Concert Review - April 5, 2011 Disney Concert Hall

This concert was part of a series featuring Thomas Ades. Two of his compositions were played, two arrangements were played, and he conducted the ensembles as well. The first piece (Powder on her Face) was a mixed bag of styles. Ades blended different elements into a solo piano performance that at times seemed improvised, at times seemed very strict and exacting. The Ligeti pieces featured massive amounts of percussion (played by three percussionists) and a mezzo-soprano. A series of short, playful pieces featuring gongs, marimbas, pitched and un-pitched metallophones, as well as the mezzo singing in multiple languages, and at times gibberish.

The arrangements of Nancarrow’s Studies for player piano were by far my favorite pieces of the night. It was quite amazing to watch two players perform these complex pieces. I imagine what a feat it must have been to arrange them, transcribing from a player piano roll into notation. There was also a video playing, which I found only to detract from the performance onstage.

Next was a premiere of a Coll piece (who, as Kyle pointed out is younger than me). It sounded as if the performers were playing 80 different Frank Zappa riffs, from different points in his career, all at once. It made my head want to explode. The concert finished up with another piece by Ades, which he conducted. This piece also contained non-traditional percussion (including a rock), and was rhythmically complex.

Kronos Quartet Concert Review

Kronos Quartet April 6, 2011; Segerstrom Concert Hall

Aheym – Bryce Dessner

Death to Kosmische – Nicole Lizee

WTC 9/11 – Steve Reich

Harp and Altar – Missy Mazzoli

Flow – Laurie Anderson

…hold me, neighbor, in this storm – Aleksandra Vrebalov

I try and see Kronos Quartet when they come to town. This concert featured pieces that were written for (or, in the case of Flow, arranged for) the quartet. Many of the pieces featured electronics. In some instances this was a tape rolling in the background, other times ribbon-controlled instruments were used. Sometimes this was a matter of good concept, poor execution. The Reich piece was a treat. WTC 9/11 was written for a triple quartet and tape with pre-recorded voices. It played by Kronos against a recording of Kronos to make up the other two quartets. The voices were all sampled from NORAD or FDNY recordings from the trade center attacks, along with some interviews. The piece begins and ends with the violins doubling a repeated F (the pitch your land line phones give when left off the hook). Reich’s voice tape concentrated on the speakers final vowel or consonant, which made for a very rich, rhythmically complex wall of sound for Kronos to play with. The Laurie Anderson arrangement started out very soft and still, slowly growing to a point when I thought it was going to take off, but ended instead, which was a disappointment not because of the material played, but because it ended so soon. Think of a still pool of water, with someone dropping rocks in it, slowly at first so each ripple spread out. More rocks get dropped and the ripples grow faster and stronger, you are waiting for the big splash that happens when a big rock is thrown into the pool. But that rock is never thrown, instead you realize that you friend who was throwing rocks is no longer beside you and is out of sight.

Pacific Chorale: Daughter of Light

April 17th, 2011

This concert featured the ‘Plorate filii Israel’ chorus from Giacomo Carissimi’s Jephte (1648), the choral version of David’s Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion (2007), and the 1893 version of Gabriel Faure’s Requiem in D minor, Op. 48.

I admit that I had high hopes for this program, and those hopes were not satisfied by the end. Soprano Zanaida Robles was listed on the headline of the program, so I anticipated that she would play a greater role than what she actually did. First, I expected the Jephte excerpt to include more than just the final chorus; it is preceded by a very lovely soprano solo, so I initially assumed the Pacific Chorale would include that with Robles (I was mistaken). She did not have a solo in the Lang piece, either, so it was a little odd for her to return to the stage for an “encore” before the intermission, performing a very classically-styled rendition of the spiritual Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child. (I love this spiritual, and enjoyed a very different performance of it by a former Redlands student much more than I did Robles’ classical soprano version.)

I didn’t mind this inserted performance once. I questioned the reasoning behind the programming, however, when Robles returned after her one-movement solo in the Faure Requiem to sing the same song again. Double encore of the same piece? I’ve never experienced that, and it gave me a very weird sense of déjà vu.

That strangeness aside, I wasn’t as pleased with the Lang passion as I thought I would be. The John Alexander Singers, a 24-voice professional chamber choir, performed a “staged” version of The Little Match Girl Passion. I appreciated their dedication to memorizing the entire work, but the staging left much to be desired. The movements were somewhat expressive but mostly just exaggerated gestures, and it was distracting when the performers were not completely synchronized.

Lang’s transformation of The Little Match Girl story into a Passion was interesting, and I appreciated the juxtaposition of texts. He had effective musical ideas too, such as the inclusion of several percussion instruments (bass drum, handbells, brake drum, glockenspiel, crotales, and sleighbells), a text-setting style that repeated syllables over and over for a “shivering” effect in several sections (like “When it is time for me to go”), and a very lovely canon that blurred between dissonance and consonance (“Have mercy, my God”). The latter was my favorite moment of the entire piece. My favorite use of the percussion was an interjection of solo brake drum that was amplified to project the unusual scraping/rubbing effect on its surface. The “shivering” vocal technique was interesting and evocative at first, but I would have preferred it to happen only at the beginning of phrases rather than through the entirety of the phrases. I liked the overall material of the work as well, but ultimately the repetition of different sections throughout the piece (to new text) was too minimal and redundant for my personal taste. I would have appreciated a greater depth of variety and development.

LA Opera: The Turn of the Screw

Benjamin Britten’s opera The Turn of the Screw (1954), based on the novella of the same title by Henry James, is pretty awesome of its own accord, regardless of the performance it receives. The LA Opera’s rendition during the March 2011 series demonstrated just how much more awesome a successful performance can be, particularly for a first-time listener/viewer. I had listened and read through about half of the score’s piano reduction sometime last year, but never seen the opera until this production.

I don’t want to give too much of the plot away because I think it is worth it for ALL of you to check out at some point, but it centers around a governess who travels to an estate far removed from the rest of society to take care of two children, Flora and Miles. The governess begins to notice an unsettling mystery surrounding the departed manservant, Peter Quint, and the former governess, Miss Jessel. Britten’s version of the original story is particularly effective because he does not cast it as specifically a ghost story or a psychological story; instead, he leaves the final interpretation to the viewer.

The orchestra is chamber-sized, using a one-on-a-part string section, flute/alto flute/piccolo double, oboe/English horn double, clarinet/bass clarinet double, bassoon, horn, harp, percussion/timpani, and piano/celesta. I found myself really enjoying this size and instrumentation. It has potential for a variety of thin and full textures, without overpowering the six-member vocal cast. Recurring motives help unify the musical structure of the two-hour opera; a spiraling theme, for example, represents “the turn of the screw.” One of the most recognizable motives is Quint’s melismatic and haunting summons to young Miles. To me, Quint had the best vocal role, which is no surprise (Britten wrote many tenor roles for his partner, Peter Pears. I’m really only mentioning this so I have an excuse to show this adorable picture of the two of them on a beach in dress clothes.)



William Burden as Peter Quint and Michael Kepler Meo as Miles were my favorite performers, and Patricia Racette as the governess was also quite good. The ingenuity of the set and lighting design really sold this production to me, however. The centerpiece was a large panel of glass with a pane that could open and close for a door; the entire panel could be raised and tilted, serving at times as a wall of the house and other times as the surface of the lake (allowing during one very cool moment for Miss Jessel to rise from the lake through the “door”). The other more permanent piece of set was a large, gnarled tree. At times, certain characters like Miss Jessel or Quint would be contorted in the background as part of the silhouette of the tree, so that the audience would only really notice them when they emerged from the silhouette.

I encourage you to look into this opera more if you’re interested, or Britten’s other fantastic operas! Here are some pictures from the LA Opera production, and a video with excerpts of music.

Pure Awesomeness...

Cellist. Saxophonist. Beatboxer. Composer. This is incredible: http://kevinolusola.com/ ; The KO Hip-Hop Cello-Beatbox Experience: Julie-O

Ensemble Green Concert Review

Ensemble Green: Saturday, March 5, 2011

The atmosphere of this concert was much different from previous new music concerts that I had been to: simplistic lighting instead of theatrical technology, a modest audience, and a stage that encouraged an intimate, human connection with the listeners. Even the style of the program and its notes were quite modest and personal, but highly effective. The notes aimed to connect the audience with the mindset of the composer during the writing of the piece instead of over-elaborating on the compositional process of the music and all of its relatively insignificant details.

The programming of the concert centered itself around relatively small chamber ensembles, with the largest being a string quartet. Many of the pieces were solos, some of them unaccompanied. Unfortunately, this left me with the feeling that everything was too thin texturally—I was looking for at least one or two relatively large, dense works maximizing the timbral color of the ensemble. Perhaps such programming would have been too overbearing for the atmosphere that Ensemble Green intended to create for the evening—they might have been aiming for a recital-like environment.

The opening piece, Nick Norton’s “Gare D’Arras” was a trio for violin, clarinet, and cello. Although I appreciated its experimentation with color (i.e. slap pizzicato, tapping/slapping the instruments), I feel that a lot of its coloring effects could have been more elaborately used and woven into the framework of the piece. Striking the body of the stringed instruments was a bit too unexpected at the point it arrived in the piece, and for me, it was hard to take the completely percussive section of the piece seriously in spite of it being a valid musical technique. (This is partly because of my unwanted association between clapping/stomping/etc. and entertaining young string orchestras with their repertoire.) In listening to the piece, I wanted the piece to “prove” that the percussion was necessary at that point.

One of the interior pieces of the program, “Impermanent Things,” for cello and piano, functioned well as a cinematic piece, although that was most likely not Elizabeth Alexander’s intention. In listening to the piece, I thought that its melodic content was a bit overemphasized while its harmonic content was relatively thin. However, Alexander succeeded in developing this piece into a meditation as she said it would: the nearly hypnotic repetition of the intervals in the motif as well as the chords in the harmony created a useful backdrop for the listener him or herself to meditate, not the just the music itself.

Concert Review

On April 7th, I went to Cal-State San Bernardino to see Mario Verlangieri’s guitar junior recital. It was very interesting getting to experience a concert at another music school. I got to see the different kinds of people that went there and I also noticed that their way of performing is a little different from here. The performance hall was really nice. It had really comfortable seats, a great light set, and a large stage. The acoustics were really good too. I do think Fred Lowe’s acoustics are a little better though. The concert was really nice. The guitarist was very talented. He played with great expression and feeling. His melodies stood out the whole time. It was enjoyable to listen to. My favorite piece was the first movemet of Suite del Plata No. 2 written by Maximo Diego Pujol who was born in 1957. It started out very dissonant and beautiful sounding. I admired the beautiful resonance that filled the room. The ending was very nice too. Mario did a great job with playing a melody with harmonics. It sounded really cool. It is definitely something I would love to put in one of my pieces. The rest of the songs were really interesting too. I could tell that this musician loved to play guitar. I plan on researching a little on the composer Pujol because I really liked his style and I want to someday write a piece for guitar. It was great experiencing what other college’s music programs are like and it was great hearing wonderful songs.

Concert Review

On April 5th, I went to the amazing Walt Disney Concert Hall to see the Green Umbrella and I was very surprised with what I saw. The first piece I heard was amazing. It was a piano piece written by Thomas Ades and played by Ades himself! This guy was one great player! He played with great expression and feeling. Every note was very articulated. He put a lot of thought into this piece. I really enjoyed it the mood changes throughout the piece. The acoustics were absolutely amazing as well. From any area in the hall, the music sounds perfect. The piano also had the most beautiful tone. Ades is very talented, he played piano that night and conducted two pieces, one of which was his own composition as well. After Ades on the piano came a singer and percussionist piece written by Ligeti. It was very interesting. They used instruments I’ve never seen before as well as instruments you usually wouldn’t see in a piece. For instance, a whistle and a kazoo were used in the percussion piece. It was really cool! Then next two pieces I heard were written by Nancarrow and arranged by Ades. Nancarrow composed his songs for player pianos. They were very geometric and rhythmically difficult. It was very interesting the way his pieces were put together. They were very entertaining. I heard that he composed a piece where there was a chromatic glissando on the piano, which can’t be done unless it is programmed into a player piano. That was a really cool idea. The next two pieces were my least favorite probably because I couldn’t understand what was going on. Overall, the show was great and I am very happy I got to go!

Mario Verlangieri, guitar

On Thursday, April 7th, I joined some of our fellow composition students in attending a Junior Recital at Cal State San Bernardino just up the road a bit. The student was a guitarist named Mario Verlangieri. All in all, Mario performed seven pieces for classical guitar. While there were some good moments in each of the pieces individually, as a whole, there was not a lot of variety during the recital. Many of the pieces seem to bleed into the next and after a short time, I'd completely lost track of what piece we were currently hearing performed. What I enjoyed most was a section of one of the middle pieces that used a lot of harmonics on the guitar. It was a nice change for a while. I think the harmonics of the guitar are too often neglected as most pieces for the classical guitar don't do much to try to stray from it's usual style and sound. I left this performance with a new appreciation and understanding for how useful and exciting it can be to challenge performers to try new things that are not typical of their instrument's usual roll. The classical guitar needs more variety, even if only to keep the audience from getting a bit sleepy during junior recitals.

-Bryce Doubravsky

Creepy Opera Set

Hey all,

heres a creepy opera set being constructed in Australia.

as they say, a picture is worth.....

http://gizmodo.com/#!5791623/the-worlds-creepiest-opera-is-still-under-construction

Concert Review

Ensemble Green, March 5th 2011

This was the first chamber music performance I have seen that was not connected with the LA Phil in some way (aka Green Umbrella or RedCat), and I have to say I was quite impressed. I had never heard any of the pieces before, and the performers were spectacular. It was incredibly uplifting to see such great music performed so well by an ensemble I have never heard of (not that it is saying anything, just that it wasn't eighth blackbird or the Kronos Quartet). The Concord Sonata was absolutely stunning! It really reminded me of what a total badass Ives is. It is hard to believe someone was writing stuff like that in the nineteen-teens and twenties. Oh and lets not forget Suter's piece. All brown-nosing aside, it is the best string quartet piece I have heard live. Hands down.

All in all, there was one rather disappointing aspect of the performance, and that was the attendance. Excluding the composers, there were less than 10 people in the audience if I recall correctly. Now I know it was a small venue and it probably wasn't ever expected to sell out or anything, but I was very disappointed at the turn out. I don't want to sound Schuller-y, but this is some of the best performed chamber music I have ever heard, but where were all the people?! Is it because you have to have some sort of intelectual understanding of the music to appreciate it that everyone there had some background in musical study? Are people too lazy to care? What does this mean for me and my future career as a composer? Should I be trying to cater to bigger, broader audiences? Or do I say f**k it and write what I want? It really hits me hard to see music like this fall into the cracks...but what can we do about it?!

Concert Review

Concert Review: LA Phil Green Umbrella, April 5^th

This Tuesday I saw the LA Phil perform works by Ades, Ligeti, Nancarrow, and Francisco Coll.The first piece was called Concert Paraphrase on ‘Powder Her Face’ performed by Thomas Ades on solo piano. What I found most interesting about the piece was the mixing between tonality, chromatic harmony, and what appeared to me as serialism. Many sections of the piece were strongly ambiguous as to what the tonal center was (I dare not say atonal) and others seemed to be based around complex harmonies. Then there were moments of classic tonality. At one point there was even a perfect authentic cadence. What made the piece nice was the fact that every section flowed into the next quite well. Hearing that PAC was unexpected, but it wasn’t out of nowhere. I could tell there was a very subtle lead into it.

The Ligeti piece was possibly my favorite of the night, tied with the Nancarrow. It was titled Sippal, dobbal, nadihegeduvel (With Pipes, Drums, Fiddles) and performed by four percussionists and a mezzo-soprano. The entire piece was broken into seven movements, each one very quick and concise. The percussion was very interesting, at some points there were three marimbas being played simultaneously. Gongs and an abundance of cymbals and other unpitched items added lots of interesting color. The vocals were very strange, speaking another language or even jibberish at times it seemed. While at many times it seemed close to frightening, the vocalist also had many points that were comical. Overall, I describe the piece as captivatingly strange.

Probably my favorite performance was the Nancarrow. Thomas Ades arranged studies 6 and 7 to be performed by two pianos. There was also a video for each study, which featured an extensive and less-than-interesting array of squares and triangles. I had heard these studies before, the original recordings on player piano, and was excited to see human beings try to replicate it. I think the performers did very well. It was impossible for me to notice if they were playing perfectly, especially the rhythm, but it didn’t seem like they missed anything. I’d really like to see the score and find out how the arrangement was created, because I know that Nancarrow used precise ratios to compose the rhythm of the pieces. Both studies were very fun to watch, especially no. 7, with its blazingly fast ending.

The next piece was Piedras, Op. 11 written by Francisco Coll, who apparently is younger than Scott. This one went right over my head to be honest. I didn’t quite follow exactly what the intentions of the composer were, and didn’t really get anything out of it. There was some interesting orchestration happening, but I couldn’t find anything that didn’t confuse the hell out of me.

Closing the concert was another piece written by Thomas Ades, who also conducted the work. It was called Concerto Conciso, Op. 18 which I thought was a funny title for such a long piece of music. What I liked most about it was the percussion. There were two percussionists, each with a very interesting setup. One had mounted guiro, a gong, lots of cymbals and much more. The other had an equally extensive set, including snare, cowbell and what looked like a small rock. He hit the rock with a hard xylophone stick, which made a metronome-like sound; it was interesting. What I thought was most interesting however, was the fact that the entire piece (I believe) was in 4/4 time. I’m not entirely sure, but I never saw the conductor beat any pattern other than four. Much like the some of the Schuller we analyzed, the rhythmic complexity was solely created with internal subdivisions, rather than meter changes.