Monotonous Forest

One soprano rocks out, another does Mozart

Recent recordings from Renée Fleming and Michael Maniaci.  The Juilliard Journal, October 2010

Another night in New York with nothing to do

On Friday night, some tough choices present themselves.  An intriguing new vocal ensemble, Ekmeles, directed by Jeffrey Gavett, will present the U.S. premiere of Mauricio Kagel's The Tower of Babel (2002), plus works by Giacinto Scelsi (the rare Litanie from 1975), Kaija Saariaho, Kenneth Gaburo, and Aaron Cassidy.  The concert is free, part of Music at Our Savior's Atonement.

At Park Avenue Christian Church (also on Saturday night), Hannah Lash has a new chamber opera called Blood Rose (based on Beauty and the Beast), to be performed by the superb JACK Quartet, and singers Kirsten Sollek and Eric Brenner.

A concert titled DRAMA: music and its double features the inventive group counter)induction, in works by Kyle Bartlett, Georges Aperghis, Vinko Globokar, and Alfred Schnittke.  And the International Contemporary Ensemble continues its production of Saariaho's Maa at Miller Theatre (see previous post). 

Good luck, deciding between them.

[Photo: "Tower of Babel" by Andreas Zielenkiewicz]

A glimpse of Saariaho's "Maa" in its American premiere

Last night, the Guggenheim Museum opened its Works & Process fall season with excerpts from Kaija Saariaho's Maa (1992), her only ballet score, choreographed by Luca Veggetti with live music by members of the International Contemporary Ensemble.  Three musicians and seven dancers from The Juilliard School presented four of the work's seven sections, with Veggetti also having a hand in the stage and costume design, and original artwork onstage by his wife, Moe Yoshida.

As with many of her scores, Saariaho uses live electronics, here enchantingly realized by Ryan Streber, first working with harp virtuoso Bridget Kibbey (in the sixth section, "Fall"), and later in two all-electronic sections, "Forest" and "Window."  Veggetti combines hypnotically slow walking and gliding movements that somehow reach architectural plateaus; a dancer will seem to slide across the floor, only to find herself balanced horizontally on a colleague's feet, almost floating in space.

In one striking sequence, "...de la Terre," dancer Frances Chiaverini emerged from backstage carrying a music stand, placing it in front of violinist Erik Carlson who had slowly entered from the opposite side.  As the sequence ended, with the memory of Carlson's shimmering string chatter still in the ear, Chiaverini dispatched the stand as mysteriously as it had appeared.  Veggetti has the ability to invest a simple act with tension and drama; walking somehow becomes greater than the mere process of getting from one place to another.

The full ballet opens Miller Theatre's new season on Wednesday night, with two more performances on Friday and Saturday.  Miller's intrepid Director Melissa Smey was on hand to elicit thoughtful comments from both Saariaho and Veggetti, and the troupe of superbly controlled dancers was rounded out by Craig Black, Spencer Dickhaus, Min Young Lee, Viktor Usov, Casia Vengoechea, and Chen Zielinski.

[Photo of "Maa" by Richard Termine]

Words to live by

Like so many genres, new music is best heard, and most inspiring, live. “I think the biggest preconception with so-called new music…is that you are supposed to have some kind of preformed reaction to it,” says International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) founder Claire Chase. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Audiences are going to hear something that will blow their minds and that has never happened before and might not ever happen again. That’s the magic of live performance, and that’s what for me is so unbearably exciting about doing new music, because that daredevil, cliff-hanging aspect of the experience is heightened in the performance of a brand-new work, both for the audience and for the players. It’s vulnerable, visceral, utterly risky and the hugest rush.”

From "Concerto inferno" by Doyle Armbrust, in this week's Time Out Chicago.  The complete article is here.

Today's tribute to the letter "H"

George Frideric Handel: Keyboard Suites, Vol. 1 (Nos. 1-4) and "The Piano Sings": Joanne Polk Plays Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel.  The Juilliard Journal, September 2010