New York Times Articles

New York Times CLASSICAL MUSIC REVIEW; Teaching an Old Form Some New Tricks

The Miller Theater has undertaken a three-year commissioning project in which it has asked a dozen composers to write what it is calling 'Pocket Concertos' for soloists and chamber orchestra. The first installment was offered on Saturday evening, and already there was a glitch: Ichizo Okashiro's 'Starry Night' was deemed too difficult, and was postponed. Still, the remaining scores, by Julia Wolfe, Benedict Mason and John Musto, made for a full and varied evening.

There was, of course, no reason to expect that these works would be conventional concertos in the 18th- and 19th-century sense. Ms. Wolfe, for one, warned listeners in a program note that she was more interested in ensemble dynamics than in the traditional showiness of the concerto form.

Mr. Mason's interests are similar, and he has others as well, among them, how music works in space and how much timbral variety a small group can produce. So in his Concerto for Bass and Tuba, the soloists -- Joseph Carver on bass and Marcus Rojas on tuba -- had textural bursts, as did just about everyone else, but little to keep them in the spotlight.

The spotlight, though, is not the point here. Mr. Mason's works are theater pieces built of sound and movement, and in this score he has the musicians roving on and off the stage, individually and in clusters, playing their usual instruments, a few antique ones (theorbo and gamba) and an arsenal of devices created by Mr. Mason. The staging kept the ear, eye and imagination fully engaged.

Brass Ecstasy had Mr. Douglas on trumpet, Ray Anderson and Clark Gayton on trombones, Marcus Rojas on tuba and Gene Lake on drums. At the climax of the set, the other musicians quieted down to watch Mr. Rojas stretch out during a version of Otis Redding's "Mr. Pitiful." He rode on the rhythm and used some of Bowie's old brass language, kissing and harrumphing and groaning through the mouthpiece. Finally he couldn't help cracking up.

New York Times MUSIC REVIEW;A Solitary Spirituality And Absurdist Humor

Simply put, there is no musical organization in New York that produces more intellectually enticing or more viscerally satisfying programs than Continuum. Cheryl Seltzer and Joel Sachs founded the group 30 years ago, and it long ago became one of New York's unheralded glories. Year after year, its explorations in 20th-century repertory prove to be not only unusual and unexpected but also important and enduring.

Continuum's program on Saturday night, at Merkin Concert Hall, honoring the obscure and powerful Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya, recapitulated the usual virtues. This ensemble has a long history of acting in behalf of composers whom others discover years or decades later. If, like Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Part and Conlon Nancarrow, Ms. Ustvolskaya draws a larger American following in the coming years, Continuum can once again take credit. The group is entirely composer-driven; no trend, dogma or bias predominates.

This is, incidentally, music of intense spirituality. But it communicates a difficult, solitary fight for belief, not the collective trance beloved of some other Eastern European composers. It also has a colossal sense of self, almost frightening conviction, a Beethovenian "It must be." Ms. Ustvolskaya's works can be taken or left at face value; they are monumental or ridiculous, depending on how you look at them. But they demand to be heard.

Ms. Seltzer and Mr. Sachs traded off the piano parts, each showing a vibrant understanding of the music. Among other contributions, Marcus Rojas's tuba was notable. On Saturday, Continuum returns with a concert at Miller Theater at Columbia University, this time playing music of the novelist Kobo Abe and Japanese composers connected with him.

They hinted at musical styles, briefly calling up a brass band or be-bop or blues. It was beautifully shaded music, asking questions instead of making declarations.

Though its instrumentation of trumpet, guitar and tuba seems thin and unlikely in theory to generate much motion, the trio Spanish Fly can rock. And on Wednesday night, opening for Shudder to Think, the group did exactly that.

Spanish Fly moved from fierce collective improvisation, centered on a rhythm or two, to more traditional roles, having a soloist supported by the band, for instance. It used free time and elegant ostinatos. It implied New Orleans rhythms and rock. The soloists, Steve Bernstein on various trumpets and Dave Tronzo on guitar, moved from delta blues to Duke Ellington, all carried by the rhythmically assured tuba lines of Marcus Rojas.

What used to be called the avant-garde is finding itself not at the far edges of musical development but increasingly at the center of things. Thus, the Anne LeBaron Quintet's main activity on Wednesday night was less exploration than reconciliation; Ms. LeBaron and her colleagues surrounded themselves with varying cultures and tried to draw them all closer together.

She plays the harp, altering its Classical-music nature by amplification, bowing and the doctoring of strings in the manner of John Cage's prepared piano. One of the group's principal melodic agents, moreover, was another symphony orchestra instrument, the tuba, played here with unusual lyrical potency by Marcus Rojas.

The composer and saxophonist Henry Threadgill has spent the last decade or so leading some of the most provocative bands in New York. His new group - a loose septet featuring Curtis Fowlkes on trombone, Brandon Ross and Masujaa on guitars, Marcus Rojas and Edwin Rodriguez on tubas and E. J. Rodriguez on drums - doesn't break any patterns. Freewheeling and risky (Mr. Threadgill turned a scrap of melody into an entire, detailed composition by conducting his group through quickly changing improvisations), the band, which played at Carlos 1 on Friday night, made Mr. Threadgill's reimagined musical Americana jubilant.