So very thrilled to be working with Yris Apsit and Tillo Spreng this upcoming year on a new multi-media work through a grant we won from ZHdK and the Avina Stiftung! Last fall we got together and produced a really fun and interesting experiment that sought to capture the essence of Helvitiaplatz, a public square here in Switzerland. Through this funding we will be expanding the scope of our experiment, by turning the lens of our artistic process towards a most significant Hyperobject: Anthropogenic Global Warming.
One of the advantages of being in a university (really Hochschüle) that has tons of concerts and events going on, is there is always something new and interesting to do. This is especially true when the school has a leading institute for computer music/sound technology. A couple weeks ago I went and saw an evening of music put together by students and faculty in ZHdK’s Electroacoustic Masters program. The evening hosted a bunch of interesting works, and I got to hear some music by friends who I have met during my first five months here, in addition to students who I do not know.
Work for Sax and Electronics by Germán Toro-Pérez.
The works ranged from fixed media pieces with some simple, live manipulation, to pieces that involved NIME’s (new interfaces for musical expression), to works that incorporated spatialization techniques to varying degrees. Toro-Perez’s work, shown above, integrated the variable height of the speakers and the movement of the saxophonist in relation to said speakers into the structure of the work. James Tenney’s Saxony was performed as well, but with an added twist thrown in by Eric Larrieux who applied live, first order ambisonics to the recorded loops.
Saxony with ambisonics (although naturally they are inaudible in this state due to the capture format).
Back in December I went to see another concert of electroacoustic music hosted in the Transdisciplinary Department’s Atelier (the department I am associated with) as part of ZHdK’s Lange Nacht der zeitgenössischen Musik. The offerings were similarly diverse, and a ton of fun to experience, along with mood lighting and cheap drinks!
Last Fall (I know, big delay), Lachenmann rolled up to Zürich and had a series of events that ran the course of a weekend, including several concerts at ZHdK. This all coincided with his one of performances as the narrator in his Ballopera Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern alongside a chamber concert and talk-back that the Züri Opera house had hosted. This was near the end of the run of the his show—if I remember correctly, there was only the closing show left after this weekend—and amazingly, from an American’s perspective of sales rates for contemporary classical productions, all of the shows were sold out.
Pit, with creepy, “Saw “inspired grandmother on stage before the show starts.
Luckily, I was able to get a ticket through ZHdK, and the seats were amazing. But before I get to the Ballopera (it’s a thing now), let me rewind to earlier in the weekend, which started out with a chamber concert performed by ZHdK students and Lachenmann himself. Without getting into too much detail, there were several pieces on the program. The ones that truly stood out were Wiegenmusik, and temA. Wiegenmusik: for it’s truly lush piano writing and harmony, and temA: for the instrumental and coloristic creativity that Lachenmann is known for. Intériur I was masterfully performed, but it’s funny: I think that for an ‘instrumentarium’ that inevitably demands for creative writing, Lachenmann called for a massive battery of instruments, yet, in contrast to his reputation and the presented temA, got little out of each.
Amazing performances all around.
ZHdK’s Arc-en-Ciel (the school’s large New Music ensemble) also presented some Lachenmann alongside Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel. I spoke with some of the players afterwards, and they mentioned that Lachenmann really took the time to work through everything with the ensemble. The players from the chamber concert expressed the same thing to me, which leads me to believe it was a truly exceptional rehearsal experience. I know, had I been in their position, it would have meant the world to me, to have someone of Lachenmann’s stature not simply dip in for the dress and peace out after the concert (he attended all the post-concert social gatherings). In this way he served as a role-model for how to treat colleagues, students, or even just fans.
Arc-en-Ciel
Das Mädchen was also an interesting experience. There are many political aspects to the work and the production itself, which I will get into in a second. The production was stunning, and the opulence of the orchestra on hand, alongside the fact that it was spatialized throughout the opera house, was really put to use beautifully within the musical experience. The first half of the piece was revelatory orchestral writing, after which, the music (reflecting the content of the narrative) flagged and died away . I wonder if the music would have been so captivating on recording, or whether it is intrinsically linked to how the orchestra is positioned around the audience (bound to the live experience).
See orchestra musicians in the boxes, and the backs of the balcony. It was like this all around.
Hearing a bunch of Lachenmann’s music live, back-to-back over a weekend, alongside seeing a panel discussion hosted at ZHdK (not the one at the opera house), there were a few things that struck me about Lachenmann’s music and the apparatuses (INSTRUMENTARIUM) surrounding it. Lachenmann is well known for being a Marxist, and his modernist style of music hews close to modernism as a dialectically and progressively grounded historical and aesthetic ideology. There are many contradictions in the the sequence of events I’ve covered in this post to a Marxist, or even dialectic musical-political ideal. On the one hand, I do understand that we live in a society (cue joker), and one has to navigate institutions and realities within that society in order to produce the art one wants. On the other hand, there is something quite ironic about a Ballet, whose principal character’s hope is extinguished by a cold, uncaring (capitalist) society, yet the work was most definitely produced in an iconic type-space of Bourgeoisie/high society, which is nonetheless situated in the economic center of one of the banking capitals of the world.
This information has been out of the bag for some time–that being said, what’s the point of having a website if you don’t post cool stuff that happens?
This upcoming fall I’ll be spending a year studying at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste working on my dissertation project. This is all being made possible through the generous U.S. tax payers, the staff at the IIE, the generous Swiss tax payers, and the SFBI under the auspices of a Fulbright Open Study/Research Award and the Swiss Government Excellence Grant.
Check in here over the coming year, where I’ll be posting about my time in Switzerland and the progress of my crazy participatory computer music system!
This June, The Impossible Will Take a Little While was awarded a 2018 UMEZ Arts Engagement Grant from LMCC and the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone. The program is described here at LMCC’s website! More details to come on a performance of this upcoming work!
UMEZ Arts Engagement is a new grant program launched in December 2017 to enhance the diversity and frequency of arts and cultural presentations in Upper Manhattan. The program provides direct support for these activities to Upper Manhattan’s artists and nonprofit arts organizations under the guiding principle that support for artists of diverse disciplines, practices, cultural backgrounds, and career stages contributes to the vibrancy and sustainability of the communities in which they live and work.
The January TCS concert series features Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5, a piece commissioned by the composer’s native country, Finland, in honor of his own fiftieth birthday. Of this piece, Sibelius wrote, “it is as if God Almighty had thrown down pieces of a mosaic for heaven’s floor and asked me to find out what was the original pattern.”
Deborah Nixon returns to the stage to perform the Saint-Saëns’ Violin Concerto No. 3 on Friday and flutist Michelle Stockman performs Michael Colina’s Isles of Shoals on Saturday. Both concerts open with a world premiere by TCS member, composer, and violist Eric Lemmon.
Last month I had the pleasure of premiering my second string quartet with Listen Closely Inwood. I wrote a little bit more on the work which you can read below, and was originally posted on Listen Closely’s blog.
On String Quartet No. 2
When Listen Closely NYC asked me to write a new string quartet based on Inwood’s history, I eventually settled in on writing about three of the parks that surround the neighborhood of Inwood. Beyond any specific reference to aspects of the Isham, Inwood Hill and Fort Tryon parks, I also wanted to delve into the multiple levels of what a park does for an urban area like New York City. I wanted to also explore the admittedly common aspects of inspiration which nature and landscape frequently serve—on a personal level—to a composer.
When reviewing a history of the parks and comparing them to the perspective of present day city government manifestos on the function of ‘the park’, it is easy to see that parks are set up in opposition, or relief, to the contemporary urban landscape. In 2014, New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio and the New York City Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver laid out the language clearly in NYC Parks: Framework for an Equitable Future, where parks are described as “green oases” in contrast to the urban surroundings, and that park spaces have, “a sustained, positive effect on an individual’s health.” (http://www.nycgovparks.org/downloads/nyc-parks-framework.pdf) This language was also espoused approximately 150 years earlier by Frederick Law Olmsted—the architect of Central Park. (http://www.fredericklawolmsted.com/philos.html)
What is missing largely from the rhetoric of political and philosophical arguments for parks is a recognition of the interplay between the green-spaces and the city that surrounds them. While these nature refuges are much needed by citizens to escape the rush of urban zones, they are also simultaneously encroached upon by the surrounding densities of concrete and steel. Parks are carved by boulevards and pathways for access (access is not a bad thing—to be clear), or are limited in space and internally pockmarked with landmarks or constructions, all of which keep a total urban escape or “refuge” from being realized.
This complexity—that of being within a city, while also having refuge from it simultaneously—is a psychological musical idea that I wanted to explore. In developing the harmonic language for this work, I wanted to utilize an intervallic language that simultaneously afforded a duality of emotional tension and relief. This was realized through a pitch class set whose prime form is [0157]. The inversion of this set is [0267], which has a much softer characteristic to my ear. Due to the aesthetic and physical qualitative differences within the two forms of the set, I found the set’s duality suitable to demonstrate the aforementioned simultaneity of being ‘within’ and ‘without’ that occurs when in a park’s ground. The first movement of this work traverses through different motivic and emotional ideas as the formal key areas cycle towards the resolution of a complete chromatic field.
The second movement’s formal structure unfolds in a similar way (cycling through a chromatic field), this time using a different set which is based on a combination of the first movement’s organizing pitch classes. The music in this movement acts a bit differently than the first in that it does not seek to explore deeper psychological entwinements. Instead the work is referential to aspects of Inwood Hill Park’s creation (glacial scraping and grinding) and its current day inhabitants (a species of bird which call the park its home)—here the story is the past and the present.
The final movement involves a personal narrative around a place in Fort Tryon Park. I will leave what is heard up to the audience.
