It wasn’t just the spine-tingling performance of Messiaen’s 20th century masterpiece, plus other works by Debussy and the great 20th cnetury Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu. I also realized that this was fourth concert in as many weeks starring local musicians performing relatively contemporary music. Those other concerts also featured mostly original music written in the 21st century by Oregonians, so with the most recent work being Takemitsu’s 1981 “Toward the Sea,” Tuesday night’s Northwest New Music concert — which in most other cities would be one of the few “modern” music concerts of the season — almost counted as classical fare here in Portland.
And all of this has been happening before the classical music “season,” whatever that means anymore, has really even started! This coming weekend (see below) offers still more new music treats, as does almost every weekend for the rest of the year. NWNM and other new music groups are springing up (and cooperating — the pianist Tuesday was the superb Susan Smith of Third Angle New Music Ensemble, and she and the new 3A violist are performing this weekend with still another group), while the city’s other alt.classical groups going strong and even pushing into the mainstream; two of them, Electric Opera Company and Opera Theater Oregon, even participated in old-line Portland Opera’s street party last weekend.
In October alone, veteran new music ensembles Third Angle and FearNoMusic are staging important contemporary music concerts, the art gallery Disjecta is hosting a week-long exploration of Northwest electronic music by women, while old-line classical presenting organizations are bringing contemporary programs to Portland: Friends of Chamber Music’s Ebene Quartet and So Percussion shows; Portland Piano International’s recital — at Doug Fir Lounge, a rock club! — by the jazz/classical pianist Uri Caine last week; and a mostly 20th century program by Inon Bartanan next. And dance companies like Oregon Ballet Theater and Polaris Dance are bringing live 20th century or even contemporary music into their shows.
September is notoriously a slow month for non-pop music of any kind, but a TBA Festival concert on the 14th showcased the welcome occasional series New Musics, which started last year at Holocene. Curator Claudia Meza (who fronts one of Portland’s most acclaimed indie bands, Explode into Colors) chose a strong lineup of experimental works, including her own “instrumental opera” Mourning Youth, with video by Chris Hackett (featuring a girl applying lipstick to her face and slow motion skateboarders), sound art by Thomas Thorson, choreography by Allie Hankins, vocals by Portland’s Flash Choir and percussion by Portland Taiko. Because it was announced as a work in progress, I’ll save further description for future performances, but already this multimedia presentation shows plenty of promise.
Preceding Meza’s work was a characteristically haunting tape collage piece, PART, by one of Portland’s most interesting musicians, Liz Harris, who records as Grouper. Augmented by Harris’s live sound processing and vocals by the Flash Choir, it, too, felt unfinished yet provided some evocative moments. It’s good to see TBA providing showcases for locals as well visiting artists.
The show opened with another multimedia presentation featuring San Francisco’s Tashi Wada’s long tone drones, played on two reed organs, perfectly matching slowly evolving color projections by Madison Brookshire. Reminiscent of La Monte Young’s early minimalist experiments half a century ago, it would probably work better in an installation setting rather than on a stage where you sit and gaze and listen for half an hour. Plenty of audience members felt free to come and go during the half hour experience.
Three days later, challenging the unofficial TBA embargo, the remarkably active Cascadia Composers group, now entering its fourth year, presented an afternoon show at Sherman Clay Pianos, with especially attractive works by Paul Safar, Jeff Winslow and others, and starring fine musicians like pianist Maria Choban and NWNM cellist Diane Chaplin. CC is providing a nice opportunity for regional composers to showcase their work. It varies in quality, and is often fairly conservative, but I’ve never been to a CC concert that wasn’t worth the admission price.
Last Friday, CC was back with a bigger concert at PSU’s Lincoln Recital Hall, featuring new music by women composers. Jan Mittelstaedt’s breezy Crosscurrents for string quartet (played by an all distaff foursome) kicked the show off on a buoyant note. Accompanied by pianist Lisa Marsh, Carole Crowder Phillips sang her own Unconfined with conviction. The music suited the text, by women poets, well. PSU student Amelia Bierly performed on cello with violin and horn accompaniment in a movement of her promising trio in progress, In the Shadow of the Elm. Elizabeth Blachly-Dyson’s tuneful string trio Glimpses and Lisa Marsh’s joyful, jazzy Pour le Trio (for flute, bass and Marsh’s piano) maintained the first half’s unremittingly pleasant feel, but the first half’s end, I was ready for more ambitious — and maybe ambiguous — fare.
