New Music That Deserves More Attention

Yesterday evening One Found Sound launched the spring portion of their eight season. This was planned as three concerts to be performed over the course of three months, all organized around the theme title Water Music. The title of yesterday’s program was OCEAN.

The program consisted of three recent compositions, each by a different composer, all of which were given creative music video productions by Max Savage, Video Producer for the Noisy Savage video production house. The music was played at The Midway in Dogpatch; and, where appropriate, Savage provided first-rate accounts of how the music was being performed. However, for other videos, the music served a a “soundtrack” for alternative approaches to imagery.

The “ocean” theme of the program was most evident in the opening selection, “The Mind is Like Water,” scored for violin (Michelle Maruyama) and percussion (Divesh Karamchandani) by Kevin Day. Savage interleaved intimate footage of both performers with vast oceanic panoramas reflecting different aspects of tidal waves and turbulence. Particularly striking was Savage’s decision to present all of this footage in black-and-white. This provided a “shared abstraction” between the images of the ocean and the activities of making the music. From a musical point of view, Day’s sonorities and structures were consistently engaging, and the tuned gongs that were part of Karamchandani’s gear offered up subtle contrasts to Maruyama’s technically impressive violin work.

For the “Marejada” string quartet by Angélica Negrón (which she had composed for the Kronos Quartet on a commission from their Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire project), Savage tended to dwell strictly on the four musicians on stage. However, the music was supplemented with field recordings made in Puerto Rico capturing the sounds of birds and waves. The recordings were made by Ariel Alvarado and Manuel Vázquez. In addition, each of the four quartet players (violinists Laura Keller and Maruyama, violinist Evan Buttemer, and cellist James Jaffe) were required to provide a “coda” with percussion instruments of their own selection. Savage’s attentiveness to these new sound sources definitely enhanced the listening experience. In addition, while the players themselves were “socially distanced,” the camera-work could evoke “illusions of proximity,” which enhanced the “interpersonal” nature of Negrón’s score.

The final selection consisted of three “songs” scored for wind quintet and percussion. These were taken from the third volume in Ivan Trevino’s Song Book series, which seemed to be intended as a “middle ground” between classical and pop genres. The song titles, “Thom,” “St. Annie,” and “Byrne,” seemed to carry pop connotations. However, the quintet of Katrina Walter (flute), Jesse Barrett (oboe and cor anglais), Sarah Bonomo (clarinet), Caitlyn Smith Franklin (horn), and Jamael Smith (bassoon), joined by Karamchandani, clearly presented chamber music rhetoric.

Babatunji Johnson dancing his choreography of Ivan Trevino’s “Thom” (from the YouTube video of the performance being discussed)

In this case, however, none of this was available for viewing. This performance included Babatunji Johnson dancing to his own choreography of Trevino’s songs. Savage captured all of that choreography in outdoor settings. The resulting synthesis was highly invigorating, since, while Trevino’s rhetoric may have been that of chamber music, his expressiveness reflected the pop side of the coin and seemed to provide the primary motivation behind Johnson’s dancing.