Spirits of the Electronic World
The California EAR Unit investigates the sounds machines
make in a loud, fresh program.
By
MARK SWED
TIMES
STAFF WRITER
May
Day is noise day. Demonstrators take to the streets; revelers too. Wednesday
night, leaving downtown for midtown, one could hear the sounds of 10,000
marchers on Spring Street demanding rights for illegal immigrants; listen
to a radio report about a million in Paris protesting Le Pen; and then,
facing blaring boring music from a private fund-raising party, attempt
to walk up the steps of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, past guards
stationed to divert concertgoers. Ironically, all we were after was
more, if fresher and artful, noise in the Leo S. Bing Theater.
The
concert was the blowout of the California EAR Unit's 20th anniversary
season, but it was called "Brown Out." On this evening, noise, along
with a hint of political protest, was this ever-mutable ensemble's metier.
The six superb players of conventional instruments variably confronted,
collided with, marched in lock step with and outwitted the electronic
ether, with the secret sounds your computer makes, with the sounds of
sophisticated Space Age gear, with the amplified ritual of the world
around us. A lot of it was loud; some of it was interesting; much of
it was new.
The
most ambitious piece was a premiere by Laetitia Sonami, an Oakland-based
composer who has been picking up prestigious prizes lately (she just
won this year's Herb Alpert Award in Music). "A Blind Ride" modifies
sounds apparently hidden in electronic documents and spreadsheets, over
which the musicians improvise. Variously placed lightbulbs illuminate
the stage in brief bursts.
Who
knows quite what she was up to on the darkened stage--framed by four
glowing blue dots of lights from the loudspeakers--with her homemade
"lady's glove," full of embedded sensors that let her control sound
and the lightbulbs. Still, Sonami's electronic, computer-document-derived
noises revealed a fascinating papery texture that was not just satisfyingly
visceral, but, at least to one writer not always happily glued to his
machine, downright comforting. The ensemble played mostly floating fragments
that made a beautiful fit with the rustling, swirling electronics.
Nicholas
Frances Chase, a recent CalArts graduate, picked up his electronic ideas
from scratch DJs in "OPUS," in which the composer manned two turntables.
Breaking up his new piece into turntable duets with piano and percussion,
trios with winds and strings, and a fifth section for all the players,
Chase has a fine ear for combinations of sounds. Flamboyant music for
pianist Vicki Ray made intriguing counterpoint with a hand-modulated
piano recording (Brahms' "Paganini" Variations?).
Chase
amusingly challenged violin and cello with a stuck record, sent bass
flute and bass clarinet into scat song with amplified scratches, and
created a percussion extravaganza for Amy Knoles. Not exactly fleet-fingered,
however, Chase broke the piece's momentum with long pauses as he gingerly
changed records and adjusted his score between each section, making
the finale an anticlimax.
Three
other pieces pitted solo instruments against the machine. In Anna Rubin's
"Landmine," written last year and receiving its Los Angeles premiere,
Dorothy Stone's live flute, often electronically thickened, added moody
atmosphere to a pre-recorded, digitally dithered text about the land
mine crisis in Cambodia.
Clarinetist
Marty Walker gave the premiere of a new version of Barney Childs' "The
Edge of the World." Originally for live organ accompaniment, Walker
has adapted the 1981 piece--written for him by Childs, who died in 2000--with
an electronically realized organ part, making it seem all the more a
haunted landscape as the bass clarinet improvises over insistent, sonically
exaggerated diapason chords.
Although
receiving a local premiere, Eric Chasalow's "Hanging in the Balance"
for cello and electronic soundswas the oldie of the evening, not so
much because it was written in 1983, but because the electronics had
the flavor of the back-to-the-future Space Age bleeps and bloops of
the '50s and '60s. Still, Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick's exciting performance
(from memory), and the piece's brief duration made it hang on, if just,
in the present.
For
Mark Trayle's premiere, "Periodic transmission at regular intervals
(are not allowed)," crabbed phrases played by violin (Robin Lorentz),
cello, flute and percussion were tracked by a chirping computer. Typical
of these machines, when given leeway, they want all the attention for
themselves whether they have anything to say or not.
Obviously
in the early stages of evolution, geek musique needs all the
help it can get from real musicians. In the case of the EAR Unit, it
is actually getting it. I just hope the machines are paying attention
as well.
Copyright
2002 Los Angeles Times
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