[Voxnovus] NM421> December 24, 2014 - Happy Holidays!!! - Review - Composer's Voice Brass!

[Robert Voisey (Vox Novus)]

 Happy Holidays
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December 24, 2014 	

VOX NOVUS NEWSLETTER - New Music for the 21st Century	
Happy Holidays!!!	
REVIEW: Brass!! 	
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HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!! 

>From everyone at Vox Novus, we wish you all the very best! 
	
 Compooser's Voice
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Brass!! 

November 9, 2014 
Review by Jack Crager 

The title of the November 9 Composer's Voice Concert - cited verbatim above
- says it all. This is a celebration of brass instrumentation, an unusual
feature in the chamber-oriented CV series, with a twist: Comfort meets
cacophony. That is, conventional brass sounds, combined with highly
adventurous compositions, make for an afternoon of dynamic surprises. 

 Christopher Bill
<http://www.voxnovus.com/NM421/img/14-12-24-Christopher_Bill.jpg> 

Trombonist Christopher Bill is first on the bill, starting with his own
piece, "Celestial Mountains." It's an apt title, given the cavernous echoes
he'll produce - with a little help from electronics. Bill blows a series of
notes that play back in a recorded loop, then adds harmony lines which are
also looped, and the third time around creates triads. While these loops
plays he solos over the top (and bottom) of this bluesy cadence. He breaks
the loops to start a new pattern based on staccato blasts, then solos over
this new loop, adding additional parts to create a rising miasma of sound
like a Dixieland brass band.and then dials the mix down into a more subdued
section, ending in long, fat low chords. It's a marvelous combo of parts
coaxed from a single instrument. 

Bill continues the experimentation with George Forder's "Music for One
Instrument," which he prefaces by noting that the piece "questions
conventions." That it does. It begins with a series of blips and sliding
grace notes, with a striking loud-soft dynamic and a combination of
irregular written parts and improvised lines. Part-way in, the piece calls
for a muting effect from plastic bags filled with air, most commonly used as
packing material in boxes, which creates fluttering, flattened blasts that
give way to a series of mysterious chords to end the tune. 

In Bill's final piece, Richard Liverano's ".all we endured since we parted,"
he returns to using the electronic loops - but this time the return notes
sound different from the lead ones, as if a second trombonist has taken off
on his own plane, sometimes in symbiosis and other times in dissonance. In
the final section, a series of short notes grow into a meandering melody
line that ends on lonely notes, fading into electronic white noise, and Bill
takes his bows. 

 Purchase Brass Ensemble
<http://www.voxnovus.com/NM421/img/14-12-24-Purchase_Brass_Ensemble.jpg> 

Having heard a solo trombonist who sounds like an ensemble, we shift to an
actual group: the Purchase Brass Ensemble, from Purchase College, State
University of New York, conducted by Peter Reit. They start with Greg
Bartholomew's playfully titled "Grand Imperial Promenade & Whimsy." The
cacophony of the warm-up indicates that the group - six trumpets, four
French horns, three trombones, two tubas, and four percussionists - will
take full advantage of Jan Hus Church's round-sound acoustics. But the piece
itself starts quietly, with contemplative exchanges between the three horn
sections. This progress into a faster refrain led by the trumpets, answered
by the calmer tones from trombones and tubas, mediated by harmonies from the
French horns, with a series of call-and-responses between the high- and
low-register voices that alternately provokes and soothes. The momentum
suddenly builds in a flurry of crescendo and ends on a rich, bright chord. 

The next piece, Shigeru Kan-no's "St Clemens-St Stphen-O Dimention-Tone
Police," begins more ominously, with low rumbling brass augmented by
timpani, shifting into minor-chord splatters accented by trumpet blasts and
muted trombone phrases, the tension punctuated by the timpani's rolls and
fills; the notes pop right and left like a soundtrack to a fitful dream.
This builds to a strident, unresolved, yet resonant ending. 

The aforementioned Christopher Bill offers the next composition, "Bar
Clandistino," which traverses more conventional terrain. It begins with a
series of orderly sounding major chords and reassuring variations, with tuba
phrases that are echoed and expounded upon by the other voices like
concentric circles in a pond; it shifts into a march-tempo exchange complete
with hand-claps and swing-band grooves. Then matters settle back into slower
chord shifts with trumpet-led soaring melodies, returning to the opening
motif and resolving in a nice, end-of-movie closing. 

Just when it seems that major chords are in vogue, the band commences with
Kevin Timothy Austin's ".if roots remain uncut and firm." whose title hints
at its discord. Its mysterious opening tones slide and blast into a slow
build-up of tension hanging on the edge of resolution, finally flowering for
a moment and then reverting back to dissonance, as if parts of a plant are
trying in vain to sprout forth. The final section features low tuba rumbles
joined by a cacophony of high chords that lead to an ending as mysterious as
the piece's beginning. 

The Purchase Brass Ensemble closes the afternoon with the aptly titled
"Fanfare and Frivolity," by Gary Powell Nash. This begins with regal brass
harmonies underpinned by three-part drum cadences and the occasional
gong-bang, with call-and-response exchanges fit for a Queen's court. This
progresses into a more free-form section with each horn section heading in
its own direction, creating a round-robin momentum pushed forward by the
snare drums, until all parts synch back up for a climactic final flourish.
As a blend of conventional brass dynamism with avant-garde undertones, it's
a fitting finale to the afternoon's offerings. 

You can find more as well as see and hear some of the performances at the
following link: http://www.ComposersVoice.com/media/ 

 Jack Crager <http://www.voxnovus.com/NM421/img/Jack_Crager.jpg> 

Jack Crager 

	


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