ICE and Composer Marcos Balter en Famille at Miller Theater

NEW YORK - Marcos Balter [pictured] is a prolific and sought-after composer entering midcareer with a head of steam. Originally from Rio de Janeiro, he spent the latter part of his training in Chicago, getting a doctorate at Northwestern under the tutelage of Augusta Read Thomas and Jan Alan Yim. After a five-year stint teaching at Columbia College Chicago, Balter has come east, recently joining the faculty at Montclair State. Much of his early catalog is for chamber forces. However, orchestras such as the American Composers Orchestra, Amazonas Philharmonica, and Orquestra Bachianas have taken notice. Balter recently secured a big coup when the Los Angeles Philharmonic commissioned a work for their Green Umbrella new music series in January, to be conducted by Susanna Mälkki.

For a number of years, Balter (b. 1974) has collaborated with the musicians of International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). Thus, it seemed especially fitting for ICE to present his Miller Theater debut in a Composer Portrait concert. The November 16th program featured five works composed between 2005 and 2016. In an uncommon twist for composer portraits, none were premieres (even New York premieres). Rather, this was a chance to hear an ongoing working relationship between one of the United States’ most prominent new music ensembles and one of its favorite composers.

In an onstage discussion midway through the evening with ICE founder and flutist Claire Chase, both she and Balter described this relationship as feeling “like family,” with all the closeness that implies; even allowing for an occasional sibling spat over artistic details. Balter indicated that the absence of premieres was actually a relief, joking that most composers are nervous at first performances and feel fortunate to get those elusive second, third, and fourth hearings, where both the musicians and creator can relax a bit given the familiarity of the music.

One can hardly imagine any player ever feeling entirely relaxed when encountering Balter’s work: by design it is amply virtuosic and filled with challenging passages of micro-tunings, extreme ranges, and, recently, even a measure of improvisation. Descent from Parnassus, a high-energy piece for vocalizing flutist (both elements amplified), is a case in point. From solemn intoning to puckish squeals, the performer is called upon to deliver a plethora of vocal sounds. Some of these occur simultaneously with notes played on the flute: a dilemma with no easy answers that requires site-specific choices by the performer. Complementing the aforementioned vocalisms are flurries of flute activity; the work’s dramatic impact was further heighted by imaginative lighting and Chase’s glittering black dress.

Rather than let up, the next piece was of paramount intensity. Its title, Landscape of Fear, could be an evocation of its impact on both the listener and the performer. It is fiendishly difficult, which didn’t seem to remotely faze the stalwart duo of saxophonist Ryan Muncy and pocket trumpeter Peter Evans. One wondered how the constant stream of notes, many in the respective instruments’ highest registers, gave either a chance to breathe. Though only five minutes long, it left both performers with heaving chests, gasping for air—a few listeners were left breathless as well. Relentless, yes, but a tour de force.

Raw Item for oboe and ensemble featured James Austin Smith as soloist and David Fulmer as a detailed and dynamic conductor. Smith displays an extraordinarily beautiful tone throughout the compass of the oboe and he specializes in extended techniques such as multiphonics and microtones, both of which are called for in this piece. This was intensity of a different sort, taking instruments to their limits and, according to Balter’s story of an oboist who had refused to play the piece’s premiere, beyond some of them. Again, with Austin Smith, supposed technical barriers were broken through. One of the remarkable things about Balter is that he positions various challenges as central without them ever feeling anything but organic to the conception and shape of the resulting music. This is equally true of ensemble parts. Nuiko Wadden’s harp blended with Nathan Davis’s chimes and a bowed water vessel, while pianist Jacob Greenberg and cellist Katrinka Kleijn provided supple contrapuntal underpinning, the latter in a microtonal field that added yet another layer of intricacy to the piece’s ornate design.

Luigi Serafini, an obscure and reclusive writer, published Codex Seraphinianus in 1981. An encyclopedic work about an imaginary culture, it uses a highly symbolic made-up language. Balter was attracted to this idea of a self-contained imaginary universe. His 2014 eponymous quartet traces 11sections—the book is divided similarly—each calling for different playing techniques among different members of the ensemble. Codex displays a more slackened sensibility from Balter and passages that, based on what was else was on the program, are stylistically surprising: medieval organum, minimal ostinatos, and heterophonic repeating melodies.

Equally surprising in its own way is Balter’s Violin Concerto (2016). Commissioned by ICE for its Mostly Mozart concerts, it is cast in three movements in the traditional fast-slow-fast design. It plays with the ideas of formal design and even evokes some open-string-based harmonies along the way. However, the composer takes an imaginative approach to the details: violinist David Bowlin spent much of his time speedily arpeggiating passages in the stratosphere; the slow movement is fragile in its lyricism, with the soloist playing precariously high with a mute; the finale features a blindingly fast scherzo. After an ambitious cadenza, a drum thwack announces a mercurial coda. ICE again flourished under Fulmer, playing so responsively that, even in passages of great speed and dynamic contrast, they were admirably well-balanced with Bowlin. As Balter’s family of collaborators expands from Chicago to New York to Los Angeles, one eagerly awaits the ambitious compositions that will result.