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!
