1-2-3: Solos, Duo, Trio

John Harbison (photo by Katrin Talbot)

Callithumpian Consort is back! — and ready to kick off the new season. We’re in Jordan Hall on Thursday, October 4th with an intimate program, focusing more inside the ensemble to reveal our individual, virtuostic soloists. The opening concert features two premieres (a Harbison world premiere, and a Roberts US premiere) performed by cellist Benjamin Schwartz.  All in all, the night contains a wide-ranging array of detailed sounds and ideas, coming from around the world and stretching deep into the mind and imagination.

Karina Fox begins the evening with Tristan Murail’s C’est un jardin secret, ma soeur, ma fiancee, une source scellee, une fontaine close… . The subtle work, written for viola (and as a wedding present for two of Murail’s friends), is described by Julian Anderson as “an exquisite miniature” containing the particular timbres and senses we come to identify as coming from Murail’s soundworld. Next, Trevor Bača gives us this pristine image for his Sekka (for unaccompanied flute): “Shining white sounds. A shifting multiplicity. And an intense and sculpted whisper.” The title essentially is a fusion and play on the Japanese characters for “snow” and, in part, “flower”, opening to a beautifully minimal analogy perfectly suited for the design and structure of the instrument. Flutist Jessi Rosinski performs.

Clarinetist Rane Moore and pianist Elaine Rombola team up to explore the sonic contours and extremes in the terrain of Jonathan Harvey’s Be(com)ing, and cellist Benjamin Schwartz presents two premieres this evening: Invention on a Theme by Wm. Shakespeare by John Harbison (a world premiere) and Anakhtara by Adam Roberts (US premiere). Both are commissioned works; the Harbison was commissioned for Schwartz’s 40th birthday (a treat from family and friends), and the Roberts piece was commissioned by the cellist himself.

Gabriela Diaz performs Roger Reynolds’s Kokoro for solo violin, a 27-minute work in 12 parts, exploring the idea of “kokoro” in its various meanings: the actual, physical heart, the emotional “true” heart, the mind, soul, and spirit (Daisetsu Suzuki). According to a program note, Reynolds found this multi-tiered concept to be “irresistable”, and in a performance note, imagines the ideal performance as “involv[ing] the assumption of an entirely new psychological stance for each of the parts.” Finally, we close the night with the conceptual Georges Aperghis’s Les guetteurs de sons, performed by percussionists Mike Williams, Jeff Means, and Nick Tolle.

Join us for this rare program highlighting our soloists within the Consort — Thursday, October 4th in New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall at 8:00 PM; free admission. Not to be missed!

— your friendly webbottress.

Boulez Reviews!

Callithumpian performs Boulez at Seully Hall

Congrats to our ‘Thumpers, and many thanks to all who came to experience Boulez first-hand at Boston Conservatory!  From The Faster Times, Matthew Guerrieri writes, “If there’s an ensemble better suited to this sort of thing than the Callithumpian Consort, I don’t know of it—given the kind of Moore’s-Law-esque acceleration in musical training, there’s doubtless far more musicians able to navigate Boulez’s tangles than when it was written, but the Consort (reflecting the predilictions of its director, pianist Stephen Drury) combines that ability with a devil-may-care, caution-to-the-wind flair. So this Le marteau—conducted by Jeffrey Means—was not only technically secure, but confident enough that Boulez’s touches of timbral character and narrative came to the fore…”

And more from Guerrieri: “Soprano Jennifer Ashe sang all three works on the program, a feat for which tour de force seems strangely inadequate. Ashe’s voice, silvery and fine-spun, was lithe and lucid from top to sometimes wickedly deep chest-voice bottom, with enough clarity to delineate the precipitous lines and carry them through often busy instrumental traffic. To simply make it through such a trio of scores on one program is testament enough to skill and technique; to do so with style, the illusion of ease, and an intelligent interpretive point of view is kind of mind-boggling. Those wild, leaping, coursing, uncompromising lines have rarely sounded so good.”  Read the entire review here.

From the Boston Globe, Harlow Robinson writes: “…“Séquence’’ (1955), the lone Barraqué piece performed with gusto on Thursday by the intensely focused members of the Callithumpian Consort and new music diva soprano Jennifer Ashe, who displayed remarkable pitch control amid apparent sonic chaos. A cool Jeffrey Means conducted. Based (sort of) on a dense text by Friedrich Nietzsche and scored for an eccentric ensemble including violin, cello, piano, harp, celesta, glockenspiel, xylophone, vibraphone, and unpitched percussion, “Séquence’’ creates a hypnotic, shimmering, multilayered world whose underlying mathematical complexities bend and boggle the mind.”  Read more of this review here.

Coming up next: we’ll be performing Earle Brown, Michele Zaccagnini, Morton Feldman, and a world premiere by Tamar Diesendruck on December 3rd, 2010 at New England Conservatory.  8:00 pm, free admission. See you then!

Enjoy the holiday!

—webbottress.

Boulez Festival in Boston

Thank you to all who came to our Harvard Group for New Music concert last Saturday!  Our classic ‘Thumpers – Jessi Rosinski, Rane Moore, Gabriela Diaz, Benjamin Schwartz, and Jeffrey Means – performed music by Harvard composers Trevor Bača, Josiah Oberholtzer, Ian Power, Sivan Cohen-Elias, Sabrina Schroeder and Ann Cleare.  We came across kind remarks by Richard Green, who expressed his admiration in Callithumpian’s liveliness and tightness in “thorny pieces” — read the rest of his review here.

This week we’re over at Boston Conservatory for the 2010 Boulez Festival.  Thursday night will kick us off, with the amazing Jennifer Ashe performing Le marteau sans maître (1954), Improvisation sur Mallarmé I, II (from Pli selon Pli, 1962), and Jean Barraque‘s Sequence (1956), with Jeffrey Means conducting.  Friday’s concert will be a variety of Boulez’s acoustic and electroacoustic works, with Michael Norsworthy in Dialogue de l’ombre (1985) for clarinet and tape, Gabriela Diaz in Anthems 2 (1997) for violin and electronics, and Sonatine for flute and piano (1946) with Sarah Brady and Yukiko Takagi.  Cellist Rhonda Rider, on faculty at Boston Conservatory and at Boston University, will be performing Messagesquisse (1977) with conservatory cello students.

All concerts are FREE, starting Thursday evening at 8pm, Seully Hall at the Boston Conservatory: 8 The Fenway, Boston MA.  For more information and concert details, click here.

(photo from http://www.deceptively-simple.com)

Hope to see you there!

your friendly
—webbottress.

Titanic Reviews + Left Coast/Avant Gardner

Callithumpian Consort performs Gavin Bryar's "Sinking of the Titanic" at ICA

For those of you who missed out on a phenomenal rendition of Gavin Bryars‘s “Sinking of the Titanic”, check out the Flickr set (more pictures coming soon)!

The 8/20 performance – at Boston’s wonderful Institute of Contemporary Art, right on the water – involved surround-sound acousmatic sound, bespoke lighting in blue and sunset hues, both indoor and outdoor choreography, and our own Benjamin Schwartz playing a wirelessly mic’d cello in a small boat at the close of the day.  The weather couldn’t have been better.

Boston Globe correspondent David Weininger writes, “…The performance — spearheaded by the Callithumpian’s intrepid director, Stephen Drury, and expertly guided by sound engineer John Mallia — made shrewd use of its surroundings. But “The Sinking of the Titanic’’ suggests just enough to force you to reimagine the disaster itself, which is why this performance was one not just of postmodern wit but of poignant, even wrenching emotion as well…”  Read the rest of the review here.

Keith Powers, of the Boston Herald, in his review: “…Under director Stephen Drury, Callithumpian has long experimented at the edges of the contemporary repertory with commitment and intuition. This version of the ensemble – Benjamin Schwartz (cello), Jessi Rosinski (flutes), Rane Moore (bass clarinet), Gabriela Diaz (violin, viola) and John Mallia (electronics) – brought this challenging and fascinating piece to life, almost, one could say, up from the ocean floor.”  Read more here.

Classical Voice‘s Phyllis Nordstrom: “…Yet the water was not what made this the perfect venue; this was a museum exhibit – an installation piece. This was so much more than music performed from a boat…”  Click here for the complete review.

Congrats to all!  A special thanks goes out to John Andress for his assistance in putting this together.

Coming up next!  Callithumpian Consort performs on September 16th, 2010 at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in a concert aptly titled, Left Coast (as part of the Avant Gardner series).  Program starts at 7:00 p.m. and includes music by Terry Riley, James Tenney, Lou Harrison, and John Luther Adams.  For more performance details/ticketing information, here’s the listing on the Gardner website.

more soon, from your friendly
—webbottress.