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CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW
Truckin' with the Tape April 8, 2002
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By Jules Langert
Monday evening's concert by the San Francisco Contemporary Players presented an electro-acoustical program of four pieces covering a broad range of styles and techniques. The third piece, Mambo Vinko (1993) by Mexican-born composer Javier Alvarez, was the most unusual offering. In it, he evoked a hallucinatory journey by truck across the mountains from Puebla to Veracruz. On tape we heard the truck's engine sputter and start up. Then the vehicle pulled onto the highway to begin the trip, accompanied intermittently by a sampling of local radio programs and the periodic noises of passing traffic.
The tape conveyed a rich and heady assemblage of sounds drawn from actuality, but with additions and distortions creating a stream of surreal and comic aural images. Meanwhile on the stage, trombonist Hal Goff, dressed as the truck driver, performed a lively and raucous solo obbligato with great gusto. This whimsical, high spirited piece showed real theatrical imagination in the sounds emanating from the tape. The trombone part was at its best, for me, in some long, sustained passages that blended with and reinforced the sound of the truck's engine, or when playfully mimicking the traffic horns of approaching vehicles. At other times the trombone seemed less interesting and more conventional in its jaunty, parodistic style. Perhaps a greater use of mutes and other coloristic devices would have linked the live and electronic sound more closely and effectively.
The final work, Ronald Bruce Smith's Return to Breath (2000), scored for trumpet, two percussionists, contrabass, and tape, was the most sophisticated and ambitious piece of the evening. The solo trumpet, beautifully played by David Bithell, took the lead with a part ranging from brief, energetic runs and fanfares to muted, melodic passages and long held notes merging with the tape, which was often confined to the sonic background. Much of the piece was lyrical and meditative, but there were two contrasting sections with accented rhythms and bright, intricate passages for bells, marimbas, and string pizzicatos. It was a fascinating, satisfying piece deftly conducted by Neal Stulberg.
The Voices of Silence by Ezequiel Viñao opened the concert. For tape alone, this work was focused too narrowly on abstract, minimalist sound patterns. Each of its four movements was preoccupied with a single musical texture, of propulsive, repetitive rhythms in the first movement and long, slow, overlapping tones in the next. The music's starkness was modestly enhanced by projections of light and color onto the stage, their shape and hue changing with each successive movement. In Music for Harp and Tape (1990) composer Curt Lippe constructed his tape part from the harp's music, subjecting it to electronic manipulation. The two sound sources were then combined interactively in performance. Harpist Karen Gottlieb was a strong advocate for this piece, but unfortunately the tape's volume was turned too low, making it impossible to fully grasp the composer's intentions. In this program, the taped sounds that had been derived from musique-concrète sources for the pieces by Alvarez and Lippe seemed more imaginative and interesting than those generated solely by electronic means. Is this partly because natural sounds offer a greater stimulus to the imagination, or because electronically generated sound is more difficult to manipulate, and by its nature more limited in scope? (Jules Langert is a composer and teacher who resides in the East Bay.) ©2002 Jules Langert, all rights reserved |
