Cellist Mariel Roberts performing Tristan Perich’s “formations” for cello and one-bit sound.
Record releases fill me with trepidation. These events have
the potential to reach a lofty tenor, with the parties involved hell-bent on
staking a claim in the annals of music history. However, Wednesday night’s
release concert in Brooklyn Heights for Nonextraneous
Sounds, the new record on Innova by trailblazing cellist Mariel Roberts, bore
no resemblance to such stodgy affairs. Instead, the evening was an honest gathering
of some of the city’s most energetic young composers and musicians. With one glance at the
gathered audience, I quickly realized why this performer is making such a
splash in the New York scene.
The environment that night was fitting, as the emphasis on approachability
and community are at the heart of Nonextraneous
Sounds. The album explores the outer bounds of solo-cello repertoire, but
does so in a way that is palatable to new-music newbies. The compositions, all
written specifically for Mariel, are from a generation of composers that are
embracing eclecticism instead of a single compositional paradigm. The album celebrates the lively milieux that makes up the scene
today, with Mariels explaining that she “wanted to make an album that sounds like the city [she] live[s] in.”
Violinist Adriana Molello shows support for her friend and colleague.
The concert opened with Andy Akiho‘s “three shades,
foreshadows.” The piece, written for prepared cello and a trio of backing
tracks, extracts from the cello a sonic palette ranging from bell-like pangs to
prickly pizzicatos. Inspired by a Rodin sculpture, Akiho described his work as
evoking “multiple perspectives simultaneously.” While inspiration may
have come from la Belle Époque, the
piece’s spirit is firmly rooted in the present: the stereo panning in the
playback stands out as the invention of a composer for whom listening to music
through headphones is as natural as a night out at the concert hall.
Another gem of the evening was Tristan Perich‘s
“formations,” a twenty-minute septet for cello and six speakers, each
emitting a series of one-bit tones. Perich is well known for his work with
one-bit sound, and has carved out a musical aesthetic that subdues the raw
square waves into something novel and refined. In a compositional language
reminiscent of the early minimalists, Perich composed the piece with each
speaker in mind as a separate entity (“a septet for cello and six digital
parts”). However, to my ear,
the frenetic mix of tones emitted were spatially ambiguous—an aural monolith, with complex and constantly
shifting inner workings, barely visible beneath a uniform veneer.
Composer Tristan Perich joins Mariel Roberts on stage after “formations.”
Leaving the concert, I was impressed by the breadth of the
program I had just taken in, as well as the convivial atmosphere. Yet, beyond the sense of having experienced a first-rate evening of music,
I also felt grateful of this young cellist’s decision to commit her ample skill
to the performance of new music. The
world could use a few more musicians like Mariel Roberts.