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Kansas City's Online Journal of the Performing Arts

NewEar Contemporary Ensemble performed last Monday, February 16 at MidAmerica Nazarene University with a truncated version of Crossing Acoustic Spaces, Concert 3 in their season series called Crossings which explores the acoustic setting of musical performance and features pieces of music that make special uses of acoustics. The new and impressive Mabee Performing Arts Hall within Bell Cultural Events Center is a state-of-the-art facility only a little over a year old, and was designed for its acoustic environment with the latest in audio and multimedia capabilities. It's a beautiful and wonderful sounding space and was the perfect venue for this concert.

This performance was designed for the students of MNU, but was open (and free) to the public as well. This was an excellent opportunity to see and hear great new music and discuss the works with the players and even the composers. During the performance, the musicians invited questions from the audience and the evening nearly developed into a discussion between the performers and the students.

The first piece of music was Crossroads Songs by Evan Chambers for flute, alto saxophone, piano and percussion. It's good to hear chamber music with saxophone because that instrument still rarely crosses the street from the jazz club to the concert hall – if it is not marched away in a parade.

The piece was melodic and emotional. And as mentioned in an earlier review of newEar, (newEar's Kansas City Connections, I remarked that contemporary music in the 21st century seems to be moving in a more melodic and emotional direction than it did in much of the late 20th century. Crossroads Songs fits that forecast perfectly. The focus is on the melody and the emotional content. The first movement, “Nightwaking/Distant Past,” is about chaos vs. restraint and the second movement, “Simple Song/Hymn,” about consolation and rest. There was an expression of tension and release—emotion. In the first movement the melody became a crescendo that reached towards piercing high overtones on the alto saxophone against fluctuating rhythms in the marimba each time it started, developed and restarted in a progression of upward lifting strains, reaching to escape. The second movement was a resolution to the tension of the first--a simple hymn with a strong beautiful melody.

Chambers' aim was to combine multiple ethnic influences and the result sounds almost improvised even though the score is sharply orchestrated. In classical music of the 20th century, ethnic themes were almost always treated individually. This mixing of variables led to an emotional swirl of motific interplay.

The middle piece was Inconspicuous Impulses for piano and electronics by Kansas City composer Christopher Biggs. "Electronics" is the best word to describe an aspect of contemporary music and refers to digital accompaniment that is played (and performed by a computer) during a performance with another acoustic instrument. Biggs sampled sounds and manipulated them with a computer, and then arranged them to fit together in performance with a live pianist. The piano score included cues by the electronics for the pianist to follow—to keep in sync with the computer.

Another Kansas City based composer, James Mobberley, composed a breakthrough piece for piano and "electronic tape" in 1987, Caution to the Winds. For this piece Mobberley made an analog tape of manipulated piano sounds that played along with a live pianist. In the just over 20 years since then, computers and digital technology have grown enormously and Biggs is able to manipulate the samples he uses in Inconspicuous Impulses in far more complex ways. The young history of music for instrument and electronics began like Mobberley's work with a live instrument and an accompanying tape made from sounds produced usually by the same instrument, but performing phrases a person could not. Biggs' electronics feature sounds from more than just the accompanying instrument, and can be manipulated in much more complex ways. With the current technology, more sophisticated timbral nuances can be explored. Biggs says the piano "becomes larger than itself." This use of more complex manipulations and, in particular, from more diverse sources, is comparable to the use of multiple ethnic influences in Crossroads Songs as similar features of contemporary music.

The final piece was Ever Present by Alvin Lucier for flute, alto saxophone and piano with electronics. The electronics used here are specifically "slow sweep pure wave oscillators."

The oscillators produce two pure sign wave tones that slowly move up and down in pitch, moving in opposite directions to a certain point and then continuing downward together until resting on the final pitches. These oscillators also pan left to right in stereo on the house sound system. As the pure waves oscillate they produce a phenomenon called "beating" or "beats."

Beats occur because at least two sign waves of different frequency (and pitch) are heard by the ear at once. The combination is perceived as a wobbling sound; there are fluctuations in the amplitude (volume) of the sounds caused by the sound waves as they reverberate and bump into each other. The speed of the wobbling varies too depending on how great the difference in frequency. Lucier uses this phenomenon to produce consonant or dissonant harmonies between the oscillators and the acoustic instruments.

Ever Present sounded wonderful in the Bell Center as a concert piece, but this piece could stand alone and be performed (anywhere there is electricity, that is) as an installation piece. Listening to this work is an event that encompasses the whole space of the theater. Sounds can be heard ‘crossing’ from left to right and right to left. At some points it even sounded as though the sound was pushing out into the audience before recoiling.

For both of these last two works, I wanted to ask why microphones were not used on the acoustic instruments. George Crumb has pieces for "electric piano;" a term he used to refer to a piano that had a microphone inside the lid over the soundboard. Crumb was trying to intensify the sound of the piano, especially in works for prepared piano. NewEar could apply this to the piano so it can hold its own against the electronic sounds coming over the theater sound system. The same could be done for the flute and the saxophone as well. This would also allow for more stereo panning in the Lucier piece. Moreover, this technique would also encourage more 'interaction' between the computer and the electrified acoustic instruments.

These three works provided a good sampling of some trends in contemporary music, the move toward melody and emotion in Crossroads Songs, and the use of electronics in Inconspicuous Impulses and Ever Present. Both of these trends in contemporary music will continue to figure in new compositions as we move further into the new millennium. Crossing Acoustic Spaces exposed a sense of unruliness and curiosity in contemporary music. There is a reaction to, or progression from the constructive qualities of 20th century music, and use of electronics takes the sound experience to other levels and explores sounds with a wider imagination.


REVIEW:
newEar Contemporary Ensemble
Feb. 16, 2009, 4pm. (Free)
Mabee Performing Arts Hall of Bell Cultural Events Center,
MidAmerican Nazarene University,
www.newear.org.

By Scott Easterday

New Classical Contributor, VIDs Department Director

Scott Easterday is a musician and singer/songwriter. He writes reviews and performs interviews for KCMetropolis in New Classical and explores new directions in the performing arts.