After some cake (a vegan recipe can produce perfectly delicious chocolate cake, thank you) I have decided that it makes more sense for me to tell you what I’ve been up to lately in an update instead of just telling you the first thing that pops into my mind once I step into my apartment (the bit about the dog). Even if describing my actual life takes longer.
Actually I won’t tell you much about my life, timewise, just one event. Monday evening Erik and I went to San Francisco to hear the world première of his music professor’s newest composition. The concert presented five pieces, four of them world premières, mostly performed by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. We attended the pre-concert talk as well, which was very enlightening. The theme of the evening was ‘Big Bang.’ Indeed.
The concert did start with a bang, somewhat, because it began with a brilliant one-performer percussion piece called Gris-gris, by a New York composer named John Zorn. The piece is partly inspired by one of the founders of cubism, painter Juan Gris, which ought to tell us something about the way it sounds, but actually doesn’t. Zorn has an interesting compositional philosophy, as detailed in the program notes: ‘ ‘Whether we like it or not,’ he declares, ‘the era of the composer as an autonomous musical mind has just about come to an end.’ Citing such historical precedents as Duke Ellington’s reliance on his band members and John Cage’s involvement with a close circle of performer-friends, Zorn also observes that the ‘collaborative aspects of the recording process’ have intensified a healthy tendency to view every instance of music making as a group endeavor.’ ‘ Gris-gris reflects that philosophy in that it was written specifically for, and in collaboration with, the percussionist, William Winant. Winant was incredible. He was dressed very, very casually, in a beat-up old henley and pants, and didn’t even really bother to bow to the audience, instead kind of stopping mid-walk to acknowledge our presence. It was funny. I don’t know how to describe his performance except that it was really quite something. I’m always so amazed at how much skill and range a percussionist can have–when we think of people who play percussion, we typically think of ‘the drummer’ as the least interesting person in an ensemble. Over the last couple of years I’ve really come to see just how much talent and work it takes to be a truly exceptional percussionist and I have a much greater respect for anyone who is.
The second piece was Professor Cox’s, World a Tuning Fork. The title comes from a line from a poem apparently written by her husband, poet John Campion. ‘World a tuning fork/Lift-up-over sounding.’ In Prof Cox’s words, ‘I imagined this vision generalized to the entire living world, an earth turning on its axis like a tuning fork, vibrating with the musics of every location. My composition was inspired by this conception of resonant space.’ I thought her piece was brilliant. She used a grouping of instruments very typically found in jazz, although there was nothing jazzlike about the work: saxophone, double bass, percussion and piano. Somehow she did get the piece to sound very resonant, as if sounds from all over were reverberating around a single enormous tuning fork, but without sounding cacophonous. I did comment to Erik, however, that this didn’t sound like ‘world a tuning fork’ but rather ‘America a tuning fork’ because somehow all the sounds only sounded American to me, and North American-United States to me. But whatever. I loved it.
The third piece, the last before intermission, was another one I really loved. I was intrigued by the composer’s comments during the pre-concert talk; he’s a music commentator for NPR as it turns out. The piece is called Funny Like a Monkey and is inspired by and dedicated to his sixteen-year-old daughter Rachel. He says, ‘Funny Like a Monkey is one of the many phrases coined by my daughter in order to address the actions and well-meant (but clueless) attempts at humor by both her younger brother and her hopeless antiquated father. What I love about these phrases is their use of nonsequitur elevated to high verbal art: they are at once biting and humorous and filled with a sort of over-the-top verbal exuberance and bravado that only a teenager can get away with.’ It’s written in three movements and scored for violin, viola, cello and piano, and I think the performers chosen to play it were really perfect. I don’t know if it was intentional, but the pianist seemed to be playing the part of the teenager. She’s apparently quite accomplished but she looked to be about seventeen (she’s not), and her posture was hilarious for the part of the rebellious daughter. I also really liked the cellist, Nina Flyer, who along with the other two string players seemed to be alternately praising, chastising and getting furious with their teenage charge. The first movement was the ‘rebellious teenager’ part, with the strings and the piano talking/arguing back and forth and sometimes together. It was the second movement I liked the most. It’s called ‘Flutterby’ and has moments of incredible beauty as well as of deep sadness. The third movement was short and very funny, called ‘Morph, with apologies to J.B.,’ J.B. being Johannes Brahms. The finale of Brahms’s g minor Piano Quartet keeps running in and out of the movement.
The second half of the program, after intermission, was good but somehow I couldn’t get into it… as it turns out Erik couldn’t either, so maybe it was just not as brilliant. Either that, or neither of us can stay active listeners past a certain point.
Intermission was interesting because something happened that has never happened to me before but which I always see in movies and TV shows and things like that. Some of Erik’s other music professors were there, so there were actually people we knew there that we could talk to. I’ve never been to a not-exactly-social-event where I’ve run into people I knew that I could talk to during intermission, at least not in unfamiliar places. Piano recitals where we’re all friends don’t count. Usually when we go to concerts we just sit in our seats during intermission and look at the program, but this time there were actually people we could ‘mingle’ with. Very very interesting.
That’s enough for now. Lunch time!
[This post was imported on 4/10/14 from my old blog at satsumabug.livejournal.com.]
satsumabug.com | Lisa Hsia 