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CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW
November 18, 2004
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By Jeff Dunn
When George Beauchamp demonstrated the first electric guitar in L.A. in
1931, little did he know he was building what historian Jeff Maguire called
the instrument that most clearly captures the American mythos, "the
archtypical symbol of American freedom, independence, and rebellion." Having
conquered the popular music world via rock and roll, will that instrument
and its sidekick, the drums, go on to conquer the contemporary classical
music arena as well?
Paul Dresher made his case for this transformation last Thursday with his
guitar and electronic spawn, the Quadrachord, Marimba Lumina, electronic
drums, electronic bassoon, keyboard and violin, at the Yerba Buena Center for
the Arts. By commissioning three new works for the program by composers
other than himself, Dresher is turning his Electro-Acoustic band into a
dandelion head that may very well spread to the entire lawn of the avant-garde over the coming decades.
The evening began with Neil Rolnick's Plays Well With Others, for ensemble and electronically manipulated voice recordings. The title refers to the
composer's opinion of President Bush, ". . . he seems like someone who might
have had an elementary school report card in which he got low grades in the
column 'plays well with others'." Rolnick wrote what he rightly calls
"doggerel" for the voice track after "immersing" himself in children's
verse. Lines like "There's just one way we won't be hurtin' / We've got to
hire Halliburton" were unimpressively read by actors Tom Richter and Michele
Ragusa. Children's voices probably would have been better, but the
forgettable music and soon-to-be-if-not-already-passé topic do not bode well
for the work's future.
The second commissioned work, Black Rock, was inspired by basalt in a Nevada desert playa. As composer Ingram Marshall puts it, it is about "that detail that announces itself, that proclaims its terrifyingly important function." There was plenty of detail that stridently announced itself but none of the accompanying desert vastness that should make the detail stand out all the more forcefully. Not a nature piece, but of some interest in its own shrill way. The first half of the concert closed with the most significant composition of the evening, James Mobberley's Fusebox. Here was a piece that lived up to its name, presented a memorable structure, and combined available forces in a way that leaves the listener aching to hear the music again. Part of the genius of this work is that the several sections are tied together rondo fashion with a ritornello of foot-tap sounds and chords flashing like sparks from the namesake fusebox. More successfully than any music this listener has heard, Fusebox lives up to its billing by Mobberley as "a wholly integrated fusion of rock, jazz, and contemporary classical indioms, textures and timbres, one that lives comfortably among all these worlds." Fusebox succeeds in a field where many have failed, due to Mobberley's strong familiarity with the idioms employed, his technical virtuosity in structure and counterpoint, and his dramatic sense. This last skill is most apparent at the conclusion, a frenzy of activity that pushes its performers to the limit. As Mobberley puts it, "...the whole thing could blow at any minute." Anyone interested in the music of the future should keep an eye on this man!
The second half of the concert was devoted to three of Dresher's own works, written from 1994 to 2002. In general, they show increasing sophistication in projecting evocative sound worlds. All are journeys, some to locations one need visit only once; others, more enticing. In the former category was one section of the first work, In the Name(less), that conjured up in my mind a sleepless night in a cheap motel on a noisy interstate. The repeat-journey category included the second item, a movement of Dresher's violin concerto, where the soloist's melodic line soars in ethereality until cut off by the diabolic entry of Dresher's guitar. The violin returns to debate, but the conclusion is ambiguous. While the first two works reflected Dresher's studies of Eastern musics, the third piece, Din of Iniquity, was closer to the Heavy Metal category. All emphasized melodic line, accompaniments and timbre over counterpoint and highly analytic structures. All are worth hearing; may Dresher's music prosper. Of ancillary interest was Dresher's quest for new instrumental sonorities. His Quadrachord is a 14-foot-long aluminum sawhorse with four strings on top. Numerous tricks can be performed on it, producing different sounds, including rolling a steel ball down its length. The Marimba Lumina is a surface the size of two backgammon boards that responds as programmed to strikes by cushioned tenor drum sticks. Sometimes, however, the sound of the stick hitting the surface intrudes on the sound electronically generated. All performers deserved kudos, especially bassoonist Paul Hanson, whose electrified instrument sounded like a very sensual bass saxophone.
(Jeff Dunn is a freelance critic with a B.A. in music and a Ph.D. in Geologic Education. A composer of piano and vocal music, he is a member of NACUSA, a Bay Area correspondent for the journal 21st-Century Music, and President of Composers, Inc.)
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Paul Dresher