Orphic Percussion Comes to Old First Concerts

Yesterday afternoon Old First Concerts hosted a performance by the Orphic Percussion quartet. All four of the percussionists, Sean Clark, Michael Downing, Divesh Karamchandani, and Stuart Langsam, are based in the Bay Area. Much of their repertoire is consists of commissions, and five of the seven works on the program were taken from those commissions.

The Orphic Percussion quartet playing Alexis’ Alrich’s “Muse of Fire” (screen shot from the YouTube video of yesterday’s performance)

The beneficiaries of the commissions and the titles of their works, in “order of appearance” on the program, are as follows

1. Alexis Alrich, Muse of Fire
2. Gary Heaton Smith, Rendezvous I
3. Alejandro Vinao, Stress and Flow
4. Shaun Tilburg, Series of Accidents
5. Kenneth Froelich, Stuck in Loops

The other selections on the program were “Gravity” by Marc Mellits and David Skidmore’s “Donner.” By all rights, this should have been a showcase of diversity; but, in spite of the many different instruments and variations in styles, I must confess that I found it difficult to avoid settling into an overall sense of sameness across the two-hour event.

Mind you, there was no arguing the skills of the four performers, not only in the command of their respective instruments but also their impeccable techniques of interplay where complex polyrhythms were involved. Furthermore, it would be fair to say that each of the seven contributing composers brought a unique voice to the overall program. Nevertheless, regardless of that diversity in the skills of execution, the overall journey was never quite as engaging as I had expected it to be. This may have had something to do with the “overload” of that diversity, leading to a creeping sense of “enough is enough” long before the program concluded. Yes, every selection on the program had its own merits worthy of attention; but I fear that my attention began to lag before all those merits had run their course.