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CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW
Stimulating Experimental Music
June 8, 2001
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By Jules Langert
The collaboration of electronics with live performers provided some fascinating results at Friday night's Hertz Hall concert of "Tempo," UC Berkeley's inaugural Festival of Contemporary Music Performance, held during the first week of June. The series of six events presented music "which blurs the line between improvised and composed" pieces while also incorporating computer technology in the process.
The most impressive composition on Friday's program was the last piece, Monedas de Hierro, by Argentine composer Martin Matelon, for 10 players and electronics, conducted by David Milnes. The title, which means "Coins of Iron," suggests the cascading, glittery sound that permeates much of the score, generated by harp, percussion, and electronic sounds. Each of its several short movements has a distinctive central characteristic, like a bassoon or trumpet solo, or a passage for closely dueting clarinets. Rippling, complex textures seem to integrate freedom with precision of detail in this dazzling piece.
The opening work, Metallica, a dramatic duet for trumpet and electronics by Monegasque composer Jar Maresz, was also of particular interest. Each of its sections was initiated by the live performer: a fanfare of repeated notes, an agile leaping run, a sustained, lyrical line, or an edgy, muted figure. Maresz is able to build whole sections of dialog by echoing and expanding these textures.
In Assonance III, for clarinet, cello, and piano (1989), Swiss composer Michael Jarrell produced an ensemble piece whose style is remarkably indebted to electronic sound sources. Contributing to the piece's striking impression are such effects as a sustained note undergoing slow distortion or gradually changing timbre, and sudden fluctuations of speed and texture in which the instruments often play together in a solid, complex block of sound. In Flecte Lapis, Icelander Atli Ingólfsson uses a keyboard to release electronic sounds, which were projected from multiple speakers throughout the hall. Pianist/composer Mei-Fang Lin, the keyboardist, lent an air of spontaneity to her playing, thus combining the freedom of live performance with the preprogrammed electronics. French composer Philippe Leroux's PPP, for flute and piano, using leaps, running, and repeated note textures, was unable to capture the aural magic that electronic sounds might have given to some of his effects. Repeated notes, especially, were too prolonged. This piece seems more like a study than a fully achieved composition. Cindy Cox's Hysteria, for trombone and electronics, creates a cavernous sound space reverberant with feminist associations drawn from the spoken text that was part of the mixture. In this case there is no synthesis or interaction between sound sources. Instead, we hear a succession of events without any cumulative resonance connecting them. Inevitably, the feminist message predominated, to the esthetic detriment of the musical experience. Jorge Liderman's brief, puckishly attractive Trio, for marimba, piano, and cello, and Ronald Bruce Smith's skillful Meditation, for tape (using voices and instruments from various Oriental traditions) made up the rest of the program. This concert, which used resources from UC Berkeley's Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT), presented experimental new music of a generally more accomplished and stimulating kind than can often be heard, and in superior performances. (Jules Langert is a composer and teacher who resides in the East Bay.) ©2001 Jules Langert, all rights reserved |