The Santa Fe International Electro-Acoustic Music Festival
Olivia Block, Ulrike Brand (see tomorrow for part II)
(hear it)

A decent concert. The second half was amazing. The pianist, Olivia Block from Chicago, came ready to rock. She had CD players, an iPod, a grand piano, several transducers (piezo-electric contact pickups, Electro-Magnetic Field pickups, microphones, an E-Bow which is an electro-magnetic field generator used to make sustaining notes on steel strings) and some tuning forks. Don't forget the packing materials, which she placed strategically in the piano before striking with a tuning fork. Her piece began with single notes from piano and fork, gradually incorporated struck and ebow-ed piano elements, then began to incorporate the CDs, playing god knows what kind of horrible/beautiful sounds - she struck and plucked the bass strings on the piano. A delivery truck began honking its horn outside, men called out in Spanish (genius!). She starts playing the lowest notes on the piano, with vigour to say the least. She did not tire. Very gradually, at the top of the crescendo, she moved very slightly up the keyboard, playing perhaps an octave above the piano's low note. It went on for a long time. You would have grown tired, believe me. Her second piece was a soundscape derived from natural sounds. They may have been artificially generated natural sounds.

The first half was a mixed bag. Ulrike Brand, a great cellist, played three pieces.

The first piece by a Korean, whose name escapes me, was a sort of rudimentary sounding looping piece, in which Ms. Brand played sort of shapeless phrases while a computer repeated them over a surround sound speaker system. This sort of thing can be very awesome, but it just seemed like the composer had written a bunch of things and then said "loop them". The point of the looping was unclear, but the phrases would not have worked any better on their own... grumble.

The second piece from Ulrike was a duet with herself, as embodied by a computer pre-loaded with phrases of the piece which were started one-at-a-time by a computer operator (named Paul). The piece was by a German named Heinz. It featured a huge variety of sounds from the cello, and the composer had obviously thought a lot about what sounds would be played and "played" at the same time. Compared to the first piece it was a masterwork. It was very engaging and I felt like paying attention the whole time. I developed a real appreciation for Brand as a cellist. It would be interesting to hear with a second cellist, and I imagine the only reason not to do so, assuming a capable performer could be found, is philosophical. Philosophical reasons are nice, aren't they?

The third piece was by Steven Miller, a composer and professor in Santa Fe with whom I've communicated a little. His piece was an overtone piece, by which I mean he had the cellist play notes from the overtone series, which were then looped, with the intention (I assume) of building up a consonant/dissonant sound-mass. Consonant because all the notes are in the same sequence of partials, dissonant because (for example) the 19th partial only relates to the 17th with the fundamental's mediation, and the relation they have to it is tenuous. It was interesting, but having made this kind of music myself, I found that the full detail of the resultant sound-mass was not realized. Perhaps just more volume was needed. On the recording of my piece "Comma", at the right volume, you hear all kinds of awesome little melodies and improbable tones which strike the imagination. Part of the problem here was also a little too much fiddly-diddly on the cello... sigh. I felt bad that I couldn't highly praise the work of someone with whom it would be good to develop a friendship. I'm sure he has great pieces, amazingly performed.

bb, 28 mar 08