| < | January 26, 2013 | > |
Composer’s Voice: One Enchanted AfternoonIt's always a pleasure to spend an hour or so at Composer's Voice, a biweekly concertheld at Jan Hus Church. With life as frenetic and inescapable as ever, devoting an hourto drinking in the talents of live musicians playing innovative works by living composersoperates as a much-needed elixir for the human spirit. Sometimes, you even get to witness magic. That's what happened on Sunday, January 13th. Dr. Jasmin Bey Cowin, a German born harpist, curated an enchanting 15 Minutes of Fame. Usually acting as a musical grab bag showcasing the player'staste and dexterity, Cowin takes her program a step further. Inspired by JuanMaria Solare'sdarkly pensive White Horse Falling Asleep, she structures her fifteen minutes to invoke G.K.Chesterton's “The Ballad of the White Horse,” one of the last epic poems. Written in 1911,the stanzas relate the legend of the Saxon King, Alfred the Great. Cowin takes portionsof the poem and knits each of the musical selections into the text. 
Cowin's thoughtful approach proves to be transcendent. Many of the pieces are spare and meditative, the silences just as instructive as the notes played. Cowin's playing—deliberate but never pedantic—results in an Elysian experience; the pieces cast aspell, lifting you to the White Horse Vale where King Alfred plucks his harp. Certain selections conjure the exterior environment from Chesterton's poem. Aaron Fryklund's Frost, second on the program, ripples with aural shards that sparkle momentarily, and then disappear into the ether. The First Snowflake, composed by Ehsan Saboohi, flurries gently before a surprise midsection of dramatic abrasion. Others bewitch with their invocation of the text. Jashiin’s L’instableregne highlights the line “Tales that tumble and tales that trick….the world is not stable around the White Horse” with splashes of crystalline brightness tempered by somber admonitions. The last piece, the luminously enchanting Instrument de Paix by Anthony W. Randolph marries the symbolism of White Horse with that of the harp: they are both mechanisms of peace and accord. If Cowin’s 15 Minutes of Fame is an exercise in thoughtful introspection, then Yuri Boguinia’s two pieces—Nox Aeterna and A Minor Prayer—travail in the realm of volatileand grandiose externality. Acting as a physical force, Boguinia’s music assaults and pummels you, bruising your spirit into submission. 
Constructed for piano, French horn, and violin, Nox Aeterna — performed by the impossibly young and composed trio of Vladislav Boguinia, Trevor Nuckels, and Mariam Machaidze — highlights a pervasive antagonistic insistence, which heaps smacking and clawing strata, one on top of another. When the pounding intensity, created masterfully through swellings of dynamics and tempo, finally erupts into splinters of melancholia, Boguinia begins the process again. While only half a dozen minutes, Nox Aeterna feels like an epic peregrination through Dante’s layers of hell. A Minor Prayer, played by pianist Vladislav Boguinia, is another piece that refuses to beignored. While less contentious than Nox Aeterna, it blows like a tempest, traversingin vertiginous highs and lachrymose lows. A solitary note whispering becomes a torrent; stridency thumps and streams, refusing to be ignored. 
15 Minutes of Fame also features beguiling compositions by Seth Custer, Salim Dada, Marissa DiPronio, Pat Duke, Stanley Hoffman, Pamela J. Marshall, Alyssa Reit, James Sebring, Cardamom Stern, and Kezia Yap. Bill Douglas’ sprightly Trio for Flute, Clarinet, and Bassoon played by the appealing Bella Winds; ABEL—chocolate hued with jazzy asides—composed and performed Fima Chupakhin; and Claudio Montero‘s Evocaciones, a parting benediction, rendered by Cowin round out this uniquely moving Composer’s Voice program. 
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OOO to the Rescue
In August of 1970, the Keyboard Division of the North American Minimalist Society published a manifesto that declared war on pipe organs, claiming they were “disproportionately large for the amount of musical gratification [they] produced.” Its militant members immediately began to “downsize” organs by stealing their pipes. From Philadelphia (Wanamaker’s) to London (Royal Albert Hall), from Australia (Sydney Town Hall), to New York (St. Bartholomew’s), pipe organs suffered losses ranging from a single vox humana pipe to entire ranks of diapasons. Eventually, the Oregon Organ Organization, an elite anti-keyboard terrorist guild, infiltrated the NAMS/KD and brought them to justice, no matter the swiped pipes were not in their possession at the time. But that little legal lapse was soon rectified when a Pringler Water Ski Company buyer visited Society headquarters – now covertly staffed by the OOO – and requested a re-supply of its increasingly in-demand product. Faced with a lengthy fine for trafficking in stolen goods, Pringler coughed up a robust customer list. Eventually, the organs got their pipes back. All except for two. So if you recognize the young skier in the photo (Pringler thinks her name was Dinklaker), please contact your local chapter of the OOO. Reward.
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