Null Point: Singing Silos, Decay/Reverberate

Silo City, site of Null Point's Decay/Reverberate

The grain silos in Buffalo's Old First Ward have been an attractive location for the city's experimental artists for many years.  These vast, now empty structures are the site of several well-known events, including the Silo City Reading Series, the City of Night festival, and the Silo Sessions video series.  Most of these events take advantage of the resonant acoustics of the large grain elevators, using the silos' natural reverberation to extend and transform a wide variety of sonic art forms, from folk music to literary readings.

Last week's Decay/Reverberate, however, took a different approach.  Sponsored by the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music's co-sponsorship program, and presented by Null Point, a Buffalo-based platform for experimental music and sound art, the four-day event (June 11-14) centered around site-specific works that recognized not only the silos' acoustic features, but also their architecture and history—a history that is entangled with often-troubling subjects like habitat destruction and labor exploitation.  Event curator (and UB composer) Colin Tucker sought out works that "build new musical and sonic syntaxes from the ground up in dialogue with the site, revealing Silo City in new and unexpected ways."  Null Point's call for works attracted a surprising number of artists—with submissions coming from 18 countries on 5 continents—all eager to engage with the site in this way.

Tucker developed a curatorial strategy he called 'double negation':  "[The] site and aesthetic negate each other, creating a third space which is not reducible to either, and yet which opens up unnoticed aspects of both.  The site provides resistance to aesthetic business-as-usual, while the artwork brings into focus aspects of the site that might not be apparent in its everyday existence."  This resulted in a program of works that were site-specific not only in their dependence on the physical and acoustic properties of the silos, but also in their reckoning with and consideration of their social and ecological history.

Materials from Christof Migone's Record Release 7-inch, 
which uses surface-resonating speakers, contact microphones, 
and small pellets used to make vinyl records in an interactive 
installation.

For some artists, this entailed turning the silos themselves into a kind of large-scale musical instrument.  One such work was Lena Nietfeld's "…some workers it casts into barbarous types of labor, and others it turns into machines", in which "the floor, walls, and the remains of metal grain hoppers are scraped and struck with a variety of objects of historical significance."  These include shovels and brooms (used to move loose grain from ship hulls to the grain elevator) and beer bottles (representing the grain scoopers' dependence on saloon bosses).  In Nietfeld's work, five musicians perform a repertoire of actions that reflect the kinds of work done when the grain elevators were fully operational.  "In some cases this can be very visceral," Nietfeld explains, "but in other cases it is more subtle."  Noting that the introduction of grain elevators to the waterfront produced a significant change in the First Ward's soundscape, the performers of "…some workers" do not read from a traditional score, but instead rely on cues from each other and/or unpredictable environmental sounds (bird calls, ships, machines, etc.).

For the collaborative work, Slow Drip, media artists Tom Stoll and Ezra Teboul took the simple sound of dripping water—ubiquitous to abandoned industrial sites—and developed it into an expansive sonic sculpture.  Based around a set of hanging bowls which slowly drip water into each other—mimicking the funnel structures of grain silos—the piece used opto-interrupter sensors to measure the dripping, and relayed this information to a computer, which spontaneously created real-time sonic responses from a repertoire of drop-like sounds pre-recorded by clarinetist, Krista Martynes.

Shannon Werle, a Dartmouth-based artist specializing in the intersections between architecture, sound, and urban research, offered Filter Index.  A culmination of months of research into the relationship between impulse-location and tone-color, the piece consisted of several dozen balloons positioned throughout the silos popping in succession.  This activated "the reverberant interior of the Marine A elevator, making manifest the unique acoustic architecture of the silo."  Werle has created a preliminary fixed media version of this piece—with an accompanying video diagramming each point's location—which can be seen below (additional documentation from Decay/Reverberate will be released on Null Point's website over the coming months).

Other pieces included works by frequent Center collaborators Daniel Bassin and Matt Sargent.  Bassin performed his Typographies II:  Opera, a series of 35 improvisational modules for trumpet (Bassin) and drum set (UB percussionist John Bacon).  The piece—based on a compositional germ Bassin first cultivated in a string quartet composed for the Ardittis at June in Buffalo 2010—utilized the silos' reverberations as a "virutal third player" and was subtitled "sempre pianissimo":  referring to the 'intensity of listening' demanded by the piece as well as the "potential violence that comes as soft sounds give way to silences."  Sargent's Tide (10+1 basses) was a collaboration with bassist Zachary Rowden.  The work's eleven lines (10 recorded + live performer) consisted of an interaction between software and improvisor, just as its realization depended on an interaction between sound, space, and audience.

Daniel Bassin & John Bacon
perform Typographies II: Opera

Nearly all of the nearly twenty pieces featured at Decay/Reverberate were world premieres, composed especially for this site and this event.  One of the few exceptions was a performance of James Tenney's classic having never written a note for percussion, a frequently-performed open work for percussion, consisting simply of a crescendo from pianissississimo to fortissississimo and back again.  During last week's realization, percussionist Brandon Bell performed the work as an extended roll on a simple gong.  "However," Tucker notes, "the real instrument was not the gong but the silo itself—as the gong's volume rises, the silo begins to 'sing' as its resonant frequencies become activated."

The singing of the silos was a integral—if not deliberately understated—component of Tucker's own work, surplus, an electroacoustic installation whose specific location was unannounced.  In surplus, two unmarked speakers played back a large number of field recordings taken at Silo City, which had been overdubbed and filtered in order to reinforce low frequency broadband noise emanating from nearby industrial fans and distant traffic.  As a result, the sonic environment near the concealed speakers became something of an acoustic black hole, as the speakers strongly emphasized certain ambient sounds while masking others.  "[I] liked the idea of just strolling around the site and [wondering] 'What's that going on over there?" Tucker told WBFO.  surplus aligns closely with Tucker's original curatorial project, as the piece, in his words, "materializes a socio-ecological contradiction in sound, denaturing the site's present day scene with faint traces of the unresolved antagonisms constitutive of its past."

—Ethan Hayden

Hornist Adam Unsworth performs with the Slee Sinfonietta!

We’re excited about our Second Fall Slee Sinfonietta concert coming up on Tuesday, October 30, at 7:30 p.m., and are happy to have received a thoughtful write-up in this week’s Buffalo Artvoice by Jan Jezioro, which is largely about the evening’s conductor Daniel Bassin, “Now in his third academic year as the UB Symphony Orchestra’s music director, Daniel Bassin enjoys his hectic schedule of music making. In addition to his duties as the UBSO music director, Bassin has also been conducting some very challenging works on this season’s Slee Sinfonietta series, yet he also somehow manages to find the time to perform often as a trumpeter with jazz ensembles in venues throughout the city. And he does this all while pursuing his PhD in musical composition at the University.” Read the entire article here.

We thought we'd do a little profile on french hornist Adam Unsworth, who will be joining us for the evening, hailing all the way from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. His ensemble, the Adam Unsworth Ensemble, has recently released two CDs, Next Step, and Excerpt This!, which received rave reviews, including a terrific piece in All About Jazz, by Ken Kase, "Unsworth's debut recording does what the best jazz should do by asking questions, shunning orthodoxy and predictability and having a few laughs along the way. His virtuosity is undeniable... Unsworth and his group have created something rare and distinctive." Read more about Unsworth's work here. 

Next Step by the Adam Unsworth Ensemble

Some background on Unsworth from his extensive biography:

“Adam Unsworth is Associate Professor of Horn at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Prior to his joining the faculty at Michigan, he spent nine years as a member of the horn section of The Philadelphia Orchestra and three years in the Detroit Symphony. Adam has appeared as a recitalist and clinician at many universities throughout the United States, and has performed repeated solo and chamber concerts at Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall. He is the leader of his own jazz group, the Adam Unsworth Ensemble, which recorded the critically acclaimed CD, Excerpt This! and now has completed a second recording, entitled Next Step. The group embarked on its first U.S. tour in October 2007.

“Next Step, the Adam Unsworth Ensemble's 2008 release, is a culmination of work done after his leaving the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2007, a move made in order to devote more time and energy to teaching and creative endeavors. It features new Unsworth compositions for jazz quintet of horn, woodwinds, vibraphone, bass, and drums, and two original works by multi-woodwind virtuoso Les Thimmig.

“In 2006, Unsworth released Excerpt This!, a groundbreaking recording for the French horn that looks to redefine the virtuosic boundaries of the instrument. Highlighted on the CD are five of Unsworth's compositions for jazz sextet. The instrumentation of horn, violin, alto flute, bass clarinet, vibraphone, bass, and drums is unique and creates a texture that truly embodies the term chamber jazz. Joining Unsworth on Excerpt This! are Philadelphia jazz greats Tony Miceli, Diane Monroe, Ranaan Meyer, and Cornell Rochester, as well as Les Thimmig from Madison, WI. In addition to the works for sextet, the CD includes unaccompanied jazz works for horn by Unsworth, Les Thimmig, and Dana Wilson.”

Adam Unsworth, Yuki Numata, and Eric Huebner,
rehearsing György Ligeti's Trio for horn, violin, and piano,
in UB's Slee Hall, 

Rehearsals over the weekend have been going swimingly, as Maestro Bassin recently tweeted, “Great 1st rehearsal of Feldman's "De Kooning" - my first time conducting his music! These musicians are fantastic! #SleeSinfonietta10/30/12”

Slee Sinfonietta

Tuesday, October 30, 2012, 7:30 pm

Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall

Daniel Bassin, conductor

Yuki Numata, violin

Adam Unsworth, horn

Eric Huebner, piano

Ticket information can be found here. 

Link to this here.

The Slee Sinfonietta performs seminal 20th century works!

Our September Slee Sinfonietta concert was a great success and enjoyed a huge turnout, and received a very thoughtful write-up in the Buffalo News by Daniel J. Kushner. We’re already gearing up for the second Fall Slee Sinfonieta concert, which will take place on Tuesday, October 30, at 7:30 p.m., in Lippes Concert Hall. Maestro Daniel Bassin will be conducting some of the most seminal works of 20th century chamber music, and will be joined by violinist Yuki Numata, hornist Adam Unsworth, and pianist Eric Huebner.

Program:

Daniel Bassin conducting David Rappenecker's Emergence

Morton Feldman - De Kooning

György Ligeti - Trio for horn, violin and piano

--- intermission ---

Pierre Boulez – Notations 8, 3, 9

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Kreuzspiel

Tristan Murail - Vues aeriennes

Witold Lutosławski - Dance Preludes

We sat down with Daniel Bassin and asked him about the program, how the pieces fit together, and if he could give us a sneak preview of the music in store for us: 

“They’re all major works, each and every one on the program, but the biggest work is Ligeti’s Trio for horn, violin, and piano, which Ligeti considered to be the first work of his late period, and which represents the culmination of the musical ideas he had been working with during the late 60s and 70s, and a maturation into a lyrical and autumnal style. On the other hand, there is Stockhausen’s Kreuzspiel, which Stockhausen said he considered to be his first true composition – he felt that this was his first work that wasn’t a study or copying someone else’s style, but was a true composition of his own. And we added to the program three of Boulez’s twelve Notations, for piano, written when Boulez was only 20 years old, but which present a nice context for hearing the Stockhausen, in terms of the composers’ treatment of the piano, and the techniques they employed related to total serialism. Bookending the concert are pieces by Feldman and Lutoslawski, both of whom are experiencing something of an anniversary – 2012 being the 25th anniversary of Feldman’s passing, and 2013 will be the 100th anniversary of Lutoslawski’s birth.*

“Morton Feldman’s De Kooning is a piece of chamber music with the unique instrumental combination of muted french horn, violin, cello, percussion (crotales, vibraphone, chimes, tenor drum, and bass drum), and piano/celeste. It was originally written to accompany a film on Feldman’s friend, the 20th century painter Willem de Kooning, created by German-American director Hans Namuth. Feldman once remarked of de Kooning’s work, that at first impression it seemed as if his canvases were painted quickly, but when watching de Kooning paint, he saw that he was painstakingly deliberate and slow, and I think the piece, in a way, mimics de Kooning's process. In Feldman’s composition, the individual instrumental tones succeed one another without regard to metric pulse, but rather with a cryptic instruction from the composer that each sound only begin when the preceding one starts to fade away. 

“The concert closes with the third version of Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski’s Dance Preludes.  The piece was originally written for clarinet and piano, and was derived from Polish folk dances and melodies. In an intervening version, Lutoslawski developed the work into a concertante version featuring the clarinet as soloist, however, in this final version composed for the group Czech Nonet, the composer treats the four string players and members of the woodwind quintet equally, while creating chamber orchestral textures which point forward to his more mature symphonic work.While the works in the program by Stockhausen, Boulez, and Ligeti each mark important turning points in those composer’s compositional output, it is with this final arrangement of the Dance Preludes that Lutoslawski made the artistic decision to abandon the folk arrangements and transcriptions that he had previously been compelled to write as a Soviet-era composer.

“The concert will also feature the composition Vues Aeriennes, by a Darmstadt composer from a later generation, Tristan Murail. In this work, the composer seeks to depict an object – in reality a set of musical processes – in four different qualities of light. Murail breaks it down into four movements: 1. morning light (clear light, very obtuse angles, maximum distortion), 2. light in the rain (soft-focus effect, softer angles, slighter distortion), 3. midday light (brilliant light, frontal view, no distortion), and 4. evening light (warm light, long shadows, heavy distortion). The horn player, throughout the four movements, travels an arc across the stage – he begins off stage to the right, in the second movement plays from stage right, in the third movement plays from center stage, and finally concludes the work off stage left.”

We look forward to seeing you all there!

Slee Sinfonietta

Tuesday, October 30, 2012, 7:30 pm

Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall

Daniel Bassin, conductor

Yuki Numata, violin

Adam Unsworth, horn

Eric Huebner, piano

Ticket information can be found here. 

 * Note: Daniel Bassin will be presenting two other concerts associated with the Lutoslawski centennial: on Tuesday, February 2nd, at a Brown Bag concert in Slee Hall featuring chamber music from across Lutoslawski’s compositional career, and on Friday, March 1st, when TJ Borden will give the Buffalo premeire of Lutoslawski’s 1970 cello concerto with the UBSO.

Link to this post here.

"In Low Key Buffalo, a New Music Milestone"

Wrapping up his series of articles and reviews on JiB 2010, Allan Kozinn of The New York Times contributed a lengthy writeup on several of the festival's concerts, including recitals by Signal, Ensemble SurPlus, and the Arditti Quartet.

While Kozinn had much to say about works by JiB master composers, including Steve Reich, Augusta Read Thomas, Olivier Pasquet, and David Felder, he also devoted substantial space to works by this year's participants, including Daniel Bassin, Matthew Heap, Ashley Wang, Emily Koh, Peter Van Zandt Lane, Huck Hodge, David Wightman, Ray Evanoff, and Jordan Kuspa.  Kozinn described Heap's Illicit Trysts as "an engagingly noisy, rhythmically sharp-edged essay, full of sudden starts and stops and colorful instrumental effects (including quiet sections that sounded as if they were a tape being played backward)."

Noted Kozinn, "Emily Koh’s beautifully eerie circum perceptio, built in layers of delicate string, piano and woodwind timbres, was another highlight of the Signal program. And Peter Van Zandt Lane’s Magana, with a repeating, syncopated clarinet figure taken up contrapuntally in the cello and percussion writing, was one of several student works that used Minimalist techniques as a springboard but headed off in different directions.

"Another, on the Ensemble SurPlus program, was Huck Hodge’s Apparent Motion, which began with a thoroughly Reichian figure and evolved into a harmonically fresh work with a variegated texture full of both sparkle and thunder.

Regarding Kuspa's Piano Trio, Kozinn wrote, "His writing here was sharply focused, carefully shaped and attuned to coloristic possibilities of the piano, violin and cello. The resulting four-movement work, animated and melodically opulent, sounded consistently alive and inspired."

You can follow Allan Kozinn (left), a writer whose interests range from Buxtehude to the Beatles, on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Kozinn, also via http://twitter.com/nytimesmusic.