Kate Campbell’s Ross McKee Video

Kate Campbell (screen shot from the video being discussed)

This evening’s installment in the live-streamed Piano Break series presented by the Ross McKee Foundation was a solo recital by Kate Campbell. Campbell is probably best known to most readers as the pianist for the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, whose next program will be presented tomorrow evening. The one-sentence description of Campbell’s program on the event page for her performance describes it as “a recital of fun, quirky, and deeply personal works in a program that celebrates Bay Area Composers and the diversity in contemporary classical music.”

Those enumerated attributes failed to capture the role of brevity that permeated much of Campbell’s program. Indeed, the very opening selection by Ryan Brown was entitled “Four Short Pieces for Solo Piano;” and brevity was definitely the soul of wit behind each of those pieces. The wit itself tended to be subtle, such as writing the opening piece, “Cellar Door,” in the highest register of the piano keyboard. I also suspect that Brown was giving a sly nod or two to the Baroque tradition by casting the last of these pieces, “Shoestring,” as a gigue, as if to say to both soloist and audience, “You see, this is just another traditional suite after all!”

If Brown’s pieces were short, each of the eight movements of Leila Adu’s Colour Wheel were downright microscopic. Each movement had the brevity of a haiku and the haiku spirit of capturing a single moment as an intense expression. I must confess that I never found a connection between the titles assigned to the movements and the experience of listening to each of them over such a short duration. Perhaps Adu simply wanted a better point of reference for each of the pieces that was more than just a number.

Most fascinating was the somewhat lengthier world premiere performance of the first etude for solo piano composed by Matthew Welch. Welch gave this etude the title “Gupekan,” which is a noun that denotes Balinese hand-drumming. Indonesian music is more often associated with pitched percussion, such as metallic xylophones and pitched gongs; and there are suggestions of pentatonic pitch classes in Welch’s composition. However, there is clearly a focus on rhythm, which Campbell captured and presented in a compelling performance.

The final composition was David Lang’s “Wed.” I do not normally think of him as a “Bay Area Composer,” since he was one of the founders of the New York-based Bang on a Can. However, he did his undergraduate work at Stanford, which has to count for something! Nevertheless, I have to confess that I have never really warmed up to Lang’s composition; and, given the meticulous approaches to brevity that preceded his “final word” on the program, I have to say that he music felt more than a tad on the long-winded side.