{"id":4449,"date":"2012-04-04T15:42:14","date_gmt":"2012-04-04T19:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=4449"},"modified":"2012-05-01T18:28:18","modified_gmt":"2012-05-01T22:28:18","slug":"american-mavericks-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=4449","title":{"rendered":"American Mavericks, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Sedgwick Clark<\/strong><\/p>\n

The American composer has no greater champion than Michael Tilson Thomas. For his first season as music director of the San Francisco Symphony, 1995-96, virtually every subscription program contained an American work. Heralding the 21st century, the orchestra\u2019s 1999-2000 season concluded with a three-week American Mavericks festival. This year, to celebrate the orchestra\u2019s centennial, Tilson Thomas revived the Mavericks concept and took it on tour, culminating in a week at Carnegie Hall. Darned if these concerts weren\u2019t the hottest tickets in town, with hardly an empty seat in either house.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles Times <\/em>critic Mark Swed called Tilson Thomas \u201ca fearless musical explorer\u201d when Musical America <\/em>named him Conductor of the Year in 1995. Perhaps the most notorious of his explorations remains a performance of Steve Reich\u2019s Four Organs <\/em>at a Boston Symphony concert at Carnegie Hall on January 19, 1973. This rather severe example of minimalism–in which four organs \u201cdeconstruct\u201d a dominant eleventh chord for 20 minutes to the rhythmic underpinning of a monotonous maraca beat (Steve\u2019s Bolero<\/em>?)–provoked a mass walkout, with audience members shouting at each other and at the performers.<\/p>\n

Tilson Thomas recalled that “One woman walked down the aisle and repeatedly banged her head on the front of the stage, wailing \u2018Stop, stop, I confess.\u2019 \u201d Another quote had her banging a shoe. I wonder how he could have heard her: I was sitting about a third of the way back from the stage in the left parquet section with Joan La Barbara, who performed in two of these current Maverick concerts, and can attest that after 10 minutes it was impossible to hear the music over the uproar.<\/p>\n

But I digress. As noted in this space a couple of weeks ago, I had looked forward to these concerts ever since their announcement, and overall there were few disappointments. The four San Francisco concerts were preceded by a week of city-wide concert, dance, film, and visual arts events, performed by violinist Jennifer Koh and pianist Reiko Uchida, Alarm Will Sound\/Alan Pierson, and JACK Quartet, among others.<\/p>\n

A hugely entertaining John Cage Centennial Celebration by So Percussion and friends performing on assorted electronics at Zankel Hall (3\/26)\u00a0led off the first night of American Mavericks. The group writes in the program book about their concert: \u201cJohn Cage believed that duration\u2014as the only musical parameter that sound and silence have in common\u2014was the best way to frame musical structure. It becomes like a box, or a series of compartments, into which all kinds of noisy, unusual, and beautiful things can be thrown. In this spirit, our show will be exactly 91 minutes long (4\u201933\u201d multiplied by 20), a Cage-ian work unto itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seven Cage pieces (four performed simultaneously) were thus woven in with five new works by other composers to create a continuous tapestry.\u00a0 The digital countdown was projected onto the stage wall so that all of the pieces and actions could be \u201cchoreographed\u201d with precision.\u00a0Isolated events dotted Zankel\u2019s crowded stage: One man performed pushups; another who had been growing a long, black beard for over a year in anticipation of this concert cut it off. A member of So Percussion ripped through Cage\u2019s 45\u2019 for a Speaker <\/em>(\u201cI have nothing to say, and I am saying it\u201d), astonishingly pronouncing the final word as the countdown reached 00:00.<\/p>\n

Audience participation was delightfully provided by Dan Deacon in his Take a Deep Breath<\/em>, which consisted of 14 instructions timed to the countdown\u00a0and performed by everyone in the\u00a0hall\u00a0“to the utmost extreme” and “with sincerity.” Among them, hold one\u2019s breath as\u00a0long as possible\u00a0and release it with \u201cAHH\u201d or \u201cOHH\u201d sounds; make non-singing, vocal, or speech sounds with your mouth, including \u201ctongue slaps, lip smacks, pops, teeth chatter, clicks, sucking sounds, sound with the spit in your mouth, whistles, fart sounds, throat sounds, etc.\u201d; make a series of snaps, claps, stomps, whistles, or hoots in accelerating-decelerating, crescendo-decrescendo shape; sing something to the person\u00a0on your left for a minute; play any song on your cell phone at maximum volume; switch seats).<\/p>\n

As my favorite concert companion had been scared away by my description of the evening’s projected delights, I\u00a0found myself\u00a0unable to respond fully to the composer’s urging, “Don’t be shy!”\u00a0At some point in the\u00a0work I realized that the best \u201cperformers\u201d would be couples in love.\u00a0<\/p>\n

NOTE: Tune in next Wednesday for Part 2, which covers the San Francisco Symphony portion of the American Mavericks festival. <\/strong><\/p>\n