Dinosaur Annex, now celebrating its 50th year of operation, gave “Unending Winter” at the University Lutheran Church, Cambridge yesterday. Among the mix of premieres and performances by current Dinosaur players, the two surviving founders of the ensemble Scott Wheeler and Rodney Lister joined the new generation. conducting new music and an old favorite (Ezra Sims, the third founding member, unfortunately died in 2015. A review of a tribute concert this reviewer also reviewed can be found HERE.
Saxophonist Seychelle Dunn-Corbin, one of the newest members of Dinosaur Annex, opened the evening with Anthony R. Green’s dhakira: a middle eastern reflection. Originally written for Dunn-Corbin as a Castle of Our Skins commission, Dunn-Corbin echoed the sounds of the Islamic call to prayer that sounds over major Muslim cities like Istanbul. Green fragmented the actual call into different cells that played throughout the piece, inserting other extended techniques like key clicks, air tone, and slap tongue to break up the lyricism. Dunn-Corbin showed her musicality here, making extremely extended musical thoughts coherent in how she shaped her lines and connected the largest structural notes. Altogether, this opening painted the picture of Islamic prayer effectively.
The first of three Fiftieth Anniversary Tributes, A Fuller Tune for violin and cello by Jeff Nichols, like those that followed, was extremely short, clocking in around a minute. Length did not impede the intent of the composition, however, as it said everything it needed to say in that time. Nichols took inspiration from Emily Dickinson, specifically a line from within 250 (Dickinson’s poetry has no titles and thus has to be referred to with its chronological numeral). Violinist Lilit Hartunian and cellist Rafael Popper-Keizer interacted well in this miniature, locking in on their imitation and fully supporting the inverted pairing on its final cadential harmony (the cello played a harmonic while the violin supported underneath, making a more unusual sound to end).
The Fromm Foundation at Harvard University commissioned Yoon-Ji Lee for her clarinet, violin, percussion, and electronics work Unending Winter. Dinosaur Annex took pleasure in premiering it and naming the concert after it. In eight short, continuous movements, the work reflected on the experiences of Korea’s surviving “comfort women” via the picture book Unending Winter by Kang, Jae-Sook. The live musicians worked with live-triggered tape that Lee manipulated from a MaxMSP instantiation on a computer, sending out a quadrophonic sound signal into speakers around the audience. This tape encircled everyone listening while clarinetist Diane Heffner, violinist Hartunian, and percussionist Piero Guimaraes morphed into one texture on the stage. More often, Hartunian and Guimaraes were the main focus of the texture with Heffner showing her restraint and helping to support the texture. Hartunian’s sul ponticello playing and Guimaraes using extremely hard mallets on the vibraphone created a big conflict of harmonics, making an extremely gritty timbre that all the players smartly leaned into given the subject matter. After giving Heffner a moment to shine in a short but aching clarinet solo, Guimaraes smashed the bass drum with a loud BANG, crashing this premiere to an enormous close.
Scott Wheeler contributed his Shalin Liu Performance Center inauguraiton piece Granite Coast from the Summer Star Foundation to end the first half. Wheeler’s use of the piano trio, a notoriously difficult to compose for ensemble given three equal agents that need equal amounts of attention from the attentive composer, was incredibly well balanced. Each movement allowed one member of the trio to be the focus. Pianist Donald Berman, violinist Hartunian, and cellist Popper-Keizer spiraled through the music. Berman in the first movement “Coastline with Figures” showed his inherent lyricism and control over the piano while Hartunian and Popper-Keizer supported him well. Popper-Keizer barked out sharp attacks on his C string on the second movement, “Summer Star,” and the Chinese folk melody “Dong shan piao yu, xi shan ching.” Hartunian then navigated more traditional violin technique tinged with fiddle-style ideas in the last movement, “Celebration by the Water,” before Wheeler tastefully had Hartunian and Popper-Keizer close with a short burst of seagull technique on the strings.
After intermission, Dunn-Corbin returned with JacobTV’s Buku. Imitating Charlie Parker’s bebop playing and sending up the bebop era of players in general, JacobTV manipulated several recordings of jazz cats back in the day along with their playing to make a tape that served the live player, effectively making Dunn-Corbin collaborate more obliquely with the boppers. Dunn-Corbin commented to this reviewer that she had to take a lot of time to time out the performance exactly to the tape, as the piece is extremely unforgiving to those who even fall one click behind the metronome marking; everything is so rhythmic that one mistake costs the entire work. Dunn-Corbin, however, lived up to the challenge, adding her unique sound into the generations before her on tape.
Two more Fiftieth Anniversary Tributes followed, both for bass clarinet and vibraphone. Founder Rodney Lister composed his Dinosaur Song (…if I could tell you…) as a villanelle, employing extremely dense harmonies between Guimaraes on the vibraphone moving all over the keyboard of his instrument and Heffner (a fellow founder of Dinosaur Annex) crooning a melody all across her bass clarinet. The piece felt like one composite voice trying to murmur and say what it wanted to say. A second listening is required to fully understand what was going on, but the piece was effective.
Arthur Levering’s Little Garland for Dinosaur Annex exploded out of the gate with a large glissando down the entire range of the vibraphone, which Guimaraes executed perfectly, and a crashing low C in Heffner’s bass clarinet, a short, quiet, and self-contained melody emerged. Levering used a miniature made of one large contrast to honor the ensemble, and although there might have been some extensions to expand the melody, nonetheless, it came across as a delightful miniature.
Something from Dinosaur Annex’s past: Where Crows Gather by Lewis Spratlan, ended the evening. Joined by composer/conductor Wheeler back in front of the ensemble he used to conduct all the time, three clarinets in Heffner, Amy Advocat, and Jonathan Russell joined violinist Hartunian, cellist Popper-Keizer, and pianist Berman, seemingly synthesized into a flock of what Spratlan described as “over 100” crows in a very Hitchcockian experience outside of his composing studio. Spratlan wisely ensured the only time the three clarinets matched each other was when Heffner, Advocat, and Russell were on B-flat clarinets; sometimes there were two bass clarinets and one B-flat, sometimes there were two B-flats and one E-flat. The dynamicity of the three clarinets astounded us. All three clarinetists fit into each other’s sound so well sometimes it was hard to tell who was playing what (they all play together in Russell’s Improbable Beasts, after all, so they have learned to match each other well). Berman and Popper-Keizer had moments of their own to bark through the flock of clarinet crows, too, but the attention mostly focused on the clarinets. Hartunian also navigated the space well, her violin being used as an additional blending voice for each sub-grouped ensemble; this job is quite hard to pull off without drawing too much attention to one’s self, and that Hartunian did it so easily showed her inherent restraint and musicality. Wheeler did exactly what he needed to: keep the time and give cues. His conducting was spare, but this type of piece did not need expansive gestures: the players can handle it so long as they know when to enter.
Dinosaur Annex continues to celebrate its long history in the Boston area with one final concert for the season, June 7th at Watertown First Parish with “Hub of the Musiverse IV.” The fact that this group, spun off from the New England Dinosaur Dance Theater, operates to this day speaks volumes to its value to the Boston scene.