The three years in which Michael Gordon has been composer-in-residence at Merkin Concert Hall have seen a marked increase in the amount of downtown music to be found north of 14th Street and south of Columbia University -- not a wholesale incursion by any means, but certainly a steady trickle. Located just north of Lincoln Center, Merkin is a comfortable, useful auditorium most often occupied by rental performances in recent years. Gordon's tenure -- and that of Merkin Hall director Karen Chester, hired in 2002 -- generated a spark of excitement the likes of which the venue hadn't been seen in some time. The arrival of Gordon and his Bang on a Can colleagues, the New York Festival of Song, the New York Guitar Festival and the innovative No Minimum series of jazz-piano concerts all suggested that Merkin was ready to emerge from the shadow of Lincoln Center and establish its own distinct identity.
On Saturday night, as the first event in his final four-concert Ear Department series, Gordon presented three works made in collaboration with Bill Morrison, the filmmaker with whom Gordon created the haunting cinematic symphony Decasia. The first work, Who by Water, received its world premiere; Light Is Calling, for solo violin and electronics, had been presented during a one-day Gordon festival at Merkin in May 2004, while Gotham, a substantial, multi-movement piece for chamber orchestra, was premiered by the American Composers Orchestra at Zankel Hall in February 2004. "At Zankel, that piece was amplified," Gordon noted in an opening statement. "Tonight, it's not amplified, and I think it's even louder."
Named for a passage from the Rosh Hashana service, Who by Water features archival film footage of passengers embarking on a sea journey on a massive ocean liner. Some are impassive, others smile and a few laugh uproariously; decay in the film stock sets their faces awash in aqueous ripples. Behind the translucent screen, Patti Monson conducted TACTUS, the Manhattan School of Music's fine contemporary music ensemble, in a score that suggested the inexorable drive of history, along with a certain sense of mounting tension. Tambourine, shaker and bass drum paced falling patterns in the winds and brasses, punctuated by crunching power chords on electric guitar. Piano, guitar and bass took up an ascending figure while a string quartet floated up and down in seasick dissonances. Halfway through, the basic pulse doubled into an urgent, staccato beat as the images of the passengers were further blurred by film emulsion. Bass drum and cymbal joined the frantic pace near the end, driving the work to its shockingly sudden ending; strings whimpered briefly in the resonating aftermath.
In Light Is Calling, violinist Caleb Burhans, a composer, arranger and member of Alarm Will Sound, played the solo-violin role originally created by another violinist-composer, Todd Reynolds. Accompanied by a heartbeat pulse, swirling keyboards and a warm chorus of prerecorded strings, Burhans's violin sang out sweetly elegiac lines; on screen, characters from the 1926 film The Bells melted, burned and congealed in a near-psychedelic whirlpool of celluloid decay. The result was almost unspeakably beautiful, even poignant.
Like Light Is Calling, the chamber-orchestra piece Gotham was conceived in the years immediately following 9/11. But while the former work offers something of a gentle, abstract elegy, the latter is far more clearly a hymn to the spirit of an ever-regenerating city. The premiere, although inadequately performed, suggested a tremendous promise that was at last realized tonight by the animated Monson and her well-drilled, eager players. The opening movement is one of Gordon's most bucolic creations: pulses in three and four gently jostle under sustained strings while onscreen, sheep placidly graze on a meadow while automobiles pass in the distance. As the film shifts to footage of a steam boat chugging upriver, a smoky scene of buglers and a birds-eye view of skyscrapers, instrumental textures rippled slightly out of phase, creating a smeared effect that echoed Morrison's layering of images.
A boisterous second movement paced footage of bustling pedestrian traffic and vertiginous images of workmen balanced precariously on beams and scaffolding. Horns wailed in alarm as the camera panned past terraced urban ziggurats. In Ionisation, Edgard Varèse concocted a musical language that echoed the sirens and suspension bridges of the modern city; to this, Gordon introduced an element of headlong speed that echoes the city's pulse. The final movement opened with galloping strings, as the screen split into four sectors. At top left, a workman sat on a suspended girder, impassively scanning the urban horizon; at bottom right, corroded film suggested perpetual decay. The other two panels were filled with bustling traffic, on sidewalks, streets and rivers. The frenetic composition, including a brilliantly liquid passage for slide trumpet and trombones, effected a vivid impression of New York City's constant state of birth, decay and rebirth. Performed as securely as it was here tonight, Gotham was finally revealed to be as meaningful, masterful and moving a creation as Decasia -- and one with which any New Yorker locked in a love-hate relationship with his or her hometown could most surely relate.
Three remaining events in Gordon's final Ear Department series include the annual Bang on a Can People's Commissioning Fund concert on February 22 (with new pieces by Yoav Gal, Annie Gosfield and John Hollenbeck, plus a local premiere by Ornette Coleman); an Emerging Composers showcase with Clarice Assad, Missy Mazzoli and Stefan Weisman on March 1; and a performance of Yoav Gal's multimedia biblical tale, Mosheh, on March 29. With Gordon's tenure -- and Chester's, as well -- now at an end, one can only hope that Merkin Concert Hall will find some way to continue building on the momentum established over the last three seasons.
Music combined with video to altogether different ends in a performance by the Bajofondo Tango Club in the Allen Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Columbus Circle enclave on Friday night -- part of Lincoln Center's ongoing "Passion of Osvaldo Golijov" festival. The group, led by Argentine guitarist, producer and composer Gustavo Santaolalla, served up a seductive mix of tango and electronica -- likely better suited to the discotheque than the concert hall. Representing for Argentine tradition were violinist Javier Casalla and bandoneonist Martín Ferrés, both of whom were startlingly versatile, fluent musicians.
So, too, was Luciano Supervielle, whether he was offering stately piano figures, funky keyboard lines or thrillingly athletic turntable scratching. Bassist Gabriel Casacuberta lent the evening an earthy gravity; at the rear of the stage, composer-producer Juan Campódonico paced the evening with pumping house beats and samples from his laptop. In an acoustic interlude, singer Cristóbal Repetto held forth with a piercingly nasal sob of a voice, the kind you'd expect to hear struggling to rise from the grooves of an old 78 rpm shellac; rejoining the full band later, his plaintive tones cut through the mass of amplified instruments.
A listener whose perception of tango was shaped by the subversive work of Astor Piazzolla might have been confused or even disappointed; for all its modern sophistication, Bajofondo's music has far more in common with the ballroom than with Piazzolla's course, sweaty milonga. His brutal pulse and cruel syncopations surfaced only once, in a tune backed by video footage of armored vehicles and massed dissent. Otherwise, video artist Verónica Loza -- who worked onstage alongside the other players -- filled the screen overhead with scenes of fashion models, venerable performers, gorgeous vistas of Argentine cities and countryside, and digital abstractions. During the last song of the set proper, a dark black curtain slowly rose, dramatically revealing Columbus Circle and Central Park South to an admiring gasp from the audience.
At the heart of the performance was the tasteful guitar playing and animated presence of Santaolalla, who bounced around the stage like a 24-year-old rock star. At the beginning of the concert, Santaolalla predicted that the audience would be dancing by the evening's end; during the last song, he and one of his technicians saw to this end by running up into the audience and bringing people down to the Allen Room's tiny dance floor. Watching Santaolalla drag Dawn Upshaw down for a spin was one of many highlights of the evening. Golijov himself stayed put, beaming during the band's grand finale as well as its loudly compelled encore numbers.
Playlist:
Decapitated - Organic Hallucinosis (Earache)
Joe Fiedler Trio - Plays the Music of Albert Mangelsdorff (Clean Feed)
Los Horoscopos de Durango - Antes Muerta que Sencilla (Disa)
Benjamin Britten - Albert Herring - English Chamber Orchestra/Benjamin Britten (Decca)
Michael Gordon - Weather - Ensemble Resonanz/Evan Ziporyn (Nonesuch)
Fripp & Eno - The Equatorial Stars (DGM)
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