The venerable new music ensemble Dinosaur Annex (core members Sue-Ellen Hershman-Tcherepnin, flute; Diane Heffner, clarinet; Seychelle Dunn-Corbin, saxophone; Lilit Hartunian, violin) joined with guest performers pianist Christopher Oldfather and cellist Stephen Marotto to perform Insect – Water – Heart at Waltham’s Clark Government Center Auditorium on Friday night. Including a series of duets from various composers and a final Pierrot-ensemble piece by local composer Luke Blackburn, the Dino’s show paired up with 250 Mass Waltham and 350 Mass Watertown in an ecological concert of vast proportions.
Dunn-Corbin and Hartunian opened the evening with a pair of pieces by Australian-British composer Keyna Wilkins. The first duet of the evening was a re-orchestration of Wilkins’s reed quintet piece A Glimpse Into Eternity, inspired by the paintings of Japanese artist Reiko Azuma. Two of the movements of the suite were presented, “Trust” and “Struggle.” The two movements were possibly in attacca format, but without seeing the score, the audience could not tell the dividing point, paved elegantly over by the saxophone and violin pair. Hartunian acted as strong, crisp support for Dunn-Corbin to solo over, hefty and full sound of the melody carrying over double stop drones from Hartunian. The most effective part of the piece was a canonic duet between the two voices, allowing the two ladies to imitate one another and show their delicate musicality. The second was an arrangement of Scorched Earth, originally for solo oboe edited for alto saxophone and violin by Duo Aki. Reflecting on the devastating brush fires that afflicted Australia from 2019-2020, the piece acted as a tour-de-force for Dunn-Corbin, who took over the majority of what appeared to be the solo oboe material. Dunn-Corbin commanded attention with forceful and mournful playing that filled the hall, reflecting the solo origins of the piece. Hartunian performed admirably in her second supporting role, tightly controlling bariolage and rapid arpeggiandos one the violin arcing across the instrument’s range with relative ease. It was obvious, however, that her part was secondary to the original line represented in the alto saxophone, the most important noteworthy section where Hartunian had some focus being a seagull-effect passage just before the end of the piece.
Dunn-Corbin then joined guest cellist Marotto on Walk on Water by Dorothy Chang. Chang reflected on the ever-changing nature of water, taking it through several sectional ideas that focused on different states of being in the water cycle. Here, the two instruments truly shared equal parts of a duet piece, blending into one another by Chang’s careful and deliberate orchestration choice of the alto saxophone being effectively on top of the cello voicings. Dunn-Corbin showcased her extended color palette range, performing several complicated techniques including piano-dynamic altissimo register playing and a variety of slap tongue. Similarly, Marotto slid the cello through a variety of timbres, being careful not to overtake the saxophone while deftly executing angular lines that looked to this reviewer to be extremely complicated. This is, of course, not to say that Marotto played flat and exclusively acrobatic material, for he took control of his solo passages and made the cello sing. Though perhaps about three-quarters through the piece Chang’s ideas sagged momentarily, the ending brought everything back together easily.
Blackburn’s Menagerie of Spectacular Creatures: Insecta formed the second half. Each movement of Blackburn’s Pierrot ensemble (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano for those unaware) presented a vignette in the life of a given insect, such as the big awkward Hercules Beetle or the Monarch Butterfly (the impetus for the composition of this piece) or even the bothersome mosquito. Blackburn, in his dense contrapuntal writing, made it so that the image of each insect came across to the audience easily, showing his ability to paint scenes aurally. Each movement focused on different subsections of the Pierrot, not unlike the grandfather piece of Pierrot Lunaire itself. Here, guest conductor Orlando Cela, Oldfather and Marotto joined Dino regulars Hershman-Tcherepnin, Heffner, and Hartunian to make up the venerable new music vehicle. After a dissonant but bouncy introduction, the entire quintet soared with the music of the Monarch Butterfly; Blackburn avoided the common “flying music” cliches to instead present a wonderful collection of delicate and airy passages that spread amongst the players. Of particular note in other movements, Heffner lead the remaining members of the quintet using her barking bass clarinet as the True Dung Beetle rolling its ball of questionable design around, Hartunian performed a buzzing but well controlled solo as the bothersome mosquito which especially used bariolage to great effect, and Hershman-Tcherepnin and Heffner shared active lines between the flute and clarinet in a duet for the Water Boatman. The entire ensemble, under the expert and reserved control of Cela’s conducting, reflected the multicolored nature of the lightening bugs in the Fireflies movement before cascading into the finale, ending the entomological collection with a well-disguised aleatoric ending (this can be hard to do, as total aleatory can stick out as completely uncontrolled performing; Blackburn expertly set up the entrance of controlled improvisation slowly in the finale).
Dinosaur Annex continues to hit its stride with concerts connected with another organization. Well themed and programmed using expertly composed music, these interdisciplinary events drive their points home. It’s truly a pleasure to hear the venerable Dinos.