This season’s opener, the Ferdinando S. Buonanno Concert, honored one of Collage’s longtime sponsors before an enthusiastic audience. Having succeeded David Hoose as Music Director, Eric Nathan spoke of “Memory Palaces,” comparing this multicolored concert of seven different composers to different rooms in a house of many mansions. Each half began with a “Vestibule,” nos. 3 and 1 respectively, in the form of a short duo by Curtis K. Hughes, who described these as two of an ongoing series not yet completed. No. 3, for bass clarinet and marimba, led “a feverish dream through a house;” in a “nonhierarchical form;” we heard short episodes, bursts of sound with repetitive figures, from harsh atonality to warm diatonic expression in slow tempo: “in the midst of becoming what it is;” we assume this apply also to his subsequent pieces.
Joan Huang, a Chinese composer who survived the Cultural Revolution and much else since, came all the way from Los Angeles to hear Don Berman’s confident rendition of her piano solo, A Flowing Brook in Yunnan (2020). Decidedly impressionistic even down to a glissando, it sparkled here and there with pentatonic harmony and incorporated a Chinese folksong; she said that the second movement of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony provided part of the inspiration as well. The composer sees her current work Phoenix, as a resurrection of her art following the tragic destruction of her home, library, and instruments in the wildfires of last spring.
I prefer living in color, a whimsical, highly rhythmic and even boisterous sextet (2017) by Sarah Gibson (1986-2024) for bass clarinet, violin, viola, cello, piano, depicts a different Los Angeles. Gibson, a composer who died tragically young, wrote in her notes about the “changing landscapes” in a big installation by the painter David Hockney, as well as “the energizing curves and changing views found along Mulholland Drive.” An impressive harmonic organization moved mostly between D major and E-flat major, tonic and Neapolitan, very like Lecuona’s immortal Malagueña, with big drumbeats.
Cathedral bells and high-register textures in South Catalina (2014) also evoked California. Composer Christopher Cerrone wrote of how “…sharp and loud attacks in the piano and percussion would inspire a flurry of wild and improvisatory gestures.” The ensemble of flutes (including alto and piccolo), clarinet (including bass), violin, cello, piano, and percussion moved inexorably with clear open-fifth chords, a suggestion of the Dies irae, and a fine shrillness. “The title is drawn from the street in the Koreatown neighborhood of L.A. where I lived.” The audience especially cheered the stridency.
Curtis Hughes’s Vestibule No. 1, for alto flute and bass clarinet, in episodes with paired melodies, short, repeated figures, trills, hocketing, and sharp accents — a brief but invigorating duo — led off the second half
Rising Tide (2015) by Nina Young included an epigraph from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. This used the full ensemble including viola and bowed piano strings as well as other inside-the-piano manipulations, and a generous helping of microtones. An atmospheric panoply of upward scales and glisses contrasted with bell chords, extra-long notes, and deep percussion, tamtam and bass drum rumbles, and a prominent D major.
Frank Epstein, founding director of Collage New Music which now celebrates its 53rd season, was on hand to celebrate the premiere of a Collage commission from his daughter Nomi, who herself directs a new-music ensemble, a·pe·ri·od·ic, in Chicago. The new work, entitled with, rates as a seriously Zen study. Three gentle five-minute sections comprised widely spaced short gestures and delicate interruptions, long stretches of echo-tone clarinet, ultra-high string harmonics, and whistle tones on the flute. Nathan cued most of these, although also offering some regular time-beating in the final section. The middle section featured an upper-register piano solo accompanied by rubbing on the bass drum; halfway through the final section the piano entered with a pianissimo middle-register chord that thundered in context, and it sounded just right.
The fortissimo startle-attack of Rising Tide returned in Steven Stucky’s Ad Parnassum (1998), another ensemble in which high-register arpeggios, repeated figures, and long notes amid the short ostinati found favor and prominence. A contrasting quieter section dripped notes here and there over a sustained harmony, eventually yielding to a massively growing succession of five-note figures and a crescendo to fff, a triumphant moment for the evening’s very varied events.
Collage’s core ensemble continues with a few changes: Catherine French, violin; Jan Müller-Szeraws, cello; Sarah brady, flutes; Alexis Lantz, clarinet and bass clarinet; Craig McNutt, percussion. Collage also welcomed Jason Fisher, viola (from Boston Baroque and A Far Cry), and veteran pianist Donald Berman, who subbed for Christopher Oldfather. Eric Nathan displayed a well-controlled, expressive, and precise beat throughout the evening.