Technology Takes it on the Chin at SFCM

An example of Feuillet’s dance notation (from a Wikimedia Commons Web page, public domain)

Last night on the ground floor of the Bowes Center, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) presented a survey of works by eight students in the Technology and Applied Composition department. The student performers were Lylia Guion on violin, cellist Megan Chartier, and Taylor Chan on piano. For the world premiere of one selection, Han Lash’s “Orchesography,” they were joined by Nanette McGuinness, Artistic Executive Director of Ensemble for These Times, who served as narrator. I could not identify the source of the text, but I am pretty certain that it had nothing to do with either Thoinot Arbeau or Raoul Auger Feuillet (the two pioneers of dance notation). Lash was supposed to perform with this ensemble as dancer but was unable to attend.

Taken as a whole, the six works on the program constituted a distressingly incoherent jumble of well-intentioned chamber music performances with video projections running the gamut from arbitrary to tedious. In that context the high point of the evening came with Chartier giving a solo performance of “ko’u inoa” by Leilehua Lanzilotti, which probably came closest to avoiding to mistake of going on for too long. This was a relief in the wake of the the world premieres that preceded it, which, along with “Orchesography,” included “Okean” by Tamara McLeod, Niloufar Nourbakhsh’s “Cavities,” and “Who Are You Now?” by Clark Evans.

Back in my student days, there was a sharp distinction between “Mathematics” and “Applied Mathematics.” The latter was for engineering. The former was often called “Pure Mathematics;” and those who studied it (myself included) took pride in working with “the real thing.” That sense of “the real thing” was painfully absent in last night’s performance, as if it had been cast into the shadows by the “Technology and Applied.” I prefer music that aspires to “purity,” whether in composition or in performance!