Last night I attended a concert put on by Sonic Generator, the musical group-in-residence at Georgia Tech University in Atlanta led by Jason Freeman, a composition and music technology professor at the university. I had gone to a couple of the group’s concerts last year, and was excited to be able to go again last night. Sonic Generator is a group comprised of core members, but also features special guests when the pieces require them- my composition professor at Georgia State, Dr. Nickitas Demos, performed a composition at one concert last year for clarinet and DJ.
Last night’s performance drew significant crowds to GT’s Alumni Hall, where the group typically performs. The big draw for many people was no doubt the performance of a John Cage piece using four iPhones, but we’ll get to that in time- the concert itself was a successful collaboration of technique, performance, and programming (both technically and musically) from the first work on.
Up first was “Dorian Reeds”, a piece by Terry Riley featuring soprano saxophone and electronics sound design (as reconstructed by Ulrich Krieger). I’m familiar with Riley in name only from his collaborations with Kronos Quartet, but after hearing this 1964 work I’m definitely keen on familiarizing myself further with his work. Ted Gurch performed soprano sax live, with Akito Van Troyer following with the electronic representations of the part slightly delayed, resulting in a musical landscape as dense as any as I’ve heard in a live performance, blurring the line between live and processed performance to the point where it was difficult to figure out sometimes what was coming out of Gurch’s saxophone and what was coming out of the speakers surrounding him. No matter; as with most contemporary music of the 20th and 21st Century, it’s the overall soundscape that matters, and Riley’s vision of this particular work is an intriguing one for the tricks it plays on even the most musically-trained ear.
Next up was a 2008 composition entitled “Morphallaxis” by Greek composer Panayiotis Kokoras. The work is for flute, cello, and hand drum, with the conductor touching off electronic events using a foot pedal at specified moments, resulting in more aural tricks for the listener, as live performances (by Jessica Peek Sherwood on flute, Brad Ritchie on cello, and Tom Sherwood on hand drum) start to sound manipulated into soundscape. The live performers are asked to perform more technical effects than musical thoughts- as Peek Sherwood basically said before the piece, “If you hear anything resembling lovely flute lines, it’s a good bet I did something wrong.”- which are more interesting (and oddly musical) in this particular context than more melodic writing would have been. Listening to the piece, I began to consider “Why So Serious?,” the 9-minute suite Hans Zimmer wrote for Heath Ledger’s Joker in “The Dark Knight,” and relied on similarly-innovative sound design and avant garde techniques to get to the sinister chaos of that character. “Morphallaxis” was probably my favorite piece of the evening- a standout among equals.
Marking the midway point in the show was “Holding Fast”, a composition by Randall Woolf which acts as a musical accompaniment to a film by Mary Harron (“American Psycho”) and John C. Walsh, which looks at life in a Tibetian refugee camp. Music and sound effects from the onscreen action go hand-in-hand with the moving violin underscore performed by Helen Hwaya Kim, which is evocative in what it adds to the visuals and memorable in how it works with the rest of the sound for the film. This feels less like a conventional short film and more like a visual tone poem to the human spirit in exile.
Up next was John Cage’s “Four2” (to be read as Four-squared). Originally a work for a four-part high school choir, Freeman and his collaborators- including Van Troyer and software developers Gil Weinberg and Xiang Cao- have adapted Cage’s piece to be performed via four iPhones, with the performers- Gurch, Ritchie, Sherwood and Peek Sherwood- beginning and ending synthesized versions of the individual notes at imprecise intervals (in accordance to Cage’s intent), while tilting the devices to control timbre. It’s an intriguing conceptual work from a truly iconoclastic composer (Cage was the creator of the infamous piece “4’33”,” which is 273 seconds of silence, and another of his works- entitled “As Slow As Possible”- is being performed on organ in Germany in an ambitious performance that will last 639 years!!!), executed with imagination by the performers and behind-the-scenes technicians responsible. Perhaps the most intriguing element of the live performance was visual accompaniment that was created by one of Freeman’s students after the piece was performed for one of his classes last week- a 16-hour turnaround was noted from the time to the performance to the delivery of the video. In his introduction of the piece, Freeman said that the video was not to represent the live performances we were hearing, but I know it didn’t seem that way to myself or one of the concertgoers- fellow Atlanta composer Darren Nelsen- I talked to. Suffice it to say, it’s got me started on a Cage kick now, even searching out the website to the ongoing performance of “As Long As Possible,” which sounded its’ most recent note in July of last year (it sounds pretty good so far; maybe I can get myself frozen so that in 2639 I can hear the conclusion… 🙂 ).
Concluding the evening were six pieces off of the 2007 album “Paranoid Cheese” by Marc Mellits, who joined violinist Kim, cellist Ritchie, marimba player Sherwood, and electric guitarist Evan Bertrand on keyboard. The music was fast, minimalist, and compelling from start to end; sometimes it was hard to hear some instruments over others (especially the electric guitar), but Mellits’ musical ear is well-tuned to combining timbres and tones in a way that would sound chaotic were it not so well constructed. Whether you’re talking about “Srecan Rodendan, Marija!”, the beautiful “Lefty’s Elegy”, or a propulsive work like “Machine IV”, Mellits’ craft is attuned to creating counterpoint that serves the greater vision of the music, instead of just creating two parallel solo voices, which is what it did back in Bach’s day.
None of what I heard Monday night could be classified as “commercial” music. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’ll take anything I heard on this concert over anything put out by the major music labels anyday…unless it’s The Boss or GN’R or any of the other major acts who’ve dared to push themselves into bolder places over the years.
Thanks for listening,
Brian Skutle
www.sonic-cinema.com
For more on upcoming Sonic Generator and Ga. Tech musical events, go to gtcmt.coa.gatech.edu
