Most new music groups are small affairs, three- to six-member outfits. When a 19-piece contemporary music group comes to town, it is a must-see event.
Thus we ventured to UC San Diego’s Conrad Prebys Concert Hall on Tuesday and Wednesday to hear the ensemble of the Center for Experimentation and Production of Contemporary Music (Cepromusic) in Mexico City.
Their ability to navigate difficult rhythms and extract all manner of sounds from their instruments was excellent. Confidently led by José Luis Castillo, Cepromusic Ensemble fearlessly met the challenges provided by 21st-century composers.
They played five works by UCSD graduate students, a piece by UCSD’s new composition professor, Karola Obermüller, and four works by more established international figures.
The music of English-born, Berlin-based Rebecca Saunders is not heard enough here. Her piece “disclosure” was scored for violin, clarinet doubling bass clarinet (here taken by two clarinetists), trumpet, trombone, and piano. It began with low piano thumps and rumbles beneath gusts of air sounded through wind instruments. The topic disclosed over the next 10 minutes appeared to be the violin’s music, submerged beneath clarinets and brass, breaking through in the final minute for a furious cadenza. Carla Benítez was the virtuosic violinist whose maniacal playing caused her bow to lose more hairs than Homer Simpson.
UCSD alumnus Ignacio Baca Lobera is one of Mexico’s leading experimental composers. His “De La Singularidad V” for 11 instruments and recorded sounds closed Wednesday’s concert. It opened with metallic clanging, but the ensemble was tilted to low instruments and they soon boomed out. Frequently raucous and dense, textures would suddenly drop out, revealing unconventional sonorities such as cellists rapping on their instruments or the surprise ending with its tiny scratching and fluttering noises. Throughout, a subtle electronics part augmented the acoustic sounds.
Obermüller’s “traverse” was inspired by a Lars Gustafsson poem about the surface between water and air. One can traverse that layer, but cannot remain there. It began with soft sustained notes flicking back and forth between flute, clarinet and rubbed crystal glasses, soon joined by a trio of high strings. The transitions were a little sharp, a little flat, the pitch flickering back and forth as if pushing through and pulling back into water or air. This led into a section of loud chords played together by the strings, winds, piano and marimba, repeated chords whose harmonies gradually changed and pulled apart.
“Traverse,” dedicated to “the brave people of all times who stood up against despotism,” was composed the same year that Trump came into power. If there were programmatic connections in the music between tyranny and resistance, I couldn’t readily follow them. Nevertheless, it was a compelling work and a fine introduction to Obermüller’s music.
Compositions by UCSD students Jiyoung Ko, Aaron Mencher, and Alex Taylor were well written modernist and/or spectral explorations. However, works by students Akari Komura and Nasim Khorassani stood out among all the pieces for being different.
In Komura’s “How The Sky Holds The Sun,” the notes of a clarinet melody in a regular pulse were sustained in a harmonic web by violin, cello, flute, piano and marimba. It eventually split into two contrasting lines, each clear and successfully orchestrated.
Khorassani’s “Paper Pigeons” had a theatrical element—each musician doubled on different types of paper. Rarely has the integration between paper and acoustic instrumental sounds been handled with such finesse. Bass clarinet key pops, muted low piano notes, and bow wood bouncing off of strings superbly complemented the paper rustling. A secret message revealed at the ending added an unexpected deeper meaning to the experience.
Hertzog is a freelance writer.