The Phillips Collection had an artsy, New York vibe on Sunday when the Metropolis Ensemble took over the place, literally. Using the second floor of the Goh Annex and the entirety of the original mansion, in addition to the music room, this cutting-edge, we’ll-try-anything troupe put on a roving “installation” of compositions by Jakub Ciupinski, Christopher Cerrone and Paula Matthusen, all avant-garde New Yorkers in their 30s. A goodly percentage of the patrons seemed more concerned with capturing the events on their cellphone cameras than simply taking in the experience. But this kind of acoustic art is good for the palate, and it was a fun afternoon.
Ciupinski’s piece, “Brownstone,” updated concepts pioneered by Charles Ives and Edgar Varèse; varied groups of musicians were stationed in adjoining galleries and played repetitive figurations in conjunction with an electronic soundtrack. The electronics were the only constant; they were piped into each room through speakers. Thus each patron’s perspective on the piece was unique as he or she wandered from one gallery to another. The overlapping sounds, near and far, created a dreamlike effect.
Back in the music room, Cerrone’s “Memory Palace” was a dialogue between Ian Rosenbaum on a vast array of tuned percussion (wood and metal) and more electronics, leavened in spots by recordings of chirping birds, which were laboriously rendered by assistants who stuck paper megaphones with a needle on one end against hand-twirled LP records. It was unclear what the division of labor was between composer and performer here, as Rosenbaum didn’t refer to any score and appeared to be selecting instruments and rhythms at random.
Matthusen’s work, “Between the Smell of Dust and Moonlight,” was a premiere, commissioned for the Phillips’s 75th-anniversary season. It was similar to the Ciupinski, although it was set in the upper floors of the mansion. The electronics were audible but hidden for some reason (piped discreetly through fireplaces in each room), and the source material drew from early 78s, recent field recordings and computer manipulations. The musicians, again distributed throughout the galleries on two floors, just played small, repetitive phrases that blended together differently depending on where you walked.
The final section, back in the music room, contained the only real “music” of the afternoon — an extended trio for harp, violin and glockenspiel that was euphonious and hymnlike. The piece ended with another appearance of the acoustic bird-chirping and a gentle chorale hummed by the Metropolis members. Ephemeral but charming.