Concert Review: 'Todd Rewoldt & Lesi Mei'

Concert Review:
Composers Concordance
'Todd Rewoldt & Lesi Mei'
Kostabi World, NYC
Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Musicians:
Todd Rewoldt, alto saxophone
Lesi Mei, piano

At Composers Concordance’s “Todd Rewoldt & Lesi Mei” concert, held at Kostabi World NYC in Chelsea, two extraordinary players wove the diverse voices of 10 composers into a fascinating tapestry of shapeshifting sound. Although the program lacked an explicit theme as such, taken together, the pieces shared an enigmatic, tenuous quality that made each seem like the necessary part of a mysterious whole.  

The program began with Faye-Ellen Silverman’s  Interval Untamed: Five Miniatures, featuring Rewoldt on solo alto sax. The introspective pieces opened mysterioso, a sense of someone exploring an empty house in the dark--feeling one’s way tentatively but with urgency. The second miniature continued this theme with a journey along a wide spectrum of notes, and the remaining pieces of Interval Untamed were like the aural equivalent of glimpses--of elusive, rare and beautiful things darting in and out of the corners of your eyes.

Debra Kaye’s Dialogues with Distant Mountains was offered in three movements, with Lesi Mei’s piano joining Rewoldt. It opened with wistful chords trailed by a sax melody like a traveler who keeps just a tad too far behind you to be called a companion. I had the sense of being not led, but called . . . the whole work continually verged on the edge of melancholy but never quite collapsed into such; rather the tone was of a slow-dance between acceptance and curiosity.

Mark Kostabi introduced the premiere of his piece, Time Lingers, saying: “Time loiters . . . Who knows where we will go at the time of our midnight departure? Perhaps eternal bliss, perhaps breakfast at an amazing restaurant in Naples . . .” The music was as enigmatic as Kostabi’s words. Piano and saxophone intertwined in a contemplative mode, evoking imminent departure, a lone person waiting in a deserted train station out in the middle of--well, the middle of where? It isn’t clear . . . the music was threaded with long and longing gazes, the working of thought across a face alternately fretted and becalmed. It seemed to give voice to the words unspoken behind every farewell hesitation. Time Lingers ended, however, on an ecstatic note, an anticipation, perhaps, of the midnight-departure bliss Kostabi had referenced earlier.  

Peter Jarvis’ Binary (Opus 138) paired angular piano with a spiraling saxophone. A musical collage that jumped from section to section, disparate fragments that worked together as a whole--a kind of microcosm of the entire concert. The piece was characterized by a tension that arose between peaceful and aggressive moments, hinting at potentially dangerous emotions, repressed too long and about to spring from their cages.

The program’s fifth piece was the second premiere of the night--TBA by Dan Cooper. Cooper explained that he’d first heard Rewoldt at St. Mark’s Church a few years ago, and was blown away by the saxophonist's virtuosity. It was with that night in mind that Cooper wrote TBA--which apparently has something to do with Jimi Hendrix--but the composer wasn’t letting on--in keeping with the overall aura of mystery. As Cooper had hinted, virtuosity was at the heart of the solo; Rewoldt was like two players; it was a constant call-and-response that dashed across the registers like a conversation heating into an argument--the winner unknown, or else all lost.

In This Black Cat (from Sonata) by Carter Pann,  Mei and Rewoldt mixed blues and jazzy chords with seemingly near-random structures. A mix of the composed and improvisation, the musicians created a kind of almost-ugliness that was yet beautiful--reminding me of the music that might come from out the bars of a cage overstuffed with exotic birds, a horrific yet breathtakingly colorful sight.

The prolific and eclectic composer Gene Pritsker introduced the next premiere of the show: Hello Infinity, titled after a line from a poem by Robert C. Ford (AKA The Wall Street Poet), who was on hand to preface the music by reading the poem, the terse “Element 115”. The opening was as slowly expansive and atmospheric as Debussy--rapidly switching to hectic, propulsive changes--a “new music” version of Frankenstein’s creation--sewn of different pieces, the thing yet walks and cannot be ignored. As with the other compositions sharing the bill (and befitting its title), all was suffused with an esotericism just beyond the reach of definite understanding.  

Seth Boustead explained that his La Cascade (the third and final premiere) was inspired by a mechanical waterfall created by Swiss artist Jean Tinguey. The opening was restless and jerky, echoing the reiterations of machines. This eventually softened, as the piano descended into a deeper register, leading to a tentative idyll featuring unresolved piano and sax, each instrument seeming to try to catch the other as it is about to fall over . . . La Cascade ended as far from mechanization as possible, with a lonely sax trying to soar--within the confines of a net.

The evening came to a haunting close with two arrangements by Todd Rewoldt, featuring both performers: Nocturne and D’un matin de printemps by Lili Boulanger, the lesser-known sister of Nadia Boulanger; Lili died at just 24 after becoming the first female composer to win the Prix de Rome in her teens. Rewoldt’s presentation of this impressionistic composer was beautiful, dark and aggressive. The saxophonist explained that the pieces were originally composed for lush orchestration, influenced, but not overshadowed by Fauré and Stravinksy. This made their successful translation into sax and piano duo all the more startling; the transparency afforded by Rewoldt’s reworking bringing Boulanger’s music--written in the early 20th Century, into the 21st.
 
And so from the avant-garde to the old guard, Composers Concordance once again showed why the Classical-Modern Review has called the organization “Edgy . . . boisterous . . . demanding our attention.”

    - Martin Box