A Tradition of Change / Mark Alburger

It's hard to believe that electroacoustic music has been around for more than 60 years. Dating back at least to 1948 with Pierre Schaeffer's first tape compositions (a style dubbed Musique Concrete), the genre flourishes in many contexts. One such is chamber music of a live acoustic soloist in consort with electronically generated sounds, and it was this type of concert that was presented, with resounding success, on July 16, by sfSound at Community Music Center.

The featured group was EKG, the duo of oboist / English hornist Kyle Bruckmann and analog electronician Ernst Karel, heard in two works: Christopher Burns's The Mutiny of Rivers (2010) and Morton Feldman's Oboe and Orchestra (1976). The former was an improvisational tour-de-force, where English hornist Bruckman was given 13 unordered large sheets of music (some notational, some instructional) against 6 streams of electronics, from which Karel could sample and further alter before making audible. The result was a fevered thrill ride down a sonic cascade.

The Feldman was just about the opposite, as expected. Known for his extended, meditative, tangentially-minimalist soundscapes, Feldman offers here about 20 minutes of plaintive, plangent, lonely motives -- fairly engaging, but a little difficult to fully assess in this realization. In truth, the piece probably should have been redubbed "Oboe and Electronics, by EKG, after Morton Feldman," as the electronic score, intriguing as it was, bore little resemblance to what Feldman's intentions may have been vis a vis an orchestra.

Burns cited in his program notes the influence and inspiration of Luigi Nono, and we were treated to the underplayed Italian master's ...sofferte onde serene... (1976), one of three "old-school" compositions featuring electronic sounds on electromagnetic tape. Here the sonorities of pianist Christopher Jones intentionally blended in with altered pianistic pingings on the pre-recording, as a dark, sonorous soundscape.

The sound world of Dennis Smalley's Clarinet Threads (1985), as brought to life by clarinetist Matt Ingalls, was considerably more, well, electrifying, in hair-raising high notes that commanded attention. The virtuosity in this performance, against a fixed electronic component, was impressive -- indeed the quality of the live performers throughout the evening was first rate.

And the excellence continued in cellist Monica Scott's realization of a Mario Davidovsky classic: Synchronisms No. 3 (1965). This, the oldest work on the program, was near ground zero of the whole live-soloist-and-electronics category, and had an almost nostalgic and pristine quality in its careful alteration of media. Scott brought technique and tone to the table, and the electronic score perked agreeably.

By contrast, while Per Bloland's Quintet (2005) was not quite the newest work on the program, it certainly pointed towards future directions. Saxophonist John Ingle became his own one-man band, with the assistance of an Apple laptop, in realizing five-part music in real time that animated and thrilled. The precise cut-offs alone were worth the price of admission (OK, I got in free as a critic, but still...), and bespoke of the excitement of the evening, taken in by an enthusiastic capacity crowd.

Chronical of July 2010

July 15

Garage a Trois and the Dead Kenny G's. Maxwell, New York, NY. "The terminology can’t be trusted when it comes to Garage a Trois, a band consisting of the drummer Stanton Moore, the saxophonist known as Skerik, the percussionist Mike Dillon and the keyboardist Marco Benevento. That’s four people, not three, despite the group’s chosen name; it doesn’t have much stake in garage rock, either. And while Garage a Trois fits the profile of a jam band, its music feels more focused and less freewheeling than that particular pigeonhole might suggest. Garage a Trois formed just over a decade ago, originally with Mr. Moore, Skerik and the guitarist Charlie Hunter. Its sensibilities have skewed grittier and more psychedelic with the current lineup, largely because of the fuzz-tone output of Mr. Benevento. . . . [T]he band played a shrewdly overdriven show, combining heavy-riff distortion with a rough-and-tumble funk delirium. Almost all the songs were from its most recent release, Power Patriot (Royal Potato Family), a respectable album but only a faint intimation of what Garage a Trois can do live. (That may ultimately be the strongest link the group shares with its jam-circuit brethren.) The band’s life force is rhythm, both at a subterranean level and on the surface. Mr. Moore is also a founding member of Galactic, which has evolved into an all-purpose New Orleans house band equally at home with bounce music or Mardi Gras funk. He has a knack for disarming bombast with elasticity, sounding sly and adaptable even when jackhammering at his toms. And he had a ready sidekick in Mr. Dillon, who began the set on vibraphone before turning to congas, tablas and effects. There was mathematical complexity in some of the tunes, like Rescue Spreaders, which involved a whorl of superimposed meters, in groupings of four and five. (During a vibraphone solo by Mr. Dillon the rest of the band shifted neatly into swing.) But it was no less satisfying to hear the album’s relatively simple title track rendered tougher and wilder, with Mr. Dillon socking a pair of cowbells and Skerik howling through his horn. One tumultuous stretch of the tune recalled the Brecker Brothers at their fusioneering peak, when their sound was best described by the title of a live album: Heavy Metal Be-Bop. Skerik and Mr. Dillon also played an opening set as two-thirds of the Dead Kenny G’s. (The other third is Brad Houser, on bass and baritone saxophone.) Their rapport in this setting was a bit more feverish than in Garage a Trois, and their tone a lot more juvenile. Skerik was freer and more impulsive with his improvising as the trio pinballed between styles: Afro-pop, Balkan klezmer, pocket funk lashed to Middle Eastern modality. The jumpiness felt a little dated and obvious -- very 1990s Knitting Factory -- as did the ostensible target of the band’s fury. There are few easier marks than Kenny G, the living symbol of simpering instrumental pop. Skerik and crew know this, but why would they let that stop them? What’s in a name, anyway?" [Nate Chinen, The New York Times, 7/17/10].


July 16

SFSound. Community Music Center, San Francisco, CA.