Who knew that Turning Point Ensemble Artistic Director Owen Underhill was such a Frank Zappa fan? Or that Zappa, who apparently kept putting out rock and roll records (first with his band the Mothers of Invention, and then as a solo artist) so he could keep composing his orchestral works, was so influenced by French composer Edgard Varèse, one of the pioneers of musique concrète? In fact, the answer to both questions forms the basis for TPE's latest concert, Zappa Meets Varèse and Oswald: The Present Day Composer Refuses to Die, presented with the PuSh Festival at SFU Woodward's this past weekend. The third composer in this equation of influence is Canadian John Oswald, whose early experiments in "plunderphonics" prefigured contemporary sampling practices, and who was commissioned to write a new work, Refuse, for this concert.
I don't think I've ever seen so many musicians on stage at a TPE concert, and in the large ensemble pieces by Zappa especially one really felt the swing and rhythm of the wind instruments and percussion (there were three artists overseeing that section) and, of course, guitars. Indeed, the last piece on the program, G-Spot Tornado, was accompanied by a brisk, mamboesque duet choreographed by my colleague Rob Kitsos and performed by dancers Diego Romero and Anya Saugstad. The commission by Oswald, in "emulating Varèse's ascending octaves and fifths, and incorporating Zappa's rapid-fire collage of disparate genres," takes as its starting point some of the pop songs that were at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 list in January 1966. It also blends in references to other recognizable television and movie theme songs in order to suggest that in the detritus of musical history one can also find a shared signature that transcends time and place and narrow and isolationist ideologies (Varèse, who spent many years in the US teaching and conducting, was a committed internationalist, once proposing a "League of Nations of Art").
In these bleak times that's an idea I can snap my fingers to.
P
Showing posts with label John Oswald. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Oswald. Show all posts
Monday, January 30, 2017
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Modulating Movement and Music
For the latest edition (number 31) of Dances for a Small Stage, Artistic Producer Julie-anne Saroyan has teamed up with Music on Main's David Pay to curate an evening of music and dance that coincides with the launch of MoM's Modulus Festival. The result is one of the best and most tightly conceived DSS offerings in a long time.
The evening is divided into two halves. In the first, Toronto's Cecilia String Quartet (Min-Jeong Koh and Sarah Nematallah on violin, Caitlin Boyle on viola, and Rachel Desoer on cello) perform Tchaikovsky's String Quartet No. 1 in D Major, Opus 11. Each of the four movements is accompanied by a different dance sequence. In the first, the evening's mute maestro, Billy Marchenski, appears perplexed by the Moderato that he has failed to initiate, but that has gotten away from him nonetheless. This is followed by former Ballet BC star Makaila Wallace dancing to Karissa Barry's delightful interpretation of the Andante section; b-boy Stewart Iguidez popping and locking and dropping and posing to the Scherzo; and, finally, Vanessa Goodman, in a sheer white hoop skirt designed by Deborah Beaulieu, channeling her inner Isadora Duncan to the rousing Finale.
Following an intermission, the second half of the program proceeds as a series of short choreographic riffs on the music of John Oswald, the electro-acoustic composer from Ontario best known for his philosophy and practice of "plunderphonics"--transcribing, adapting, rearranging, collaging and just generally mashing up previously existing recordings. Most of the choreography is provided by Oswald's partner, Holly Small, who was one of Saroyan's dance instructors at York University. This includes an excerpt from Small's award-winning Radiant (2009) that was danced to stunning effect by Sean Ling and Goodman. They are joined by or alternate with Jessica Runge and Small herself for most of the other pieces, although Iguidez returns in the penultimate excerpt to display some of his own stylin' moves to an Oswald rearrangement of a Curtis Lee song. The Cecilia String Quartet also reappears briefly to perform a beautiful piece by Oswald, preLieu (1991), based on Beethoven's B-flat Major quartet.
Interspersed throughout the evening are also some vintage videos, including of Glenn Gould, whose famous humming and vocal accompaniment to his own piano playing becomes another important motif linking the expressivity of sound with that of bodily movement.
P.
The evening is divided into two halves. In the first, Toronto's Cecilia String Quartet (Min-Jeong Koh and Sarah Nematallah on violin, Caitlin Boyle on viola, and Rachel Desoer on cello) perform Tchaikovsky's String Quartet No. 1 in D Major, Opus 11. Each of the four movements is accompanied by a different dance sequence. In the first, the evening's mute maestro, Billy Marchenski, appears perplexed by the Moderato that he has failed to initiate, but that has gotten away from him nonetheless. This is followed by former Ballet BC star Makaila Wallace dancing to Karissa Barry's delightful interpretation of the Andante section; b-boy Stewart Iguidez popping and locking and dropping and posing to the Scherzo; and, finally, Vanessa Goodman, in a sheer white hoop skirt designed by Deborah Beaulieu, channeling her inner Isadora Duncan to the rousing Finale.
Following an intermission, the second half of the program proceeds as a series of short choreographic riffs on the music of John Oswald, the electro-acoustic composer from Ontario best known for his philosophy and practice of "plunderphonics"--transcribing, adapting, rearranging, collaging and just generally mashing up previously existing recordings. Most of the choreography is provided by Oswald's partner, Holly Small, who was one of Saroyan's dance instructors at York University. This includes an excerpt from Small's award-winning Radiant (2009) that was danced to stunning effect by Sean Ling and Goodman. They are joined by or alternate with Jessica Runge and Small herself for most of the other pieces, although Iguidez returns in the penultimate excerpt to display some of his own stylin' moves to an Oswald rearrangement of a Curtis Lee song. The Cecilia String Quartet also reappears briefly to perform a beautiful piece by Oswald, preLieu (1991), based on Beethoven's B-flat Major quartet.
Interspersed throughout the evening are also some vintage videos, including of Glenn Gould, whose famous humming and vocal accompaniment to his own piano playing becomes another important motif linking the expressivity of sound with that of bodily movement.
P.
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