Earplay Honors Andrew Imbrie at Old First

Readers may recall that, this past March, the Earplay new music ensemble presented its first performance before an audience since the onset of pandemic conditions. The original plan had been to begin Season 37 at the end of January with a celebration of the centennial of the birth of composer Andrew Imbrie. The highlight of that program was to be a full-ensemble performance of Imbrie’s “Dream Sequence.”

Last night Old First Concerts provided Earplay with a platform to present their centennial program. That program also included the world premiere of Fred Lerdahl’s “Reflection,” composed in 2020 on an Earplay commission in Imbrie’s memory. That performance was followed by Tyshawn Sorey’s “For Fred Lerdahl,” composed in 2018. The program began with another world premiere of music composed on an Earplay commission, Hyo-shin Na’s “To the Ice Mountains.”

Imbrie had died early in December of 2007. I acknowledged the occasion in one of my earliest articles, observing how little attention had been given to his passing. Indeed, I did not encounter any sign of attention until November of 2008, when cellist  Jean-Michel Fonteneau dedicated his Faculty Artist Series recital at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music to the memory of Imbrie. After that event, he receded back into oblivion in my personal landscape of memory, only to return in September of 2021 when his first string quartet was included in the Sony Classical anthology Juilliard String Quartet: The Early Columbia Recordings 1949–56.

“Dream Sequence” required the full complement of the current seven Earplayers. Conductor Mary Chun led Terrie Baune (violin), Tod Brody (flute), Peter Josheff (clarinet), Thalia Moore (cello), Ellen Ruth Rose (viola), and Keisuke Nakagoshi (piano). They were joined by oboist Kyle Bruckmann and percussionist Jim Kassis. Imbrie had written his own set of program notes; but, for the most part, this involved a charting of specific events in the score. The fact is that, like much of the contemporary music composed after World War II, this is music that requires several listening experiences to provide a “period of adjustment.” The good news is that Old First Concerts live-streamed last night’s program. The video was recorded and is now available for YouTube viewing.

Lerdahl’s memorial composition was only three minutes in duration. It involved extracting the letters from Imbrie’s full name that could be interpreted as pitch classes. The melodic lines are spun out on flute and clarinet against chord progressions on the piano. However, the composer’s attention to abstraction did little to enhance attentive listening. Sorey’s reflection on Lerdahl was far more engaging, pitting viola and piano against two marimbas (Kassis and colleague Kevin Neuhoff). The program began with “To the Ice Mountains,” which was apparently inspired by Franz Kafka’s short story “The Bucket Rider;” but the connection between literary and musical narrative was, to say the least, difficult to fathom.

Most important was that Imbrie’s memory was finally given the attention it deserved.