Concert Review: Bass-ics

Concert Review:
Composers Concordance presents
Bass-ics
Kaoru Watanabe - bass flute, Dave Taylor - Bass trombone, Troy Rinker Jr. - contra bass 

Feb. 19, 2022
Greenwich House NYC.

A signature of Composers Concordance is the creativity and often whimsy of its programming. A unique combination of instruments or conceptual theme is chosen, the word goes out and composers respond.  And musical expressions of rarely explored territory come into being. “Bass-ics,” with music for bass flute, contra bass, and bass trombone is yet the most recent example of this process.

Born of the mutual admiration of percussionist/flautist Karaou Watanabe and trombonist Dave Taylor, directors Gene Pritsker and Dan Cooper took the idea and ran with it resulting in an evening of adventure in the lower register. In addition to these two, Troy Rinker joined in on the bass with Max Pollack coordinating the choreography.

 The concert was held in the Greenwich House School of Music, which as composer (and associate director)  Peter Jarvis explained was a homecoming in that the venue had been CompCord’s primary home for two decades.

Karaou Watanabe, who is primarily is a percussionist  with instruments like Taiko drums, began the evening with his Trio Bass.  It begins like slowly dawning realizations led by the trombone leading  to the instruments weaving into a dance of their own  expressions, staccato statements, bits and pieces and riffing flights until finally resolving in a final joint fanfare.

A Touch of Whimsy by Peter Jarvis was exactly that with its muted trombone opening leading into jazz-like riffs and declarative statements and the instruments carrying on a dialogue until Taylor’s trombone takes off in the lead and then comes to a stop like a period at the end of a sentence.

Lament, by Dan Cooper, was originally composed for a memorial concert for CompCord founder Joe Pehrson. For bass flute with electronics, and accompanied by Morgan McMahon’s dance, the piece effectively expresses the range of emotions that are part of lament. Not just sadness, but reflection, good memories, yearning all come through the interplay of electronics and flute. The piece ends with a solitary flute and the dancer’s hands reaching up…as if wanting to  touch what is just out of reach.

Taking a cue from tabloid journalism, Seth Bousted’s If it Bleeds it Leads is inspired by the mantra that what ’s most lurid will sell the most copies and so get the headlines. In Boustead’s words, a sonic meditation on the gapers’ block (or rubber necking)  phenomenon. The three section piece begins with  a dramatic opening but the other two sections are more quiet reflections on what Boustead calls this dark aspect of humanity. We are taken from the splashy headlines to, hmm, just what’s going on here?

Dave Taylor’s Ballad for basses is a classic Taylor combination of swagger and humor. The piece began as a simple C blues, but then as Taylor put it, it gets  extravagant. From hip bluesy flights, we  eventually find ourselves in the realm of the unexpected, like a tourist lost in the deepest depths of downtown. In short, typical Dave Taylor fun.

Debra Kaye says that her Submarine Dreams can mean “whatever you want it to,” but for her the inspiration was the increasingly muted quality of her dreams during Coivd, even as our waking lives grew ever more muted. This time, Kaitlin Verchimak joins Morgan McMahon as the dancers interpret Kaye’s music. At one point, Rinker’s bass becomes a percussive instrument like persistent thoughts knocking on the door, trying to get in.

Next was Gene Pritsker’s Blank, easily a metaphor for the whole concert as a blank slate given the fact of not much repertoire for this configuration of instruments. In the piece Pritsker employs microtones until we come to a scampering contrabass ending in a  dead STOP.

 Lukas Ligety effectively explores the emotional territory of a Deep Embrace where many thoughts and feelings can exist at the same time.  It begins with a tentative start, like feeling your way in with repeating rising glissandos. The many colors of the embrace even include questions.

Fitting for a winter’s night, Madelyne  Byrne’s  In a Winter Landscape, for bass flute and electronics, may be in her words, a pain in the neck piece, but it nevertheless expresses her own experience of a personal  winter storm. The music rises ominously like a gathering storm before quietly fading away. …winter…was further evoked by Kaitlin Varichek’s dance.

David Taylor takes us into the world of hurdy gurdy music with his The Echoes of  Love a Trois. A series of haikus and the music take us on a journey through the transit system winding us up in Grand Central Station.  Taylor’s trombone score sings a song with political undertones of immigrants and the Women’s Suffrage movement.  One can hear joy, frustration and ultimately determination.

Having previously brought us 1000 Kites, Mark Kostabi’s 2000 Kites brings the evening  together in a grand finale. Kostabi’s always present romantic tone is clearly there underneath all but takes on added color as the kites play hide and seek with one another, dancing on air, finally all coming together in the end.

For the Composer’s Concordance community , once again  a challenge well met which must have been as much fun for the musicians as it was for the audience…. As Meschiya Lake once sang, …the joy of life on the lower level…that’s Bass-ics.

A review by Eli Y Jack