Disappointing Encounters with SFCMP

Yesterday afternoon at The Lab, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP) presented the third installation in its Sound Encounters series. This series involves a collaboration that brings SFCMP musicians together with composers (primarily students) currently working at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT), based at the University of California at Berkeley. Due to my always-busy schedule, this was my first opportunity to experience the results of one of these programs.

All of the composers showcased in this installment were also performers. In “order of appearance,” they presented the following compositions:

• Eda Er: “Too Much of a Woman,” scored for solo voice, electronics, amplified objects, and video
• Kevin CK Lo: “The Audience Plays Itself,” scored for solo bass, electronics, cameras, and projection gear
• Aine Nakamura: “Kusottare!,” scored for solo voice and electronics

The program also featured one of the SFCMP musicians, bass player Richard Worn. In the spirit of the CNMAT students, he presented a composition of his own for bass and electronics (“Apocolectric”), as well as providing the bass part for Lo’s composition. He also played two solo works from the twentieth century. The program began with Hans Werner Henze’s “San Biagio 9 Agosto Ore.” Worn’s other selection was “Theraps,” composed by Iannis Xenakis, whose centennial is being celebrated throughout Europe but with almost no attention here in the United States.

In this heavily electronic setting, Worn emerged as the star of the show. His own composition cultivated the sweet spot where the natural sound of his instrument blended intimately with electronic synthesis. There was also a modest bit of theatrics with a lamp sitting on the floor only for the sake of its presence, since Worn performed his composition from memory. That presence had to do with the title of the last of the piece’s three movements, “Lights Out,” an event that signaled the end of the composition.

The other twentieth-century compositions did not hold up very well. However, in fairness to the memory of the composers, I feel it important to observe that the program book provided absolutely no information about their works being performed. Indeed, nothing more than a biographical sketch was provided; and that was sadly inadequate in preparing for the experience of listening to either of the two pieces on the program.

“Theraps” is a Greek word for healing, but relevance to the music is unclear. Xenakis, who taught at Indiana University, wrote a book, which was originally published in French and then translated into English as Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition for publication by the Indiana University Press. Sadly, the book is heavily focused on probability theory, with the occasional nod to abstract algebra and a few intimations of computer programming.

None of this would inform the experience of listening to “Theraps.” Indeed, my own experience reflected on whether Xenakis wanted to compensate for the fact that Luciano Berio had not written a “Sequenza” composition for the bass. As to the Henze offering, presumably it was acknowledging a historical event; but, in the absence of any program notes, the attentive listener could only make educated guesses.

Sadly, the CNMAT offerings never rose to the level of Worn’s performances. More often than not, these seemed to have more to do with playing with technology, rather than harnessing that technology for the sake of making music. This was particularly the case with Lo’s composition, which encouraged the audience to move around, using those gestures to create the score that Worn was playing in real time.

Only in Nakamura’s “Kusottare!” was technology kept to a minimum, working just with video enhancement. My own impression of this composition was that it was a butoh realization of Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene in the “Scottish play” (Macbeth) by William Shakespeare. Nakamura made her first appearance an a costume that included lengthy sheets of paper with some arcane notation. She subsequently shredded those sheets, handing out the shreds to members of the audience as part of the exit process. Since I was one of the recipients of a shred, I can share it with the readers: