Seattle composer Janice Giteck's Ishi, a suite inspired by the story of a Native American who was the last of his California tribe, reminded me of Stravinsky's A Soldier's Tale: not melodically or harmonically, but in its unabashed storytelling picturesqueness, its transparent counterpoint, the way it paints a mood or scene with great evocativeness and economy and then moves on. Deeply moving, and admirable, is the way Giteck uses episodic structure itself as an expressive device, the six movements' snapshot-like brevity evoking a sense of nostalgia and loss. Ishi's infatuation with, of all things, Italian opera is paid homage to with a salon-orchestra-style arrangement of Donizetti's "Una furtiva lagrima," with Shmidt giving the melody the full-on schmaltz treatment.
Like Lauten's piece, John Luther Adams' The Light Within incorporates a rather overwhelming electronic part, a big sound cloud that very slowly darkens over the course of the piece. Here too the instruments edge in and out of audibility, but without a sense of struggle: they add glints and shadings of color to the overall mass. The electronic part in Eve Beglarian's Robin Redbreast was a more equal partner to the duo of Taub and vocalist Jessika Kenney, consisting of a looming drone and chirping bird noises imitated by Taub on piccolo.
William Duckworth's contribution to close the concert was another chapter in his ongoing Cathedral project: an online repository of his previous performances, plus contributions from musicians around the world, is drawn on as seed material for each new Cathedral performance. (Kind of like holding back a bit of sourdough bread dough to start the next batch.) These sounds were blended into a half-hour collage by Duckworth and associate Nora Farrell on laptops and DJ Tamara at the mixing board, with live contributions from Stuart Dempster (trombone, didgeridoo, a pile of toys) and Taub. It was the sort of ambient-chaos-event-happening not at all shown to best advantage in a traditional concert setting, with them onstage and us sitting in rows.
For an ideal presentation of this sort of thing, you had to check out the three-and-a-half-hour marathon of music by Morton Feldman (1926–1987) that the SCP staged at the Seattle Art Museum Sunday afternoon. In a third-floor gallery displaying some of the Abstract Expressionists who were friends of Feldman and whose way with paint influenced his with sounds, the SCP and friends played eight works of typically vast length and vaster delicacy, each a gentle unfolding of quiet isolated notes and gestures. Listeners came and went, sat on the floor and on chairs surrounding the musicians, meditated in corners, or just wandered by. Anyone who thinks audience excitement and electricity are incompatible with contemplative absorption should have been there—the listeners were silent but the thrill was palpable. Immediately afterward I grabbed the first SCPer I could reach, Taub, and told him this should be an annual event. gborchert@seattleweekly.com
