"Downtown" music usually happens in small venues such as Roulette and The Stone. The bohemian spirit seems to flourish best where the pressures of commerce are least. And yet, many members of the downtown music community are rebels with causes. Once such cause is to bring a diverse range of music to more than just a relatively small coterie of enthusiasts. Begun in 1987, Bang on a Can has always sought to reach a larger public through festivals and other special events. The original Bang on a Can Marathon has grown into an enterprise far beyond the dreams of its founding members, Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe.
This year, the Bang on a Can Marathon at the World Financial Center Winter Garden brought downtown music to a huge gathering in the very large and open venue that allowed people to sit "up close and personal," at a distance, one the sidelines, or just to stroll by out of curiosity.
Beginning at 11 a.m., and continuing until "'round midnight," more than 35 works by 34 composers and around 24 performers and ensembles regaled listeners with a tremendous range of music. One can only imagine the organizational dedication needed to make sure everything would go smoothly. The festival actually moved along ahead of schedule for much of the day.
I was able to get to the late afternoon and evening performances, hence the title of this blog. One of the striking differences between this event and most of the "sampler" program I have experienced was the scope of the works. Works for relatively large ensembles, some lasting more than one hour, gave the listener a chance to experience "large canvas" music.
One such work, Index of Metals by Fausto Romitelli, slowly unfolds. Intended as a mutimedia work, the musical portion combines electronic sounds, traditional and non-traditional orchestra sounds and a soprano. It was a perfect choice for the reverberant acoustic of the Winter Garden. Speaker placement allowed for a quadrophonic presentation. The work begins with a "contemplation" of the note "A" as all the instruments get "in tune" with the music. Like so many sonorist composers, Romitelli is concerned with the texture of the sounds. His own comments elaborate on this:
My compositions take as their starting point the idea that sound is a matter that can be worked. The grain, thickness, porosity, density, brilliance and elasticity are the main aspects of these sound sculptures resulting from amplification and electro acoustic treatment as well as simple instrumental writing. After Professor Bad Trip, where the instrumental harmonies were perceived as through a veil of mescaline – satured, distorted, twisted and liquefied – I found myself compelled to follow these experiments through to the limits of perception by projecting sound as though it were light, reaching the extreme hallucination whereby sound is seen.
The aim of Index of Metals is to turn the secular form of opera into an experience of total perception, plunging the spectator into an incandescent matter that is both luminous and sonorous, a magma of flowing sounds, shapes and colours, with no narrative but that of hypnosis, possession and trance. It is a lay ritual, rather like the light shows of 1960s or today’s rave parties in which space, having assumed a solid form through the volume of sound and visual saturation appears to twist into a thousand anamorphoses. Rather than calling on our analytical ability, like most contemporary music, An Index of Metals aims to take possession of the body with its over exposition of senses and pleasure.
[An Index of Metals]
This extended work was followed by a shorter solo-piano piece, At the River, composed and performed by Timo Andres. Like more and more pianists, Mr. Andres used a tablet instead of a paper score. The work combines the perpetual motion and limited materials of Minimalism with the watery textures of Impressionism. I am sure that many in the audience, including myself, expected to hear the hymn tune "Shall we gather at the River?" and we were not disappointed as a chordal section near the end enfolds the tune in a Debussyan planing style.
The "rock star" of the evening was Phillip Glass who performed a solo piano piece, Metamorphosis IV, a contemplation of Latin harmonies and rhythms. He later joined the Bang on a Can All-Stars ensemble for a performance of Music in Similar Motion where inflections of timbre and interesting movement of instruments from the background to the foreground color the work. A final Glass work, Closing, contains elements of a French lament with its plaintive writing and poignant cello part.
For me, the most fascinating work of the marathon was Cruel Sister by Julia Wolfe.The composer was commissioned to write a work based on a fairy tale. She remembered an old English ballad she had heard, and was both horrified and attracted to the story. Two sisters, one fair and warm and one cold and distant are visited by a potential suitor. As she knows she cannot compete with her sister, the cruel, cold sister pushes the fair sister into the sea. Her body washes up on the shore and is found by two minstrels who shape the breast bone into a harp. The harp is ironically played at the cruel sister's wedding with the lyric concluding that "surely now her tears will flow."
Ms.Wolfe does not refer to the ballad tune but rather, as she commented before the performance, recreates the arc of the story. An incessant low strong repeated note brings cumulative tension to the work. The use of open strings with open fifths brings an archaic tone to the sound. Toward the end of the work the tessitura shifts to a high register. The use of amplified string pizzicato creates a stirring climax to this powerful work.
Of course, there were also points of pure zaniness in the marathon. The marching band Asphalt Orchestra chugged their way through the audience at several different points during the marathon with arrangements of Frank Zappa, Bjork and the like. The completely off-the-wall Sun Ra Arkestra mixed seemingly random, cacophonous sounds with brilliant solos and ensemble playing. With their bright, glittery attire and "this is who we are, like us or leave us" attitude they are truly unique.
While some might argue that the Bang on a Can Marathon is more "midtown" than "downtown" there is no question that this enterprise brings music to masses of people who otherwise would likely never here anything like it.
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