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CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW
February 15, 2006
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By Heuwell Tircuit
One of the joys of living in the Bay Area is the general level of intellectual curiosity. Even in inclement weather, Composers Inc managed to attract a sizable audience for its chamber concert last Tuesday in the Green Room of the War Memorial and Performance Arts Center. Four works were on offer, by four American composers, and performed to a high standard. The only other US cities I know of where that could happen would be Boston, New York and Los Angeles.
The evening opened with 10 of 24 Preludes by Roger Nixon for piano (2000), played by the dedicatee, William Corbett-Jones. This was followed by Mischa Zupko's Seven Deadly Sins (2002) with flutist Thomas Robertello and pianist Winston Choi. Then intermission; then Lawrence Moss' Six Short Pieces for alto saxophone and piano (1993), with saxophonist Keith Bohm and pianist Natsuki Fusasawa. For a finale, there was Kevin Beavers' Wandlebury Ring (2001) for mezzo-soprano and string quartet. That last featured mezzo Jennifer Lane with the quartet of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. (Jules Langert's Cello Sonata, which was to have been premiered at this concert, had to be postponed as it's not as yet quite completed.)
Not too surprisingly, the two most experienced composers, Nixon and Moss, produced the finest results. Nixon, professor emeritus at San Francisco State, presented a set of short, charming pieces in his Preludes, using a great variety of piano textures. Some were as light as anything in Debussy, and one or two, as resonant as anything in Rachmaninoff. The music, however, sounded nothing remotely like those two composers. Nixon was, after all, a student of composers as widely different as Ernst Bloch and Arnold Schoenberg. He is thus possessed of a wide technique for managing diverse styles, as well as a firm control of musical architecture. Fine music!
It didn't hurt that the performances were terrific. I have not heard Corbett-Jones play in something like twenty years, and had forgotten what a thorough musician and sensitive pianist he is. Beautiful, complete playing, consistently satisfying. Timbre variety, astute pedaling, and control of sensibility left nothing to chance. It's a wonder that he's not regularly appearing with local orchestras. Next to that, my vote would go to Moss's little suite. The cutie-pie movement titles (“Broadway Boogie-woogie,” “Chinese Lullaby”) were a bit off-putting, but no, these never slipped into mere kitsch. Fun, yes; vulgarity, no. There was a kind of pixy element at work here that I found greatly entertaining. And, again, exceptional performances from Bohm and Fukasawa were a plus. Bohm was amazing, able to control dynamic shift on a pinhead. That's tremendously difficult on the saxophone, which tends to be ever loud in most lips. And, like Corbett-Jones's, Bohm's playing was marvelously musical in every aspect. Bravo! The two newer works I found disappointing. Zupko has won any number of awards and is being widely performed. Indeed, the reason for his Seven Deadly Sins being presented is that it won the 2004 Lee Ettelson Award — Ettelson being a distinguished newspaper editor who managed to bring a number of papers back from the brink. Depicting grevious sins with a flute and piano would seem hopeless. But apart from that, I found the music run-of-the-mill obvious in a 1950s way. Nothing struck me as inventive nor particularly interest-holding. There was no sense of momentum toward a goal, just sounds. As Liszt once said of the Bruckner Symphonies, the movements didn't begin, didn't end. They lasted. And this in spite of fine performers.
A major chink in the armor of compositional training is that very few are taught much if anything about vocal writing. Beavers committed some basic errors. With the vocal line tied heavily to the upper register, very few words of Andrew Sofer's text make it across the void, even with a brilliant young professional like Lane as soloist. (She was recently in the SF Opera's Janácek and Ligeti productions.) Then, too, the style is so ultra-conservative as to make Vaughan Williams sound avant garde by comparison. It did offer a contrast to the other three works, but as finale to the evening, rather a bland dessert. Congratulations are in order to Composers Inc for winning the recent ASCAP Award for adventurous programing in 2004. Considering that this is a national prize, it speaks volumes for the group's dedication and courage on behalf of American composers.
(Heuwell Tircuit, composer, performer and writer, was chief writer for Gramophone Japan and for 21 years a music reviewer for the SF Chronicle, previously for the Chicago American and Asahi Evening News.)
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Mischa Zupko 
Kevin Beavers