Contemporary Classics March 27, 2018 - Celebrating the Woman Composer

This week we are celebrating Women's History Month by celebrating modern women composers.  Women composers are featured most weeks but this week the playlist is all women.

Over two years in the making and premiered at Carnegie Hall in Febrary 2014, Vespers for A New Dark Age reimagines the traditional vespers prayer service and replaces the customary sacred verses with poems by Matthew Zapruder that contend with themes like technology, God and more. Mazzoli set out to create a more modern version of the vespers service, on her own terms, to explore the intersection of our modern technological age with the archaic formality of religious services. Vespers is meant to beg questions of its listeners -- What haunts us in this "new dark age"? What role does ritual play in our lives? Is there room for the supernatural in an increasingly technological world?

Acoustic movements alternate with purely electronic interludes.  The acoustic movements are performed by Missy Mazzoli’s group Victoire along with percussionist Glenn Kotche, synth producer Lorna Dune and vocalists Mellissa Hughes, Martha Cluver and Virginia Warnken of Roomful of Teeth. The group's eclectic instrumentation of strings, clarinet and synthesizers has been expanded to include a large pallet of electronic sounds and junk percussion, complemented by Kotche, whose massive drumset included three sets of crotales, glockenspiel, and a seemingly endless battery of cymbals. The vocalists often sing in quasi-baroque harmonies that glided over this landscape of percussion and synths, only to collapse into a haunting solo line.  The electronic interludes are a collaboration between Mazzoli and Dune which allow Mazzoli to combine her compositional skills with remixing and sampling techniques.

It is in 8 movements I. Wayward Free Radical Dreams, II. Hello Lord, III. Interlude 1, IV. Come On All You, V. New Dark Age, VI. Interlude 2, VII. Machine and VIII. Postlude

Arlene Sierra Cicada Shell

Cicada Shell is part of a series of works inspired by an ancient collection of Chinese battle tactics entitled “Thirty-six Strategies”.  This is taken from strategy #21 “Slough off the cicada’s shell” to take on false appearances to mislead the enemy.   Cicada Shell is in two movements – the first Marziale is a series of diminuendi derived from a short recurring theme while the second movement Misterioso, espressivo is a series of crecendi based on the same recurring theme.  Both movements include a central motif transcribed from the cicadas call in nature.  This work was premiered in 2006.

Kaija Saaiaho Notes On Light

Notes On Light is not the typical cello concerto but it does give space for the cello to be virtuosic and for a powerful interaction between cello and orchestra.  In the first movement “Translucent, Secret” the cello interacts with small ensembles within the orchestra.  The second movement “On Fire” opposes the cello and orchestra in a fiery dialog.  In the third movement “Awakening” the orchestra and soloist rise together with large colorful gestures.  In the fourth movement “Eclipse” the orchestra eclipses the soloist with dark waves of sound while the soloist tried repeatedly to break out.  The soloist succeeds in breaking out on the third try and this begins the fifth movement.  In the fifth movement “Heart of Light”  the cello and orchestra move together to end up high in the spheres of light.  This work was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2007.

The vocal group, The Crossing commissioned To the Hands as a response to Ad manus from Dieterich Buxtehude’s 17th century masterpiece, Membra Jesu Nostri and was premiered by members of The Crossing, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and the early music ensemble Quicksilver on June 24, 2016, Philadelphia

To the Hands begins inside the 17th century sound of Buxtehude. It expands and colors and breaks this language, as the piece’s core considerations, of the suffering of those around the world seeking refuge, and of our role and responsibility in these global and local crises, gradually come into focus.

The first movement, “Prelude”, turns the tune of Ad manus into a wordless plainchant melody, punctured later by the strings’ introduction of an unsettled pattern. The second movement, “In Medio”, fragments Buxtehude’s choral setting are used as reflections on what may have been done to us, but we also question what we have done and what our role has been in these wounds we see before us.  The third movement, “Her Beacon-Hand Beckons”, is a riff on Emma Lazarus’ sonnet The New Colossus, famous for its engraving at the base of the Statue of Liberty. While third movement operates in broad strokes from a distance, the fourth movement , “Ever Ever Ever”, zooms in on the individual. An intimate scene of an old woman in her home, maybe setting the table for dinner alone. Who is she, where has she been, whose lives has she left? This simple image melts into a meditation on the words in caverna from the Song of Solomon, found in Buxtehude’s fourth section, Ad latus.  In the fifth movement, “Litany of the Displaced”  the harmony is passed around from one string instrument to another, overlapping only briefly, while numerical figures are spoken by the choir. These are global figures of internally displaced persons, by country, sourced from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) data reported in May 2015.  Sometimes raw data is the cruelest and most honest poetry. The sixth and final movement “I Will Hold You” unfolds the words in caverna into the tumbling and comforting promise of “ever ever” — “ever ever will I hold you, ever ever will I enfold you”. They could be the words of Christ, or of a parent or friend or lover, or even of a nation.

 Susan Alcorn

I fell in love with Susan Alcorn’s music just this past week at the Big Ears Festival in two spectacular performances.  Baltimore-born Susan Alcorn growing up in a home filled with music fell in love with the sound of the pedal steel guitar as a child.  She began playing with country bands but her desire to improvise thrust her out of that genre. Over the last 20 years or so Alcorn has lifted the instrument far from its usual roots and dropped it deep into the realm of the experimental and the avant-garde through music that is informed by jazz, minimalism, Gamelan and Indian classical music.  Her album “Concentration” was recorded live at Maryland's High Zero Festival in 2005. Rob Fitzpatrick in The Guardian describes her music as  “wild and beautiful and disturbing”  and “trying to describe Alcorn's music is bit like trying to paint wind: you're better off just turning it on and let it happen” and “A very special record”.   I agree wholeheartedly.  Believe me in upcoming weeks you will be hearing more of Susan Alcorn.

Susan Alcorn Concentration High Zero Recording

Time Was Nothing 11:05

The Silence Was Your Grey Butterfly Urine and Bedsores 9:58

The Queen Is Always Pregnant 6:11

Sapphire 4:22 Susan Alcorn New Music for Old Instruments incunabulum records