Freedom from constraint…
The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players ended their season last week with a program titled “His Own Space of Freedom,” with a demonstration at ODC April 25 and a performance at Herbst Theater the next evening.
Philippe Hurel’s Figures libres pits constraint against freedom. A jazzy array of rhythmic figures—reminiscent of bebop improvisation—found common ground between the grouped instruments. Bass clarinet, oboe and flute played unison phrases, short notes with occasional hurled accents. And across from them viola, cello and violin slid around on a surface made treacherous with microtones. But each group, now and then reinforced by piano or cowbells, posed a tension created from the difficult unison passages. They seemed to fight the score, instruments straining to break free of the composer, and gradually that score changed. Phrases altered, accents were misplaced, colors brightened.
After inviting questions from the audience during the Sunday afternoon pre-program, one person asked if the cowbell passage could be louder, so it’s brief sonority would ring clear. They humorously acquiesced and percussionist William Winant deepened his attacks. I thought of how well a cowbell symbolizes restraint and freedom, swinging wildly on a kept neck.
Winant went on to talk of color, describing Hurel as a student of Messiaen and Grisey, French composers who, like Ravel, created glorious colorings. Conductor Christian Baldini led two passages, one of kettle drum thrums, piano and bass clarinet, and the other of vibraphone, piano and piccolo. The phrases were nearly identical, but in different registers and startlingly different timbres.
After a lovely passage of pure breath from the winds over string harmonics that Baldini described as “glassy,” one also had cause to think of breath as both freedom and restraint.
The following night at the full-fledged performance, I thought of freedom and breath again as Julie Steinberg played breakneck and stumbling piano figures, which the players reprised before slithering down with breathy releases. Their bouncy figures ended in anticlimax as their air let out, a balloon’s comic shrivel.
…and the constraints of freedom.
Hurel shared the program with three others—Tan Dun’s Water Music, a celebration of liquidity, Guo Wenjing’s bright timpani Parade, and A Time to Break Silence, Speaking Truth to Power by Manolis Manousakis, which opened the program.
Manousakis took his title from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1964 call to action: “ ‘A time comes when silence is betrayal.’ And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam…If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”
Prefacing the music was a short video, disjoint images shimmying through blurred curtains. Manousakis wrote this for bassoonist Rufus Olivier, a 19-year veteran of the group, and his delivery, like the speech, was passionate. Double tones and the deep creak of closing doors gave way to a short liquid passage. And then back to richly congested notes. Fragments of popular tunes and the sounds of traffic washed through, and Olivier paused three times to add his voice. First an anguished roar; then “But we must speak,” and finally, “ The choice is ours.”
Percussion filled the rest of the program, a reminder of the great percussion programming of two seasons ago. Awesome percussionists Christopher Froh, Daniel Kennedy, Loren Mach and Benjamin Paysen performed in Water Music, and the first three percussionists returned for the carefully choreographed Parade, wielding sticks on gongs for a strange and lustrous language, all gold shimmers and the cries of bent notes.
Next season will be their 40th, a venerable run for a group of wild experimenters. More information can be found at www.sfcmp.org.
—Adam Broner
Photo of Rufus Olivier, principal bassoonist of the SF Opera and SF Ballet. Olivier performed the solo A Time to Break Silence at Herbst Theatre April 26; photo by Earle Wood.
A version of this article originally appeared in the Piedmont Post.