by Aristea Mellos
Some nights, after returning home from a music-soaked
evening, you can’t help but be reminded that living in New York City is a privilege.
On Tuesday, May 7, after first attending the Picker Pops Up concert at Columbia University's Miller Theatre, and later, Fred Hersch and Anat Cohen’s 9:30PM set at the Jazz
Standard, I felt fortunate to be a witness to the city's diverse musical life.
Miller Theatre often features music
by contemporary composers in both its Portrait Series and cocktail-hour
Pop-Up Series. The music of the award-winning American composer Tobias Picker was featured on May 7 in a well-attended and intimate event. The concert celebrated both the formation of the Tobias Picker Ensemble and the
upcoming recordings of Picker’s chamber music on John Zorn’s label, Tzadik
Records. The Tobias Picker Ensemble, (a quintet of recent graduates from some
of the nation’s most prestigious conservatories) includes violinist Keir GoGwilt, pianist Nathaniel LaNasa, violist Margaret Dyer, cellist Michael Unterman,
and bassist Tony Flynt.
The concert opened with Third
Etude (1996), a Romantic work for solo piano that La Nasa executed with
poise and elegance. Cascades of crushed note clusters trickled down the
keyboard, only to be followed by moments of intensely transparent counterpoint.
It’s rare to hear Romantic resonances in serial compositions, but Picker’s
unique twist on this expressionistic compositional method results in music
that was both cerebral and fragile.
A dramatic and confident performance of Invisible Lilacs (1991) by La Nasa and GoGwit captured Picker’s intellectual, yet intimate, musical voice. Throughout the work, the violin and piano
seemed to be used as two discrete entities, shifting from brutal pointillistic
stabs to winding and melancholic phrases without ever really meeting. The
final movement, a playful rhythmic minefield, required taut
ensemble work from the musicians, who navigated their way through its
freneticism whilst maintaining their cool. GoGwit’s accurate and agile playing
came to the fore in running passages that dominated the work's finale.
The second half of the concert travelled back in time,
resuscitating two works by Picker from the 1970s. When Soft Voices Die (1977) for solo piano, a long-winded and whimsical
work, was performed by LaNasa with a deft sense of precision. Although the
essence of Picker’s compositional voice has remained unchanged throughout the
decades, this earlier example of his output lacked the structural tautness of
his more recent compositions, and its protracted passages gave the work a cumbersome
sense of weight.
The final work of the evening, Nova (1979) for piano quintet, brought together the complete
Tobias Picker Ensemble for the first time in this concert. Throughout the three
movements, the ensemble delivered an engrossing performance of this varied and
energetic work. After an opening battle between the piano and the quartet of
strings, the second movement played with the textural possibilities of the
ensemble.
The strings, (GoGwit, Dyer, Unterman, and Flynt) captured the
accordion-like expansions and contractions of Picker’s textures like a band of
seamless shape shifters. The final movement revisited the opening dynamics of
the work and concluded with a poignant chorale, executed
with heartfelt sensitivity.
In many ways, this concert was as much a celebration of the
young musicians who performed Picker’s music as it was a celebration of Picker
himself. The direct nature of the performers' presentations (particularly LaNasa
and GoGwit’s performances) invited the audience to listen deeply and openly and to emerge themselves into Picker’s prickly, but rewarding, musical world. These taut rhythms and tantilizing melodies filled my thoughts as I traversed the city on route to my second concert of the evening, Fred Hersch and Anat Cohen at the Jazz Standard.