Here is an article, just published, which I wrote for Early Music America about Vivaldi, his work at the Ospedale della Pieta, the music he wrote for his all-
female choir and orchestra, and the work by Matthias Maute and Ensemble Caprice to revive the tradition of using an all-female choir for Vivaldi’s sacred music on the albums Gloria! Vivaldi’s Angels, and Vivaldi: The Return of the Angels.
Scenes from Music in the Barns. Music by R.R. Parry, Rose Bolton, Anton Bruckner
Wychwood Barns, Toronto, February 25, 2012.
Nico Muhly - Keep in Touch (viola and electronics)
Live at Sala Rossa, Dec. 18, 2011
Pemi Paull - viola
(36 plays)Luciano Berio - Naturale
Live in Montreal, January 2011
Pemi Paull - viola
Phil Hornsey - percussion
Tim Brady - Frame 4: Still
From Tim Brady/Bradyworks album 24 Frames.
Tim Brady - Electric guitar
Pemi Paull - viola
Michael Oesterle - Garrowby Hill
Pemi Paull - viola
Recorded live at the Music Gallery. March 2011, Toronto.
(24 plays)Quartet for Heart and Breath
Introduction
This is the second in a series of compositions which use the automatic/involuntary muscles in the human body (specifically the lungs and the heart) as the performance parameters. All of the notes and cues are read from a score, but the tempos and rhythms and dynamics in which they are played are governed by either the heart rate or breathing rate of the individual players. Performers wear stethoscopes during the piece, which enables them to play in synch with their own heartbeats. At other times, the players are instructed to play as directly in synch with their own individual breath as possible, either playing along with their inhalation, or exhalation, or both. The idea is less about “performing” and more about directly translating into music the subtle, naturally varying internal rhythms of the individual players.
This kind of performing can yield a subtlety, a spaciousness, and a uniquely fragile style of interplay between performers and musical parts which can never be played the same twice: each performance is it’s own unique, gentle collision of notes, dynamics, timing and shifting harmonies which has new life literally breathed into it every time it is played.
Process/Guidelines/Explanation
In general the players should be paying very little attention to their own “performance” or “musicality”. The idea of the piece is for each individual player to get very “internal”, to imitate or translate as closely as possible the contours and dynamics of their heartbeat or breathing.
The feel of the piece is fragile and somewhat loose. There is no actual time signature, the length of notes and general pacing is all dictated by the players’ breathing and heart rates. By nature of the way in which each person has to follow their own internal rhythms, there may be points at which the player will find they are not quite in synch with themselves, that they have lost track of their pulse, that they are controlling their breathing, etc., which may lead to uneven notes, little gaps in playing or moments where the notes “stutter” a little. This is fine, and adds to the natural fragility of the piece. It seems to be part of the demands of this somewhat challenging method of performing - following one’s own breathing and or heart rate while also playing an instrument and following the other players.
Throughout this piece, each player is going to be playing in one of a few different ways, outlined here in brief but more thoroughly explained in the instructions:
1. Playing the breath: the player plays arco, along with his/her own inhalations and/or exhalations. When playing arco, vibrato should not be used at all, as it interferes with this direct imitation or translation.
2. Playing the heartbeat: the player plays pizzicato in synch with his/her own heartbeat.
During certain sections of the piece, there is a designated leader. In these instances, the leader will always be playing Breath notes. During other sections of the piece there is no leader, and either one designated player will signal others to start, or the cues will be entirely breath-based.
About Warhol Dervish:
Based out of Montreal, Warhol Dervish is an unorthodox chamber music collective gathering together some of the most interesting and creative musicians in Canada. Pioneers and visionaries, Warhol Dervish uses the term “post-good” to describe it’s approach. Made up of early-music HIPsters, new music specialists, ardent 19th century romantics, pop collaborators, rockstar wannabes, meditators and yogis, the members of the ensemble seek to move the chamber music concert experience into the 21st century. Post-good means that good has been done, and that WD reaches its audience through new channels. Warhol Dervish actively seeks to blur the lines that separate classical music from other styles, to rehearse as would a band, to collaborate with improvisers, to actively seek alternative spaces in which to perform, to collaborate with and learn from artists in other media. The members of Warhol Dervish draw on their professional experience working with artists and playing in ensembles as diverse as Ensemble Kore, Patrick Watson, Lhasa de Sela, Bradyworks, La La La Human Steps, Socalled, Ensemble Caprice, SMCQ, Theatre of Early Music, Music in the Barns, and l’Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal.
Viola by Leopold Renaudin, Paris 1789.
Bow by Jean-Jacques Millant, Paris c. mid-20th century.
#violaporn
Warhol Dervish is playing at Sala Rossa on December 18 at 9:00, and the Youjsh will also be doing a set. We are playing NYC-based composer, Nico Muhly’s music as well as string music by another amazing New York composer, Missy Mazzoli. The program is not completely set in stone yet, but should include most of the following works:
By Missy Mazzoli:
“Dissolve O My Heart” for violin
“A Thousand Tongues” for cello and electronics
“Lies You Can Believe In” for string trio
“Harp and Alter” for string quartet and electronics (pending permission by the Kronos Quartet)
By Nico Muhly:
“Diacritical Marks” for string quartet
“Stride” for string quartet
“Keep in Touch” for viola and tape
“Honest Music” for violin and tape
John Corban and I are both prodigious youtube watchers, always sending each other videos we find interesting. We have a similar aesthetic, and one violinist we both respect a lot is a Finnish musician named Pekka Kuusisto, who has been championing Muhly’s music for a while now. I actually know Pekka a bit, having participated in the Prussia Cove Open Chamber Music course in Sussex, England a number of years ago, and we both went to Indiana University. Anyway, I discovered a piece that Pekka wrote a few years back for the NY-based violist Nadia Sirota called Keep in Touch, and what is interesting about that piece is that it juxtaposes the baroque form of the chaconne, with an interesting post modern twist…namely that the pre-recorded tape part features the voice of Antony Hegarty the “bluesily androgynous vocalist” of the band Antony and the Johnsons. I felt upon hearing this music for the first time, that Muhly had hit upon a sort of Y-generation composer’s holy grail, writing music that is equally informed by the greater (ie: non academic) popular culture, and simultaneously influencing it with his work collaborating with artists like Bjork, Jonsi from Sigur Ros, Beth Orton, Antony, etc, to the point that when the King of Limbs (the new Radiohead album) was released, I actually heard people saying that it sounded like Muhly.
Digging a little deeper, I discovered that this hadn’t come out of nowhere. Muhly was mentored by Philip Glass, and there is a connection between the do-it-yourself popular culture ethos of the minimalists coming from New York a generation ago and the current scene. Besides that, Muhly is a founding member of an Iceland-based record label/collective called Bedroom Community (http://bedroomcommunity.net/about/), which has a really interesting cross-pollination of popular and art music.
There is also the Ecstatic Music Festival, in NYC, a festival founded and curated by the composer Judd Greenstein, which brings together more than 150 composers, songwriters and performers re-defining contemporary music for collaborations exploring the fertile terrain between classical and popular music”. Greenstein is also a co-director of New Amsterdam Records (http://www.newamsterdamrecords.com/?page_id=4), and the NOW Ensemble, which share a similar mandate to the other organizations I mentioned.
All this points to a flowering of a new wave of composers and performers, mostly Brooklyn based, who are playing in bands, writing and performing music with each other, connecting genres and creating new ones in the process, and doing it all using the new social media and general cultural real-world savvy that was unusual from music grads a decade ago. For instance, the other composer on our program, Missy Mazzoli (http://www.missymazzoli.com/), has her own new music “band” called Victoire, which is “an all-star, all female quintet she founded in 2008, dedicated exclusively to playing her compositions”.
Warhol Dervish started around the same time, around 2007, with somewhat similar aspirations, here in Montreal, not knowing that this cultural flowering was taking place elsewhere as well. We consider ourselves to be post-modern musicians, meaning that we have assimilated many musical languages and genres, and have created a style of playing, by both conscious and unconscious processes which brings a wholeness to a fragmented musical landscape.
I personally earn the majority of my income playing baroque music in groups such as Ensemble Caprice (http://www.ensemblecaprice.com), Theatre of Early Music with Dan Taylor (http://www.theatreofearlymusic.com), as well as contemporary music in Bradyworks (http://www.timbrady.ca/Bradyworks.html), SMCQ (http://www.smcq.qc.ca/smcq/en/), and formerly in the KORE Ensemble, but also step out and work, along with John and JC, with musicians like Patrick Watson and Socalled (both of who are as important to the musical fabric of Montreal as anyone!). John does it all, subs with the OSM, plays in a number of bands, does some historical performance, and plays a lot of new music with groups like the SMCQ as well. JC (Jean Christophe Lizotte, our cellist) also works with bands, and is currently on a two year world tour with the modern dance company, La La La Human Steps. We all perform together in a group founded by the wonderful Toronto-based violist, Carol Gimbel, called Music in the Barns (http://www.musicinthebarns.com/the_ensemble), which performs chamber music as the resident ensemble in Toronto’s Artscape Wychwood Barns (http://www.torontoartscape.on.ca/places-spaces/artscape-wychwood-barns), an amazing 60 000 square foot arts and culture community center in Toronto’s St. Clair and Christie neighborhood, and we all have deep roots at the Banff Centre for the Arts. We all participate in concerts with Portmanto as well, another exciting ensemble that has arisen here in Montreal to address the intersection of contemporary, classical, and popular musical culture.
So you see, I feel that we have been leading a somewhat parallel experience here, though being in Canada it happens slower and more off the radar than in New York (which is not necessarily a bad thing). I feel a kinship to our American friends and colleagues, and want that they be discovered by more people here, and that some of their musical experiments get heard by the wider new music establishment here in Montreal. Our grant system favors younger composers who are still very influenced by academia, which is a blessing in it’s support for young composers, but a curse because it stifles the true conversation with the culture that surrounds us, which is critical to producing work of lasting value, or a career outside of academia that is in any way sustainable.
Mostly, I just think that I think that Missy Mazzoli and Nico Muhly are composers who are doing very exciting work right now, and it is my desire to share it with my community of composers and performers here in Montreal. Then I’d like to go to NY and show them what we are doing too. We are doing different things, but it comes from the same place, and it’s a direction that really gives me hope for the future of our profession.
Top: Nico Muhly, John Corban
Center: Warhol Dervish
Bottom: Missy Mazzoli, JC Lizotte, Pemi Paull
