental music scene that's happening in Seattle. It's not too difficult to find reviews about Seattle music in the realms of pop/rock, hip hop, jazz, or classical music. The goal is for this blog to feature quality writing about live music happening in Seattle and reviews of recordings released by Seattle experimental musicians.

So who am I and what qualifies me to undertake this project?

My name is Clifford Kimbrel-Dunn, and I'm a flutist/composer/electronic musician who lives in Seattle and plays exclusively experimental and avant-garde music. I've premiered over a hundred new compositions that incorporate the flute, and I've spent the majority of my adult life dedicated to exploring the extended capabilities of flute technique. I have a bachelor's degree in flute performance, master's in music composition, and a second master's degree in music and technology.

I'm only recently becoming active in the scene again. Having lived in Seattle for a little over six years, I'm putting down thicker roots. I have a daughter who is almost a year old, and I'm hoping to buy a condo in the city this year. When I'm not working on music, I'm either working as an audio/visual technician at the Seattle Public Library, or spending time with my wife and daughter, Kayla and Aria. Please comment and contact me with any information for great shows and music.

Thanks for coming.