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CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW
February 24, 2005
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By Mark Alburger
There's always the next big thing. Doesn't matter how innovative you are, someone else will come along and provide some new astonishment. At least we hope so. That's why we keep going to concerts and getting up in the morning....
Three generations of composers opened the 11th Other Minds Festival on Thursday at Yerba Buena, fulfilling Sergei Diagilev's old admonishment ("astonish me!") with various levels of amazement.
The old guard was represented by the once-avant-garde minimalist Phill Niblock, whose Sethwork (2003) was a revelation in sustained drones and difference tones (those wobbles you hear when two notes are closely "out of tune" with each other). Sitting with a laptop, Niblock's co-conspirators were guitarist Seth Josel, for whom the piece was written, and a diptych of the composer's own intriguing films focussing on repetitive manual laboring around the world. The sum was indeed greater than the parts. The visuals which also ran independently before and after the music, took on an increased level of attention as the lights dimmed and the sonics swept.
Josel's live component was a comparatively small part of the overall mix — most of which had been presampled but were modified by Niblock in real time. The volume, which had been billed as bordering on deafening, was not overloud (Steve Reich's glockenspiel music in Drumming and any take-your-pick metal band — there were no fingers in the ear or escapes to the lobby here); duration was not overlong (true believers take in Niblock's 6-hour winter solstice show each year in New York); and the visuals were sufficiently magnificent, if perhaps socioeconomically/culturally
questionable (Niblock was a professor of photography, film, and video for 17 years).
The evening's slam-bang came in String Quartet No. 4 (“Angelou”) from the young dredlocked composer-violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain. Here the aiders-and-abetters were the manipulated voice (but not poetry of) Maya Angelou and the consummate musicianship of the Del Sol String Quartet and DJ Scientific. Opening with rangy-tonal unison melody that could have come off an updated Kronos Quartet Pieces of Africa (Pieces of New York?), imitative contrapuntal adventures soon ensued. Maya was in the mix for the second movement, and big hip-hop computer samples joined in movements three and four, as did Roumain, respectively on amplified acoustic and electric violins, the latter sounding like a scratch Jimi Hendrix. This was a fun yet uncompromising music that did not pander, and seemed at every moment genuine. Applause erupted after each of the last two sections. Applause was rampant as well for an evolving elder statesman of postminimalism, Michael Nyman, who began his set with three settings from his wonderful score to Jane Campion's 1993 film, The Piano, the most poignant of which being "The heart asks pleasure first," heard at several key moments in the work. This is a lilting folkish music, with lovely figurations and metrical shifts that seem at once postmodern and timeless. By contrast, his pounding live and pre-recorded accompaniments to an early silent reel (Manhattan, 1921, on portions of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass) sound like an update to the rollicking 1920's pianola music of George Antheil's Ballet mécanique — wholly appropriate, and another form of "postmodernism," one supposes. Or "post-postmodernism"?.... Nyman's music for the Del Sol and soprano Cheryl Keller was more challenging. The String Quartet No. 3, like the Roumain, calls for an amplified ensemble, but seems to cry out for larger forces, with a first violin part requiring numerous difficult double stops. The Ballad of Kastriot Rexhepi was marred by miking problems of balance between ensemble and soloist: Keller's fine tone was sometimes difficult to hear in the mix, and words were often unintelligible.
(Mark Alburger is an award-winning ASCAP composer of concert music published by New Music, Editor-Publisher of 21st-Century Music Journal, oboist, pianist, vocalist, and music critic.)
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Michael Nyman 
Daniel Bernard Roumain