Ted Hearne: Sounds from the Bench

by Ted Gordon on Sept. 13, 2016, 11:25 a.m.

There is a multiple valence to the "political" aspect of the music of Ted Hearne. Yes, it often sets texts pulled from contemporary politics—WikiLeaks, court testimony, headlines; but it also creates, in the moment of its performance, a polis—a community of performers and witnesses, confronted with texts laid bare by their setting and repetition. At the Philly Fringe Festival this past weekend, The Crossing performed a program of Hearne's music entitled "Sounds from the Bench"—four compositions that use texts drawn from our own contemporary media polis. 

             
(pages from Consent) 

The works performed included Sound from the Bench, which used the words of Supreme Court oral arguments on corporate personhood mixed with language from ventriloquism manuals; Ripple, which sets one line of text from the Iraq War Logs; Privilege, which uses text by David Simon, creator of "The Wire"; and Consent, which combines love letters with text messages cited in the Stuebenville High School rape case of 2012. (Consent will also be performed alongside the World Premiere of Hannah Lash's Reqiuem later this month in New Haven and New York, as well as at the Ear Taxi Festival in Chicago on October 6) Listen to a sample of Consent below.

A few weeks earlier, Cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, formerly of the Kronos Quartet, and percussionist Ian Rosenbaum recently performed Hearne's Furtive Movements in Tulsa as a part of a four-day residency, organized through Choregus Productions.

Furtive Movements, a non-texted piece, approaches the political in a different way. Hearne's concern with this piece is to subvert the identities of these two different instruments—one ostensibly melodic, one rhythmic— by moving beyond the concepts of pitch and rhythm, and into the areas of timbre and phrasing. The cello is "prepared" with a wine cork in-between its G and D strings; rhythmic phrases pass between both players, and often they are called to play in unison. 

           
(pages from Furtive Movements) 

And why might this music be "furtive"? Hearne writes: "this phrase conveys the assumption of guilt [...] based on appearance or demeanor in a given moment, which is striking to me because it speaks more to the expectations of the observer than to a useful description of the subject." Our expectations of what music is, or can be, are called into question here: Hearne points our assumptions back at ourselves, forcing us to grapple with our own desire of what music should be by showing us what it could be, otherwise. 

Furtive Movements will also be performed later in the month by members of The Knights to accompany new choreography by Pam Tanowitz at The Joyce's NY Quadrille. 

Erin Gee Featured at the Resonant Bodies Festival

by Ted Gordon on Sept. 6, 2016, 5:12 p.m.

Now in its fourth year, the Resonant Bodies Festival showcases contemporary vocal performers who curate their own concert programs—allowing for a wide variety of repertoire and musical styles. Held this year at Roulette, Resonant Bodies' closing night features the premiere of a new work by PSNY Composer Erin Gee, performed by soprano Charlotte Mundy alongside the TAK Ensemble. On the Resonant Bodies Podcast, Mundy discusses her curatorial choices with festival director and soprano Lucy Dhegrae. Check out the podcast below. 

Alvin Singleton on PSNY

by Ted Gordon on Aug. 29, 2016, 2:55 p.m.

Alvin Singleton has been one of the leading compositional voices in America since the 1960s, as a member of a cohort of American composers who fused the inheritance of European Modernism with a unique style of American individualism. Raised in Brooklyn and trained at Yale, Singleton resided in Europe for most of the 1970s, returning to become the composer-in-residence at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in 1985, and has since become an acclaimed American composer. For the first time, a selection of Singleton's music is now available for immediate download via PSNY. 

Though Singleton has worked extensively with orchestras, he has also written works for chamber ensembles, theatrical pieces, and vocal ensembles. Two early works from 1966—Mutations for solo piano, and Epitaph for double SATB chorus—show Singleton's own unique take on the transformations of melodic material, nodding toward the Serialist tradition but going his decidedly own way.


(Singleton composing in his Atlanta studio, late 1980's)

In the 1970s, Singleton's writing for solo performers and small chamber groups pushed on that tradition even further: 1974's Be Natural, for any trio of bowed string instruments, includes ludic and improvisational elements that emphasize the creativity inherent in musical performance, and 1978's Argoru IV is a fiendishly difficult piece for solo viola, meticulously notating music to the point of it sounding improvisatory during performance. Both pieces were recently performed as part of a portrait concert at Brooklyn's Roulette — check out a video of Be Natural from that concert, below: 

[Be Natural performed by Stefanie Griffin (va), James Ilgenfritz (db) and Meaghan Burke (vc)]

Singleton's signature playful, enigmatic style is also heard in other chamber works from this period, including the solo harpsichord work Le Tombeau du Petit Prince (1978) as well as Necessity is a Mother...!!! (1981), for three female actors and amplified double bass—a piece which calls for extensive improvisation by all four performers, and nods to the tradition of spoken word performance.

            
(pages from Le Tombeau du Petit Prince, listen to a recording here)

His more serene, mysterious aesthetic can be heard on pieces such as Et Nunc (1980) and Through it All (2007), both of which feature wind instruments. A truly versatile composer, Singleton's work over the past forty years has varied widely by instrumentation and ensemble, but has retained a fascinating, important compositional voice.