GUITARRAS EN ENSEMBLE: 3 MAY 2003
On a Saturday night in early May the Seattle Art Museum came alive with Guitarras en Ensemble, a concert involving many of Seattle’s best guitarists. Jason Williams led the organization of this exceptional evening, which brought together with full force many of the leading performers in Seattle’s guitar renaissance. The concert was also a benefit for SCGS, which, in translation, means that the performers gave more than just music. In all, 18 performing guitarists played in two’s, three’s and fours. And in the finest of surroundings, we could browse the stone lions and hammering man while waiting for the near- capacity audience to fill the hall.
Robert Beaser, who heads the composition department at Julliard in New York, has written settings of American Appalachian folk songs (Mountain Songs, 1985), for flute and guitar. These were composed for Eliot Fisk and Paula Robison, which gives an idea of their level of virtuosity. Randy Hathaway rearranged, Fair and Tender Ladies and The House Carpenter for three guitars. It was very effective, and the complexity of House Carpenters in its original form was smoothed out by having three voices. Indeed, I feel that some of this music is more confrontational than collaborative in the original, and the skillful and sensitive performance by Hathaway, Colt Valenti and Darko Vukmanic here seemed to add to it.
Matthew McColl and Mark Wilson presented an arrangement of Comptine d’un autre ete: l’apres-midi by Yann Tierson (b. 1970, arranged by Wilson), and Rafael Andia’s (b. 1942) Canciones Flamencas Antiguas. These are recent works. The Canciones was full of surprise: dissonant flamenco perhaps, with complex rhythm that shaded over into traditional Spanish. Andia is a French composer of Spanish parents, and his compositions and performances blend Flamenco and ‘scholarly’ Spanish styles.
Eythor Thorlakkson is a Finnish composer who has arranged Brazilian and Spanish folk songs: smoothly flowing and gracefully played by an estimable trio: Elizabeth Brown, Hilary Field and Jessica Papkoff. I have to say that flowing hair against a deep black background made this visually interesting as well. To download some (free!) scores go to www.eythorsson.com.
Enrique Granados' Danza Triste was more familiar, and once again the fullness the trio brought to this piece was a good match to its original form for piano.
Michael LeFevre and Steven Novacek played three pieces from Brazil: Abel Fleury’s Milongueo del Ayer, Celso Machado’s Imagens do Nordest, and Juan Cobain’s Los Mareados. There were marvelous samba rhythms: read more about these contemporary composers at sites like www.celsomachado.com. LeFevre and Novacek are powerful players, and brought to the music a sense of strength and vitality.
The largest ensemble was a quintet, Jessica Papkoff, Colt Valenti, Robert Vierschilling, Jason Williams and Mark Wilson, playing Wilson’s Ee, Nano, Nano, a Georgian lullaby. Wilson is a prolific composer as well as enthusiastic leader of ensemble guitar playing in Seattle (note the current Guitar Orchestra session and the Victoria BC music camp this summer, at www.seattleguitar.org). The Caucasus is pretty far afield from the normal sources of guitar music, but this illustrates the universal grasp of the instrument; especially in ensemble. The piece was indeed a graceful lullaby, with interesting and unusual stresses in its rhythm. It ended with a soft, extended heartbeat on open strings.
Theme and variations from Sextet in B-flat, Op. 18, is a much-transcribed piece written for wind instruments by Johannes Brahms. Michael Nicolella and Michael Partington present it with shared runs, triumphal chords, lyrical andante’s interesting harmonics. It is a very exposed piece, in demanding strict timing relationships between the instruments. My personal favorites in Brahms’ music are his most melodic works, like the G-major violin and piano sonata, or the simple but evocative Intermezzi for piano, and his grand symphonies. The Sextet seems to excel in another dimension….the piece reminds that the Greats of classical music have a place in our guitar world, though it is unusual to hear them, in the face of all the newly composed or discovered music.
Kevin Callahan and Michael Partington next performed Idilio Crepuscular (Twilight Reverie, 1941), by Alberto Ginastera, Argentina’s best-known composer of the 20th C. This brief idyll was introspective. It felt like twilight, with two people bonded together in a quiet conversation. I wish it had gone on and on.
This was greatly contrasted by Steve Howland, Michael LeFevre and Jason Williams performing a recent piece, Two Safardic Songs by Danίel Akίva, who is a guitarist and teacher in Haifa, and graduate of conservatories in Jerusalem and Geneva. Durme, durme is from his Jewish-Spanish song cycle. The second of these, Tres Hermanicas Eran, had a Flamenco feel, a lovely, crisp palette of sounds. Maximo Pujol’s also recent composition, Fin de Siglo (‘end of the century’), was dedicated to Astor Piazzola. Rich in rhythm with muffled bass, unison runs it was challenging and exciting.
The Ensemble evening ended with the newly born Seattle Guitar Quartet playing two ‘out there’ pieces: Carmen Suite of Georges Bizet arranged by William Kanengiser of the LAGQ, and On All Fours by the exciting Portland composer Bryan Johanson. Could that be a child imitating a dog or an adult looking for his car keys? No, it’s a musical rendition of the firing of a four-cylinder car engine. The piece begins with strummed sequence of chords going round the quartet (which, I have to say, really ‘moved’ on a KUOW-FM presentation, heard through headphones). It blended into the kind of lyrical images that Johanson seems to create like falling rain, yet is jazzier than usual. We are lucky to be so close to Bryan Johanson’s ever surprising musical output (not to mention his heroic Portland Guitar Festival which every truly dedicated guitarist must experience). The ‘SGQ’ has a great opportunity, with enormous well of talent, new compositions and a very receptive public.
A total experience this was. Good profit for the SCGS, and CDs for sale at once-in- a-lifetime prices (for a sampling of recordings from northwest guitarists visit the SCGS website).
-Peter Rhines