Heard a nice concert tonight. The Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble drew a big crowd for a varied show that featured bass clarinet virtuoso Harry Sparnaay and several premieres.
It opened witih a tone-poemish piece ("Mirage", based on the desert) by Shulamit Ran, an Israeli composer now at U of Chicago. It featured flutist Craig Johnson on amplified and acoustic flutes and piccolo, accompanied by violin, cello, clarinet, and piano. A good opener, not too deep but some great sounds.
The ensemble then appeared for the premiere of Australian composer Michael Smetanin's "Roar". Smetanin explained that it was based on spectral harmonics, but that he avoided the "school band" sound associated with that technique. He was successful with the orchestral scoring, which relied on very consonant sounds. Only when Sparnaay came on relatively late in the piece did we hear some funny intonation. Sparnaay got to play lots of overtones and slick energetic passages. Certainly Dolphyesque in a way, though Sparnaay isn't at all bluesy. I found some of the writing problematic in that the lower register of the bass clarinet doesn't project well and was drowned when accompanied by the tenor instruments(cello, trombone, tuba, ...), though there was great stuff with oboe andsoprano clarinet accompaniment. And lots of cool marimba work.
Besides Sparnaay, the main attraction for many of us was the premiere of a work by local hero Ben Opie, leader of Watershed 5tet. He wrote for the ensemble plus a trio of himself on alto, Jay Matula on drums, and Jeff Mangone on double bass. Ben had told me some months ago that he wound up basing the piece on some Dolphy thoughts he had, which turned out to be some jagged phrases with interesting intervals. He used a 10-note scale and lots of tritones, for which he named the piece "Blue Four". Improvisations by the trio were set off by scored ensemble passages, not particularly striking on first listen but highly structured stuff as Ben is wont to do, lots going on that escaped me. In the middle there was a very long bass solo, which I suspect turned off a lot of people who wanted to just hear composed music. Ben's solo was excellent, but I kept hoping he'd take off. He played outside, did some circular breathing, but never increased the energy past a certain point, probably for good reason given the audience. There was a trumpet solo over changes by the ensemble that was pretty straightforward. So lots of variety, and hopefully it will open opportunities for Ben.
After intermission, Eric Moe and Harry Sparnaay did Moe's "On the tip of my tongue", a duet for synthesizer and bass clarinet based, for one, on James Brown's "Sex Machine". This permitted Sparnaay to really play, including a final movement that was improvised against African drumming from the synthesizer. Definitely a rhythmic extravaganza, with Sparnaay analyzing little phrases a la Coltrane. He didn't have quite enough energy to bring it off totally, but it was fun, good use of the synthesizer to make new sounds with impossible rhythms. At one point, I had a very brief hallucination that came with a quick deja vu. I don't know if our recent thread affected it, but it made me notice it and think about it. I can't describe what it was like, something having to do with a dreamlike notion of whole tones or simultaneous tones doing something. The deja vu was realizing how I had this same hallucination at other concerts and felt transported to the same setting elsewhere.
They closed with the premiere of Gerard Brophy's "Hot Metallic Blues". Like Smetanin, he's Australian, so we got a dose of the New South Wales Conservatorium. But his piece was a long way from Smetanin's. This was fusiony, like Chick Corea getting 15 pieces. It was an electric bass concerto for Jeff Mangone. In the middle he had the electric guitarist quote Zawinul's Birdland even, and there were probably other quotes I didn't know. It was interesting metrically, starting in 7 and moving around a lot before settling into a swinging 4 at the end. Very unusual for this orchestra, but the drummer got to play hard through the whole thing. I don't know whether the title is a reference to the web or is a straight description of the piece.
I had a chance to chat a bit with Sparnaay afterwards, and he was charming, not surprisingly. Things are picking up musically, with another new music concert next week by Eric Moe, Matthew Rosenblum, and Anne LaBaron, then Tiny Bell Trio in March and White Out with Assif Tsahar Trio in April. Plus Charles Gayle some time in April, God willing.