Experiencing ‘Map of Rain Hitting Water’ in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

W   hen at last Justine arrives, he’s at the piano
     the hammers strike and rise
 with his fingers, and the pedal’s damp
   shifting carries through the instrument
as waves echo through the frame of a ship...
Now he thinks perhaps the music’s
More like a map of rain hitting water—
He’s moving closer to her without moving;
And how wonderful to be held from her
   at last by nothing but the song's duration—”
  — Wayne Miller, ’What Night says to the Empty Boat’, p. 73.

I ’d first listened to Mara Gibson's new 16:30 work commissioned by Mark Lowry of newEar Contemporary Music Ensemble in July. The DVD has Mark performing vibraphone, log drum, woodblock, gong, tam-tam, songbird whistle, cymbal, and miscellaneous percussion, accompanied by video imagery and film by Caitlin Horsmon. Bob Beck rendered a high level of engineering and production values achieved in this recording.

T he beauty of the chromatic intoning of vibraphone, punctuated by tolling woodblock, drum, and, less frequently, other instruments captured my interest from the first listening. The glisses and pitch-bent post-processed sounds of the vibraphone acoustically paralleled the imagery, the lateral motion of water in the foreground and in the distance; the water droplets in air, falling under gravity in parabolic arcs; the globules of water separating from a stream; the intercalating pastel cloud layers.

B ut now several months later—having just last week returned to the midwest after a period at our home on the East Coast, and having driven through some of the areas of hurricane-caused power outages and natural devastation—these textures and narrative arcs of ‘Map of Rain Hitting Water’ evoke different meanings for me. The watery surfaces now seem ominous and obscure what lies beneath.

T he reflections imply sky and sun, but these seem untrustworthy. The eddies and vortices imply structure and hidden currents, turbulence: the violence and indifference of Nature to humanity.

T he speed of the current makes abundantly clear how rapidly we will be swept away, annihilated, pointlessly. The accelerando/ritardando phrasing imparts a large-scale 2+ minute hypermeter to the piece.

N o animals or other sentient creatures are seen anywhere in Horsmon’s imagery here... bulk matter only, liquid and air. The abruptly changing frame-rate... declares a capriciousness of our frame of perception, together with Nature’s propensity to precipitous, emergent change, against which our human wishes and needs are respectively futile and irrelevant.

T here is midway through the film a montage of stop-action stills, with different transparency/saturation settings, calling into question what is motion. It brings to mind horror film sequences built up out of successions of freeze-frame stills.

T he very high-speed video of the water droplets, together with digitally-stretched contrast and/or edge-sharpening, gives heightened perception of the separateness of the individual [droplets].

W e have here a sort of ‘video-monitor-as-painter’s-canvas’ effect... a palimpsest of successive masks and over-writing of previous images and surfaces.

T he film draws our attention to the very thinness and 2-D nature of our existence in the biosphere, between the sky and the depths of water.

I n fact, most of the film is of deep water: the first 5:45 is sky; second 6:00 is water; third 4:45 is water hurled into sky—with gradual transitions between these segments.

T he piece conveys feelings of loneliness and alienation that arise from our understanding that we are alone in the universe and insignificant in its workings. Underneath the performer’s punctuated observations and soliloquy about fate and the stream of events that occupies our attention while we are alive is a certain forboding, a fear of nothingness.

T hat we are in some inescapable way alienated from Nature is an old concept, going back at least to Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th Century. It is also a notion that coheres with our current environmental problems, insofar as our estrangement from Nature involves a hubris that forecloses upon developing an awareness and regard for how we depend upon Nature, in such a way that we would stop harming Nature.

R elinquishing whatever agency I have in the presence of the bulk matter around me reveals my beholdenness to the agency of other humans who are living now and who will take care of me in my dying days and who will outlive me, and the susceptibility of my remains and the residue of my life’s work to the agency of all creatures and natural processes that persist beyond my tiny lifetime.

T he harsh contrast and unblinking lens of the camera—together with the continuous, unflinching sound of the music—announce the abject hopelessness of our achieving any anonymity in the flesh, or participating in any genuine reciprocity with Nature.

S uch existential worries are absent when reciprocal trans-corporeality involves the definitely spiritual, or “more than human”, or involves an ambiguity or reversibility afforded by the hardly-human-at-all, or as-minimally-human-as-possible, as in Wilderness or Zombieness.

O ne can make some sense then of this piece’s assertion that we might be estranged from the flesh without that meaning either that such estrangement puts us really outside the flesh, or that landscapes including sky and water are themselves not fleshy. We are estranged, every bit as much as sky and water are patently fleshy.

T his is a superb composition, an excellent film, a beautiful performance, an excellent recording—sufficient to propel an evening’s meditation and beyond.

• Mara Gibson website
• Caitlin Horsmon website
• Mark Lowry/newEar website
• Wayne Miller website
• Abram D. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. Vintage, 1997.
• Brown C, Toadvine T, eds. Eco-Phenomenology: Back to the Earth Itself. SUNY, 2003.
• Cataldi S, Hamrick W, eds. Merleau-Ponty and Environmental Philosophy: Dwelling on the Landscapes of Thought. SUNY, 2007.
• Cook D. Adorno on Nature. Acumen, 2011.
• Eder K. The Social Construction of Nature. Sage, 1996.
• Honneth A. Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea. Martin Jay, ed. Oxford Univ, 2008.
• Kristeva J. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Columbia Univ, 1982.
• Merleau-Ponty M. The Visible and the Invisible, followed by Working Notes, ed. Claude Lefort, tr. Alphonso Lingis. Northwestern Univ, 1968.
• Miller W. Only the Senses Sleep. NewIssues, 2006.
• Toadvine T. Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Nature. Northwestern Univ, 2009.
• Vogel S. Against Nature: The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory. SUNY, 1996.

MATA Young Composers Now! Festival: Ears Are the Way to Hearts and Minds

W    hat could be the relationship between a viola solo and the destruction of large portions Iraq’s archaeological heritage during the Gulf War? How could a trombone solo possibly relate to the suffering of Iraq’s children as a consequence of past United States’ led United Nations’ economic sanctions imposed on Iraq? What does music have to do with environmental change and the Gobi Desert?”
  —  Katia Tiutiunnik, The Symbolic Dimension: An Exploration of the Compositional Process, 2010.

I f you are in New York over the next several days and are interested in having your musical horizons stretched, be sure to sample the offerings in this year’s MATA Festival, whose events are being held at Le Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village.

M ATA’s opening last night featured a 2-hour presentation of an interactive sound work ‘Totem for Gobi-New York’ by composer Matt Wright in LPR’s downstairs black-box Gallery Bar with improvisations by renowned U.K. saxophonist Evan Parker. The experience was a poignant period of speculating on the methods and practices of making, experiencing, and thinking about music… imaginative musical meditation about the future of the natural world, faced with the challenges of human population and global development.

T he user is immersed by ‘Gobi’ in a sonic environment with 8 studio monitor speakers overhead plus two large flat-panel video screens that respond to track-pad controller movements with fluid shifts in volume levels and desert imagery. A rhythm pulses continuously, but the intensities of the individual elements (or tracks) are altered by user movement of the track-pads. The participants are able to create their own sonic arrangement of the parts, altering the musical environment with which other participants then interact. The work is a fluid and immersive environment with us users becoming less conscious of ourselves engineering a mix of sounds and more conscious of a constructed environment, experienced sonically, that we symbolically manipulate.

T here is powerful political irony in having ‘Totem-Gobi’ installed in a bar setting, as opposed to, say, a museum. In the bar, the human participants are interacting with the controls in a playful, cavalier, irreverent way, characteristic of routine ‘cocktail behavior’ and oblivious to what they have just done to the music by touching the track-pad in the way that they did. By contrast, in a museum or other setting with reverent behavioral customs the ‘Totem-Gobi’ participants may tend to interact in a manner that is attentive to cause-and-effect, the moral consequences of their actions. How poetically fitting this is. Humankind: most of us oblivious to our environmental impacts—on the Gobi, and on the Earth as a whole.

1) Generate a population of motifs and sound envelopes;
2) Construct timbre model;
3) Evaluate fitness of population members based on an example sound or set of sounds;
4) Select ‘parent’ motifs and pairs of population members to ‘crossover’ their genotypes;
5) Perform ‘crossover’ using genetic algorithm;
6) Perform mutation of motifs;
7) Evaluate the ‘fitness’ of resulting mutants based on an example sound or set of sounds;
8) Survivors’ and replace the current population with new one;
9) Check if the termination condition is satisfied; if not, go back to step 3, otherwise stop the algorithm.

T he algorithm starts by generating a population of candidate sounds. These are weighted samples such as sine wave, square wave, noises, fractals, etc. The timbre model is constructed using a [Kohonen?] neural network. This is an unsupervised machine learning algorithm that self-organizes into a ‘feature map’. In the construction phase of the timbre model the neural network is trained with the initial population and the example sound. The neural network self-organizes into a feature map of sound spectra under the influence of audience-participants’ interactions with the two computer track-pads—one on either end of the LPR’s darkened Gallery Bar.

I    s there any difference between improvisation and composition? If so, maybe it has to do with notation. If notated scores create a written literature of music, then improvised compositions create an oral literature of music. But most improvisation involves some degree of notation, at least in principle. And most notated music involves some degree of improvisation... Maybe it has to do with speed. Improvisation happens in the moment, while composition can take a very long time. But if improvisation is spontaneous composition, and composition is a kind of deliberated improvisation, then again it’s just a matter of degree...”
  —  John Luther Adams, NewMusicBox, 2001.

T uesday evening’s MATA program at LPR will include works by Christopher McIntyre, Antye Greie, and Bjørn Erik Haugen, Lisa Coons’s ‘Cythère’ (a musical ‘trauma ballet’ ?!), Fabian Svensson’s ‘Singing and Dancing’, Daniel Wohl’s ‘Glitch’, and a world premiere by Nathan Davis, co-commissioned by MATA and Carlsbad Music Festival, performed by Calder String Quartet. Cool.

B y the way, you might like to have a look at the recent book on symbolic and evolutionary music, by Eduardo Miranda (Professor in Computer Music at the University of Plymouth and Edgard Varèse Guest Professor of Computer Music at the Technical University of Berlin) and Al Biles (Professor of Information Technology at the Rochester Institute of Technology) [link below].

P    arker’s inventions stick in the ears like fish hooks.”
  —  Scott Hacker, Cadence, 1994.

• MATA Festival website
  
• Le Poisson Rouge website
  
• Evan Parker page at Univ Sheffield
  
• Calder Quartet website
  
• Eiben A, Smith J. Introduction to Evolutionary Computing. Springer, 2010.
  
• Jankowski M, Kuska J. Connected components labeling: Algorithms in Mathematica, Java, C++ and C#. New Ideas in Symbolic Computation: Proc 6th Intl Mathematica Symposium, 2004.
  
• Levitin D. This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. Plume, 2007.
  
• Miranda E, Bils J, eds. Evolutionary Computer Music. Springer, 2007.
  
• Sacks O. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. Vintage, 2008.
  
• Sivanandam S, Deepa S. An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms. Springer, 2009.
  
• Tiutiunnik K. The Symbolic Dimension: An Exploration of the Compositional Process. Alpha, 2010.
  
• Wooten V. The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music. Berkley, 2008.
  
• Ystad S, et al., eds. Computer Music Modeling and Retrieval. Genesis of Meaning in Sound and Music: 5th International Symposium, CMMR 2008 Copenhagen. Springer, 2009.
  
• Zorn J, ed. Arcana II: Musicians on Music. Tzadik, 2007.

La Catrina Quartet and Àlvarez: Collage Against Nationalism

J avier Àlvarez reveals influences of popular cultures that go beyond the borders of our own time and the place.”
[beyond the Borders of
Time
  and place;
     of anyone’s time
        and place — beyond
our ‘own’ ]
  —  John Adams.

Javier Álvarez combines conventional instrumental idioms with the acuteness of technology, elaborating an eclectic vision that originates as much from various non-musical disciplines as from music collected from other parts of the world.

At present Álvarez lives and works in Mérida, Yucatan. Born in Mexico City in 1956, he studied composition with Mario Lavista before coming to the United States in 1980 where he studied with John Downey at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Subsequently Álvarez moved to the U.K. where he continued his studies at the Royal College of Music with John Lambert. His first electroacoustic works were composed then—for example, Temazcal (1984). Mannam (1992) uses cítara, mixing rhythmic elements of traditional Korean music with materials and techniques of Mexican harp—this won second place in the Prix Ars Electronica in Austria in 1993. Most of his works incorporate sonic elements of other music, such as mambo (Mambo a la Braque, 1991). Papalotl (1987) combines piano and electroacoustic sounds.

This is not novelty for novelty’s sake. Álvarez’s textures are not ‘merely’ interesting or seductive: Their appeal for our attention is not strident. They have a point. He creates collages of vernacular music that emulate a folklore—a Borges-like abcediary of imaginary creatures—a factitious folklore so fantastical that it calls into question our notion of folklore itself. Álvarez’s transgressive textures work to undermine the very notion of cultural identity and ownership. In the process, he demolishes the exclusionary and disenfranchising politics of nationalism and tribal culture—affiliation and disaffiliation.

Metro Chabacano (1991), performed by La Catrina in Albuquerque on Sunday, is a case in point. Derived from Álvarez’s 1986 piece for string orchestra, Canción de Tierra y Esperanza, the composition was created to accompany sculptor Marcos Limenez’s kinetic installation art, to be displayed in Mexico City’s biggest and busiest subway station, Metro Chabacano. The piece was subsequently performed on tape there for a period of three months during 1991. Metro Chabacano has a continuous eighth-note ground from which short lyrical passages appear in each of the parts. The repeated notes confer a deceptive minimalistic simplicity, out of which the organic, unstoppable, inevitable individuality of each voice in the quartet flourishes. The effect is, on balance, an optimistic world view—albeit an elemental, fatalistic or ‘vegetal’ one, on a par with the experience of watching a garden grow or watching children grow up. La Catrina Quartet’s account of Metro Chabacano was simultaneously inspiring and poignant, in precisely that elemental way.

Because of La Catrina Quartet’s profile, they are well-positioned to facilitate Latino and minority students’ progress—students who might otherwise fall through the cracks of the educational system. It also is consistent with their devotion more towards ‘nurture’ rather than ‘nature’ in their teaching. As a Latino string quartet, they strive to offer young minority audiences positive role models in opposition to gangs and negative stereotyping, corrosive influences in youth culture.

I n a country where the ‘melting pot’ phenomenon is all but unavoidable, it is essential to show the younger generations of today that immigration can be a positive force, one that enriches our culture rather than impoverishes our society.”

  —  La Catrina Quartet.

As to the Quartet’s name, according to Mexican Folklore, ‘La Catrina’ is a name for Death. La Catrina can show herself in many different ways. Sometimes she is dressed in a elaborate, festive clothes. Sometimes she appears as just a skeleton, to take us away when we least expect it. Generally, though, in Mexico death is thought of as a natural guest on certain occasions, such as the Day of the Dead, or Día de los Fieles Difuntos. The memory of one’s “fieles difuntos” (‘faithful departed’) is the source of familial and cultural identity. La Catrina, with her mischievous smile, exhorts the living to seize the moment and, through music, to find life’s meaning.

Founded in 2001, the La Catrina String Quartet frequently performs new music by living composers and promotes and performs Mexican and Latin American art music in Mexico as well as in the United States and abroad. This summer La Catrina was string quartet in residence in San Miguel de Allende, México, where they collaborated with the Brentano Quartet for a performance of the Mendelssohn octet and the Brahms sextet Op. 36. Their residency duties included giving private instruction to string students from Mexico and the United States and teaching chamber music and strings masterclasses, as well as their collaboration with the Brentanos.

In the current season, the Catrinas will be featured in concert series in the United States and México. Currently, the quartet is working on developing an exchange program between the Conservatorio de Las Rosas, where they will be the Quartet-in-Residence beginning in Summer 2008, and Kent State University. This Fall the quartet relocated to Hickory, NC, where they continue developing their repertoire as well as commissioning new works and continuing with their commitment to bringing the string quartet out of the concert hall and into alternative venues.

[Daniel Vega-Albela was born in Mexico City and earned his Master of Music degree in violin performance from Western Michigan University, where he studied with violinist Renata Artman Knific. He holds a Master of Music degree in chamber music performance from Kent State University. From 1994 to 1997, he was instructor of violin at the Academia Yuriko Kuronuma in Mexico City, and in 1997, he joined the Conservatorio de las Rosas to teach violin performance and to play with the new music ensemble, the Ensamble de las Rosas.

New York native George Anthony Figueroa earned his Bachelor Degree from the University of Florida at the New World School of the Arts in Miami and currently holds a Master’s degree in violin performance from the University of Oklahoma. Figueroa has studied with Cathy Meng-Robinson, Ivan Chan, Yair Kless, Diane Pascal, Lucie Robert and Felicia Moye. He has participated in master classes with Monica Hughes, Charlie Castelman, Yuval Waldman, Fredell Lack and Lucie Robert. Mr. Figueroa holds a Master of Music degree in chamber music performance from Kent State University.

Born in Torreón, Coahuila, Mexico, Jorge Martínez studied viola at the Conservatorio de las Rosas where he graduated with honors, under the tutelage of professor Gela Dubrova. In 2003, he completed his Master of Music degree in Viola Performance at Western Michigan University. Mr. Martínez has been a faculty member of the Conservatorio de las Rosas in Mexico, as well as instructor of violin and viola at Crescendo Academy of Music in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Martínez holds a Master of Music degree in chamber music and vocal performance from Kent State University.

Born in Mexico City, Alan Daowz started the cello with José Luis Gálvez at the Escuela Nacional de Música and the Conservatorio de las Rosas in Morelia, Michoacán, where he obtained his Bachelor degree in cello performance. He received his Master of Music degree in cello performance from Western Michigan University, where he studied with Professor Bruce Uchimura. Mr. Daowz holds a Master of Music degree in chamber music performance from Kent State University. ]

• La Catrina String Quartet
  
• Chamber Music Albuquerque, Simms Center at Albuquerque Academy
  
• Ashbee E, Clausen H, Pedersen C, eds. The Politics, Economics, and Culture of Mexican-US Migration: Both Sides of the Border. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
  
• Benhabib S, Shapiro I, Petranovich D, eds. Identities, Affiliations, and Allegiances. Cambridge Univ, 2007.
  
• Brodsky Quartet. Elegie. (Silva, 2000.)
  
• Cuarteto Latinoamericano. Memorias Tropicales. (New Albion, 1994.)
  
• Delanty G, Jones P, Wodak R, eds. Identity, Belonging, and Migration. Liverpool Univ, 2007.
  
• Gannon M. Paradoxes of Culture and Globalization. Sage, 2007.
  
• Marinissen A. Traces of Culture. (Bvhaast, 2003.) [Temazcal]
  
• May T. The John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American Composer. Amadeus, 2006.
  
• Phillips A. Multiculturalism without Culture. Princeton Univ, 2007.
  
• Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. Danzón. (Dorian, 1998.) [orchestra version of Metro Chabacano]
  
• Webb H, Mead P. Alvarez: Papalotl. (Saydisc, 1994.)