Friday, August 30, 2019

A Splendid Survey of Pamela Z’s Inventiveness

from the cover of last night’s program

Last night The Lab hosted a solo recital by Pamela Z entitled Other Rooms. The concert was held in conjunction with side by side/in the world, an exhibition featuring California artists reflecting on the current nature of immigration and the rise of sanctuary cities. That exhibition will be on display through September 14 in the San Francisco Arts Commission Main Gallery, located on the first floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue. The Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

In her program note Z described Other Rooms as “a suite of solo works (some old, some new) for voice, electronics, gesture-controlled MIDI instruments, and projected moving image.” Since she will be leaving soon to take up her residency at the American Academy in Rome as a winner of the 2019–20 Rome Prize, she could have added that the program served as a sort of “short-term farewell concert.” For those who have attended many of Z’s performances, many of the older compositions were familiar; but the visuals were, for the most part, original, often conceived as an integral part of some of the newer pieces.

The program note also included brief descriptions for each of the compositions. However, given the integral significance of the projections, distraction from the performing area was definitely not a good idea. As the performance progressed, I used my program only to seize quick glances of the titles of the individual selections, saving the descriptions themselves for later consultation. For the most part, the music spoke for itself, although I must confess to feeling a bit of advantage on the basis of both past performances and basic engineering knowledge of the technology she was engaging in each piece.

Many of the selections were witty. “Typewriter” left me wondering just how many in the audience knew what a typewriter was, let alone used one. As a result, I had a particularly nostalgic reaction to the sampled sounds of the key strokes themselves. The spoken text suggests the efforts of a contemporary individual trying to write electronic mail on a typewriter; and I found it a hysterically funny perspective on my own transition from physical to digital writing.

Equally witty was “Unknown Person” from the larger Baggage Allowance composition. The text reflected the routine instructions given at the airport related to the scanning of carry-on luggage. The projected images suggested the results of the scans until surrealist “invasions” began to take over the pictures, many suggesting that live creatures were crawling around inside the bags.

It is also worth noting that the opening selection, called, simply, “Opening,” provided just the right workout for cognitive perception to prepare for the remainder of the program. The projections were initially blurred, even before Z began her solo. However, as she sang, one began to realize that the images would come in and out of focus, the precision of focus correlated with the amplitude of Z’s voice. Thus, “Opening” was not just an opening but also a “perceptual warm-up,” getting the audience in shape for the prodigious variety of experiences to follow.

Following the suite itself, Z offered an encore in the form of her personal interpretation of Meredith Monk’s “Scared Song.” Monk composed this piece for her own singing and keyboard accompaniment. Z explained to the audience how she reconceived this piece to work with her electronic gear without compromising the spirit behind the original composition. Thus, taken as a whole, the evening was an engaging exposition of the many ways in which Z has harnessed contemporary technology for her own creative purposes, and her results continue to be refreshing in both their novelty and their expressiveness.

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