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Richard Salter (center) as The Magistrate in Austin Lyric Opera’s production of Philip Glass’s Waiting for the Barbarians Photo by Ken Howard

Philip Glass’s Waiting for the Barbarians portrays pointless torture, executions without justice, futile interrogation, and a lost war on terror. Staging its U.S. premiere in Austin, Texas, might seem like a left hook aimed at the jaw of Bush Country—except that there’s little disagreement with its message in this cosmopolitan university town.

True, the setting is a never-named generic country that, if anything, superficially resembles the South Africa of J.M. Coetzee, the Nobel laureate whose 1980 novel formed the basis for the libretto (and who once taught at UT-Austin). But, in adapting that story for the operatic stage, Glass and librettist Christopher Hampton make obvious reference to the Global War on Terror, while aiming at universal truths. The parallels to our own time are ominous, and obvious: the frontier threatened by seldom-seen “barbarians” who, when captured, are subjected to fruitless interrogations and sadistic tortures; the town’s freedom submerged to the needs of a single-minded security force; the folly that inevitably results in a lost cause.

The Austin Lyric Opera have staged Barbarians with gauzy sets in which rising and seething fabrics become a landscape with a personality of its own, seeming to dance to the arpeggiated rhythms of Glass’s flowing string and wind parts. At one point, a veil of cloth stands between the magistrate and the torturers, rendering the latter unreal, like ghosts.

The abstractness of setting and universality of action and the theme of a decent person struck down by merciless power claiming righteousness, brought to mind Orff’s Antigonae, which was staged by the UT Opera Theatre elsewhere on campus in 2002. The contrasts help to point out how Glass’s oeuvre continues to differ from Modern forebears. By our contemporary American standards, Orff’s court of Thebes was the scene of high melodrama, “operatic” in the vernacular sense. In the Barbarians’ unnamed frontier town, we instead glimpse the banality of evil. Orff’s piece relies on German bombast, both in its declamatory, epic dialog and in its massive instrumental underpinnings. (The score calls for nine pianos but the 2002 production made do with three.) Glass’ music, on the other hand, is understated, perhaps to a fault. His approach to dialog closely mimics the rhythms of natural speech, yielding little to ornamentation and other tricks of classic vocal music.

Austin Lyric Opera’s production of Philip Glass’s Waiting for the Barbarians Photo by Ken Howard

Neither Glass nor Coetzee is a tragedian. Both prefer to evoke pity rather than terror. For Coetzee, eroticism is piqued and humanized by compassion. In Barbarians, The Magistrate tenderly bathes a barbarian woman onstage, and the nudity is more innocent than erotic. Yet The Magistrate’s fascination with her becomes romantic and erotic as well as rehabilitative—and exploitative. His supposed treason for “consorting with the enemy” becomes the excuse for his own imprisonment, humiliation, and torture, after which he comes to know in his flesh the suffering that so fascinated yet repelled him in the broken female Other. Yet he finds no new insight; as a man of compassion he is as incredulous of human cruelty and as unimpressed by the militant demands of imperialism as when the opera began.

Within the musical history of Philip Glass, it is now tempting to see his Orion as a last joyful effusion of the 20th century, and Barbarians as the first dark episode in an evolving soundtrack to torture, war, and authoritarianism in the 21st.

Much of the buzz among those waiting in the interminable line for cocktails at intermission was pleasant surprise that “This isn’t like Einstein on the Beach.” Only a small minority were unpleasantly surprised by Barbarians‘ conventional story line with developed characters and a realistic plot. After all, it was well advertised as an adaptation of a novel. If, say, Richard Strauss might find Einstein or 1000 Airplanes on the Roof a bizarre evolution of what he knew as opera, Barbarians would present no such challenge to the composer of Salome.

Yet, in other ways—especially its orchestration, at once (paradoxically) lush and austere—Barbarians marks a return to the Glass of Koyaanisqatsi. There are the wavelike arpeggiations, repetitive but not literally repeating the identical pattern. There is the patient elaboration of a sonic texture around an unyielding, drone-like tonal center till it reaches a climax that is inevitable yet gentle and restrained.

Restraint is evident in the vocal parts as well. Hampton’s dialog exhibits a Shepardesque talent for plain and idiomatic yet poignant everyday English. Thanks to the declamatory singing style and a score light on ornamentation, nearly all the dialog would have been easy to follow even without the prominent surtitles. There is an overwhelming reliance on recitative, and few arias. (One occurs by dramatic necessity when The Magistrate finds himself in solitary confinement and is thus forced to solo.) Choruses often consist of non-word vocalizations, or the mindless repetition of catchphrases by army personnel brainwashed into goons.

The plot naturally calls for a largely male cast. Countering the tradition of male lead as tenor, Richard Salter as the Magistrate is a stunning baritone; his nemesis Eugene Perry as Colonel Joll sinks even deeper as a baritone-bass. This bottom-feeding approach to male singing helps to accentuate the grim and violent subject matter. When we first hear the wail (in pain) of mezzo Adriana Zabala as The Barbarian Girl, the sudden intrusion of high-pitched female singing adds a welcome but rare dramatic contrast to a score that effectively, but depressingly, complements Coetzee’s grim tale. Salter in particular drew shouts of “Bravo!” for his aplomb in executing what must have been an exhausting role; Perry also drew adulation (and a few hisses for the authenticity of his evil) and, in addition to Zarbala, Georgia Pickett (soprano) stood out as the cook.

Gone are the days when the premiere of an Aïda or, for that matter, an Oklahoma! would have their audience streaming out of the theater humming a signature tune. But we should not mourn the disappearance of that ultimately guilty pleasure. In its place we have an opera capable of engaging the nonspecialist, the middle American who loves theater.

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Lindsey Eck is a composer, musician, writer, and editor who lives in rural Texas near Austin. His Web site is The Corner Oak.

Robert Honstein

Welcome to Austin, Texas, “Live Music Capital of the World.” Or so claims the conveniently placed eye-level placard that greets weary travelers as they deplane at Austin’s Bergstrom Airport. More than just tourist propaganda, “Live Music Capital of the World” is indeed the city-sanctioned moniker for the Lone Star state’s illustrious capital. Known for the long-running PBS program Austin City Limits, the massive city-wide music industry festival/band bonanza South by Southwest, and a host of luminous musical personalities ranging from Willie Nelson to Stevie Ray Vaughn, Austin is a city overflowing with musical bounty. But in the sea of hipster indie bands, wayward singer-songwriters, grizzled blues men, and hardened rockers, that thing we call new music has sometimes been hard to find.

In the face of the cultural behemoth that is Austin’s bar/club scene, it has been difficult for new music advocates to carve out a niche for themselves. Ask most unsuspecting Austinites about classical music, let alone new music, and they would be hard pressed to mention anything other than the local symphony, opera, and possibly one of the many University of Texas ensembles. However, in the last five or six years things have started to change. Challenging norms of concert music presentation and programming, a handful of dedicated composers, performers, and promoters have succeeded in building a small but vibrant new music community, grabbing the attention of the wider Austin arts scene along the way.

The Establishment

Fortunately, even within Austin’s established classical music institutions, today one need not look quite so hard to find exciting new music. Founded in 1986, the Austin Lyric Opera in its last five seasons has produced operas by Andre Previn (A Streetcar Named Desire), Carlisle Floyd (Cold Sassy Tree), and Jake Heggie (Dead Man Walking). This year the ALO will present the American premiere of Philip Glass’ Waiting for the Barbarians, an opera based on the novel by JM Coetzee, himself a UT graduate and former UT professor. Similarly, the Austin Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Peter Bay, has ramped up its contemporary offerings, recently featuring performances of works by Kevin Puts, Chris Theofanidis, and Joseph Schwantner.

Of Austin’s many choral ensembles, the excellent chamber choir, Conspirare, has shown a consistent commitment to new music. Led by Craig Hella Johnson, Conspirare—whose latest recording, Requiem, received two Grammy nominations—has performed and recorded works by a host of contemporary composers, including, among others, Daniel-LeSur, Eric Whitacre, John Corigliano, Veljo Tormis, Paul Crabtree, and UT composers Donald Grantham and Dan Welcher. Recipient of a 2006 NEA American Masterpieces grant, Conspirare will host a major choral festival in January 2007, featuring collaborations between six Texas choirs and the premieres of new works by Stephen Paulus and John Muehleisen.

Tower Music: The UT Scene

Providing the Austin musical community with a steady stream of well-trained and adventurous young musicians, UT’s School of Music has always played a central role in the city’s classical scene, with many local composers and performers having at one point or another passed through the school’s doors. Home to an impressive composition department, led by faculty composers Dan Welcher, Donald Grantham, Russell Pinkston, and Yevgeniy Sharlat, the school has also been a reliable source for contemporary classical music performances.

John Corigliano in rehearsal for the premiere of third symphony, Circus Maximus, at the University of Texas. Photo courtesy of the School of Music, University of Texas.

UT’s new music ensemble, a cohort of up to sixteen musicians led by Dan Welcher, performs six concerts a year featuring works by prominent contemporary composers along side those of UT students. Jet-setting composers regularly pass through, receiving performances of their works by the New Music Ensemble, and occasionally the UT Symphony and Wind ensemble.

Along with the new music ensemble, the Wind Ensemble regularly presents concerts featuring 20th- and 21st-century works. Under the direction of Jerry Junkin, the ensemble frequently commissions new pieces, including recent world premieres of works by John Corigliano, Michael Daugherty, and UT faculty composers Donald Grantham and Dan Welcher.

For Austin new music fans, the Corigliano premiere was a particularly gratifying event. Playing to a nearly sold-out, 3,000 seat concert hall, the Wind Ensemble’s premiere of Corigliano’s third symphony, Circus Maximus, received a massively positive reaction from an audience filled with university and non-university folk alike. Regardless of one’s esteem for the piece itself, after the performance—with a fully decked out wind band behind them and nearly 3,000 rapt audience members in front—the image of Junkin and Corigliano taking bows was an undeniably encouraging sign, suggesting a public, and an ensemble, quite willing to give new music a chance.

For the electronically inclined, the school’s Electronic Music Studios, by definition of the medium, always offers contemporary music. Run by Russell Pinkston, who also doubles as the president of SEAMUS (Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States), UT’s Electronic Music Studios recently hosted Mario Davidovsky, who completed his Synchronism No. 11 for Double Bass and Tape while in residence at EMS.

An outlet for the work of EMS composers, the Electro-Acoustic Recital series, or EARS, presents two concerts a year. Incorporating lighting and visual effects, these concerts sometimes feel more like a theatre production than your standard new music concert. This multi-media theatricality, along with dynamic collaborations between composers, dancers, and filmmakers, contributes to the long-standing appeal of the well-attended concert series.

New Kids on the Block

Photo courtesy of the Golden Hornet Project.

Outside of UT, a number of dedicated new music organizations have emerged over the past six years. Marked by a preference for alternative venues, a delightfully flagrant disregard for boundaries of genre and style, and an intensely collaborative spirit, the Golden Hornet Project, masterminded by composers Graham Reynolds and Peter Stopchinski, embody the recent sea-change in Austin’s new music scene. Since its inception in 1999, the Golden Hornet Project has presented dozens of concerts featuring the premieres of over 100 works by more than 30 composers. Golden Hornet concerts reject the stuffiness of standard classical fare, presenting works that freely weave jazz, classical, and rock styles in an atmosphere more akin to a club or theatre than a concert hall.

A frequent collaborator with the Golden Hornet Project, composer Kelly Waddle seems to be everywhere at once. A composer of over 250 works, bassist for the Austin Symphony, author, and blackjack dealer, Waddle has crusaded to bring both his music and that of other Austin composers to the public in a non-threatening, non-pretentious way. Consolidating his activities under PKW Productions, Waddle puts on concerts in movie theaters, libraries, churches, and art galleries, frequently incorporating eclectic reinventions of standard repertoire with his own compositions.

Another outlet for local composers, the Barbwire Music Project, brainchild of composer Stephen Barber and Matt Orem, has been producing eclectic concerts featuring a healthy mixture of contemporary classical, experimental rock, and jazz artists since 2001. Featuring numerous Austin-based artists such as Terry Bozzio, Glover Gill, and the Tosca strings, their popular Dia de los Muertos concerts are marathon extravaganzas incorporating a wide range of music.

Having worked with the likes of David Byrne, Keith Richards, and Arto Lindsay, Barber has led a fascinating career as a composer, arranger, and pianist. Before moving to New York to study composition with John Corigliano, Barber, a native Texan, was a member, along with Austin guitar legend Eric Johnson, of the Electromagnets, a prominent Austin-based experimental jazz/rock group. While in New York, he led a duel life as both an arranger—writing charts for the likes of Joe Zawinul and Van Dyke Parks—and a concert music composer. Upon his return to Austin in the mid-’90s, Barber has continued to pursue both sides of his musical life.

In addition to Dia de los Muertos concerts, Barbwire also presents pianist Michelle Schumann’s annual John Cage birthday concert, a program devoted entirely to Mr. Cage’s works. Schumann, an award-winning pianist, professor at University of Mary Hardin Baylor, and director of the Austin Chamber Music Center, is a vigorous advocate for new music. Recently, she joined forces with the Tosca strings, choreographer David Justin, and composer Rob Deemer, in the newly formed American Repertory Ensemble, a group dedicated to innovative collaborations between dancers, composers, and performers.

The Audio Inversions concert series is perhaps the newest act in town. Established in 2005 by composers James Norman, Tony Suter, and flutist/conductor Karmen Suter, Audio Inversions concerts take place at the Austin Museum of Art and regularly include works by local composers. While the Golden Hornet Project, PKW Productions, and Barbwire, have taken a more pluralistic approach to producing new music concerts, frequently including pop-music elements while cultivating a distinctly un-classical feel to their concerts, Audio Inversions takes a slightly more conventional approach, offering the closest thing Austin has to a standard new music concert series (i.e. classically-trained performers, playing contemporary concert music, in a typical concert format). After a successful inaugural season, Audio Inversions is expanding their scope with a summer music festival, featuring concerts, workshops, and the premieres of three new Kelly Waddle concertos.

Noise, Oscillators, Improv, ???

Dedicated to the avant-garde tradition, structured improvisation, and experimental performance and compositional technique, the Austin New Music Co-op, founded in 2001, sits on the fence between Austin’s contemporary classical and experimental music communities. Holding performances wherever it can, including houses, lofts, apartments, ballet-studios, and meeting halls, Co-op concerts have featured premieres of dozens of new works by Austin composers.

A kind of school away from school, the Co-op offers classes in subjects ranging from circuit bending to creative improvisation, brings in prominent guest composers and performers, like Pauline Oliveros, Mary Oliver, John Butcher, and Frode Gjerstad, and holds regular informal house concerts where members can try out new ideas in an informal and intimate setting.

Co-op members with Arnold Dreyblatt at SXSW. Photo courtesy the Austin New Music Co-op.

In 2006 Co-op members Travis Weller, Nick Hennies, Steve Bernal, and Brent Fariss, performed with Arnold Dreyblatt at the Table of the Elements SXSW showcase. A landmark in itself, as it was the first time SXSW had presented a showcase of a major experimental record label.

Table of the Elements came to Austin for SXSW, but also because they knew they would find an audience for their music. Indeed, for years Austin has been home to a vibrant experimental music community. PG Moreno’s Epistrophy Arts regularly brings in top national free jazz and experimental music artists like the ICP orchestra, Evan Parker, and Mats Gustafsson, while Tina Marsh’s Creative Opportunity Orchestra has been an incubator for progressive jazz for over 25 years.

Austin’s experimental electronic community has been making noise for some time as well. Corry Allen’s Toneburst series, the Austin Museum of Digital Art’s concert series curated by Co-op member Travis Weller, and numerous loft, apartment and house concerts, provide frequent outlets for electronic composers, while the newly minted Spectral House Records, Bremsstrahlung, and Mike Vernusky’s Quiet Design label, have all helped give voice to Austin’s electro-acoustic composers.

What’s Next?

Looking into the future it’s not clear what direction Austin’s new music community might take. Marked by eclectic personalities, a fierce spirit of collaboration, and an intense drive to produce adventurous works, the scene feeds off of itself. And, although small, the community is highly supportive of its members, with performers and composers regularly participating in each other’s concerts and helping with each other’s recordings.

Although pop music looms large, the new music scene does not exist in a vacuum. Many composers and performers are active in both worlds and crossover between the two seems to be increasing. As new music groups begin to build loyal audiences, it seems clear that there are enough Austinites interested in new music to sustain its growth, regardless of its relationship to the bar/club scene.

The prospect for attracting new audiences is promising as well. Many Austin music lovers crave new and exciting music. While there are plenty of bars and clubs where the music is secondary to the socializing, there are also plenty where people come to listen. At a recent concert at one downtown club, The Parish, I recall an impressively attentive audience as the indie band Low played a brilliant late-night set. Same thing when Joanna Newsome rolled through with Smog. When Philip Glass’s Orion played UT’s 3,000 seat Bass concert hall, it was nearly sold out. Same thing when Sigur Ros, David Byrne, and Kronos play Bass. In short, there are many Austinites excited about both listening to music and listening to new music. Down the road, it’s these kind of people who can really give the new music community legs. If groups like the Golden Hornet Project, PKW Productions, Barbwire Music Project, Audio Inversions, and the New Music Co-op, haven’t reached them yet, it’s only a matter of time.