Friday night's concert of the ensemble Adesso at Old First Church showcased an eclectic selection of music. The pieces programmed doubtless had little in common, but the quality of the playing made the evening hang together nevertheless.
Howard Hersh's Loop, the concert opener, was a strange bird. Sparkling textures streamed forth in one of three flavors: statuesque stillness, developmental transience, and a rhythmic groove reminiscent of Steve Reich's Vermont Counterpoint. Stillness led off, with the piano's consonant undulations extended by punctuations in the vibes that floated through musical space. From the cello an idyllic melody emerged and repeated, appearing frozen in time as if the beginning of Stravinsky's Petrouchka were slowed down and stripped of its jarring juxtapositions.
Developmental activity then drifted into more dissonant waters, becoming an island of turbulence and eluding a decisive climax in favor of folding in on itself. The grooving middle section was the tastiest of the flavors, possibly because the vitality of the interlocking parts made it sound like it could loop forever.
The rest of the first half consisted of text settings by Adesso member Rick Kvistad, mostly modest character pieces that nicely blended the ensemble into a backdrop for soprano Catherine Seidel to deliver the text with clarity and control. Kvistad's keen lyrical writing gave Seidel plenty to work with, but in his setting of Haryette Mullen's "Sleeping With the Dictionary," the soprano, despite being miked, was drowned out by the jazzy percussion accompaniment. Unfortunately, the text was not printed in the program, so it was difficult to surmise what the composer was after.
"Power Chords," the first movement of Michael Gandolfi's Cable Ready, was a strong start to the second half. Particularly noteworthy was the balance between cellist Victoria Ehrlich and pianist Josephine Gandolfi in the hard-driving bass riffs that eventually fanned out toward more intimate, contrasting territory. When the movement ended, I was left wondering why the entire piece wasn't performed, especially given the intriguing title of the second movement: "The All-Interval Tetrachord Blues."
Jonathan Wilkes is a graduate student in theory and composition at UC Davis. He earned a B.A. in music from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Piano Performance.