Some exciting new sounds Saturday night at the Either/Or festival, held at the Tenri Cultural Institute, a multicultural art space on 13th Street. The festival – which ended Saturday – concentrated on chamber works by emerging and established composers from Europe and the U.S. The intimate, white box gallery space was filled with large, abstract paintings, providing a captivating backdrop that made one wish it was more commonplace.
After works by M.I.T. professor Keeril Makan and Italian conductor Massimo Lauricella, composer and pianist Richard Carrick – who is also co-director of the festival – offered the world premiere of his own ensemble piece Towards Qualia. A probing intellect with degrees in both mathematics and music, Carrick explained that "Qualia" are the emotional aspects of our experience: how something makes us feel, rather than the mere facts of the experience. Or, put another way, the space between the whole and the sum of its parts. There were elements of minimalism, but also of the otherworldly soundspace of Ligeti and Bartok, eventually climaxing to a near-deafening conclusion.
Perhaps the most impressive offering of the night was the NY premiere of German composer Helmut Lachenmann’s Salut fur Caudwell (1977), a half-hour deconstruction of flamenco music written for two Spanish guitars, full of bended notes and extended silences. The score, which was performed expertly by Carrick and his co-director David Shively, is extraordinarily challenging, requiring the performers to play complex patterns and acrobatic techniques in precise unison. Shively said that they started rehearsing the work in November, and worked on it for at least 15 hours every week. "I could have used another 50 hours," Shively said.
At one point, Lachenmann requires the performers to recite a fragmented German translation of the dedicatee’s Illusion and Reality, in which the poet Christopher Caudwell states his demand for an art that transcends categories of high and low, that is merely "aware of its own conditions and reflects them." When it comes to music, I can’t imagine a better way to strip off the patina of privilege than to play it in unfamiliar spaces, whether it be downtown art galleries or Brooklyn silos.
Speaking of the new and unfamiliar, Alex Ross has a piece in this week’s New Yorker that covers the vibrant new music scene here in New York, giving the Wordless Music Series an extended mention. Guess I’ll have to start getting there a bit earlier now…
The entire festival was excellent, but Saturday’s program might win the prize (just barely). That Lachenmann was a revelation (like some of his other works), and if there is any justice Carrick and Shively would perform it again.
The entire festival was excellent, but Saturday’s program might win the prize (just barely). That Lachenmann was a revelation (like some of his other works), and if there is any justice Carrick and Shively would perform it again.
The entire festival was excellent, but Saturday’s program might win the prize (just barely). That Lachenmann was a revelation (like some of his other works), and if there is any justice Carrick and Shively would perform it again.
The entire festival was excellent, but Saturday’s program might win the prize (just barely). That Lachenmann was a revelation (like some of his other works), and if there is any justice Carrick and Shively would perform it again.
The entire festival was excellent, but Saturday’s program might win the prize (just barely). That Lachenmann was a revelation (like some of his other works), and if there is any justice Carrick and Shively would perform it again.
The entire festival was excellent, but Saturday’s program might win the prize (just barely). That Lachenmann was a revelation (like some of his other works), and if there is any justice Carrick and Shively would perform it again.
Keeril joned our Music and Theater Arts faculty (I’m on the Theater Arts side of the and) just this year and is making a mark for himself already n the section and around Boston.
We’re lucky to have such a large and gifted pool of composers here (John Harbison having been canonized with the tietle “Institute Professor”).
Keeril joned our Music and Theater Arts faculty (I’m on the Theater Arts side of the and) just this year and is making a mark for himself already n the section and around Boston.
We’re lucky to have such a large and gifted pool of composers here (John Harbison having been canonized with the tietle “Institute Professor”).
Keeril joned our Music and Theater Arts faculty (I’m on the Theater Arts side of the and) just this year and is making a mark for himself already n the section and around Boston.
We’re lucky to have such a large and gifted pool of composers here (John Harbison having been canonized with the tietle “Institute Professor”).
Keeril joned our Music and Theater Arts faculty (I’m on the Theater Arts side of the and) just this year and is making a mark for himself already n the section and around Boston.
We’re lucky to have such a large and gifted pool of composers here (John Harbison having been canonized with the tietle “Institute Professor”).
Keeril joned our Music and Theater Arts faculty (I’m on the Theater Arts side of the and) just this year and is making a mark for himself already n the section and around Boston.
We’re lucky to have such a large and gifted pool of composers here (John Harbison having been canonized with the tietle “Institute Professor”).
Keeril joned our Music and Theater Arts faculty (I’m on the Theater Arts side of the and) just this year and is making a mark for himself already n the section and around Boston.
We’re lucky to have such a large and gifted pool of composers here (John Harbison having been canonized with the tietle “Institute Professor”).