San Francisco Contemporary Music Players at Hertz Hall, March 29, 2015

CalPerformances presents the fourth and final installment of Project TenFourteen featuring San Francisco Contemporary Music Players
2015-03-29
Hertz Hall
U.C. Berkeley, Bancroft Way at College Ave, Berkeley, CA
7:00 PM, Sunday, March 29, 2015

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2015 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2015 event list! ☸ On to the next event!

• Nakano: Time Song V: Mandala (World Premiere)
• Liang: Luminous (World Premiere)
• Wen-Chung: New work TBD (World Premiere)
• Varèse: Ionisation

[7:04 PM lights down, announcements from Rozella Kennedy]

George Crumb (b. 1929): Xylophony (2015, World Premiere)

1. [7:10 PM] Song of the Forest Primeval
2. [7:19 PM] Forest Murmurs
3. [7:24? PM] the Sylvan Spirit-World: Invocation and Prayer
   [work ends 7:38 PM; bows and applause, then a long pause for the musicians and crew to reset the stage for the next work]

• Christopher Froh: percussion;
• Andrew G. Heglund: percussion;
• Dan Kennedy: percussion;
• Loren Mach: percussion;
• Ben Prima: percussion.

Koji Nakano (b. 1974): Time Song V: Mandala (World Premiere)

1. [7:50 PM] Incantation » Reading a Mantra » Ritualistic Dance » Drawing a Mandala
   [set ends 8:10 PM]

• Tod Brody: flute, vox;
• Kate Campbell: piano, vox, percussion;
• Hall Goff: trombone, vox, percussion;
• Stephen Harrison: cello, vox, percussion;
• Peter Josheff: clarinet, vox, percussion;
• Roy Malan: violin, vox, percussion;
• Steven Schick: conductor;
• Megan Shieh: percussion, vox;
• Nick Woodbury: percussion, vox.

[8:26 PM doors shut]

1. [8:27 PM] Edgard Varèse (1883-1965): Ionisation (1929-1931)
   [work ends 8:32 PM]
   [Steven Schick talks a bit about the work, telling us they will play it once more as a sort of encore]
2. [8:37 PM] Ionisation reprise
   [8:42 PM second time concludes; applause and bows, then all off while the stage hands strike things apart and reconfigure the stage for the last work on the program]

• Victor Avdienko: percussion;
• Kate Campbell: percussion;
• Christopher Froh: percussion;
• Jim Kassis: percussion;
• Dan Kennedy: percussion;
• Loren Mach: percussion;
• Jake Nissly: percussion;
• Ben Prima: percussion;
• Steven Schick: conductor;
• Megan Shieh: percussion;
• Mark Veregge: percussion;
• Willie Winant: percussion;
• Nick Woodbury: percussion;
• Cynthia Yeh: percussion.

[8:54 PM; musicians back onstage, a bit of tuning and fidgeting, then ready to go…]

1. [8:55 PM] Lei Liang (b. 1972): Luminous (2014, World Premiere), featuring Mark Dresser
   [set ends 9:15 PM; applause and bows for a few minutes, then all off]

• Mark Dresser: contrabass solo;
• Jeff Anderle: clarinet, bass clarinet, vox, percussion;
• Kate Campbell: piano, vox, percussion;
• Susan Freier: violin, vox, percussion;
• Stephen Harrison: cello, vox, percussion;
• Larry Ragent: horns, vox, percussion;
• Steven Schick: conductor;
• Nanci Severance: viola, vox, percussion;
• Nick Woodbury: percussion, vox.

Arrived at the edge of campus with just enough time to stop and grab a House Special savory dinner crepe from Crepes-a-Go-Go on Telegraph, then hustle up the hill towards Hertz Hall while chowing away. Satisfactory!

The opening work by Crumb was fun, a mostly quiet and spacious percussion work that only occasionally visited the thundering dimension where most such pieces reside. I wasn't especially keen on the whispering – in Hindu? – but it did fit into the context reasonably well.

Second work on the program was interesting too, with all of the players helping out on percussion (in addition to their regular duties). Like the first piece, there wasn't a lot of melody to follow; my recollection is that there weren't many phrases that extended longer than a bar or so. All accents, of one sort or another.

Ionisation is one of the ur-texts of the percussion literature, and like Antheil's Ballet Mécanique of 1924, it strongly evokes the energy and optimism of early 20th Century modern music to me. It was fun to hear it twice – an unexpected treat!

The closing work, Lei Liang's Luminous, was interesting enough, a sort of post-modern concerto for amplified acoustic contrabass, but in the end, didn't really seem all that engaging to me. Maybe because I felt like I'd heard plenty of more interesting solo bass work from jazz players? Hard to say. I didn't really find anything wrong with either Dresser's part or the accompaniment, it just didn't grab me enough to sustain my attention over the course of the entire piece. Oh well, they can't all be winners, right?

You can read about the works in the Program Notes, and Roz mentioned in her opening talk that recordings of all three of the new works should be posted on the SFCMP website soon; sounds good to me!

Joe Cadagin posted a nice review of the show for SFCV.

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2015 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2015 event list! ☸ On to the next event!