Symphony shuffles across the street for Edge concert

Apr 17, 2008

Author: Travis Rivers

Position: Correspondent

Source: Spokesman Review

Composer to speak
Xi Wang, whose "Shattered Dreams" will be performed by the Spokane Symphony as part of Friday's Symphony on the Edge concert, will discuss the piece and her other works today from 4 to 5 p.m. in the Eastern Washington University Music Building, Room 248, in Cheney. Her talk is free and open to the public. For more information call (509) 359-6116.

The Big Easy Concert House lies just across the street from the Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, the home of the Spokane Symphony.

Musically, though, the Big Easy grounded in rock and nightclub life lives light years away from The Fox.

But twice a year for three seasons now, the Big Easy has been the home of adventurous performances by the symphony through the orchestra's Symphony on the Edge series.

On Friday, associate conductor Morihiko Nakahara will lead symphony members in works by mainly living composers, but also including one giant of modern Japanese music, Toru Takemitsu, and one icon of Western modernism, Edgard Varèse.

"What I wanted to do initially was an Asian program," Nakahara says, "because the concert takes place just the day before the beginning of Japan Week. And I wanted to perform some music by Takemitsu again."

Nakahara has scheduled Takemitsu's Requiem, the work that established the composer's international reputation when he was only 27.

"Takemitsu had not yet found his own language completely, so this is a Japanese nod to the European avant garde of the time," the conductor says.

To show Takemitsu's mature style Nakahara has selected "Tree Line," a work composed 30 years later.

"This shows his personal approach of painting musical landscape as a series of events placed like the objects in a Japanese garden rather than following some set musical form," Nakahara says.

The other durable classic and the oldest piece by the oldest composer on Friday's program is Varèse's "Octandre."

Varèse wrote "Octandre" in 1923, and it provoked outcries of both indignation and enthusiasm when it was first performed.

"People still get scared of Varèse even today," Nakahara says. "But when they find out that Frank Zappa was a big Varèse fan, they think, 'Oh well, then, Varsèse must be really cool.'

"This is our moment of 'shock and awe' because it's the study of extremes of contrast of loudness and sonorities and rhythms and everything in three very short movements."

For the rest of Friday's lineup, Nakahara says, "I branched out into other Asian composers, adding two pieces by Chinese; both of them happen also to be women.

"I found the 'Pizzicato for String Orchestra' by Vivian Fung on 'Dim Sum,' a new recording by the Ying Quartet of bite-sized pieces by Chinese composers, an album just released on Telarc."

Fung was born in Edmonton, Alberta, to Chinese parents. She holds a doctorate from the Juilliard School of Music in New York, and she currently teaches there.

" 'Pizzicato' is very rhythmically active," Nakahara says, "and that makes a nice contrast to the repose of Takemitsu's music.

"And it's not just pizzicato she uses here, but also other kinds of percussive effects on the instruments, giving the sound the flavor of Chinese instruments."

The youngest composer on Friday's program is Xi Wang. Born in China and educated at the Shanghai Conservatory and the University of Missouri at Kansas City, Xi is now a doctoral fellow at Cornell. She received a travel grant to come to Spokane for Friday's concert.

Nakahara describes her "Shattered Dream" as having bold musical gestures and instrumental effects that lend a "Chinese sound" to her music.

The conductor decided that he wanted to go beyond "authentic" ethnicity and explore music by composers who branched out from the musical styles of their own nationality.

"I am ending the concert with 'Crazed by the Flame' by Evan Chambers," Nakahara says. "Evan is an American who teaches at the University of Michigan, but this piece is based on a poem by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke and was inspired by the great Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan."

John Mackey will make a return appearance on the Big Easy program with "Strange Humors," a work he wrote for the djembe a West African drum and string quartet, perhaps the ultimate European classical ensemble.

Mackey is a freelance composer whose "Damn!" heard in last season's Big Easy concerts was weritten for the U.S. Olympic synchronized swimming team.

"Strange Humors" was composed for a modern dance group whose choreographer was a friend of Mackey's from their student days at Juilliard.

"We are opening with Randy Woolf's 'Shakedown,' " Nakahara says. "Randy lives in Brooklyn and he has done work in film. Some people will probably remember his score for 'American Psycho' he wrote with John Cale of the Velvet Underground.

" 'Shakedown' is very rhythmically charged with no relief from the rhythmic action, getting you into almost a techno-like groove."

In addition to the musical adventure, Symphony on the Edge performances are held in an informal rock-concert atmosphere.

Drinks are available (ID required for alcohol, of course) but no smoking and there's rock concert lighting with large-screen video close-ups of the musicians.