Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

eighth blackbird and company after Music for 18 Musicians
Photo: Jeff 2009

If there was a take home message from this year’s Ojai Music Festival, it was clearly about the primacy of collaboration between a community of musicians in making contemporary music. Not that this is a radically new or different idea, but even here in Ojai over the last several decades, the history of the festival has often been a history of auteurs or individuals who shepherded players and resources to make their points. From Stravinsky and Boulez, to Salonen, Nagano, and MTT, celebrity conductors, composers, and performers have left their mark guiding a range of ensembles. This year’s festival was somewhat unique in that it was curated by a group of musicians, who selected material that never once made use of a conductor of any kind, even for works that commonly involve one. But this was much more than a simple gesture of solidarity, it was about a different way of making music.

eighth blackbird
Photo: Jeff 2009

The case was made best by two substantial works that opened and closed Sunday’s activities on the Libby Bowl stage. Sunday morning started out with Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians in all its hypnotic oscillating glory. Reich’s music is commonplace in Ojai, but as Matthew Duvall of eighth blackbird noted from the stage before the performance, the work has special meaning to all the players involved in that individually, their parts are meaningless. Rarely does any one musician have more than a short series of endlessly repeating sequences of notes. However, when put together by a group of players interacting with one another, they grow into something much more profound. It's synergy in action. The crowd seemed extremely excited, and the performance, which was clear-headed and well-organized, was likely the best show in the whole festival for many in the audience.

Musicians from the Ojai Festival 2009 following Andriessen's Workers Union
Photo: mine 2009

The afternoon brought a much different program – a musical marathon that took place over five hours involving 12 sets of music from 11 composers in various chamber arrangements. The marathon started with Reich's recent Pulitzer Prize winning Double Sextet. There were Russian songs from Stravinsky, a recorder quartet performed by the QNG ensemble, two works from Stephen Hartke, and David Rakowski's Études which called for pianist Amy Briggs to use her face to play some of the keys in the third study entitled "Schnozzage". Some of this was funny, some interesting, and some nearly awful. But as the evening wore on the camaraderie of the ever changing ensembles was clear. They were having fun experimenting in nearly every direction you could think of. Even guest composer/sculptor Trimpin got into the act providing assistance on Nathan Davis' Sounder. Half of the six or so musicians on stage played proxy instruments emitting no sound of their own, but sending electric signals via computer that controlled a variety of rigged cymbals, drums, and a toy piano in a nearby "tree sculpture" that soon developed a life of its own like some mad robot. It was a total hoot.

In the end, however, it was all about this group of individuals taken as an artistic whole. All of the players from the last two days gathered together at the end of the marathon for a performance of Louis Andriessen’s Workers Union, a piece with no specific ensemble in mind. Andriessen does specify the rhythm of the work, but also leaves matters of pitch largely to the decision of the players. Here, the members of eighth blackbird started out the piece in its broad pounding arches and were slowly joined in twos and threes by the other musicians until the staged was filled with over 30 players on everything from a bass recorder to maracas. Driving and forceful, the crowd drew together in a near frenzy. It was a joyful celebration and a wonderful reminder of the importance of the collective experience among musicians in performance. And it was a great end to this year's Ojai Music Festival.

Labels: Ojai festival 09

Lucy Shelton, Elyssa Doyle, and members of eighth blackbird
Photo: Jeff 2009

The highlight of Saturday’s schedule at Ojai, was a largely staged performance of Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire that closed out that evening’s concert. The musical forces assembled included festival music directors eighth blackbird and soprano Lucy Shelton in a staging directed by Mark DeChiazza. I’ve always had mixed feelings about eighth blackbird. Certainly their musicianship is excellent, but there was something about the hipster marketing of the ensemble that made them too easily interchangeable with outfits like Pink Martini or the Decemberists in my mind. I know, I know - it's all about breaking down barriers between genres. But does everybody have to look the same?

However, last night addressed many of my reservations and I have a new found respect for eighth balckbird on all levels after observing the six players on Saturday night. Throughout Pierrot lunaire the six musicians not only played their instruments, but also actively performed the movement, the acting, and other feats asked of them in this largely abstract and evocative staging. Of special note was percussionist Matthew Duvall. Schoenberg doesn’t call for any percussion in Pierrot lunaire so Duvall was cast in the part of Pierrot and he was often engaged in movement with a dancer, Elyssa Dole. He was very game and very committed as were all the players who were required to frequently travel around the stage, not only sorting and resorting themselves into the small ensembles called for in the piece, but also to conduct various amounts of stage business including moving chairs and lights and interacting with others in the cast by dancing or various other activities.

The production made the most of the cabaret feel of the piece in 20s-inspired costumes on a stage populated only with a few chairs and a variety of hanging lights. It was not a narrative-oriented staging, but one meant to play out in a more abstract sense, a point made at length in a program note projected onto the supertitle screens as the audience sat in the dark waiting for the music to begin. The message induced laughter in the crowd and did seem a bit bizarre for an audience steeped in decades of avant-garde music. I suspect that most folks in this crowd could handle the idea of a non-literal staging and from their applause, it seems they did. It worked well overall, paying respect to the fact that the piece was intended to incorporate staged elements while enhancing the dreamlike quality of the work with soprano Lucy Shelton and the players simultaneously performing in a real and imagined band perhaps in the soprano’s own mind.

Shelton was quite good. The vocal part of Pierrot lunaire can often be marked with a sort of detachment from the text, but Shelton avoided this and wholeheartedly sunk her teeth into the evening with a wink and a smile, unabashedly putting the melodrama right up front where it belongs. Before the Schoenberg was another piece, a west coast premiere from David Michael Gordon entitled Quasi Sinfonia orchestrated for a small chamber orchestra. It was pleasant at times and ended in a rather nice cascade of chimes and gongs. I didn't have a particularly strong take on it after just one listening of the four involved movements, but it didn't distract from the rest of the evening, which I guess is a good thing when you're up against something as showy as this particular Schoenberg work. Overall, it was a pretty good evening.

Labels: Ojai festival 09

Jeremy Denk on stage in Ojai
Photo: Jeff 2009

I arrived in Ojai on Saturday for this year’s installment of the legendary music festival with too little sleep and too much work to do, but it’s hard to feel pressured in this beautiful setting and around so many people interested in new(er) music. My festival kicked off with the afternoon solo performance from pianist, blogger, and über-cutey Jeremy Denk. He fits in well this year with a festival organized by contemporary ensemble eighth blackbird. And, while much of the music in this year’s programs is familiar to the festival audience, there is definitely a younger hipster flair to the proceedings when compared to recent seasons, although the festival clearly maintains its casual California vibe. So, while the song remains the same, the performers may represent a newer generation for a digital era. Denk himself, for example, comes off as less studied and more laid back than, say, Pierre-Laurent Aimard who graced these same stages just two years ago.

Denk started his program with Ives’ Piano Sonata No. 1 and gave a significant introduction to the piece from the stage beforehand, joking that he hoped his morning coffee would kick in while he was talking. It must have, considering how muscular and energetic the Ives came off. Denk cast the work as semi-programmatic evoking a young man who has left the rural New England farm of his childhood for wild city life while the old folks at home pine over memories of the past. It’s Ives at his iconoclastic best, wheeling through melodies and structures as if on a bender until reaching a discordant and unresolved ending. It was thoughtful and energetic playing from Denk, and warmly received by the audience. The best thing about Ives is how shocking his music still seems after all these decades. He's the musical equivalent of Walf Whitman, and Denk left no question as to the importance of this work.

I was less taken with the performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations that filled the second half of the show. Denk started off still in full-bore Ives mode seemingly flying from pillar to post with somewhat aggressive strokes and almost caricaturish flourishes. I never sensed the inner measured workings of the piece or the fleet but light spirited turn of phrase that should permeate throughout. It was big and bold, but not necessarily great. Still, Denk can’t be faulted for not having a point of view. It was never lazy playing. But as anyone who has ever read his blog can testify, Denk is not one to do anything without some thought, be it serious or not.

Labels: Ojai festival 09