There are a couple of concerts at the end of September that I didn’t hear about in time to include in my September listings post. The concerts are being given by the Happenstancers and Slow Rise Music who each represent some of the interesting and different approaches that Toronto’s younger musicians are taking to presenting chamber music.
The second programme in this year’s West End Micro Music Festival had its first performance at Redeemer Lutheran on Friday night. It was a mix of contemporary instrumental and vocal works with some unusual Hildegard von Bingen and some interesting lighting (Billy Wong) and staging.
First up was a set for Lenny Ranallo on electric guitar and soprano Danika Lorèn wrapped in a sheet. It was certainly different, and surprisingly effective, to hear von Bingen on electric guitar. This was followed by Danika singing Sofia Gubaidulina’s Aus den Visionen der Hildegard von Bingen with electronic backing. This sets short fragments of german text and was presented with great precision.
Next was Cassandra Miller’s Perfect Offering. This is scored for chamber ensemble (violins – Julia Mirzoev, David Baik; viola – Hezekiah Leung, cello – Peter Eom, flutes – Sara Constant, clarinets – Brad Cherwin, piano – Joonchung Cho with Simon Rivard conducting). It’s based on a peal of bells from a convent in France and is rather beautiful in a minimalist sort of way as you might expect fro something based on bells. Continue reading
This year’s West End Micro Music Festival opened on Friday night at Redeemer Lutheran with a programme titled Ecstatic Voices. It was a mix of works for eight part a cappella vocal ensemble and a couple of solo tuned percussion pieces.
There’s something a bit special about unaccompanied polyphony.that has fascinated composers ever since the (probably apocryphal) debate on the subject at the Council of Trent. I think a good chunk of it is the sheer versatility of the human voice which can do so much more than sing a tone. It can laugh, whistle, speak, grunt, chatter and all manner of other things and if the composers of the Renaissance were happy to stick to tonal singing more recent composers certainly haven’t been. Both were in evidence n Friday.
The ensemble was made up of eight singers (Sydney Baedke, Reilly Nelson, Danika Lorén, Whitney O’Hearn, Marcel d’Entremont, Elias Theocharidis, Bruno Roy and Graham Robinson with Simon Rivard conducting) all well capable of singing major solo roles. This was no semi-pro SATB group!
Saturday evening, at Redeemer Lutheran, the Happenstancers offered up a palindromic tribute to Pascal Dusapin. As it was a palindrome I shall review it from the middle outwards. Let us take the interval as t=0. Then at t=+/-1 we heard Two Walkings from singers Danika Lorèn and Hilary Jean Young. Two songs; “How Many Little Wings” and “Kiss My Lips She Did” came before the break and the rest; “May June”, “A Scene in Singing” and “It Seems To Be Turning Music” after. And, of course the singers swapped positions at the break! This is extremely interesting but fiendishly difficult music with the unaccompanied singers trading snatches of phrases and half thoughts in a complex atonal musical language. I’m actually in awe that anybody can actually perform a work like this but they did, and very well.
At t=+/-2 we got works for clarinet (Brad Cherwin of course), cello (Peter Eom) and singer. At t=-2 it was Danika with the evocative Canto and at t=+2 an equally effective account of Now the Fields from Hilary. It’s always interesting to hear art song with something other than piano especially when the works are as complex and challenging as these. Continue reading
Previous concerts from the Happenstancers have typically featured fairly conventional chamber music either arranged or combined in unusual ways; sometimes mixed with more modern/contemporary material. Saturday night’s concert at Redeemer Lutheran was a bit different. Titled Future Pastorale it was built around Claude Vivier’s 1968 work Ojikawa plus the text of Psalm 131 (also used, in French, by Vivier) and text from the “Introduction” to Blake’s Songs of Innocence; “Piping down the valleys wild. Piping songs of pleasant glee” etc with lambs, shepherds and clouds.
Performing were Brad Cherwin on clarinet, Louis Pino on percussion and soprano Hilary Jean Young. All three were also heavily involved with the plentiful electronics and the performance was significantly enhanced by Billy Wong’s imaginative lighting and there was some interesting stage business for some numbers.
The second concert in this year’s West End Micro Music Festival took place at Redeemer Lutheran Church on Friday night. Titled Alchemical Processes it featured a mix of early and modern works written or arranged for some combination of string quartet (Jennifer Murphy, Madlen Breckbill – violins, Laila Zakzook – viola, Philip Bergman – cello), harpsichord (Alexander Malikov) and clarinet or bass clarinet (Brad Cherwin).
It started out with Bach’s Concerto in A Major BWV 1055 arranged for string quartet, harpsichord and clarinet. It was enjoyable. Originally written for harpsichord and string orchestra, any loss of richness in the strings by only having one player on a part was compensated by the additional colours of the clarinet.
To Redeemer Lutheran Church last night for the first of two Friday evening concerts in the West End Micro Music Festival. This one was an exploration of baroque music and its derivatives though to quote co-curator Brad Cherwin, “What is baroque music? I don’t even know anymore”. Amen to that.
The first section of the programme consisted of three pieces for strings and harpsichord conducted by Simon Rivard run together as one. I found Linda Catlin Smith’s Sinfonia a bit formless and hard to get into especially when contrasted with the “attack” of the Vivaldi pieces (Sinfonia RV 169 and Concerto for Four Violins RV 580). Excellent playing though and I did like the Vivaldi.
Nahre Sol claims that all her music derives from the baroque; Bach, Vivaldi, Rameau. Who am I to argue? I can hear those influences but also others. Minimalism for sure, but where is that not an influence today? Also jazz, but not, as perhaps more typical, “the blues”. It’s more a cool jazz, sort of like John Dankworth. It flirts with schmaltz but recoils (in horror?) just when you think the saccharometer is going to go off the scale. It was interesting to hear it come together especially in the pieces scored for keyboards (variously piano, electronics, harpsichord with Sol often playing two at once), bass (both double and electric played by Ben Finley), with John Lee on Korean percussion. This section consisted of five pieces; three by Sol, one by Finley, one a collaboration. Tides (Sol) and Unexpected Turn (Finley) set the tone but it was the collab; Leaping Lightly and Sol’s Roundabout Bach that caught my attention most. They both use percussion in quite a visceral way with echoes of military march and tribal dance spiking the jazz/baroque soundscape to dramatic effect.
The Happenstancers latest concert We’re Late! happenstanced on Saturday evening at Redeemer Lutheran. It was a typical Happenstancers sort of event with chamber music works for various forces split up into their movements with the components then rearranged to make an interesting line up.
Lukas Foss’ Time Cycle provided the opening piece which also provided the title for the concert as a whole. It’s a setting of Auden for soprano and chamber ensemble and begins “Clocks cannot tell our time of day”. Which was pretty much the theme for the evening. This was followed by Toshi Ichiyangi’s Music for Electric Metronomes which had the whole ensemble banging things rhythmically and making stylsed gestures. Then came the first of three parts of rather a good musical joke; John Cage’s 4’33” arranged into three movements for different forces. which as might be expected cropped up at intervals during the show. For the record the movements were scored for piano and percussion, conductor and oboe and percussion.
Saturday night’s show in the West End Micro Music Festival continued the theme of combining chamber music with other influences. This time it was rock; specifically NYC 80’s rock. It was really varied, stimulating and, at times, bordering on sensory overload. Brad Cherwin riffed with pre-recorded clarinet and electronics on a version of Steve Reich’s New York Counterpoint to open the show. Then came what might have been my favourite bit. It was a version of Julia Wolfe’s East Broadway for electronics and toy piano. Watching the usually soft spoken, even demure, Nahre Sol go completely manic and beat the crap out of a toy piano was a blast.
There was more Julia Wolfe (Blue Dress for drums and cello?) and a David Lang arrangement of Lou Reed’s Heroin with Cormac Culkeen on vocals and a fairly large ensemble and more vocals with a version of Laurie Anderson’s Let X=X and It Tango. The final number was a killer version of David Lang’s Killer with Hee-Soo Yoon playing mad distorted violin while kicking a bass drum.
So, again, WEMMF hit the spot with an intriguing and (over) stimulating blend of rock, classical technique, minimalism and, frankly, sheer lunacy of a kind surely not heard before at Redeemer Lutheran! Great fun much enhanced by Billy Wong’s evocative lighting and Dave Grenon’s sound work.
The final concert is next Friday, also at Redeemer Lutheran, QUARTET PLUS PAPER V2 will feature, inter alia, a new multimedia work for pianist, clarinetist/visual artist, video projection and electronics composed and performed by Nahre Sol and Brad Cherwin.
operaramblings 