Concert Review: Charts and Graphics

 
Concert Review:
Charts and Graphics
@ Michiko Studios
presented by Composers Concordance
January 15, 2022

Yet another aural adventure by Composers Concordance into uncharted, well, make that charted, territory…

Charts and Graphics was a concert presenting music charted in non-traditional forms. From riffs off of standard notation to swirls, line drawings and even bold swathes of color and movement, each piece informed the players in its own idiosyncratic language how it was intended to be performed.  Video projections shared with the audience what the “charts and graphs” presented.

The evening began with perhaps its boldest visual statement, Color Music for Chamber Ensemble by Michael Poast. The full ensemble - clarinet, cello, guitar, piano, bass and drums- plays from a score made up of broad swathes of color each with its own meaning as to intensity, emotion and duration from dark purple bass to bright yellow  highlights of the upper range. Beginning with piano trills adding layers and then bright flourishes, a sustained piano rumble, squawks (even duck callesque!) sound meandering, tonal brush strokes all leading to one  final flourish. Poast’s charts for this piece would  make  a wonderful  wall display.

Next was Dennis Bathory-Kitsz’ Water No Fire. His strong visuals meant to exhibit a musical realization of Hokusai’s Great Wave…painting.  Composed originally for flute and sax, tonight’s performance featured the composer on bass recorder and Gene Pritsker on electric guitar. Its fifteen short sections reflected a meditative dialogue between the instruments ultimately resolving like a finished painting. And again, the score was itself visually captivating.

Gene Pritsker’s unCharted Deconstructed #1 for guitar, piano, cello and bass has multiple “elements” and harmonies arranged so that the players can choose between elements and play them, in Pritsker’s words, “any way we want.” Clearly demanding close attention to each other and sensitive intuition, the players proved equal to the challenge, building in intensity to one final coming together moment of affirmation.

Failure is impossible by Jinhee Han for solo cello with rustlings suggesting small scampering things with plucks, strokes and tappings was performed admirably by Rocio Diaz de Cossio.

Things, Elements. Voices (a verbivocovisual score) by Arthur Kampala is an extended interplay between the full ensemble and a video. Wisps of smoke matching and dancing with the bass recorder, originally scored for accordion.  Everything from film scraps to ping pong balls to sparkles to live frogs! Monkeys! Little bursts of stars and more smoke as if the video was inspiring the music, or even vice versa.

Dr. William Schimmel, accordionist virtuoso, made his first appearance of the evening in Dan Cooper’s Two Mobiles. Cooper’s chart resembles a “choose your own adventure” flow chart with different sections hanging suspended on each other slowly twirling and interconnected.

Mockingale by David Rothenberg brings the ensemble again as a chorus of birds each with its own unique flapping of wings.

In Was it Ever Calm? Or only storms and waves (20-21), Ann Warren asks the ensemble, in Pritsker’s words, “..to follow each other, but not really…” The piece has a tentative, searching quality as if seeking a resolution to a question, and not quite finding it…just as the title suggests.

Will Rowe’s  Shifting Walls of Reconciliation is in the form of a flow chart, in his words “..a flow chart in modular form, literally following a break up…”. The music, sensitively interpreted by cellist de Cossio again, makes its statement about choices made and their consequences, ultimately unresolved.

Sophie Duner is another musician whose music nimbly  crosses genres and is her own unique expression of “Swedish funk.” Her Bop ’Til You Drop, with the quartet, does exactly that. It’s bright bop suggests a Harlem Club or midtown jazz joint and a truly flipped out drum solo by the amazing Tommy Campbell evokes a mad dance floor scene.

Returning with his own composition (and line drawing of a beast? ) King Akkong, Dr. Schimmel once again expands the boundaries of both music and consciousness with rills and swells and his own hip sense of wry humor.

Mark Kostabi’s Mr. Who (the one and only, by the way), has an unexpected  vocabulary where Gene Pritsker’s guitar stands in for the original accordion. Pritsker brings a Dick Dale surf guitar feel to the piece which ultimately reveals Latin undertones as well.

Gene Pritsker’s guitar solo improvisation on Zachary Seely’s 3G video evokes old school psychedelia. (One unspoken theme of the evening was a realization of the psychedelic experience of “seeing music” where sound has color and motion.)

The whole ensemble returned for the grand finale, Daniel Kelly’s Flocks. A truly in the moment experience with blips,blops, runs, close collaboration, listening, listening and damn! an actual rubber chicken feature!

This concert was a truly challenging event for both musicians and audience in the cozy Michiko Studios. The truly stellar cast of musicians made our entry into this new territory pleasurable and rewarding. Concerts like these are what keeps the Composers Concordance audience intrigued and faithful over 30 years.

Musicians featured:
Ford Fourqueen, clarinet
Dennis Bathory-Kitsz, bass recorder
William Schimmel, accordion
Rocio Diaz de Cossio, cello
Gene Pritsker, guitar
Mark Kostabi, piano
Danie Kelly, piano
Tommy Campbell, drums    

- Eli Y Jack