Last night at the Noe Valley Ministry, the Nomad Session octet concluded its second season of concerts. The title of the program was Infinity; and, like the preceding concerts in the season, it featured a world premiere performance. The title of the composition was “Figure Eight,” written by Mario Godoy. The title of the entire season was The Eight, and the only request made to Godoy was that his piece have something to do with the number eight.
In his introductory remarks, Godoy made it clear that the title referred to a never-ending path, perhaps made by a figure skater. In other words he saw a connection between the character that stands for the number eight (8) and the symbol that arises when you tip that character on its side, the character that represents infinity (∞). Furthermore, both characters have the property of consisting of two halves that reflect each other. Those properties began to emerge as the premises behind Godoy’s composition.
The double-loop shape of the character translated into musical ideas involving repetitive structures. That phrase was, of course, invoked by Philip Glass in order to avoid calling his work “minimalist;” but there was never any sense that Godoy was following in Glass’ footsteps. Rather, it seemed as if Godoy had developed a palette of motifs, many of which were associated with the specific instruments in the Nomad octet: flute (Christy Kim), oboe (Jesse Barrett), clarinet (Jon Szin), bassoon (Kris King), trumpet (Ian Cochran), horn (Stephanie Stroud), trombone (Matt Carr), and tuba (Jonathan Seiberlich). It was almost as if Godoy wished to invoke the idea of a conversation among the players; but it was, more often than not, a conversation in which everyone was talking at once (otherwise known as eight-voice polyphony).
Finally, the piece was divided into two parts that were conceived to reflect each other, thus going back to the graphic shape that represents both a specific number and the concept of infinity. However, the reflections explored during the second movement were more figurative than literal. Godoy’s view of reflection involved contrasts, rather than duplications; and those contrasts emerged through changes in tempo and density among the multiple voices. The reader may guess by now that the composer had packed considerable thought about content into his structure; and, to be fair, there was more in the package than could be processed by a single listening experience. I, for one, would welcome another chance to listen to this piece sooner, rather than later.
As was the case in previous concerts, the remainder of the program was devoted to arrangements, all provided by members of the ensemble. Stroud arranged the pieces that began both halves of the program. The opening selection was Edvard Grieg’s “Troldtog” (march of the dwarfs). This was originally included in the fifth book (Opus 54) of Lyric Pieces for solo piano. He subsequently arranged four of those Opus 54 compositions for full orchestra, giving the new version the title Lyric Suite; and “Troldtog” was the final movement in that version. As might be guessed, Grieg made full use of his orchestral resources to establish a rhetoric of lush sonorities that contrasted sharply with the piano version. Stroud came up with yet another set of contrasts, occasionally witty and consistently imaginative.
Even more imaginative was her approach to Arvo Pärt’s setting of the Magnificat canticle. Pärt composed this piece for five-part (SSATB) a cappella choir, using different combinations of the voices to set the individual phrases. Rather than simply substituting instruments for voices, Stroud prepared a score in which each performer was to alternate between playing and singing. Until the final sections, all of the singing was wordless, suggesting that the instrumentation for the score had been doubled in an unconventional manner. Only at the very end was the word “Magnificat” itself finally uttered, transforming what had seemed to be an abstract exercise into a unique perspective on the nature of sacred music.
The remaining work on the program was Percy Grainger’s suite of folk songs he had collected during a trip to Lincolnshire in England. He called this piece Lincolnshire Posy and scored it for large concert band. How large? The Wikipedia entry for this composition requires three lines of text to account for the full instrumentation of the score.
Scaling all of that down to four winds and four brass was a major undertaking, and it was managed jointly by Stroud, King, and Seiberlich. I have to say, personally, that the sonority of the full ensemble is so dazzling that I often lose track of the tunes themselves and Grainger’s ingenious approaches to arrangement. Nomad’s “chamber” version facilitated focusing attention on his Lincolnshire source content and the almost vocal qualities of the eight instruments accounting for those tunes.
As was the case with its last concert, Nomad took a lighthearted approach to presenting an encore. This time the offering was “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” whose original version as incidental music for Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt required a full chorus to supplement the rich orchestral writing. As was the case with the Grainger arrangements, King’s stripped-down approach blew away any traces of the sinister rhetoric of the original score, emerging more in the wittier domain that Duke Ellington explored when he arranged the same music for his own band.
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