San Francisco Classical Voice

CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW A Birthday Tribute Circling the Subject

April 27, 2002

By Benjamin Frandzel

Although made a bit fuzzy by some off-balance programming, the Empyrean Ensemble's recent 70th birthday tribute to composer Martin Boykan offered an array of contemporary musical expression. In their Saturday performance at Berkeley's Julia Morgan Theater, the ensemble took a "This Is Your Life" approach, presenting selections by both Boykan and other artists with whom he has been involved.

Oddly enough, in widening the program to reflect Boykan's place in American music over the last half-century, the players offered precious little of Boykan himself. With two intriguing pieces by this composer, about ten minutes each, and the remainder given to a teacher, colleague, and student of his, we heard more music with which to compare his achievements than music of his own. I don't know if Boykan himself had a hand in planning this tribute, marking him as a man of generosity, or if the Ensemble simply placed too much emphasis on his influence and influences.

Even so, Boykan's own pieces made a strong case for him as a highly individual and skilled composer. A striking aspect of his writing is a fluid sense of musical line. Phrases are always expanding and contracting in an organic flow, complementing each other in layers or in counterpoint of exceptional clarity. In his recent Romanza for flute and piano, each phrase defined its own space as the instruments interacted with energy and flair. Flutist Tod Brody and pianist Michael Seth Orland delineated Boykan's syntax with unerring musicality.

Shading and coloring graceful gestures

A new Boykan composition introduced on the program, Songlines, for flute, clarinet, violin and cello, received a sensitive and well-balanced rendition. Here Boykan sometimes fused the winds and strings, the wind and string duos complementing the string complementary choirs, or shaded and colored graceful gestures with carefully varied textural changes. This approach was well-served by the sympathetic ensemble of violinist Terrie Baune, cellist Thalia Moore, clarinetist Peter Josheff, and Brody.

The occasion included a piano trio by one of many Boykan students from his long and ongoing tenure at Brandeis University. Laurie San Martin, who these days is teaching at UC Davis, the Empyrean Ensemble's home base, was represented by her Circus Maximus. I heard this piece at its premiere by the Left Coast Ensemble a couple of years ago, and it was gratifying to hear a new piece finding a life beyond its first performance, and one that has more to offer in repeated listening.

The first of the three movements of Circus Maximus combines steady pulsation with strong lines in the three instruments, which worked very well with Baune's and Moore's intensely focused playing and guest pianist Eric Zivian's powerful style. The second movement again featured forceful statements all around, and in the buildup in the work's final movement, with its challenges met by this virtuosic trio, San Martin was clearly enjoying the possibilities of the instruments at hand.

Rich, complex harmonic sense

The connection between Boykan and Edward Cohen, whose music opened the program, was left a little unclear, aside from the fact that they are both part of Boston's active contemporary music scene. Cohen, a long-time faculty member at MIT, was represented by his fine Piano Quartet of 1999. Cohen has an especially rich and complex harmonic sense, a quality made clear in a performance of great presence. The trio that played San Martin's work, plus violist Ellen Ruth Rose, explored this multifaceted work creditably. They were especially fine in their restrained, clear approach to the work's middle movement, with its gorgeous, lullaby-like passages.

As their final ;ook at Boykan's career, the Empyrean's players delved into a work by one of his teachers, Paul Hindemith, his Quartet for clarinet, violin, cello and piano (1938). The players imbued the performance with special qualities,including a sweet tonal palette from Josheff and Orland, and assertive playing from Baune and guest cellist Dana Putnam Fonteneau. Still, like so much of Hindemith's output, for all of its solid, foursquare, architecturally sturdy character, the work is hardly scintillating music. Next time, more Boykan.

(Benjamin Frandzel is a Bay Area musician and writer. In addition to writing concert music, he has collaborated with dance, theater, and visual artists, and has written about music for many publications and musical organizations. He is currently a graduate student in composition at San Francisco State University.)