The High-Voltage Danger of Electronic Music
There’s a certain amount of danger associated with electronic music events that can’t be avoided, and the amount of danger—while always significant—is correlated with the complexity of the electronics required for the show. This is such a commonplace that one facet of enjoying a festival of electronic music is simply waiting for the inevitable tech meltdown or three to occur, paralyzing the whole deal. We had a rocky moment or two at Spark this past week; fewer, I’d bet, than just about any other festival of its scope, however. I’m happy to say that no Max/MSP mishap or bad connection diminished the unbelievable momentum and energy that our staff, performers, and guests accumulated as the festival got rolling. I’ll just talk briefly about two particular concerts.
I never thought I’d ever get to witness a performance of Brian Ferneyhough’s Time and Motion Study II for cellist and three technical assistants, let alone take part in one, but I had the distinctly nerve-wracking pleasure of sitting behind an honest-to-goodness tape loop in support of cellist Alex Waterman’s St.-George-versus-the-dragon-level interpretation of the piece. (The other assistants were played by my UMN colleague Jeremy Wagner and Talea’s technician Victor Adán.) Waterman gave the U.S. premiere of the piece fifteen years ago, and he told us at a rehearsal that Friday night’s performance of it will be his last: He’s closing this chapter of his life as a performer. He couldn’t have given a more dedicated or penetrating farewell rendition—it’s clear that Waterman’s technical command of the work is surpassed only by the clarity and depth of his musicologist’s insight. Those of you who live in New York have no excuse not to see Alex play at every opportunity. It was an honor to be on stage with him.
Speaking of New York, taking the stage right afterwards was a delegation from the Talea ensemble, performing Steven Kazuo Takasugi’s Strange Autumn and the Stockhausen should-be warhorse Kontakte. Takasugi’s adaptation of a fixed-media setting of Wieland Hoban’s bilingual (English-German) poetry was an often-elusive but always-compelling gem; I can’t imagine a performance much better than the one given by Talea’s percussionist Alex Lipowski and vocalist Jeffrey Gavett, characterized by an alienated exactitude not quite like any other performance at the festival. Talea pianist Anthony Cheung then joined Lipowski for a reading of Kontakte (here it should be noted that Adán deserves major credit for ensuring that the entirety of Waterman and Talea’s concert sounded razor-sharp) that brought to light the double nature of this by now historical music: Indisputably old, and yet completely revolutionary, like middle-period Beethoven. Lipowski and Cheung showed us a moment at which it might have been possible to envision a truly transformative music, but of course we have to look backwards in order to see it. Critical aesthetics aside, Cheung and Lipowski knocked Kontakte out of the park; if there’s a group in America who can produce a more committed, precise, magnetic interpretation of this seminal work than these young players brought to Minneapolis, I haven’t heard of it.
The final show, a triple bill featuring legendary guitarist Fred Frith, Quebecois noise trio Klaxon Gueule, and sampler-wielding UK duo FURT, was no less exciting than I promised last week. None of these eminent artists needs a press quote from me, so I’ll just say that a) Frith’s ear for harmony, of all things, is superhuman; b) all emerging chamber musicians should study Klaxon Gueule’s sense of ensemble and group instinct; and c) any claims you’ve heard about FURT’s status as a single person with four hands and two brains should be taken very seriously. This is FURT’s first time in the U.S. in many years (maybe ever?), and their manic, hyperexpository gamesmanship is the perfect antidote to the establishment electroacoustic music scene in the American academy. A lot of minds were blown in the Love Power Church on Saturday night.
We’ll be making audiovisual documentation of the festival available in the not-too-distant future, so stay tuned—and if you have material that’s suitable for a festival like Spark, please consider sending it in when the call for works opens next year.
