This past Friday Other Minds announced the release of a new video of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP). That video documents the world premiere performance that had taken place on June 6 of last year at The Freight and Salvage in Berkeley. The composition being presented was a multi-movement suite composed by Øyvind Torvund and titled The Exotica Album. The advance material described this composition as follows:
The Exotica Album re-imagines in collage form the chunky edifice of those Fifties and Sixties popular styles categorized variously as ‘exotica’ or ‘lounge,’ together with a wealth of historical reference points, from early electronic composition to cartoon music. But rather than the flip pastiche or crack-a-nut-with-a sledgehammer cynicism that often characterizes high culture or avant-garde encounters with popular forms, Torvund’s attitude to his sources appears genuinely knowledgeable and affectionate. The result, rather than being a dry, academic-sounding rehash of pre-existing sources, provides a continuously diverting listening experience where the rate of change never lets up.
Sadly, I am afraid I have to differ with the author of this text. I write with the experience of one that grew up with those “popular styles” of the Fifties and Sixties, and I fear that Torvund was disconcertingly out of his depth. Furthermore, I can counter Torvund’s “move” by presenting a counterexample: a composition that basically pursued a similar (but not exactly the same) goal with much greater success (including signs of provocation on the audience side when the music was first performed). Some readers may have guessed by now that the composer is John Adams and the composition is “Grand Pianola Music.”
Screen shot of the video of SFCMP performing The Exotica Album
In the immortal words of the title of Simone Signoret’s memoir, “Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.” Torvund may have had nostalgia in mind; but, whatever his thematic vocabulary may have been, his rhetoric never does justice to the sort of nostalgia he was trying to evoke. I also have a minor nit to pick with the description of the “guest artists” for their performance: “saxophone soloist Larry Ochs and synthesizer virtuoso Jørgen Træen.” The above photograph shows Ochs, and the absence of a music stand may indicate that his contributions were improvised. However, the table that holds the electronic gear seems to support two performers; and (probably like everyone viewing this video) I have no idea which one of them is Træen!
To be fair, I can say that the SFCMP chamber ensemble and conductor Eric Dudley were probably doing their best to account for Torvund’s score. However, the unfolding of that score reminded me of one of my favorite moments in Amadeus involving the first meeting of Mozart and Salieri. Salieri had composed a march to welcome Mozart to the Imperial Court. After all the formalities, the two of them had there first face-to-face conversation; and Mozart offers to play back the march that Salieri composes. His memory was perfect; but, at the certain point, he looks up at Salieri and says, “The rest is just the same, isn’t it?” In The Exotica Album things got “just the same” very early in the performance of what turned out to be a 40-minute composition!
As they say, you can’t win ‘em all.
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