Innovative Music from an Innovative Trio

Justine Preston, Naomi Stine, and Kyle Beard in performance at Old First Presbyterian Church (screen shot from the YouTube video of their recital)

Last night in Old First Presbyterian Church, the Slow Wave trio gave its first Old First Concerts recital. The members are clarinetist Kyle Beard, violist Justine Preston, and pianist Naomi Stine. They seem to have come together in order to prepare a performance of a trio written in 2006 by Finnish composer Kalevi Aho. (Fun fact: On the BIS recording of this trio, the clarinet part is performed by Osmo Vänskä, better known in this country for his directorship of the Minnesota Orchestra.) That trio served as the centerpiece for a program whose other selections were written for the trio on commissions.

The earliest of those works was composed for the trio’s inaugural performance in 2019. This was Brett Austin Eastman’s “Paraphrase,” which, on last night’s program, served as a “pairing” with Aho’s trio. Like Eastman, all the other contributing composers are based in the Bay Area. The Aho trio was preceded by works by JooWan Kim and Julie Barwick (who also served as Stine’s page turner). At the other end the program concluded with works by Kyle Hovatter and Emma Logan. (Logan and Barwick are co-founders of the Helia Music Collective, which supports the creative endeavors of women in music throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.) Aho was the only composer that was not present to attend this recital.

Programs consisting entirely of unfamiliar compositions tend to run the risk of listener fatigue due to cognitive overload. For the most part all of the composers worked successfully with providing “mind-sized chunks.” Aho’s trio was about a quarter of an hour in duration, but it consisted of five movements played without interruption. The program note for this piece described it as “a compelling musical tapestry;” and the music’s journey through diverse and engaging sonorities lived up to that description.

It would be fair to say that each of commissioned composers found his/her own path for exploring the unconventional diversity in the sonorities of the three instruments. For the most part Stine kept her contributions to the keyboard. Unless I am mistaken, she approached the piano’s interior only once during the entire program. Over the course of the program, the clarinet parts would often venture into music for bass clarinet, thus extending the scope of clarinet sonorities in favor of the lower register. On the other hand the breadth of the viola parts often ventured into violin territory, given a consistently engaging account by Preston.

Nevertheless, the breadth and novelty of the overall program asks much of even the most attentive listener, which is why having a video document will definitely benefit those interested in learning more about this unique chamber ensemble and the repertoire it is cultivating.