soundOFF

Chicago Concert Season Opener - 2010

Here is some information on our season opener in Chicago…featuring the music of John Cage (who would have celebrated his 98th birthday yesterday) and Philippe Manoury…

Unquestionably one of America’s most influential composers, John Cage wrote some of the first music for percussion ensemble.  All three of his Constructions are built on a strict numerical framework, and the fascination with sound that dominated his later, more experimental works can be foreseen in the timbral variety and instrumental resourcefulness of these early works, which Cage wrote while in his late twenties.

First Construction (in Metal) (1939) is for an orchestra of all metal percussion instruments, including brake drums, a variety of different gongs and 5 thunder sheets.  Second Construction (1940) makes use of two iconic Cage sounds—a gong dipped in water to modify the pitch, and the prepared piano, which uses objects placed between the strings to produce a variety of unfamiliar and unique sounds.  Third Coast Percussion has been bring performances of Third Construction (1941) to audiences around the country for 5 years. This master piece of Cage’s early output is scored for everything from drums and tin cans to split pieces of bamboo, a conch shell and the “lion’s roar,” a modified drum that uses friction to produce a low groaning sound. 

An innovator in the field of electronic music, Philippe Manoury is at the forefront of the post-Boulez generation of French composers.  He is now on faculty at the University of California at San Diego.  His Le Livre des Claviers (“the Book of Keyboards”) is a virtuosic collection of pieces for mallet percussion instruments, including a mind-boggling vibraphone solo, a playful marimba duet, two movements for 6 players playing marimbas and sonorous Thai gongs, and two movements for “Sixxen,” a microtonal metal instrument manufactured by the musicians for this performance.
 
This concert kicks off an extensive Manoury project for Third Coast, which will include multiple performances of Le Livre des Claviers, as well as a recording project.  This project is generously supported by the French-American Fund for Contemporary Music, a program of FACE, with major support from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, SACEM, CulturesFrance and the Florence Gould Foundation.

Elegy: Snow in June

Day 3 at Garth Newel started with a run-through and rehearsal of Tan Dun’s “Elegy: Snow in June”. Tan Dun often refers to John Cage as one of his principal influences, so it is interesting to play his music now while we are in the process of learning and performing so much music by Cage.

Some of Cage’s influence is readily apparent…Tan Dun uses certain sounds that are found throughout Cage’s early percussion music, like coffee cans, button gongs, and maracas. But he also seems intent on controlling pitch in percussion, something that Cage was notoriously uninterested in doing. Not only do we play hot licks across a battery of keyboard instruments (marimba, vibraphone, xylophone, chimes), Tan Dun also calls for roto toms and timpani, and is very explicit in the score about the pitches of these instruments. (Our performance will not feature roto toms…because we don’t have access to any…and because we’re not Neil Peart).

In “Elegy”, we strike stones together and tear paper, both sounds which point in this relatively early piece to Tan Dun’s later idea of “organic music”, perhaps the greatest evidence of Cage’s influence. Tan Dun later builds entire pieces such as “Paper Concerto” and “Water Concerto” around the use of organic materials as instruments. For me, these sounds create the most interesting moments in the piece, along with a few other moments of orchestrational brilliance like the one featured in this recording from today’s rehearsal.

TCP at Garth Newel…

We’re in the middle of our second day at the Garth Newel Music Center, a beautiful campus in western Virginia that hosts a summer chamber music series and several other concerts throughout the year. We’re playing two concerts this weekend with musicians from the Garth Newel Piano Quartet, the resident ensemble here in Hot Springs, VA.

The program is amazing…a great chance for us to play some great pieces with some fabulous musicians. Chicago audiences will get to hear us perform the Tan Dun in February, and the Cage in September.

Saturday August 28, 2010

Lou Harrison Varied Trio
Alejandro Vinao Arabesco Infinito
John Cage Third Construction
Tan Dun Elegy: Snow in June

Sunday August 29, 2010

Marc Mellits Tight Sweater
Witold Lutoslawski Paganini Variations
Bela Bartok Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion

We’re serious about having fun

There’s been lots to talk about so far on the blog about preparations for our upcoming performances of Philippe Manoury’s Le Livre des Claviers. Yesterday we had our first rehearsals for one of our other major projects for the fall: performances both at home and on tour of John Cage’s Constructions and Credo in US.

I imagine a percussion quartet’s experience rehearsing Cage’s music having a great deal in common with a string quartet’s experience rehearsing Haydn. Cage was the first composer of note to dedicate a significant amount of his creative efforts to percussion chamber music. Cage’s fascination with rhythm and sound and his complete disinterest in harmony led him to write music for sheets of metal, junkyard auto parts, cowbells, rattles, maracas, drums, and a slew of other sundry gadgets from daily life and instruments indigenous to cultures far and wide.

Today his influence is felt in musical experiences running the gamut from Blue Man Group to Helmut Lachenmann. So as a classical percussion ensemble, we feel a great deal of responsibility to the music of this great mind to whom we owe so much of our own creative direction. It can be daunting to rehearse and perform music which means so much to so many of our colleagues, mentors, and fans. Putting our own mark on this music by presenting it in performance is not an experience free from anxiety.

But we were reminded today in rehearsal of just how playful Cage was. His love of rhythm and unorthodox sound leaps off the music stand. Gathering these strange instruments, laying them out in front of you and digging into the intricacies of Cage’s rhythmic language is a total pleasure. Here’s hoping that an earnest dedication to playfulness yields performances that satisfy Cage aficionados and fascinate the uninitiated.