Here are a few highlights from our concerts in 2009, edited and produced by Gareth Paul Cox. Groanbox on January 28, 2009, featuring the works of David Bruce, Michael Ward-Bergeman, and John Adams. Glimpses on May 6, 2009, featuring the works of Vivian Fung, Jakub Ciupinski, and Cristina Spinei. New Music 101 on September 16, 2009, featuring the interactive works of Jakub Ciupinski. Reverb on November 19-20, 2009, featuring the works of Jakub Ciupinski, Vivian Fung, Erin Gee, and Cristina Spinei.
This post was written by Timo Andres, one of Metropolis Ensemble's featured composers in Spring 2010, for the upcoming Reverb concerts at (Le) Poisson Rouge.
There's a long tradition of composers finding inspiration in Balinese music, from Poulenc and Britten to Evan Ziporyn and Ingram Marshall. A trip to Bali was also the genesis of Vivian Fung's piano concerto, subtitled Dreamscapes. She traveled there in the summer of 2008 to study traditional music and dance, play in a gamelan orchestra, and indulge her voracious appetite for Asian folk music of all kinds. But don't call her an ethnomusicologist: "I'm less concerned with replicating anything akin to an exact version of these works than with the way I have internalized the shimmering harmonies and interlocking rhythms of their traditions into my own original voice."
I asked Vivian about formulating a voice, which she says is one of the most difficult aspects of a composer's development. Growing up in Edmonton, Alberta and later studying at Juilliard, she was steeped in the canon of Western 20th-century music: Stravinsky, Debussy, Schonberg. It was not until she reached her mid-twenties, at the urging of a friend, that she undertook a comprehensive exploration of Chinese art and music, which also became an important method of self-discovery. Her listening soon widened to the music of other Asian countries. Eventually she found something which she'd felt had been missing from her "musical vernacular" all along: a connection to her ethnic roots.
The origins of her musical material were not a primary concern when Vivian conceived of Dreamscapes; rather, she turned first to her Western models to see how they structured and developed their materials (planning ahead, she says, is key). She ended up with less a traditional piano concerto than a series of vignettes. Each paints a unique sonic portrait, like a travelogue. To this end, the musicians sometimes become foley artists, calling upon a pile of toys and effects: a chorus of bird whistles (purchased from a street vendor in Ho Chi Minh City), a piano "prepared" to imitate the sound of a gamelan orchestra, and, at the end, musical use of a familiar household object which Vivian intends to keep a surprise.
Dreamscapes is scored in bold and brilliant colors, and never settles in one place for too long. Like a tourist's first visit to an unfamiliar city, there's a sense of needing to cover a lot of ground, take in a great many sights, try unrecognizable foods, and somehow have it all take on personal meaning. Vivian writes that "the sounds of Bali haunt my dreams... getting up in the early morning and seeing the morning mist covering the rice paddies [and] hearing a symphony of birds, some of which actually chirp in a gamelan-like rhythm. Occasionally, one also hears frogs and cicadas. Those moments I have remembered and are the inspiration of the opening of the concerto."
With four completely different voices, the composers in our fall concert, REVERB, have summed up their thoughts on what new music can express. Here's some excerpts from the program notes.
I am not an ethnomusicologist and am less concerned with replicating anything akin to an exact version of these works than with the way I have internalized the shimmering harmonies and interlocking rhythms of their traditions into my own original voice.
My interest in integrating percussion with orchestra comes from varying sources, each stemming from dance. I constantly immersed myself in sounds that shared one common principal: rhythm as the driving force of music that inspires and compels movement.
Avant garde composers were trying to find new solutions by rejecting the past. They were really trying to find something new. Whereas our generation is trying to find something new by incorporating elements that already existed. So this is an entirely new philosophy.
And some parting thoughts from Metropolis Ensemble Music Director Andrew Cyr on his curation of this concert of commissions and premieres:
In getting to know these composers and the nuances of their compositional styles in the process of developing these new commissions, I realized over time that they shared something in common that I found to be artistically fascinating and vital: an open and deep curiosity for exploring diverse source material and developing new and highly individual systems of compositional techniques to absorb these modes of representation.
Metropolis Ensemble is dedicated to sharing artistic connections between emerging composers and performers with audiences in settings meant to inspire a new generation of music lovers. Learn more...
