You will hear music…and shadows….shadows!

Thus ends the fantastic poem that Matthew and Michael Dickman will read at our concert next week (Hearing Voices..January 20, details here). Shadows features original music by PDX musician Nalin Silva, a violin and guitar soundtrack to accompany their evocative poetry, a quartet of voices and electric strings.

Shadows is a dream state, a collage of images from idyllic times and spectres of lost family and friends. The ideas in the poetry keep coming at you, like a Mozart opera, one right after the other…

Oh, to be on earth….to walk barefoot on the cold stone and know that the woman you love is also walking barefoot on the cold tile in the kitchen where you kissed her yesterday….

Do you think that’s music we’re listening to? Ambulances and dogs….strangers walking their darlings beneath streetlights…..sirens and trees….all the music that’s left….You know how we are going to disappear, into the dirt forever….

 Stephen Taylor is many things…professor (University of Illinois), arranger for Pink Martini, brother of Oregon Symphony trombonist Robert, and brilliant composer of Paradises Lost. Stephen has arranged a chamber version for us, with seven Third Angle instrumentalists joined by an Illini crew of four singers, the librettist Marcia Johnson (providing a bit of narration), and video imagery by David Warfel.

Paradises Lost, a 2002 science fiction novella by Ursula K. Le Guin, tells the story of the Discovery, on a 200-year voyage to explore and colonize a planet known as New Earth, or Shindychew.

Discovery would build a vast and delicate rainbow bridge across space, and across it the true gods would walk: information, knowledge. The rational gods.

The opera opens with active, rhythmic music that describes the carefully controlled environment onboard the spaceship…here’s an excerpt:

Our concert begins with Jason Schooler performing Failing, a very difficult piece for string bass by Tom Johnson, a serious attempt at succeeding to fail…..challenging music with color commentary. Is it OK to say, “Good luck, Jason”???

Musical art is a difficult pitch to make, an artistic form that exists invisibly in the sound waves, organized (sometimes) vibrations that seek resonance with the artist within each listener. It’s always amazed me how sound can be either exasperating (Barry Manilow’s voice sending me back to a horrible prom night) or astonishingly transformative (Brian McWhorter and Eve Beglarian performing Wayfaring Stranger). On a basic level, both are just sounds, nothing more, though the fact that one gives me hope for humanity, and the other makes me reach for the Lotrimin, is what we’re really talking about. Great music needs resonance, it needs minds eager for new sonic experiences, it needs listeners who want to get out more and meet new musical friends, start new relationships with pieces that tantalize with the promise of long and healthy relationships. At Team 3A we want to be your sonic matchmakers….(cue Can’t Smile Without You)

Time to tout our accomplishments from this past year:

• We brought Pulitzer Prize winner David Lang (co-founder of New York’s Bang on a Can) to PDX for an evening of beautiful music an inspiring conversation
• We continued to dig deeper into new Asian music, presenting new works by Ye Xiaogang, Xiao-Ou, Huang Ruo, Pulitzer Prize winner Zhou Long and Narong Prangcharoen.
• We celebrated 25 years of Third Angularity by pulling off another epic homage to Steve Reich, this time with Drumming, in the amazing Montgomery Park atrium
• We welcomed New York composer Eve Beglarian to PDX to tell a musical story of her travels from the headwaters of the Mississippi to New Orleans. (I’ll be in NYC in January to join Eve and her BRIM ensemble)
• We traveled to Asia to perform in the Thailand Modern Music Festival, presenting and recording Vedana by Narong Prangcharoen; for release this spring on Albany Records.

Audience + Composers + Performers = Third Angle…….all three elements are essential to producing great musical art, the essence of collaboration. Thank you for your attendance, your attention, your suggestions, your enthusiasm, and of course, for your support of our work.

Please follow this link to our donation site: Third Angle donations

Sincerely,

Ron Blessinger

Artistic Director, Third Angle Ensemble

Click here for program and ticket info for “One Mississippi”, October 21 at the Alberta Rose Theater

Eve describes how this personal WPA style project came about:

“I’m not an extreme sports person or anything like that, I’m a reasonably nerdy composer who has lived in New York City all my adult life. But somewhere around the free fall of the economy and the election of 2008, I got the idea to take a human-powered journey through the heart of the country. Without much pre-planning and with even less experience or training, my idea turned into a four-month kayak and bike trip down the length of the Mississippi River in the late summer and fall of 2009.

The only real credentials I had for doing this were first, that the idea grabbed hold of me and would not let go, and second, that my practical responsibilities are practically nil: no kids, no mortgage, no regular job with a time clock or faculty meetings or quarterly reports (or a W2 form either, for that matter.)”

Eve enlisted a platoon of friends and colleagues to join her for portions of the journey, which she chronicled in her excellent blog: Eve’s River Project. Eve will be returning to the river in the weeks leading up to our concert, performing music along the way with her BRIM ensemble. She promises to send us regular updates as she retraces her steps. Please check back in on this blog, on Facebook, and Twitter to hear/see what new discoveries Eve is making.

Eve’s music is so…..Eve-y; gorgeous, poetic, melodic, inviting, funky, seemingly simple yet complicated under the surface…the work of a very humane artist who covers tremendous territory in her music. Politics, poetry, nature, friendships, it’s all there, given voice by this remarkable, free spirited, grilled cheese loving, babe on a mission.

A few samples from the program:

Simple Person – Eating ice cream and watching children dancing in the parking lot. Solfege on a warm summer evening…

Early in the morning – “I was awakened in Iowa one night by an incredible din of frogs and insects. I recorded the racket, and its percussion creates the rhythmic material for the piece….about a year later, I came across a recording of Early In the Morning, a Mississippi Delta work song that became the basis for this piece”.

Bach Feet - Feet Don’t Fail Me Now meets Bach’s g minor Violin Sonata meets James Brown…

Click here for tickets. See you all on 10/21!

(By Wanpen, elephant painter from Chiangmai)

It’s been a week since our return from Thailand, and finally the jet lag has subsided. Our bodies are curious things….even a week of gorgeous weather isn’t enough to reorient the sleep clock. Though it’s been nice to get a lot done before 4am, the 1pm wipeout won’t be missed.

The Thailand International Composition Festival 2011 was a blast, a gathering of new music nuts, composers, performers, and the cheeriest music students you can possibly imagine. There were many highlights:

• Flute virtuoso Luisa Sello dazzled with a solo recital that featured 12 works by composers such as Bischof, Dalbavie, and Varese
• The Quadrivium Ensemble (USA) integrated acoustic instruments with electronic media masterfully, particularly in The Ends of Histories by Christopher Biggs
• Violist Michael Hall was everywhere, playing a gazillion concerts, including Xian Shi by Chen Yi
• Pianist Tomoko Honda was fabulous with everything she played, including The Pursuit of Benyakai by Pradit Saengkrai
• the newEar Ensemble (USA) presented a wonderfully varied program, including The Diary of a Female Warrior by Fay Wang
• My colleagues, Susan and Joe, performed brilliantly in our program, even recording Narong’s new horn trio in under an hour…total pros!

The weather cleared enough for us to catch a tour to Ko Phi Phi. This has been Joe’s fondest wish on this trip, to see the fabled beaches of these gorgeous islands. It was an amazing day, with snorkeling, swimming, and a boat ride in rough waters that was the equivalent of the most rigorous Thai massage. This epic day was rounded out with a spectacular sunset, as seen from our hotel….

The day wasn’t over, however…we caught a red-eye to Seoul, Korea, where we had a nine hour layover, just enough time to get into town and do a little sightseeing and last minute shopping. We made it to Changyeonggung Palace, seeing first hand the incredible craftsmanship of the Joseon dynasty artisans.

On our way to the palace, we discovered how truly connected this trip is to the cosmos, as we came across this Brahms coffee shop, built (obviously) by Seoul’s biggest Brahms afficionado, with non-stop recordings of Brahms’ music, and pictures of Brahms all over the place. Even the ceiling was well utilized to convey the level of Brahms love that the owner has going on..

And now, it’s time to board the second to last plane of our trip (final leg from Sea-Tac to PDX tomorrow). It’s been a fantastic journey, one that we’re eager to share with friends over some Hong Thong whiskey, asap….one last blog post will wrap up the whole deal-io….

The final concert yesterday was a perfect example of the Thai organizational ethos, which requires a warm embrace of chaos. “It will all be fine”….that’s the mantra that gets one past the moments when all hell has broken loose. For example, Susan and I had agreed to perform Datura, the piano quartet by Xiaogang Ye (who was in attendance). The problem arose when we realized that Datura was programmed last on the program, which would have made Susan miss her flight. The organizers, eager to please, switched the halves of the program, giving her enough time to make it. However, they didn’t tell the conductor on the second half (now the first half) that he would need to arrive earlier than he expected. This required another adjustment in the program order, which by now was unrecognizable and utterly confusing to the performers, who kept walking to the front of the stage in case their piece was next. It was an Asian traffic intersection, played out on a concert stage….we were one tuk-tuk short of a Chiangmai rush hour.

The idea of just letting things happen as they may isn’t just a philosophy, it’s an unavoidable reality in Thailand. You have no choice. Everything will get organized at the last minute, and everyone will sincerely make the best of it, whatever the endeavor. We saw this played out over, and over again. Once you let go of the need for order, you have achieved the proper Thai state of mind. Only then can you lay with the tiger….

In the end, it was wonderful getting to know the fabulous musicians who were in residence at the festival, and meeting some very talented young composers from Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand, China, and even the good ol’ USA! Narong Prangcharoen (festival director) is performing a great service for his country’s cultural identity, balancing a growing international career as composer with his deeply held desire to bring classical music to his country.

And the people of Chiangmai….they grow ‘em pretty over here. Gracious, helpful, kind, and drop dead gorgeous. My thanks to the family (below) for the excellent red curry chicken they served me on the day I left their beautiful city.

It’s been wonderful getting to know (and performing with) great players from the Quadrivium and New Ear Ensembles….everyone deserves medals of honor for putting together very difficult pieces on such short notice. Pianist Tomoko Hondo has been a wonder….performing at nearly every concert, with sparkling virtuosity.

The recording session for Narong’s horn trio went extremely well (picture above)….we got it in the can in less than an hour, easily a new speed record! Susan ends her experiment in maximum jet lag today, getting on a plane immediately after the concert. She tells me that after arriving home at 8:30 Saturday morning, she’s going straight off to her son’s swim meet. Mom AND pianist of the year!

It’s been a very productive week of relationship building, a constructive breeding ground for new ideas and possible collaborations. Final post from Chiang Mai later tonight…..

Bravo to my colleagues, Susan and Joe, for being so brave in taking on this unbelievable program. We look forward to playing for our friends in PDX at the next opportunity.

And now, I’ll take that Singha!