On Saturday, February 3, Eco Ensemble, UC Berkeley’s resident new music group, held a concert that reflected on composer Cindy Cox’s career and provided a first glimpse of major works in progress. The Harts Hall program, presented by Cal Performances, showcased Cox as a composer of vibrant, witty and colorful music, and a composer with a deep connection to the natural world. Ta. The performances of the instrumentalists and singers were top notch throughout. Conductor David Milnes never draws attention to himself, but the technical and musical excellence of his playing speaks volumes of his great leadership.
In her instrumental works, Cox’s movement titles often emphasize mood or color, even when they suggest tempo. “Headlong” doesn’t just tell musicians to play fast. It suggests some kind of recklessness or carelessness. Evocative titles such as “silver and nimble,” “blazing fast and hysterical,” and “resonant and fragile” give listeners insight into the composer’s intentions.
The program started as KanyonWritten as a companion piece to Igor Stravinsky’s Octet, it shares an unusual orchestration with flute, clarinet (doubling up as bass clarinet), two bassoons, two trumpets, trombone, and bass trombone. Masu. Cox’s first movement, “Headlong,” certainly gallops by, starting with a short, punchy motif repeated in various registers by the brass and reeds. After that, the atmosphere of the music changes, with the fluttering and harmonics of the flute and clarinet, and the previous liveliness is replaced by a breathy sound. These contrasting sections are repeated in a fugue-like theme. The music gets louder and louder until it suddenly stops.
The middle movement, “Tender, Nostalgic,” features muted brass, as if the music is being heard or remembered physically and temporally distant. All instruments are played in parallel, and a running figure appears. The final movement, “Strong, Punchy,” returns to the atmosphere of the first movement before fading out with oceanic overtones. Kanyon It sounds like it was arranged for a larger ensemble.
Strangely enough, [Four Studies of Light and Dark] It contains six numbered sections spread over five movements. The composer’s program notes explain that the four etudes are numbered II through V, with I and VI both called “frames” and located at the end of the piece. Cox says that creating a structural frame remains an important compositional technique for her.
[Four Studies of Light and Dark]This piece for piano and percussion is a wonderful masterpiece for both performers, an ongoing conversation in which you can hear ideas moving back and forth between the piano and the various percussion instruments. The faster movements are fueled by an unbridled, sometimes reckless energy, punctuated by any number of insertions from unlikely instruments like slide whistles. Cox makes extensive use of unusual tones throughout, such as the quiet groans of bowed cymbals and the dime-high rattle between piano strings.The final study “Savagely” is very exciting, It is full of intense repetition of drums and piano.
The first half of the program concluded like this. Hishk Ish Tzawok [All Things are One], for clarinet, violin, viola, cello, and piano.Cox was inspired to compose this piece. After visiting the temperate rainforest in Canada’s Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. Like other pieces heard on Saturday, Hishk Ish Tzawok is rich with ideas that Cox combines and recombines in different ways to build musical structures, here spread over five movements.
The piano may swirl as the strings tingle and the clarinet dissonates with the other instruments. Pianos often produce delicate sounds in the lower registers that you might expect to hear at the top of the keyboard. There’s a great section in the second half of the song where the strings play overtones against the shimmering notes of the piano. Despite the energetic drive of Cox’s music, this work could have left more of its most beautiful words to linger.
The entire second half of the concert was devoted to the world premiere of eight scenes from the film. road to xibalba, a musical theater piece composed by Cox to an English libretto developed by her husband, the poet John Campion. The libretto is taken from Campion’s translation. Popol Vuh, K’iche A sacred document that tells the mythology and history of the Maya people.
In addition to a narrator, four singers, and a large chamber ensemble; of road to xibalba It incorporates electronic equipment and field records of Central American birds and wildlife. When this four-act piece is finally performed, a chorus and dancers will also be included.
The plot is too complex and there are too many characters to tell them all. Put simply, of road to xibalba This is the story of twins One and Seven Hunahpuu who were killed by the King of Death. Xibalba is the Mayan underworld where the Lords of Death live. One Hunahpu’s skull impregnates Little Blood, the daughter of the King of Death (don’t ask me the biological details), resulting in the birth of twins Hunahpu and Shuvalanc. The twins are raised thinking they are farmers, when in reality they are supposed to be baseball players like One and Seven Hunahpu.
road to xibalba Sometimes haunting, funny, sad, magical, and touching.like Hishk Ish TzawokIt is strongly connected to the natural world in all its manifestations: , animals, the passage of time, reproduction, life and death.
Cox creates an amazingly diverse sound from his ensemble of piano, keyboard, two percussionists, flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, viola, cello, and bass. She also writes beautifully lyrical vocal music and sets the English text with a wonderful natural flow. The narrator and singers all used body mics, but this may not be necessary if the ensemble is in the orchestra pit.
In Saturday’s performance, Campion played the narrator and showed himself to be a resourceful presence, setting up the initial scene and then reading out the connecting text. Soprano Amy Foote sang the role of Little Blood, who deftly defeats the Lords of Death who send owls to kill her, with delicate, transparent beauty.
Tenor Michael Jankoski and baritone Nicholas Nachley played the twins. Hunahpu and Shubalanku have a deadpan sense of humor. Sarah Couden delivered a beautiful, sonorous alto to her grandmother Shumkane, but her grandmother tricked her twins into thinking they were farmers. There was no sign of an owl or a mouse in these scenes (the latter, throughout the film, is a clue to the twins’ true identity as ball players), but based on these excerpts, they certainly It will be strongly characterized – and probably a lot of fun.
These scenes are so good, so dramatic, and set to great music that the audience gave the performers and creators a well-deserved standing ovation.Let’s look forward to the highly complete staging in the future. road to xibalba.