Ensemble SIGNAL: Popups and Canons

UB's spring semester opened with Ensemble SIGNAL's residency at the University's new Creative Arts Initiative—a residency that included a masterclass, an open rehearsal, a discussion on artistic entrepreneurship, and Performance in the Dark, a concert of works by Steve Reich and Georg Friedrich Haas (read more about it here).  That was just the first of two non-consecutive weeks of SIGNAL's residency, and the second week took place earlier this month, bookending the semester with exciting events featuring the NY-based ensemble.

SIGNAL's Bill Solomon performs a
solo kalimba micro-concert

The second week began on May 2, with "popup concerts" at various locations around UB's North Campus.  Consisting of 15 'micro-concerts' in a span of 30 minutes, each popup concert featured one or two of the ensemble's musicians playing brief (3-15 minutes) unannounced lunchtime concerts around the campus.  The following day featured a workshop performance of the minimalist classic In C by Terry Riley.    For this event, the ensemble invited anyone able to read music and play an instrument to sit in with them through a reading of Riley's work, introducing UB students and community members not only to the famous piece's challenging form, but also to the excitement of playing alongside some of the most skilled new music performers.  The residency concluded with a celebratory concert of works by Steve Reich.  SIGNAL have long been renowned for their interpretations of Reich's music, especially their Harmonia Mundi recording of Music for 18 Musicians (which received a Diapason d’or in June 2015 and appeared on the Billboard Classical Crossover charts in May 2015).  This concert featured several of the composer's "hits" (1972's Clapping Music, and 1985's New York Counterpoint), as well as two recent works:  Radio Rewrite (2012), based on themes from two Radiohead songs, and Quartet (2013) for two vibraphones and two pianos.

But SIGNAL is not finished yet!  The ensemble will be back next month as one of the six resident ensembles at June in Buffalo.  At this year's festival, they will perform a concert of works by JiB participants (June 7, 4:00pm, Baird Recital Hall), taking their experience collaborating with renowned composers to JiB's young artists, helping them articulate their musical visions and offering authentic interpretations of their works.  SIGNAL will also perform an evening concert (June 10, 7:30pm, Lippes Concert Hall), which will consist of a single large-scale work:  Schnee by Hans Abrahamsen.  The Danish composer—who will be on the composition faculty at this year's festival—composed Schnee ("Snow") in 2008, and the work has since been called a "hidden gem" by the New York Times.  The piece has its roots in 8 Canons, a collection of Bach arrangements which used repetition and slow durations to open up a new way of looking at time in these often taken-for-granted works:

I became totally absorbed into this music and arranged them with the intention of the music being repeated many, many times, as a kind of minimal music.  Obviously, I didn't know which durations Bach had in mind, but by listening to his canons in this way, a profound new moving world of circular time was opened to me.  Depending on the perspective on these canons, the music and its time can stand still or move either backwards or forwards.

One of these arranged canons, Kanon zu acht Stimmen, BWV 1072, can be heard below in Abrahamsen's arrangement.

Schnee emerged through a similar idea, and, using the Bach arrangements as a model, Abrahamsen composed a pair of two large-scale canons for nine instruments divided into two halves (piano and 3 strings, piano and 3 winds, with percussion in the middle).

In my own work, an ongoing idea has persisted, of at some point writing a work consisting of a number of canonical movements that would explore this universe of time.  […]  In Schnee, a few simple and fundamental musical questions are explored.  […]  Can a phrase be answering?  Or questioning?  [Schnee's] two canons are identical like a painting in two versions, but with different colors.  And where the first one does not include the space, the second one does, as well as containing more canonical traces.

The piece soon expanded into ten canons which gracefully unfold over the course of an hour.  The airy, ghostly music begins with whispering, feather-soft gestures, and reduces itself from there as the piece develops.  The performers are told to detune their instruments between movements, moving lower and lower as the piece progresses, creating stranger and more otherworldly sounds.  The work's frigid title makes reference to Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen", and many of the sparse melodies have a frosty lightness to them, sounding almost like snow falling gracefully downward.

Brad Lubman

SIGNAL is directed by Brad Lubman, who is a special guest at this year's festival.  Lubman has played an important role in contemporary music for the past twenty years, acting not only as the founding co-Artistic and Music Director of SIGNAL, but also as a frequent guest conductor of many of the world's leading ensembles (including Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta, Klangforum Wien, ASKO Ensemble, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, WDR Symphony Cologne, Finnish Radio Symphony, and the Center's own Slee Sinfonietta). Currently on faculty at the Eastman School of Music, Lubman is known for his versatile conducting technique and skilled realizations of contemporary and classical works alike.

We're excited that Brad Lubman and SIGNAL will be returning to this year's festival (for more on the long, productive relationship between the ensemble and June in Buffalo, see last year's profile).  Whether realizing classical minimalist works with UB students, premiering new works by emerging composers, or articulating the delicate subtleties of wintery canons, SIGNAL is always a reliable source for strong, proficient performances.

SIGNAL Ensemble featured in CAI Pilot Project

This week, UB's new Creative Arts Initiative launches the first of several pilot projects:  the residency of Ensemble SIGNAL, which will feature a masterclass, an open rehearsal, and a discussion on artistic entrepreneurship, all leading up to Performance in the Dark, a concert in the CFA Black Box Theater featuring works by Steve Reich and Georg Friedrich Haas.

The university-wide Creative Arts Initiative is "dedicated to the creation and production of new work upholding the highest artistic standards of excellence and fostering a complementary atmosphere of creative investigation and engagement among students, faculty, visiting artists, and the community."  Through a number of programs aimed at exposing UB students to the richness of the Buffalo arts community—including artist residencies and innovative interdisciplinary course offerings—the CAI will contribute to UB's Strategic Plan by "creating opportunities for creative interaction between visiting artists, students and faculty, and the Buffalo arts community."  "We feel a tremendous amount of energy in being able to create opportunities for people to interact with really high-level, excellent artists," says co-Director, David Felder, in the CAI's introductory video (see below), "We're talking about individuals and groups, companies as well as solo [artists]."

One of the ways the CAI will engage students is through direct interaction with visiting artists.  Ensemble Signal's residency is the first of many such engagements.  The residency will feature a number of exciting events, beginning on February 10th with "Rehearsing in the Real World," an open rehearsal at which students will be able to witness how the ensemble works together to prepare Georg Friedrich Haas's famous String Quartet no. 3.  Later that evening, Signal's leadership will host "The Entrepreneurial Artist," an open discussion and Q&A covering the ensemble's history, with the aim of empowering UB students in the creation of their own community projects.  The following day will feature a public performance workshop and masterclass, at which Signal co-artistic director and others from the ensemble will coach UB music students, some of whose compositions will be performed later this semester.  

Ensemble Signal

The residency will culminate in Performance in the Dark:  Music by Steve Reich and Georg Friedrich Haas, a free concert in the CFA Black Box Theater featuring two groundbreaking works of contemporary music.  The concert will open with Part I of Reich's Drumming, performed by Doug Perkins of Signal alongside Tom Kolor and students in his percussion studio.  The 1971 work was composed after Reich's trip to West Africa, where he studied with Ghanaian master drummers.  One of the first large-scale masterpieces in American minimalism, the piece quickly became a staple of contemporary percussion repertoire, especially its opening section:  a quartet for tuned bongos which employs Reich's characteristic phasing techniques.  The concert also features Haas's more recent String Quartet no.3 „In iij. Noct.“ (2001), a piece which is "performed in complete darkness, with the musicians playing from memory in different parts of the room."  The New Yorker's Alex Ross has described the piece as one in which the performers 

seem to map the space with tones, like bats using echolocation to navigate a lightless cave.  […]  Often, the music borders on noise:  the strings emit creaks and groans, clickety swarms of pizzicato, shrill high notes, moaning glissandos.  At other times, it attains an otherworldly beauty, as the players spin out glowing overtone harmonies.

This week marks just the first of two non-consecutive weeks of Signal's residency:  the ensemble will return the week of April 30 for a second week which will include a series of "secret" pop-up concerts around UB North Campus, a collaborative performance of Terry Riley’s In C with UB students, and a large-scale concert celebrating the music of Steve Reich.  (For more about Ensemble Signal, see our JiB 2015 profile post from last year.)

The CAI is currently accepting proposals for residencies from creative artists from all fields (music, film, plastic arts, visual arts, drama, writing, and architecture).  This first open call aims to attract artists from around the world, with the aim of giving students the opportunity to interact with great artists who are not currently active in Buffalo.  CAI Managing Director, Cynthia Stewart emphasizes that the initiative is seeking artists who will be actively creating at UB.  Rather than bringing in a visiting artist to simply give a talk, the CAI seeks artists who will actually engage in artistic creation as part of their residency, with an emphasis on student involvement.  "The call is really open with regard to how to incorporate student interaction," says Stewart, "but the more student involvement the better."  Stewart stresses the lack of constraints on the scope of the residencies artists can propose.  "It might be a micro-seminar or a master class.  It might be a semester-long encounter.  There are not a lot of strictures."  The first open call has a deadline of March 1st, and the CAI is eagerly anticipating a variety of proposals from artists of diverse disciplines.

Arts One will visit the Albright Knox Gallery this semester

One of the initiative's key new programs is the Arts One course.  Aimed at introducing students to "a wide range of artistic performance and creative activity," the course consists of a unique approach:  every week, students are exposed to a new artistic exhibition.  Through a partnership with a variety of local institutions, including the Albright Knox, the Burchfield Penney Art Center, and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, students will attend a different event each week.  "This course is deliberately designed to put students in direct contact with artists and arts organizations in a very topical way. Each semester will be very different based on what’s happening in Western New York," says Felder.  This semester, the capacity-filled course will hear curator's talks at Hallwalls and the Albright Knox, attend concerts by Ensemble Linea, the BPO, and the Richmond Ballet, and will see performances by the Zodiaque Dance Company, among many others.  "The aim is to demonstrate to students the difference between a live performance and simply seeing something on YouTube," says Stewart, "it also forces them off campus and allows them to connect to the creative riches in Buffalo."

CAI co-director D. Felder

The Creative Arts Initiative was itself initiated through the hard work of co-directors David Felder and Bruce Jackson.  "It was their brainchild," says Stewart, "and they've been beating the drum for it for a long time."  Their vision was for an initiative that would see more investment in the creative arts, specifically.  "It's based on the idea that creating is a different process from studying," Stewart explains.  "Due to their work and persuasion we were able to receive a grant to get the initiative started, and using their relationships in the arts community we were able to assemble an excellent board.  This gives us a good position to help visiting artists make a splash in the community and not just here at UB."

Ensemble Signal Residency

Rehearsing in the Real World

Feb. 10, 3:00-4:00pm, B1 Slee

Open to all students

The Entrepreneurial Artist

Feb. 10, 6:30-8:30 pm, 211 Baird

Open to all students

Performance Workshop/Masterclass with UB Students

Feb. 11, 10:00am-12:00pm, B1 Slee

Open to UB music students

Performance in the Dark: Music by Steve Reich & Georg Friedrich Haas

Feb. 12, 8:00 pm, CFA Black Box Theater

FREE tickets required

Open to the public