Get used to Ades’ name, if you don’t already know it.  Next fall, he’ll conduct eight performances of his opera “The Tempest” at The Metropolitan Opera, all part of a typically busy season for Ades.  Besides composing and conducting he’s also recognized as a formidable pianist.

Busy is a word that could also describe Ades’ music.  His writing is usually dense with activity.  So the relative restraint of “The Four Quarters” came as a surprise.  It’s a programmatic work cast in four movements that depict the flow of a day.

“Nightfalls,” the opening, consisted primarily of hushed layers of sustained notes.  Played with a straight, vibrato-free tone, it brought to mind images of a computer screen-saver.  “Morning Dew” was mostly pizzicato strings in rhythms both random and complex, just like rain on the rooftop.  The underlying sophistication of the writing appeared when the players switched to bowing and the same melodic and rhythmic patterns were still in place.

“Days” had an arched dynamic and climaxed in a kind of battle cry of intensity.  Finally came “The Twenty-Fifth Hour,” which according to the program notes was written in an unusually complicated meter (24/16 or 2/4 + 3/16 and 2/4 + 6/16).  Tribute goes to the Emerson for bringing out the grounded and spacious quality of the visceral movement.

Come to think of it, “Four Quarters” wasn’t so restrained after all.  But it was almost a trifle in comparison to the breadth and weight of Beethoven’s String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132 that came after intermission.  Everything framed the central, prayerful movement, a lifesafer amidst much sustained dejectedness.

The Emerson handled the Beethoven with the requisite concentration and devotion. But Haydn’s Quartet in F Major, Op. 77, No. 2, which opened the afternoon, lacked thoughtful shaping as well as strict accuracy.

Before the music started series producer Daniel Berkenblit greeted the audience and introduced his successor, Derek Delaney.  Berkenblit is retiring from the volunteer position when the season ends later this month.  He began his association with the series in 1969 and took over as director 10 years later.  Local music lovers can rest easy.  Next season’s line-up of 14 events was just announced and it includes a return of the beloved Emerson String Quartet.

Previously on MyBigGayEars:

Thomas Ades’ collaboration with partner Tal Rosner performed by NY Philharmonic

Thomas Ades at Carnegie Hall 3/27

Ades with his partner, video artist Tal Rosner:

She told me that she would soon be leaving their Arkansas home and was planning to begin archiving Hovda’s studio in New York City and that a series of CD releases was planned.

Having spent several years calling on and attempting to assist the heirs of composers who died of AIDS, I knew that Wager’s intentions were good, but the task ahead of her was enormous.  The emotional burden of losing a loved one prematurely can make the work of addressing their artistic legacy feel insurmountable.  My more recent career direction as a real estate agent also continues to regularly bring me face to face with how difficult it can be to deal with years and years of belongings, whether your own or someone else’s. We all have so much stuff!

Well, cheers to Wager and Philip Blackburn of Innova Recordings who have produced a definitive and seemingly complete tribute to Hovda and her music.   “The Eleanor Hovda Collection” is an elegant four-CD set that brings together:

• 26 pieces of music, including many archival recordings but also recordings that were previously released on multi-composer collections from a variety of other labels;
• various short essays by the composer on the music at hand plus remembrances by her closest colleagues, including Wager, oboist Libby Van Cleve, guitarist Jack Vees, choreographer Nancy Meehan, and flutist and conductor David Gilbert;
• some fun archival photos;
• and, most amazingly, pdf versions of most of the scores.

The collection seems like a definite summation of Hovda’s career, but in her biographical essay Wager says that Hovda was very prolific and that the CDs represent only a fraction of her compositions.  Nevertheless, there’s more than enough here to savor and assure that Hovda’s legacy endures.

Previously on My Big Gay Ears:

The Death of Eleanor Hovda

Close Encounters with Music,

Cellist Yehuda Hanani, founder and director of Close Encounters, is the featured artist on a recent disc from Albany Records of music by Vermont composer Jorge Martin.  Though the disc isn’t billed as a Close Encounters project, four out of the five recorded works were premiered by Hanani or his group since 2003.  Taken together, the collection illustrates that a beautiful composer-performer collaboration has been happening in our region for some time now.

In his liner notes, Martin explains that almost all of the music is based on melodic material from songs, mostly of his own writing.   That goes along way to explaining the accessible nature and emotional depth of the compositions.

The largest piece was written specifically for the CD. It’s a 30-minute long sonata for cello and piano, titled “Four Noble Truths.” Martin’s title refers to Buddhist teaching, and the music is haunted and soulful in that way that only great cello music can be.

More austere, even fraught, is the cello solo, “Recuerda.” The piece was requested by an arts patron and mutual friend of Martin and Hanani after he was given a terminal diagnosis.  He wanted something to be performed at his funeral.  It’s full of drones but also references Schumann.

Quotes from a different time a place appear in “Hollywood Variations,” also for cello and piano.  The melodic source material is Leonard Rosenman’s pastoral theme from his score to “East of Eden.”  There’s enough schmaltz to evoke the film, but plenty of invention and playfulness as well.

Martin’s Cuban heritage shows up in the Latin strains of “Ropa Vieja,” for cello, accordion and percussion.  And coming from an earlier time in Martin’s career is Three Nocturnes.  It’s the most abstract of the offerings, though Hanani infuses it with the same style and feeling that’s present throughout the disc.  Pianist Walter Ponce likewise brings out fine color and articulation in all of the works.

By the way, Albany Records has also released a recording of Martin’s opera “Before Night Falls,” which was premiered by the Fort Worth Opera in 2010. Based on the memoir of the late Cuban writer and dissident Reinaldo Arenas, it’s a powerful two-act piece that evokes the culturally stifling reign of Castro as well as how in New York the AIDS epidemic mowed down a generation of gay artists. Orchestra Miami recently announced a semi-staged revival of the opera for this coming October. It’s a good choice for an orchestra, since Martin’s instrumental writing is a driving force in the fast moving drama.

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
Thursday April 28, 2011
Troy Savings Bank Music Hall

There was magic to be heard, but little slight of hand to watch on Thursday night at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.  The occasion was a concert of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, in a return presentation by the Troy Chromatics.

With up to 33 players onstage but no official leader, one expected to see more demonstrative gestures — nods of the head, swaying bodies, jiggly eyebrows — than there actually was.  The group is now in its 39th season of tackling large and small works without an overlord conductor to keep everybody together.

Orpheus has a democratic system of decision making, but in the midst the music there’s no time for a vote and someone has to give cues that say things like “Now!”   Somehow the varied program of works kept happening, often beautifully, though the players’ inner workings were usually subtle to imperceptible.

Violinist Arabella Steinbacher was the guest soloist in three pieces.

Hartmann’s Concerto Funebre dates from 1939 and commemorates the Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia.  The emotional affects of war are present in practically every bar, especially the austere opening passages, which brought to mind Schoenberg’s haunting “Survivor from Warsaw.”  And yet the actual writing was not particularly jagged or angular at all. It was the orchestration and the sentiment, as well as the restrained but searing performance, that gave it such an edge.  The ironic and slashing Allegro evoked many similar movements by Shostakovich.

Steinbacher’s tone blossomed over the course of the evening, from a cool clear line in the opening of the Hartmann to a shade brighter by its end.  Then after intermission, she was full of color and warmth in the rippling strains of Mozart.

The evening began with 13 wind players in Richard Strauss’ Serenade, Op. 7.  An early work, it was tuneful, uncharacteristically light, and well played.  Maybe the four horns did take some advance in the first crescendo.

Haydn’s Symphony No. 104 in D Major ended the program with a full stage and a full sound. The first chair violinist raised his bow extra high to launch key moments. But Haydn’s playful scoring became darned fun to follow as the rhythms and tunes jumped unexpectedly between sections. Since there were no obvious visuals to track, it was now the audience working without the aid of a conductor.

Two quick movements from Handel’s Water Music were offered as an encore.

Albany Symphony Orchestra
David Alan Miller, conductor
with Nathan De’shon Myers, baritone
Friday, April 29, 2011
Troy Savings Bank Music Hall

Friday’s concert of the Albany Symphony Orchestra at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall was no mere local try out, but a thoughtful program handsomely played.  Nevertheless a repeat performance on May 10 was on the minds and tongues of many.  That’s when the ASO will make its Carnegie Hall debut.

It’s worth being explicit:  almost anybody with the dough can rent Carnegie and then boast forever after that they played there. The ASO was selected by the hall to be part of the first Spring For Music, a festival of innovative American orchestras.

After nine years of covering the orchestra, no other particular evening of works comes to mind as a better snapshot of what David Alan Miller has forged over his 19-year tenure. The opener was a 1994 piece by George Tsontakis, a local composer of international renown. Next were eight selections from “The Spirituals Project,” a brilliant two-year commissioning effort. After intermission came a beloved American classic, Copland’s “Appalachian Spring.”

An all-American night certainly isn’t a rarity with the ASO, but more typically the wrap-up to a concert is some European masterpiece, large or small.  Miller expends most of his time in the outback of American repertoire, commissioning new works from younger composers and, less frequently, reviving things from the mid-20th century.  Hearing the Copland felt like the ASO was rightfully claiming prime real estate.

Playing the full ballet score, rather than the familiar suite, kept the ears alert for lesser known passages and changes in orchestration.  Just as the ASO usually ends a night wringing every bit of life from a symphony, this performance often bordered on the raucous, with meaty brass, heavy percussion and full-bodied strings.

Baritone Nathan De’shon Myers has a more mature sound and greater interpretative depth than when he premiered the spirituals in 2004-2005. The pieces themselves remain compelling.  Far more than arrangements, most are mini-dramas and several evoked the era of the Iraq War.

Tsontakis’ “Let the River Be Unbroken” is a delightful weaving together of Appalachian folk songs with hazy instrumental effects reminiscent of Ives.  It begins with a fiddler in the back out the house who plays as he walks down the aisle.  I’m looking forward to hearing and reporting how this and the rest of the program sounds in Carnegie Hall.

Most of the titles down the list of works read “Sonata.” But that hardly indicated the broad range of styles, colors and flavors that come from the fine violinist Jennifer Koh on Saturday night. Her recital with pianist Shai Wosner was presented by the Friends of Chamber Music at Emma Willard School.

The radical, ethnic-infused side of Debussy showed up early in his Sonata, the program opener.  It wasn’t exactly primitive because there was still a refined elegance. But with Koh’s attention to minutia of touch and effect, it was as if she’d just returned from her own journey to the Orient.  Only in the final movement did the more lush and familiar Debussy of “La Mer” appear in huge cascading lines in both piano and violin.

With Schumann’s Sonata No. 2 in D Minor Op. 121, it was back to old Europe.  Koh’s intimate fondness for Schumann stands in sharp contrast to her taste for some of today’s most quirky composers, from Carter to Zorn.  Likewise, her deep immersion in the long and heavy textures of the Sonata speaks to her diversity.  Koh and Shai kept it mostly interesting. Toward the end of each movement, when enough was almost enough, either the violin or piano would bring out some unexpected flourish of fresh material.

The token new work on the program was “Tocar,” written just last year by Finish composer Kaija Saariaho.  At only about six minutes long, it felt a bit like an interlude or prelude to something still to come.  To hear the lifeblood of the work, one had to tune in deeper than the rather repetitious surface contours, and instead attend to details of certain notes, such as tiny sags of pitch or scratching textures.  This kind of focus was probably a result Saariaho’s background in electronic music.

More Schumann followed, with the Three Romances, Op. 94, which had a more airy, folk song character than the Sonata.  Koh’s smooth long lines brought to mind a drawing class and that exercise of completing one image without ever lifting the pen from paper.

After all this, the Ravel Sonata felt kind of cheap.  That’s not saying Koh cheated in delivering it as best she could but Ravel’s middling take on blues is almost humorous.  The final movement, though, became an intense and beautiful race.

Academy of St. Martin in the Fields
presented by the Troy Chromatics
Troy Savings Bank Music Hall
Sunday February 6, 2011

It was billed as a chamber ensemble.  Yet the Sunday afternoon program of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields was something more than the traditional notion of chamber music and also long way from full orchestra.  Onstage was a string octet performing works of Svendsen, Shostakovich and Mendelssohn that are seldom heard live.  For inveterate classical music goers, it’s the kind of usual program that makes the presenters — the Troy Chromatics — such a value local enterprise.

Beyond the common instrumentation, another unifying factor to the program is that each of the works dates from early in the composers’ output.  Johan Svendsen, a Norwegian who died in 1911 (four years after the better known Grieg), threw everything but the kitchen sink into his String Octet in A Major, Op. 3. Besides being rather hyperactive, it was earnestly smart and cheerful.

Shostakovich’s Prelude and Scherzo, Op. 11, on the other hand, showed that his consummate craft and characteristic sarcasm were probably always with him.  He wrote the piece at the tender age of 19. So much for the stultifying effects of the Soviet regime.

After intermission came the more familiar Mendelssohn Octet. Another take on youthful vigor, it’s full of imaginative scoring and a questing sense of wonder.

All tolled, a fine line up for a dreary winter afternoon.  If only the performances had been as consistent and unified.

Despite their long history and storied name — founded in 1959 and internationally famous from various Baroque and soundtrack recordings — the Academy of St. Martins in the Fields functions like a pickup group with a rotating membership.

On this outing, there were two styles of performers opposing each other onstage.  The cellos and violas played with a sturdy tone and rock solid pitch.  The violins were fragile of voice and divergent with intonation.

First violinist Andrew Watkinson, billed as the guest leader, may not have the authority of a conductor but he could have taken the time to bring the players onto an agreeable middle ground. They had enough rehearsal time that ensembles matters were tip-top. Even when the composers sent every instrument off onto stray tangents, the players always coalesced back together with ease.

Another famous but leaderless band, the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble, will complete the Chromatics 114th season on April 28, also at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.

Originally appeared in the Times Union.

New music’s Boy Wonder Nico Muhly. It’s not enough that he landed a commission from the Metropolitan Opera while still in his 20s (Two Boys, premieres in London in June at the English National Opera and shows up in New York in the 2013-14 season), but now he’s also made a double debut on a major label. These two discs present varied sides of his music – choral works and a chamber score written for an evening of modern dance.

“A Good Understanding” is highly traditional, rather cheerful, confident and eloquent stuff.  The performances by the Los Angeles Maser Chorale, conducted by Grant Gershon, are terrific.  Notes by the composer trace his childhood grounding in church music.   The disc starts with a full-length mass with organ, followed by some other quasi-liturgical churchy stuff and concludes with a setting of three Walt Whitman texts.  The latter includes long interludes strings and percussion and the instrumental writing is not just repetitive but a bit lean.

Even more economical in the extreme is the material on “I Drink The Air Before Me.” This is a just over an hour of music for six instruments written for choreographer Stephen Petronio. Muhly plays the piano and the Young People’s Chorus of New York shows up at the beginning and end.  With a team of good dancers on stage, this might make for an enjoyable passing of time, but taken on its own there’s nothing terribly special in this music.  Muhly’s previous discs on Bedroom Community showed a lot more invention and playfulness.  Many passages, like the honking trombone in the movement for “Music for Boys,” seem like filler.  Another section, “Music Under Pressure 1,” has one of those overly familiar post-minimalist rhythmic riffs, a perky jigsaw puzzle of interlocking lines. Way too many scores from young composers seem to fall back on this stuff these days.  We know they like John Adams, but enough already!  When I heard this kind of material at the Bang on a Can festival some 20 years ago it was rather fresh yet time flies and now it’s just cliched and tired.

All in all, the material on these discs is really not bad at all but certainly not outstanding and original either.  As such, it contributes to watching Muhly’s fast rise, showing that’s it not just talent that sets someone apart.  Exposure also comes from how you play the game.  Success feeds on success.  This is not sour grapes because I’m not in competition with Nico Muhly. In fact, I’m rather fascinated by him.

Wearing Prada for Esquire (2008)

With Diane Von Furstenberg and Philip Glass at a screening of "The Reader" (2008)

With Peter Sellars and Rufus Wainwright at a panel discussion sponsored by The New Yorker (2009)

Previously on My Big Gay Ears:

Reading the career of young Nico Muhly

Nico does London, Met commits for 2013-14

Middle age may be encroaching but a disarming spontaneity and playful sense of humor came through in our recent conversation.

“I do look weirdly young and I still get carded for god’s sake,” says St. John. “And since I don’t drive I just have a passport and bartenders have to stare at it to verify my age.”

That passport has gotten plenty of use outside of bars and nightclubs.  A native of London, Ontario, St. John entered the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia at age 13 and transferred to the Moscow Conservatory three years later.  Continued studies followed in London, Boston and New York.

Currently St. John spends about half of the year on the road.  When she’s home in Manhattan, she takes comfort in being with her pet iguana, collaborates with a wide array of musicians — she’s a founding member of a polka band — and manages the record label Ancalagon, which she founded in 2000.

“I named the label after my dear departed iguana, who died a few weeks before I started it,” she explains.  “I now have a brand new iguana, he’s about a year and a half old. I’ve been on tour for about a month and just brought him home from the sitter and so I’m a happy girl. I got him a year and two months ago and after 21 years of chain smoking I stopped at that same time.  I credit him with the fact that I’m clean from nicotine.”

Asked how a native of Canada could develop a soft spot for tropical reptiles, St. John brings up her enthusiasm for dragons and fondness for the fantasy writers J. R. R. Tolkien and Ursula La Guin. She then shifts gears and recalls her earliest days as a violinist.

“When I was a kid, my mom would bribe me to practice, and we’d go to these little competitions and if I earned a prize, I got one more plastic dinosaur,” she says. “I started violin at age two and this obsession began around four. But that’s why I practiced between ages of 6 and 12. I credit reptilian beings with quiet a bit!”

Besides having salamanders crawling on the logo of her recordings, St. John’s recorded repertoire has also been decidedly non-traditional, at least by classical standards.

A recent recording of Mozart violin concertos has been on the Billboard charts for 15 weeks and counting, and there are also a couple of Bach titles.  But the Ancalagon label, which is devoted exclusively to St. John’s own projects, also features a gypsy disc and a polka collection, titled “Polkastra: Apolkalypse Now.”

“Our band’s next project is a wedding album with wedding tunes from all over the world,” says St. John. “Kids loved our first disc and weddings are the last place people actually dance.”

Amidst talk about pets, travel and polkas, St. John did manage to address her upcoming recital, which places works of George Gershwin and Stephen Foster alongside Beethoven and Debussy and others.  While saying how eager she is to finally play in the famed Troy Savings Bank Music Hall — friends on Facebook have been gushing to her about its acoustics — she explains that the program is meant to be upbeat and enjoyable. One might expect nothing less from such a vivacious conversationalist, but St. John counters that notion.

“During the last year or two, I did a bunch of recitals that were so heavy, with Bartok and Schoenberg and some really scary Beethoven,” she explains. “I want people to smile this time. It’s still substantial but nothing will make you cry your heart out.”

Lara St John with transexual porn star Buck Angel

Philadelphia Orchestra

After the Philadelphia Orchestra abruptly parted ways in 2008 with its seventh music director, Christopher Eschenbach, it turned to Charles Dutoit to fill in as chief conductor.  It’s a mighty long interim status for Dutoit, who will depart in 2012 with the arrival of Yannick Nezet-Seguin.

The connection that made the Dutoit-Philly alliance a natural was his long status as artistic director and principal conductor of the orchestra’s annual August residency at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York.

Dutoit ended his 21-year tenure in that post this August.   The Spa City also bid farewell to violinist Chantal Juillet, who has been artistic director of the concurrent Saratoga Chamber Music Festival for 20 years. (Earlier this year Dutoit and Juillet were married.)  The orchestra season runs for three weeks and Dutoit usually conducts three out of four nights every week (the other time is devoted to pops programs).  The chamber music events, which draw on members of the orchestra and guest soloists, are tucked into the Sunday through Tuesday slots.

Because Dutoit and Juillet hightailed it out of town about half-way through the full season, the celebrations of their tenure were particularly intense and concentrated. So too were the musical performances.  After they were gone, the orchestra was turned over to a series of guest conductors.  Next season will see more of the same, since the SPAC management has no plans to name a replacement for Dutoit for at least a year.

But Saratoga hasn’t seen the last of Dutoit.  During the farewell speeches at Dutoit’s last concert, SPAC president Marcia White offered him the title of conductor emeritus if he promised to return next summer for a performance.  In his own remarks, Dutoit eventually got around to saying, “See you next year.”

As for the music, it was blockbusters all the way.  Such has it always been.  Opening night August 4 featured Yo-Yo Ma in a typically sublime performance of the Elgar Concerto followed by a blistering account of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.”   Sometimes, in one run-through after another of standard rep, Dutoit can veer from being remarkably efficient to a tad mechanical.  Likewise, it feels like the Philly musicians could deliver certain pieces in their sleep. But this “Rite” had them all working plenty hard, despite the fact they’d played the piece together several times on an Asian tour earlier in the season.

Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” on August 6 featured a return by actor Alec Baldwin, who narrated Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait” last season. (He’s quickly becoming a regular presence in classical music, by the way, serving as the radio host for the New York Philharmonic.)  The concert featured more muscular Stravinsky, with the Suite from “The Firebird.”  Another guest for the night was pianist Kirill Gerstein, who gave an attractive and lyric performance of the Liszt Piano Concerto No. 2.

Big crowds in the amphitheatre and lawn, totaling about 4,000, turned out for these nights as well as for an all-Gershwin evening on August 11 with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, who’s an annual presence in Saratoga and, apparently, close pals with Dutoit and Juillet.  He began the Piano Concerto in F with austere tone, but it was just a tease that made the blues inflections and flashy runs all the more appealing.  The opening work, “An American in Paris” felt remarkably fresh and, even more surprisingly, like a real workout for the orchestra.  It was Dutoit’s penultimate night and the players were clearly delivering.

Would Shostakovich’s Festive Overture have been quiet so loud and crisp were it not Dutoit’s farewell concert? Probably not.  The August 12 concert proceeded with Korngold’s Violin Concerto with Juillet as soloist.  She’s an ambidextrous and modest presence at the chamber music events, some times playing first or second violin or even picking up the viola.  Whatever role Juillet takes on, her chamber music work has been nimble and appealing. But this was my second time to hear her in a full concerto and the sound was, again, weak and unsure.  Dutoit ended the night with commanding reading of Respighi’s “Pines of Rome.”  During his final curtain calls, he waved and mouthed “bye-bye” to the cheering crowds.

Two nights prior, Juillet’s farewell concert with the Chamber Music Festival became an extended musicale in the sold-out 500-seat Spa Little Theatre, a stone’s throw from the amphitheatre.  Schumann’s Quintet for Piano and Strings surged with life but was overwhelmed in scale by Dohnanyi’s Sextet for piano, strings, clarinet and horn, a fascinating essay that reached orchestral scale.  Gerstein and Thibaudet alternated piano duties, played a charming duet by Faure, and kept the proceedings going for a while with a series of miniatures in tribute to Juillet.  For the finale, a duet from Ravel’s “Mother Goose,” Dutoit turned pages while gently resting a hand on Gerstein’s shoulder.  Such unedited intimacy gave the feel of a family concert, albeit with some very high caliber relatives.

Things changed dramatically during the final week of orchestra concerts with guest conductors Peter Oundjian and Lawrence Foster.  One was reminded of Dutoit’s abilities to work some magic on just a morning of rehearsal time.  There were no major errors in either night, but the Brahms Second Symphony under Oundjian lurched more than a bit.  And the Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1 only came to life when Sarah Chang tore into the cadenza after the third movement.

Lawrence Foster, who debuted with the Philly in 1977, had a better time of it.  Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, with the remarkably relaxed soloist Garrick Ohlsson, was both soupy and choppy in the opening but ensemble matters soon settled in.  And the Dvorak Symphony No. 8 ended with night with fine color and charm.

The parade of fresh faces on the podium will continue through next season at least.  Sometimes there may be struggles between orchestra and conductor, whatever the repertoire. But after 21 years of Dutoit serving up dependably good, sometime rote performances of rather unimaginative programs, that doesn’t feel like such a bad thing at all.

A piece of American music seldom stays fresh, even surprising, to succeeding generations of audiences. Datedness sets in so quickly, while nostalgia takes a long time to show up.

George Crumb’s “Black Angels” is an exception.

Written almost 40 years ago during the height of the Vietnam War, “Black Angels” is scored for electric string quartet and is subtitled “Thirteen Images from the Dark Land.” The score is structured on theories of numerology and includes references to Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” and the “Dies Irae” theme from Gregorian chant.

In 1972, Time magazine named the debut LP of “Black Angels” as “Avant Garde Record of the Year.” A CD recording by the Kronos Quartet made it a hit again in 1990. And this weekend, Bang on a Can places it as the centerpiece of a full day at MASS MoCA celebrating the music of George Crumb, who lives in West Virginia and turned 80 last fall.

Composer David Lang, a co-founder of Bang on a Can, will lead a discussion and performance of Crumb’s music in the afternoon. The evening event features performances of “Black Angels” as well as the trio, “Vox Balaenae” (voice of the whale) and a series of madrigals to poems of Federico Garcia Lorca. More than a concert, it will also include live video by Jim Findlay.

A New York City visual artist, filmmaker and performer, Findlay has worked extensively with Bang on a Can on various theatrical happenings and comes to the music of Crumb with a typical sense of wonder and excitement.

“This was music you could blow people’s heads off with,” says Findlay, recalling his first encounter with “Black Angels” during the early ’90s. “It’s classical music, with classical instrumentation and serious intent, but it wasn’t repetitive and had a level of noise and the aggressiveness that I could relate to. This was like rock with violins!”

The new project has allowed Findlay a wider exposure to Crumb’s music and its inherent theatricality. For example, Crumb’s score to “Vox Balaenae” says that the performers should wear masks and perform under blue lighting.

“We’re going take that one step further and make a full stage environment,” says Findlay. He’ll be controlling three video cameras during the performance, but adds that more specifics of the show will be worked out during the week prior to the performance, during Bang on a Can’s annual summer residency in the galleries of MASS MoCA.

Asked whether the war-resistance roots of “Black Angels” might come into play, Findlay turns to a more contemporary struggle.

“With ‘Vox Balaenae,’ I’m having trouble getting away from the BP disaster,” he says. “I’m creating this black-and-white world and think about oil and water and all the things that are dying. It’s the kind of topicality that in classic art is transferable, but it’s always better when the audience makes that connection themselves. I trust it’s in the music.”

Bang on a Can presents
George Crumb Celebration
Mass MoCA, North Adams, Mass
July 25, 2010

Bang on a Can is dedicated to the forefront of contemporary music but the organization is still respectful of its elders. Concerts have often featured music from way back in the 1980s.

Saturday night’s program at Mass MoCA was practically ancient history with five pieces dating from 1965 through 1971by George Crumb.  The American composer, who turned 80 last fall, helped create the musical avant garde and these works are full of what’s called extended instrumental techniques, like singing into the flute, bowing on the bridge of a double bass, and strumming on the inside of the piano.  Tuned wine goblets and occasional whispers and shouts from the players were also part of the mix.

Over the years such stuff has become rather cliched, especially in the hands of lesser composers.  Yet the whole program was performed with great dignity and professionalism by the 17 musicians. Most appeared to be in the early to mid-20s.

The pieces were mostly trios and quartets, yet there were no set changes nor breaks between pieces.  Jim Findlay organized the staging and from a corner of the stage he created a live video backdrop.  His grainy, black and white images were mostly close ups of various rotating objects. They lent a cool reverence to the proceedings.  The only technical flaw in the night was a persistent noise floor from the amplification system.

The most startling and varied piece was the string quartet “Black Angels.”  Apart from all that the players had to do, including play gongs and wine glasses, the piece also traversed a world of styles, including a couple of hushed but jolting references to early music.  Did Crumb foreshadow postmodernism?

The three female vocalists were especially impressive.  Mezzo Sonya Knussen and soprano Delea Shand soloed in what Crumb called his “Madrigals,” with Spanish poetry by Lorca.  Both singers maintained a dead-on surety of pitch and attractive tone. This was even while delivering some swooping and percussive vocal affects and performing with nontraditional accompaniments.

Also poised and accurate was Amanda DeBoer the soprano in “Lux Aeterna,” which was a surprisingly moving conclusion to the evening. The quintet included two percussionist who got a world of weird rattling sounds from their tympani and other apparatus.  There was also a guitarist and a bass flute player, who both sat on the floor.  The single image on the video was a candle flame.

Originally appeared in the Times Union.

It’s difficult categorizing the new disc “Three Fervent Travelers” from the young string trio

Time for Three is made up of violinists Zachary De Pue and Nick Kendall and bassist Ranaan Meyer.  They started improvising together in the halls of the Curtis Institute about eight years ago and have given hundreds of concerts across the country.  In New York’s Capital Region, they’ve appeared several time at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, most recently with the Philadelphia Orchestra a blue grass-infused concerto written for them by Jennifer Higdon who got to know them in their days at Curtis (and who won the Pulitzer Prize in April).

(8/23/08 Times Union review)

American vernacular styles dominate the new disc, which concludes with two popular cuts: Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” followed by “The Orange Blossom Special.” The remaining selections are all original, with writing credits mostly going to Meyer. Whatever the source material though, everything seems to emerge from a quick-thinking improvisational style.   What’s more, the lively string playing is so rich and sophisticated that there’s no mistaking it for back roads hillbilly music.

“Three Fervent Travelers” is further evidence of a fresh new strain of American classical music that’s already occupied by Mark O’Connor and Daniel Bernard Roumain.  I can’t decide which is more invigorating — the griping quasi-improvised music of these artists or the fact that they’re connecting with audiences.  Just keep it coming.