Helmed by Newton-based physician and composer Ruth Hertzman-Miller, the Composite Chamber Players (Anna Ridenour on flute in place of the originally listed Hannah Elizabeth Tobis, Robert Bekkers on both nylon-string and electric guitar, Ryan Chao on vibraphone, and Yuseok Seol on piano) joined forces on Sunday at NEC’s Keller Room. The composer-performers and established composers all offered mostly quiet and reflective music intermixed with a few more forward and contextually loud (but more like mezzo-forte) selections.
Hertzman-Miller’s response to the John Cage Sonatas and Interludes Three Energy Studies for prepared piano opened the evening. In dispatching the three movements (a bouncing ball, a basketball player dribbling and moving up a court, and a run leading to AFIB which the composer comments she thankfully did not have respectively), the piano clunked and thudded in a manner similar to the Cage collection. Yet, refreshingly, the two compositions felt wildly different from one another despite a clear through-line. Instead of focusing on the individual sounds for timbre’s sake, Hertzman-Miller combined a large number of them into rhythmic cycles and color selections related to different registers of the piano. Sometimes, she even permitted the piano even to ring with the hammers striking the strings normally! Pianist Seol on occasion looked like he was fighting some of the tension of the preparations in the strings pushing against the piano’s action, but he nonetheless understood the concept Hertzman-Miller wanted and made what could otherwise be a banging mess truly musical.
Hertzman-Miller continued with the full ensemble in Essence, Movement 1. The form was slightly static in that several layers interlocked and synthesized a la Stravinsky, but the layering was done in a rather interesting manner. The ensemble pivoted around pianist Seol on piano as he held down a pairing of Ridenour versus guitarist Bekkers on electric guitar and Chao in dialogue with one another. A kaleidoscope of ideas coming in and out of focus in constant counterpoint resulted. Two minor complaints: it was rather short for an independent movement (see later on in the concert for a response to that), and the use of the piccolo tended to overwhelm the ensemble even though was dropped a few moments after entering.
Vibraphonist Chao added a pair of snare drums as resonators in his friend Jin Cho’s dead leaves become the nutrients. Recently performed on Cho’s Boston Conservatory at Berklee composition recital, the work reflected on the cycle of life, budding leaves leading into death and then beginning the birth-death cycle once again. Chao executed it well, leaving the time free-flowing but well controlled under his four-mallets. Although sometimes vibraphone solo pieces can sound monotimbral (the vibraphone itself only has so many color possibilities), the use of a single harder wood mallet in Chao’s right hand highlighted the occasional upper register note. When that sounded, amidst an otherwise soft mallet sound world, the extra emphasis sounded like a church bell breaking through the mists. Of course, this is to say nothing of the snare drums, never once struck but allowed to resonate sympathetically with the struck vibraphone bars. What to many a large ensemble player seems like a mistake to be rectified in shutting off the snares Cho instead exploited to become a major part of the sound. The snares interfered with the frequencies of the vibraphone, coloring the pitch and on occasion fighting with the instrument for focus. Easily, this one choice of sympathetic vibration made an otherwise merely okay percussion solo far more memorable.
Seol played Pastorale, a movement from his collection Five Preludes, as a replacement for his previously listed Toccata for flute (as Hannah Elizabeth Tobias was set to perform it but pulled out close to performance). Reflecting on the expansive star field of a night in Bloomington, Indiana, Seol expanded a sequence of rhythmic patterns into an Unsuk Chin-like piano resonance prelude. Seol glided across the keys and pulled the low B bass notes out of the instrument, using upper register playing and continued development of his interlocking rhythmic patterns to strengthen and weaken a given fundamental pitch. Though slow to unfurl (in this case to its benefit), Seol managed to create a very pleasing reflection of the night without falling into nocturne tropes.
Atmospheric Study No. 1 by Catherine Fields followed in quick succession, this time as a duet for piano and percussion, a very up-and-coming duet pairing. As is the case with many of these keyboard-pairs, one instrument tends to take the lead while the other acts as a color behind it in support; Fields seemingly fell into this position once again unfortunately, with the vibraphone clearly being the impetus and idea generator while the piano dragged behind. Do not be mistaken, sometimes the pair inverted and allowed the duet to really be a true duet, but more often than not, Fields fell back on a clear leader/follower combination. Quiet and meditative, the duet did possibly overstay its welcome by a few minutes, but the direct connection between Chao and Seol was a joy to watch: two experienced players truly locked in with one another.
Hertzman-Miller returned to the stage with arguably the most traditional music of the evening, save for a last-minute Bach replacement, in the form of a piano-accompanied flute solo For Rachel. Cyphering her daughter Rachel’s name and birthday into the music, Hertzman-Miller hewed as close as the evening got to an overtly conservative style, sounding like an American mid-century neoclassicist akin to Howard Hanson or, perhaps more aptly, Walter Piston. Considering how soft and ethereal the pieces had been up until this one, it made for a welcome change. Ridenour played the solo admirably, especially having come in on relatively short notice, while Seol also showed his capacity to fall back and act as accompanist. Though the harmonic language skewed far from home, the ending on a solid C major triad felt as though we as listener had not ventured too great a distance.
Two short solos followed. Bekkers performed a movement from J.S. Bach’s Suite No. 2 in C Minor for Lute, BWV 997. Certainly the most traditional selection of the evening amidst its new music compatriots, it allowed Bekkers to show his agility with complex guitar fingering, his left hand easily contorting to fall in place on the fret board. Little needs to be said about the movement: it’s Bach, and Bach is always good. Hertzman-Miller followed on the piano herself, playing her Prelude in C Minor that followed Bach’s C Minor Prelude from the WTK Book 1. Hertzman-Miller described having taken all the linear pitches from the WTK prelude and smashing them together into a verticality. What really happened, however, was Bach filtering through Latin jazz playing, a constant clave-inspired rhythmic pattern of a large four and then two short beats dominating. The prelude percolated nicely and soon was gone; a pair of back-to-back short solos broke up otherwise long stretches of extended harmony.
Speaking of long stretches of extended harmony, percussionist Chao showed his compositional ability in the open-score (minimum trio) piece he composed about one of the oldest trees in the world, the approximately 5,000-year-old Methuselah pine tree in Southern California (hopefully as of now still standing). Chao discussed that scientists discovered that the tree was composed of multiple parts that could independently survive; he then translated this discovery into music via a collection of synthesizing cells that navigated around the three instruments. Seeing the score in this case would have been welcome, as what sounded was admittedly rather aleatoric or perhaps wholly improvisatory to this listener’s ear. Ideas seemed to generate from Bekkers’s guitar and expand out into Seol’s piano and Chao’s vibraphone, morphing and fractalizing into new shapes and motifs.
Hertzman-Miller returned to end the evening with the full ensemble in a response to her earlier Essence, Movement 1 in the aptly titled Essence, Movement 2. While in this case making more sense to combine into one larger Essence or perhaps dropping the movement title to make the first two in a series of connected pieces (food for thought?), this response inverted the first piece’s core: while movement 1 depicted space with long harmonies, 2 provided short rhythmic driven punches. Less focus on color and more focus on bursts from each instrument became the norm in complete opposition to the first movement. The contrast proved welcome. Before the audience knew it, it was all over; it could easily have gone on for another minute more in its current state.
Sporting much more atmospheric and drawn-out music than one sometimes hears at new music events, Composite might occupy a useful niche that the Boston scene has been lacking for a while: reflective and contemplative but staid music.