Program notes are a useful thing, but sometimes they just don't do a piece justice. At a concert presented by the quartet Flexible Music at the Construction Company Gallery on Saturday night, the following note was provided for the premiere of Atomic Variations, a new piece by Wisconsin-based composer Ethan Wickman:
"Atomic Variations explores some of the basic science, romance, and popular mythology of the atomic bomb. Sometimes chillingly calculated, sometimes warm and humanized, the work makes an epic love story of the physics and forces that comprise the bomb. In its occasional lyricism, the work is never far from a sense of foreboding inevitability -- the consequences of which, though the result of natural, even predictable processes, possess the most unthinkable known to humanity."
With that alone to go by, what I expected was something astringent and most likely violent. What we heard -- and to be fair, the composer tipped his hand in a spoken introduction -- was a clever, elegantly crafted and deliriously charming fantasia on one of the most recognizable melodies in the operatic canon: the aria "Nessun dorma," from Puccini's Turandot.
The first of five sections, "Inertia," opened with sprinkled piano notes from Eric Huebner and the sustained whine of Daniel Lippel's electric guitar, played with an e-bow. Haruka Fujii supplied a steady flow of rhythm and texture with rolling cymbals, pattering snare drum and clanging brake drums, while saxophonist Timothy Ruedeman blew melodies based on tiny fragments of the Puccini aria. The section grew faster and louder as it progressed. In "Pas de deux," Heubner played slow, icy descending figures as Lippel's guitar and Ruedeman's saxophone swirled around each other, gradually falling out of sync. "Separation Anxiety" was built from the mysterious swells that introduce the Puccini aria. "Murder by Numbers" opened with a boisterous percussion solo, followed by huffing baritone saxophone and resonant guitar lines, all playing rhythmic figures based on prime numbers that add up to 92, the elemental weight of uranium on the periodic table. After an introductory processional, Puccini's melody burst out in all its glory in the final movement, "None Shall Sleep." Yet the piece ended not with a predictable bang, but with a quizzical shrug.
All things considered, Atomic Variations was one of the most charming, effective new pieces I've heard recently. My first order of business when I got home was to head to Wickman's website in search of more sounds; unfortunately, there were none to be found. But his name has been duly added to my ever-growing tally of young composers to watch.
He was in good company on Saturday night. The concert opened and closed with pieces by Mikel Kuehn, who teaches composition at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Unfoldings, a solo piece for acoustic guitar, explored the instrument's timbral range in a series of chiming, suspended notes, discontinuous lines and busy flamenco trills. A new ensemble piece, Combo, acknowledged the similarity of Flexible Music to a classic jazz configuration with angular melodic lines bent by occasional blues inflections, which gave the work a smoky film-noir quality.
In place of an explanatory program note for Exorcist, another new piece, composer Andrew Waggoner offered a passage from William Peter Blatty's famous horror novel of the same name, along with quotations from Carl Jung and Primo Levi regarding the banality of evil. Truthfully, I would have appreciated a bit more technical elaboration from Waggoner, but it didn't prevent me from appreciating his episodic sequence of ghostly saxophone multiphonics, greasy electric guitar bends, explosive piano figures and a tremendously involved part for a massive menagerie of percussion instruments. Waggoner's timbral combinations were particularly inventive: a roiling passage driven by pounding roto-toms was followed with a lyrical stretch for alto saxophone paired with bowed cymbal and wobbly flexatone; not long after that, icy lines on piano and guitar backed a growling tenor saxophone and groaning cuica.
The senior composer on the evening's bill, Robert Cuckson (father of violinist Miranda, whose praises I've sung here on several occasions), was represented by his solo piano piece Carillons, in which a thumping pulse and widely scattered, sonorous bell tones built into a furious barrage of melodic cells, which exploded into crashing runs up and down the keyboard in a manner often reminiscent of Cecil Taylor's seismic solo improvisations. The Construction Company's instrument wasn't ideal, but Huebner provided a powerful account all the same.
This was my first encounter with Flexible Music, but it certainly won't be my last. Each player was estimable in his or her own right; together, they provided a broad canvas upon which tonight's composers could unfurl their imaginations. There's a perfectly logical explanation for the group's odd configuration: it's the instrumentation required for Louis Andriessen's Hout, much like other new-music ensembles have been built from the complements required for Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire and Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time.
You can hear an excerpt from a Flexible Music performance of Hout, as well as music by Nico Muhly, Ryan Streber, Orianna Webb, John Link and John Lurie (the last a terrific arrangement of the Lounge Lizards tune "No Pain for Cakes"), on the group's website. Its next New York performance will be held at the New York Quarterly Meeting House on March 30; some of the pieces for that concert, Huebner noted, are most likely still being written.
Playlist:
Anthony Davis - X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X - Priscilla Baskerville, Hilda Harris, Thomas Young, Eugene Perry, Herbert Perry, Episteme, Orchestra of St. Luke's/William Henry Curry (Gramavision)
Anthony Davis - Tania - Cynthia Aaronson-Davis, Thomas Young, Avery Brooks, Episteme/Rand Steiger (Koch International Classics)
Grateful Dead - Dick's Picks, Vol. 5: Oakland Auditorium Arena 12/26/79 and Dick's Picks, Vol. 6: Hartford Civic Center 10/14/83 (Grateful Dead)
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