Sonic Revelations, Sonic Revolutions

Pretty much every week since I’ve come to Oberlin has been filled with good music. This week was no different.

On the weekend I listened to DW 2 by Lang while doing my laundry, and subsequently freaked out. The way he utilizes repetition and instrumentation is something awesome; I heard funk, I heard jazz, and I heard classical, all coming from this piece’s pieces of repeated phrases and seemingly random sequences of riffs. I felt like I do when I take samples from a song and loop them infinitely in Acid Pro, the program I’m most used to. But the way Lang moves and progresses past little snippets of a violin here and a cello here and vocals there is really something to behold. I’m really into what this guy does. It’s like DJing with pen and paper and an orchestra; it’s really something else.

Also: “First you put on your shirrrrrrrrt”

Sweet Honey in the Rock also played Sunday, to a pretty packed Finney Chapel. I was really glad to see this group perform, seeing as they’ve been writing and performing since the 70s. It was really a site to behold, with the backdrop of the very recent election of Barack Obama livening up the mood and bringing so much contemporary meaning to the songs they sang. The signer, the traditional African instruments, and the audience participation really made the performance special, adding to the raw talent behind the world-famous a capella group. It was a great start to the week.

Finally, Eighth Blackbird was amazing! I only caught the second half of the show, but I must say, Steve Reich’s “Double Sextet” was incredible. After seeing how the pianists, violinists, cellists and company interacted with each other’s vibrations throughout the piece was really inspiring, and made me want to write pieces in a similar fashion, that go beyond the plane of standard composition, and implement elements of improvisation, performer interaction, and algorithmic sequences.

Altogether, this week was really inspiring for me musically. I can’t wait to get some spare time to work on my own music…

It seems that most people are writing about this concert, and for good reason. These guys are extremely tight, energetic, and very much on the cutting edge of musical performance. I had a blast at this concert; the music they chose to perform covered a wide range of feelings and ideas that kept me on my toes. I loved the last two pieces, but everyone seems to be talking about Double Sextet so I’ll focus on Les Moutons de Panurge. Despite the informative program notes on this piece, I still wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I was first happily surprised to find myself locked in a twisted groove, but after some time I realized the piece would begin to deconstruct. Here’s where things got interesting; as we briefly discussed in class yesterday, the musicians took the piece off the page like a child lets a balloon fly into the sky. You begin with a foundation, an initial structure, but the true musicality is found in drifting away. At this point they began to walk about the stage, immersed in their own path of this byzantine sequence of notes. The overlapping rhythms felt great and the individual ideas leapt out in all sorts of directions. The piece melted itself to an end, the only real way to complete such a concept. Thoroughly enjoyable.

I loved the concert. I loved this piece.  The reflections, echos, and repetitions between the pairs of instruments was amazing, and kept the piece in constant motion.  I especially loved the play between the two pianos.  The rhythms were interesting and complex for each of the two pianists, but together the rhythms sounded regular and full.  As the backbone for the piece, the pianos would play a series of chords, over and over in a certain rhythm – and they were right on.  Not only was it awesome, it was also almost machinelike (in a good way) in the clean performance of the piece.  I found it hard to hear anything but the two driving pianos, setting the mood and rhythm, creating a whirl of motion and a framework for the other instruments in the piece.  The vibraphones were also interesting, how they played off the pianos and off each other… and the other instruments, above this base, created a gorgeous melody and a beautifully complex tapestry… but all I could focus on was the pianos. When the piece was coming to an end, I could sense it, and I was not happy about it.  I was honestly unsure of how it could stop, and if I would be ok if it did. But still as the piece came to a close, it seemed right, and it turned out that I was alright after all.  Reich’s piece is one of my favorites so far, and I would second that if Eighth Blackbird had another performance I would be there, and if they had a CD of this piece, I would buy it.  I really loved it.

I want to blog this week about the Eight Blackbird concert.

I think the first piece by Reich, the Cello Counterpart, was a wonderful performance, not only by the musician, but as a general presentation.  I will not take time on this piece because I would just end up repeating how much I liked it.
Instead I am going to talk about the first piece Eight Blackbird performed, Knight, Death, and Devil by Rzewski.    This piece is far for being the favourite composition of Rzewski I have heard, but it was very interesting to see performed.    The most obvious point to mention is the broken glass-broken plates period in the middle of the piece.   The percussionist got into work globes and glasses and broke glass and plates inside a garbage can he was using as percussion.  He hit the can repetitively wit a stick and by throwing it from over his head.  Then he made noise with his finger in the metal.    This period of apparent randomness was definitely something I did not understand at all, but that certainly blended with other absurd aspects of the composition.
The other aspect I think was interesting was the vocals.   The performers would at some points make vocal noises, both similar to singing and just “coughing” noises.  This was once enlarged by the fact that everyone took their tongues out after a particular part of the performance.
Knight, Death, and Devil was a very mixed composition.  It had parts when all the instruments came together in harmony and was really easy to digest, only to then break into disorder and dissonance.     I thought this composition was interesting, although I would like to hear more about the specific parts of it and their importance towards the piece as a whole.  I particularly thought the glass event was really random and had no other hooks in the rest of the piece, I didn’t see the need for it.  While commenting with other people that went to the concert, there was an opinion, that I  myself share that this event just wanted to make the piece seem intellectual by confussing the audience.

There’s no more equal sign between music and emotion anymore.

I used to try hard to correlate music with emotion and always found myself successful at it. However, I usually ignored the “something more” in music. Not this time. Reich’s  Double Sextet and Rzewski’s  Les Moutons de Panurge were no way to be concluded as mere expression of emotion. There was so much more that the emotion is actually a side product of these pieces. Just like what Ananda K.Coomaraswamy said, “in true art, self-expression may be an inevitable side effect, but should never be a goal.”

For Rzewski’s piece, it started in an ordinary way. Every instrument played the same note until (I think it’s the) cello began to fall out of the same beat. And things started to get complicated. If I took a broad view of the whole six instruments, they were distinct in tempo yet somehow connected(they play the same note and follow the same rule,of course). It’s like the underlying rule of chaos. However, as time goes on. The texture started to change. The cello and violin developed into more than just simple notes, but a continuous sonic clouds that was really smooth and beautiful. The best part for me was towards the end that everything fades out except the violin. Like clouds broke up and sunlight went through. The violin was so warm that it made me forget the cold outside. It was not intended for releasing emotions of course, but the colors of the texture and the warmth the piece carries reminded me of the transition from winter to spring. It was not strong, but smooth enough to make people smile.

For Reich’s piece, I really can’t write too much before I have the chance to listen to it again. It’s so beautiful both structually and textually. It’s even better listen to it live. The symmetry on stage was so great. (Matt said that.) The pianos gave great massiness to the piece, making it maginificent sonically. They are not that dynamic but provide a solid base upon which the whole piece constructed firmly. The interlocking of notes connected the two sextets togther. And the percussions were quite agile and jumping upon the pianos. The violins played not always in a flowing way, but always just in for a few bars then they came to a pause, then came in again. The pause was rather powerful and injected life into the piece. What is the best part, for me, is the ending. The sound mass escalated and escalated, and just exploded. I was so into the whole feeling that the piece was trying to convey and was not sure what exactly happened to each of the instruments. But the feeling was just so great. The explosion(actually it suddenly stopped, but to me, it was like the big bang, maybe it’s just because that the light was so intense that it actually blinded me.) was so sure to happen, but when it happened, it was still so amazing.

I don’t know what else to add to this. If there’s another performance, I will be there and if this would be in a CD, I would buy it. And my demand curve is relatively inelastic. But anyway, it’s amazing, amazing and amazing.