[36] Pauline Kim Harris and Spencer Topel perform original compositions at The Stone @ Mannes | #1Summer50Concerts

WHO: Pauline Kim Harris, violin; Spencer Topel, electronics
WHAT: HARRIS/TOPEL Ambient Chaconne; Deo
WHERE: The Stone @ The New School
WHEN: July 11, 2019 at 8:30pm

In theory, going to concerts shouldn't be tiring. You get to sit. In air-conditioning, usually. Other people do the work of filling your ears with beautiful music. It's all included in the ticket price -- you just sit back and relax.

But going back to what I said a couple posts ago about not being able to turn my critic brain off -- concerts are tiring for me. In my mind, listening to music is synonymous with forming judgments. I don't see that as either a good thing or a bad thing. It just kind of is how I work.

Occasionally, though, I wish that I could lose myself in a concert. Turn off my brain for a few minutes.

I'm not going to tell you that I succeeded. But I came damn close at this concert.

I'm usually not a huge consumer of ambient music, but there are some great classical-ambient crossovers. I think that the Harris/Topel duet is going to join the greats of the genre when their new album comes out in September. Armed with only a violin, a microphone, and a soundboard, the two presented a refreshing take on Bach (and also another composer -- I'll explain in a second).

I can't tell you a whole lot about the music itself. It moved slowly, sometimes changing so slightly over such a long period of time that I couldn't detect the transformation until after it had already happened. There were no jagged new-music-characteristic jump scares; just the sweet tone of Harris's violin, looped and amplified and augmented.

The first piece, Ambient Chaconne, was a transformation of the famous chaconne from Bach's D minor violin partita; bits and pieces were recognizable throughout, but the already-long piece was lengthened from 15 minutes to almost half an hour with a range of clever electronic fillers. (Side note: I turned to my trumpet-playing friend after the performance and asked if he'd heard the original chaconne. Blank stare.)

The second piece was based on a Deo gratias -- I heard the composer as Lachenmann, my friends heard Bach. Neither of those people wrote Deo gratias settings. Phooey. But it was great.

Update: I just looked at the album's liner notes. It was Ockeghem's Deo gratias. I think I was closer.

You can pre-order the album, Heroine, here, or just wait until September 27, when it will hopefully be available on Spotify. Fingers crossed.

EDIT: It's September 27, and the album dropped and is just as good as the live version was! 

[30] Wadada Leo Smith and friends at The Stone @ Mannes | #1Summer50Concerts #JazzWeek

WHO: Wadada Leo Smith, trumpet; Mariel Roberts & Okkyung Lee, cello; Erika Dohi, piano; Gabriel Zucker, synthesizer
WHAT: WADADA LEO SMITH Red Autumn Gold; Silence
WHERE: The Stone @ The New School
WHEN: June 28, 2019 at 8:30pm

So here's the thing.

I loved Wadada Leo Smith's performance. I think that what he did was innovative, and cool, and kept me interested the whole time.

There's only one problem: I don't really know what he did.

I think it was some sort of free jazz. Let me try to describe it. All the musicians were reading off of graphic scores, the kind that don't really specify anything other than direction and approximate time. The keyboard played a lot of single drone notes. The pianist alternated between random, Messiaen-tinged licks and dissonant chords for which she leaned over the top of the piano to damper the strings. The cellists never really played notes so much as effects -- a lot of sliding, a lot of weird in-between harmonics. And Wadada Leo Smith would occasionally come in with a super super loud entrance that would disturb the peace like a comic book character who pops a thought bubble with a pushpin.

Free jazz isn't the right term. It was just kind of....free. I think Wadada's goal was to let the music flow for itself. He sort of vaguely conducted occasionally, but really it was up to the players how the music went. They weren't given too many instructions. They did what they wanted. Wadada nodded in approval.

I mean, I don't have a ton to say about the performance. It was exactly what I needed on a Friday night. It wasn't particularly tough to listen to. Wadada's occasional loud entrances made me jump a little bit, especially considering that the #@%$ing column in the middle of the venue (huge design flaw) kept me from seeing him half the time. The performers all had good imaginations and, even in moments with repeated modules, every note was novel.

If you want to get into new music, this is not where you should start. But if you're interested in exploring a new sound world -- my date and I concluded that it was a sound world rather than a type of music -- then give Wadada a try.

Also, one parting observation: we need more cello jazz in this world. That is all.

[15] Talea Ensemble presents "Lacunae" at The Flea | #1Summer50Concerts

Yes, the lights were actually that shade of purple

WHO: Matthew Gold, percussion; Ted Moore, composer and performer
WHAT: iNSIDE OUT series: Lacunae
WHERE: The Flea Theater
WHEN: June 9, 2019, 4:00pm

You know when you're sitting in a seminar and the professor asks a really good, thought-provoking question? And then everyone just sits there silently, staring wide-eyed at each other, hoping someone will speak up?

Yeah, I hate that -- not enough to actually break the silence, but definitely enough to stew silently in hatred.

Now that I think about it, I may be part of the problem. But that's beside the point for now.

Anyway, I thought I had escaped that awkward, awkward feeling for at least a couple months. But then I went to this concert -- which, mind you, I ended up really enjoying. But seminar-style discussion is awkward enough with people you know, let alone with a group of strangers.

Anyway, I've never seen the full Talea Ensemble live, but from what I've gathered they are one of the more community-minded New York classical contemporary ensembles -- in a world where so many people hate new music for "the way it sounds," Talea is trying to foster a culture of informed and engaged contemporary music consumption.

The iNSIDE Out series always comes with a theme -- this one had to do with lacunae, or empty spaces. It's an interesting concept in music; many of my teachers have insisted that rests are actually misnamed, as they are simply times to get ready for the next moment of playing.

I happen to completely disagree with that notion. Think about music without empty spaces -- isn't that just an unmeasured, mono-timbre wave of pitch? But that's getting into semantics.

This was probably the most interactive concert I'd ever been to: word associations, Mad Libs, seminar discussions, and more. As my date so eloquently put it: "I thought we were going to a concert, not group therapy."

The Lilliputian drumset is in the middle

Though the format of the concert was a little bit weird, the music was super interesting. All of the pieces were scored for percussion and live electronics, but, as I discovered, that can mean a whole range of things. One piece was scored for vibraphone with echo effect; another for miniature drumset (not a drumset with fewer instruments, but a drumset that looks like a fixture for a hamster's cage). The most fascinating piece was scored for cymbal and feedback loop. The performer basically held a microphone at variable distances from the cymbal (which had an attachment that kept it constantly vibrating ever so slightly), creating "pitch" of sorts. Was it always the most pleasant sound? No. But was it interesting? A thousand times yes.

The concert portion of this performance was certainly worth going to. Talea percussionist Matthew Gold crashed, banged, and boomed with enthusiasm, though never recklessly so. The compositions were innovative in a vein that I had never really explored before. That being said, the discussion could have used a little bit more thought -- maybe a round of introductions first? There were only six of us, it wouldn't have been that hard: "Hi, I'm Emery, I'm a college student, and I like music."