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May 12, 2006
Delivered, the Sequel
After my last post, I realized that I'd only written about a quarter of the music heard at the Green Mill last Sunday. There was a lot more than just Dai Fujikura's works that merit attention and repeated listening, so here goes.
Experimental vocalist Carol Genetti contributed two works to the afternoon, 6tet and an untitled work for voice and electronics. I'd meant to catch a show of Genetti's at Links Hall a few months ago, but that didn't happen. Working with a range of glottal effects and sounds that suggest other phenomena (a squeaky hinge?), Genetti's a sort of slower, more meditative and less exuberant relation to Meredith Monk. Her sounds evolve slowly and melt into each other, they don't smack your eardrums into paying attention.
6tet matched Genetti with three people manning electronics along with a bassist and bassoonist. Genetti's croaking ran up against moaning from bassoonist Katherine Young and scratching from bassist Jason Roebke. Joseph Mills worked the oscillators and various things that make noise. I made the jaded critic's mistake of assuming that there was no way this show was going to start on time, since none had previously, so I came in what turned out to be the middle of 6tet. Whether there was some dramatic arch I thus missed, I'm not sure, but there was something cathartic about the minimal activity.
Genetti's untitled work brought in Eric Leonardson on electronics to manipulate her voice for about ten minutes. Again, Genetti does almost nothing, making little gestures mean a lot. No words, words carry too much obvious meaning and denote too much. Leonardson also bowed a cardboard box, if my memory isn't completely failing me.
DePaul's George Flynn usually has a hand in organizing these matinees, so naturally he played his A Suggestion of Northern Lights, for piano. Originally written for Frederik Ullen, Flynn said he'd meant for the work to be called Northern Lights, but had a couple other projects pressing, so he couldn't finish it. So he improvised around the fragments he had composed and settled for a suggestion. It began with a falling, almost-Second Viennese single-note melody that grew into a more polyphonic frame.
ICE had more to do than play a bunch of Fujikura, they also had to do Joshua Fried's Headset Sextet. Six performers, wearing headsets, stand in a line in front of six microphones. A burst of throbbing music comes out of the loudspeakers, than the speakers enter. (Fried's own analysis is here.) The speakers babble at each other, against each other, with each other, occasionally blurting out the same syllables in unison. The intensity keeps ramping up as you try to follow who's doing what, which is part fun, part enervating, but ultimately exhilarating as your head keeps on spinning. Tony Arnold's mike wasn't working, so it was more of a Headset Quintet, alas.
After all these divergent styles had had their moment, it was time for the style known as "fun" that's the specialty of Environmental Encroachment. Five members showed up to march through the club with their version of a New Orleans second line. Two drummers, two trombones and tubist dressed as a superhero/professional wrestler in Chucks gave everyone a ten final minutes of bonhomie to head out into the late afternoon glow.
Originally posted by MarcGeelhoed from Marc Geelhoed: Deceptively Simple, ReBlogged by jeff on May 12, 2006 at 02:01 PM