Icebreaker IV Festival of Emerging New Music
The American Future with Music Critics Alex Ross and Kyle Gann
15 Composers 10 World Premiers
Here in the Northwest, the final days of January 2008 were a classical music Aurora Borealis. With its all-black walls, floor, and ceiling, Seattle’s Studio Theater building was the metaphorical dark sky out of which sparks of sound and ideas shot through the air like color thunderbolts.
Two music critics selected the composers: Alex Ross from The New Yorker and Kyle Gann, Associate Professor of Music from Bard College (and Village Voice music critic from 1986-2005). The 13 composers chosen flew to Seattle to showcase their compositions in all-day seminars and evening concerts. Ross and Gann also gave pre-concert talks, led post-concert discussions, and talked about their books: The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Ross and Music Downtown by Gann. Occupying the free zone were Samuel Taylor’s caffeine-soaked film, “The End of New Music” (quoted in The New York Times), and an engaging new composition by Seattle-based composer, Seth Kinsky. A Morton Feldman Marathon, held the last day of the festival, marked the 20th anniversary of the composer’s death.
Day 1--World(s) in Collision platformed Alex Ross’ selection of emerging composers, all under 40: Alexandra Gardner, Anna Clyne, Mason Bates, Judd Greenstein, Max Giteck Duykers, Nico Muhly, and William Brittelle. Never heard of these inventive folks? You will. All of the compositions were full of imaginative, exploratory ideas, conceived with the razor-sharp intelligence that Ross himself has. And the Seattle Chamber Players performed each piece with flawless, clean tones.
Interesting though, that the older and mostly white-haired composers selected by Kyle Gann on Day 2 let loose more than Alex Ross’s Day 1 composers under 40. The younger group with their exposure to punk, hip hop, and cell phone ring tones, might well have been the wild ones, but their music revealed the polite reserve of years spent in compositional training. Check out the music on their web sites. You’ll find plenty of pyrotechnic magic there—from both groups.
Day 2--Classics of Downtown. Kyle Gann’s post-Minimalist composers: Gann himself, Elodie Lauten, Janice Giteck, John Luther Adams, Eve Beglarian, and William Duckworth--all over 40 with a flair for adventure--have produced stacks of CDs. Seattle’s Merrill Wright Stage came alive with pumped-up electronics, swirling soundscapes, ghostly echoes, and unexpected rhythms. Again, the Seattle Chamber Players performed, this time with gusto among a tangle of wires, computers, synthesizers, and subwoofers on the stage. Who said classical music is dead? It’s very much alive and well.
“The Light Within,” by John Luther Adams from this 2nd group of composers, drew gasps from the sold-out audience. Using only 5 musical instruments plus electronics, the vast white Alaska winter landscape which Adams calls home, roared into a luminous, mystical blaze. Intense color bands of sound shifted gradually, the way light changes the colors of snow.
Day 3--Morton Feldman Marathon. Composer Morton Feldman (1926-1987) also drew life from the power of color. Turning away from a musical establishment stuck in serialism, he found inspiration in the paintings of the abstract expressionists. Morning lectures at the Seattle Art Museum by Alex Ross, Kyle Gann, Jonathan Bernard (Univ. of Washington) and Elena Dubinets were followed by an afternoon of Feldman’s compositions. These were performed while Feldman’s friends: Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Philip Guston, Mark Rothko, and Robert Rauschenberg looked on from the gallery walls.
Special recognition needs to be given to the organizer of this groundbreaking event: Elena Dubinets, Artistic Advisor of the Seattle Chamber Players and Artistic Administrator of the Seattle Symphony. Bravo from Third Angle!
Linda Hathaway Bunza
Columbia Research Institute
for the Arts and Humanities
ColumbiaArts@comcast.net
0 comments:
Post a Comment