Like A Marching Band on Acid

By Mabel Kwan, Pianist

Dal Niente's preseason game started in August with a photo shoot at Architectural Artifacts. The beautiful thing about having a shoot before the season begins is that it gets everyone together in one place and it reminds you of this larger thing you are a part of. 

More nientes than usual in one spot, assembling for photographer Aleks Karjaka.

This would be a guiding principle for our rehearsal a few hours later that day, as we were preparing Hexis by George Lewis for a performance at Rush Hour Concerts. We would also record the piece at the end of the month, along with his recent chamber works Mnemosis, Assemblage, and The Mangle of Practice for Dal Niente's forthcoming album of his notated compositions. George was kind enough to make time for us in Chicago and worked with us at the concert, rehearsals, and recording session.

Playing "Hexis" at the Rush Hour Concert series. Click through for photo gallery. Photo by Marc Perlish

In George's music the sense of community between composer, performer, listener is magnified. George is always interested in what sort of sounds the performer has ready in their own "back pocket" to bring to the piece. His music is a constant act of doing and being in the moment of it, whether you are playing or listening. There's a section in Mnemosis where I sit out, and everyone else is freaking out on their instruments. They sound like a marching band on acid. Sometimes I am digging this section so hard I forget to play my next entrance. But that's the listener's role in all of this--no, not to play my entrance, but to improvise their own composition in the moment they are hearing it. Audience, performer, and composer are always co-collaborators in the music.

In our next photo shoot, we're gonna have to get all y'all in there.

Postcards from Darmstadt

Every year, musicians from around the world converge on Darmstadt to teach, learn, discuss, debate, perform, and redefine new music. We asked some nientes - and niente associates - to fill in the following blank: “Darmstadt 2016 was _______”

Below are just a few of the answers we got.

Ben Melsky, Dal Niente Harpist and Executive Director

Darmstadt 2016 was:

Theatrical. Interest in the new discipline seems to be hitting its stride and coming to the forefront AND taking off in so many directions. From Steven Takasugi’s Sideshow to basically anything by Jennifer Walshe, to a whole bunch of opera and opera-like projects from composers around the world, to plenty of George Aperghis (who happens to be among the world’s sweetest people), to music without sound but with bodies? What?

I think about this intersection of music and theater a lot. If you tell a musician to do X, they want to know “how fast, how much, how high, where, precisely when, in coordination with who?” if you tell an actor to do the same X, an entirely different set of thoughts or self-instructions precipitate.

How do you get a musician to act? In what context can this “acting” be successful and not contrived? Could you hire actors to perform these pieces? These are some pretty big questions.

Supportive. I had the distinct pleasure of working with Gunnhilder Einarsdottir (author of harpnotation.com) another harpist, Alice Belugou, and a bunch of composers from around the world. Over the course of two weeks, Gunnhilder, Alice and I worked with the composers on short pieces utilizing varying extended techniques and instrument preparations. It is always incredibly fascinating to watch other harpists (or any other performer) in the moment make decisions about whether they can do something a composer is asking for. This is a difficult line to walk because it requires the performer to voluntarily go somewhere a bit uncomfortable or even a bit vulnerable - honestly asking yourself “Can i do this?” and communicate that to the composer. And if you can’t, how to get what they’re after. You know, problem solving.

(This is how you prepare an $8 toy harp with a $500 contact microphone. Worth it? Yes.)

It is much too easy in situations like this to simply say no, something’s not possible, and of course, there are many many times when a request simply cannot be done. BUT it’s very important to realize that saying “yes” and working through problems is the process by which ideas become reality.

Working with composer Mark Andre.

Ravenswood, Lincoln Square, Uptown, Edgewater, Lincoln Park. Chicago seriously represented at the festival this year. Myself, Mabel Kwan, Carrie Shaw, Michael Lewanski and Jessie Langen (with all those über creative Chicago Arts Initiative kids) held down the Dal Niente fort. Mocrep was there and did some incredible work with Steven Takasugi and Jennifer Walshe. Katie Young and Jenna Lyle had fantastic performances of their work. Ray Evanoff (Chicago by proximity, and he stayed at my place, so he counts) was there,  Jonathan Hannau, the whole gang!

I was so proud of what Chicago had to contribute to this international festival. The energy, dynamic, ambition to do great work, and spirit of this city is truly unique and it really showed in Darmstadt. Weston Olencki, a pretty special guy who you can hear on our December 4th Enno Poppe concert, received the Kranichstein prize for interpretation and Bethany Younge received a Kranichstein stipend for composition. Great to see them recognized for their work.

Favorite moment: Overhearing Ray Evanoff explain to Michael Lewanski how to make french press coffee.  I’ll let you guess who mentioned “Scelsi” and “the universe”

From Mabel Kwan, Dal Niente Pianist:

Darmstadt 2016 was not for the faint of heart.

Blood, foil, cellophane, raw meat, torture, ambition, pain, denial of death, fear of loss, anonymity, downfall, hybrid realities, alien bodies, skin, trash, fur coats and sunglasses and six inch heels, one sold out show, gender, sex, shop vac, harpist getting stabbed in the cheek, the human body, another sold out show, condoms, broken glass, disembodiment, survival, apocalypse, the lowest bass frequencies ever, yet another sold out show, freak shows, surveillance, oppression, ghost peppers, a cleansing, an enormous teddy bear, darkness, suffocation, power tools… and that was only the first 5 days.

From Jesse Langen, Dal Niente Guitarist:

Darmstadt 2016 was educational.

I learned that, as valkyries descend from on high, the unfortunate hear a celestial harp glissando from the heights of the stars to the abyss of their doom. I saw Peter Veale recover improbably and in great style from death onstage. Also, kayleigh butcher likes several posts, according to mocrep.

And a paraphrase from sivan cohen elias, coaching Chicago Arts Initiative and Studio Musikfabrik youth ensembles: "i see a clown. But the clown wants to make a new kind of joke. Like a new music clown. And the clown is making its new music jokes by the river. But people just walk by the clown and ignore him. Play it like that." (The students play) "No."

From Jenna Lyle, Composer and Vocalist:

Darmstadt 2016 was fit-to-be-pickled.

...and in some cases actually pickled...From a wide array of vinegar-preserved cheeses and vegetables to some of the most touching and interesting performances, to some of the worst things I've ever seen, Darmstadt 2016 is something I'd like to keep in a jar, packed in salt. My experiences there will continue to ferment in my memory, decomposing and growing new strains of bacteria in my creative consciousness until eventually they become an explosion risk like that Kombucha Andrew made in our kitchen a couple of years ago. I mean it was delicious, but there were a couple of days where I was legitimately worried about scoby combustion.

COUNT ZINZENDORF; OR, HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE PARTY

By Michael Lewanski, conductor, artistic coordinator, musical cheerleader, melodica virtuoso

Friends, I sort of think classical music concerts are a problem.  I know, I know; this is an awfully strange thing for me, of all people, to be saying.  After all, I participate in a lot of them, and I have attended literally thousands and thousands.  And I’ll go a step further: if I’m being totally honest, I’d rather go to a concert than do very nearly anything else.  Some of my best, most deeply felt moments as a human being have occurred at concerts.  Essential parts of my identity are constructed around certain concert experiences.  In a sense, concerts are an expression of who I am.

Still, though, I can’t help but feel ambivalent.  For every one life-affirming performance I enjoy, I may have two concert experiences that feel inauthentic or artificial or phoned-in or uncommitted or, at worst, completely pointless and time-wasting for everyone involved.  There’s no shortage of blame to go around: performers, their training, audiences, US culture, funding structures, Wagner/Mahler (because they are partially the origin of what are now our dumb concert traditions), Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” (because it’s a terrible song), Donald Trump (because Donald Trump, though one might more reasonably claim that he’s a symptom as much as he is a cause).  But regardless, there’s just something about the format that works only some of the time.  Many of us feel that classical music concerts in the US are inherently moralizing or judge-y.  “This is Great Music(TM),” some concerts say, “and so you dress up fancy and you’d better like this otherwise you’re uneducated and DO NOT CLAP BETWEEN MOVEMENTS I SWEAR TO GOD.”  But also: many of us have been noting this moralizing/judge-y tendency for a while.  So there has been a trend in the opposite direction; and as a result sometimes in response we Try Too Hard: hey, let’s have a concert that only our friends will attend in a bar and let’s pat ourselves on the back while people talk through the performance because we’re making the music Accessible. (Uh-oh, does that mean secretly deep down we think it has to be made that was because it’s not? we hesitate to even ask ourselves.)

I’m wary of the sometimes-often alienating experiences of classical music concerts.  I’m equally wary of Trying Too Hard.  I am interested in searching for an authentic way of listening to performed music in a confusing world.  Even if I can’t find it, there’s a lot to be learned from trying.  Party 2016 is part of this search.

For some reason, now I want to tell you about Count Karl von Zinzendorf (1739-1813), an Austrian civil servant, an accountant, an otherwise pretty regular dude who had an active social life going to dinner parties, concerts, operas, etc. in Vienna.  His most remarkable characteristic is none of this, but rather that he wrote it all down—that he was an incessant diarist.  Karl (I’m sure he doesn’t mind if I call him that) made observations that are remarkable as much for all of the music he saw (the premieres of the now-standard-repertoire Mozart operas, say) as they are for their nonchalance and ho-hum-ness.  Mozart wasn’t a Great Composer(TM) to him, he was a guy writing music for his time and place that had such obvious relevance that that question was never even engaged.  It’s astonishing to us how much live music Karl encountered on a regular basis, how much he understood, and also how casual he was about it.  And that only makes sense: Vienna was a very different place in 1800; it had a population of 270,000, and music all sounded much more same-y than it does today.  (Which is NOT to say it’s not amazing music; it is; it exhibits a mastery of craft that we probably don’t really appreciate as people listening to it 200 years later.  It’s just to say that with way fewer people, less advanced technology, a different sort of social hierarchy, etc., of course there’s less stylistic diversity.)  So a trade-off exists here.  Their music (what we consider today to be, I suppose, “classical music” or “art music”) was much less diverse than ours is today.  But their music was also the stuff of everyday life that in a way that ours simply is not, unless you’re talking about Taylor Swift, which (mostly) I’m not.  (Not that I mind Taylor Swift; no, really, I think “I Knew You Were Trouble” is a good song, like when the bassline comes in at that one spot and all.)  The reasons for this are complex, and off the top of my head, are related to: commercialism, the culture industry, late capitalism, commodification, reification, the division of labor, American political and education systems, and cultural imperialism.  (OK, yeah, that’s a different convo; or is it?)

My goal, nevertheless, is for you to go to Dal Niente/Parlour Tapes+’s Party 2016 and encounter and really engage with and love and hate and feel “meh” about and be troubled by art of your time and your culture—not someone else’s.  And I think this might make most sense in a context that is familiar to you: a social event.  Our friend Karl the Viennese Accountant went to music parties (of a different sort), and so should you.  In a sense, I want you to have a cultural experience that is deeply regular and profoundly non-transcendental.  OK, maybe some of it will be transcendental; James Tenney’s Critical Band, with its tuning A ever-expanding into the complete natural harmonic series, is—just being real—a pretty out-of-body experience.  Most of it, though, I want to feel like your life.  And your life is complicated and perhaps difficult; as much as you might want it to be otherwise, it is probably a bit chaotic and ununified and not always altogether pleasant; so is our program.  It’s a party, yes, but it’s not just easy; to pretend otherwise would be lying.

So, a few words about a few of the pieces:

Greg Saunier’s Deerhoof Chamber Variations is an arrangement of Deerhoof songs for Dal Niente by that band’s drummer who also happens to be a brilliant and idiosyncratic musician with a particularly quirky sense of style.  What he’s done here is taken songs from their various albums and put them together as fragmentary arrangements, each of which engages a different style that you sort-of recognize.  “Like the score of a neoclassical ballet,” said Daniel Johnson of WQXR, in what maybe the greatest and/or least likely description for a bunch of rock songs ever.

Natacha Diels’ Elpis is a particular blend of styles you may also sort-of know, combined with certain kinds of movements that walk the human/mechanical line finely.  In the meantime, someone is cutting out photographs of models from magazines, while some of the performers imitate their poses.  What is the relationship between the movement of these performers and the sounds produced by the instruments?   

Stefan Prins’ Generation Kill: gosh, this is a dark work that is hard to read, whose meaning is actually difficult to pin down: but this hard-to-pin-down-ness forces you to ask a lot of questions.  Some performers are playing video game controllers, some are playing musical instruments.  What’s similar about those actions and what’s different?  What is the agency of these people?  Who’s controlling what?  Actually, is anyone in control here?  And how does supposed control over video and musical sound reflect on musical style?  How does musical style relate to the world we live in?  Writes the composer: “I realized that my next piece had to musically reflect [...] on a society which is more and more monitored, on the increasing importance of internet, networks and social media, which are fueled by videos taken with webcams and smartphones, on video-games and on wars fought like video-games, on the line between reality and virtuality which gets thinner by the day.”

Parlour Tapes+’s Inside-Outside Rave Pyramid:  Um, this.  Trust me, just watch it.

Louis Andriessens’ Hout (Wood): This feels like virtuoso performers playing four different fast lines at the same time.  But, OMG, they’re actually the same line, displaced by one sixteenth note.  Says the composer: “the successive voices are so close together that it is more like a unison melody with ramifications.  Ramifications and branches are the same word in Dutch.”

Good thing we have different ones in English, because “ramifications” is a word that I really like; it describes something about the way I think about art.  It’s the sense that the work is not simply the printed score or the performance.  Rather, it’s how we all (musicians, composers, audiences) collectively and individually experience what we hear and the aftermath of that hearing—how we talk about it, how we think about it, how it alters our lives in small but accumulatingly meaningful ways, and how we become different based on the art we experience.

Past, Present, Future

PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

By Chris Wild, Cellist and Lead Artistic Coordinator

The following video preview of Stefan Prins' Generation Kill uses material from our pre-recorded video sessions as its musical content. The sounds and sights in this video will be barely recognizable at our April 30 performance, but are an important part of the whole puzzle. And while this video takes a humorous approach to political ineptitude (thanks to Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove), the live experience of Generation Kill at Dal Niente's 10th Anniversary Party on April 30 promises to be a sensory and emotional wallop.

I will abstain from mentioning all the music I'm looking forward to at Dal Niente's 10th Anniversary Party simply because it's difficult to isolate one particular piece without relating it to another. Speaking as someone who coordinates programming for our ensemble, I'd like to acknowledge that when I started doing this work a couple years ago, I felt a responsibility to continue Dal Niente's musical tendencies, as our programming has played a large role in earning a loyal following in Chicago. In addition to embracing our unique traditions, we've been conscious of including American composers, and as an extension of that, composers that reflect the diversities of contemporary American society. This consideration is another reason why it's difficult to isolate repertoire for us - each composer we collaborate with has been influenced by others we've worked with, and so it becomes the totality of our programming that best reflects the society we live in, and also our mission. This is certainly the case with our upcoming Party, which in typical Party fashion will present a diversity of styles.

In addition to keeping an eye on our internal traditions, and on our regional present, being a contemporary ensemble also demands that we keep an eye towards the future. That brings us to Stefan Prins' Generation Kill, which is a piece that we'd been thinking of performing for a couple years and needed appropriate circumstances to attempt. To carry it out with our traditional level of musical preparedness, some of us Nientes are being hard pressed to acquire new technical skills so that our performance on April 30 may live up to the composer's ambitions.

The impetus for Stefan's piece is one that I find myself reminded of in the wake of each successive act of global terrorism. Stefan describes it thus:

Last year, while I was working on "Piano Hero #1 and #2", the Arab Revolutions had ignited the Middle-East. Protesters in several Middle-Eastern countries made the whole world witness the revolutionary events by making video's with their smartphones or webcams and uploading them to the internet. With the use of the social media -such as Facebook and Twitter- the whole process was accelerated, and before anyone realised, the people of Tunisia and Egypt had overthrown their dictatorial regimes, while full-blown civil wars started to split Libya and to paralyse Syria.

In the same year, 2011, a large-scale investigation was released, which calculated that there is one CCTV surveillance camera for every 32 persons in the UK.

October 2011: the Americans started to withdraw their troops in Iraq, while they were still fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. More and more images were released of successful (at least according to the official bulletins) bombings by so-called "drones" -"unmanned aerial vehicles" who are remotely controlled by military personal in secret control centers in the US. Parallel to these images, an increasing stream of eye-witnesses started to appear on the internet, telling of innocent people who were killed by these bombings.

Strolling through the internet, I found at around the same time a 7-year old video-clip on Youtube which was a teaser for the TV-series "Generation Kill", based on the homonymous book in which Evan Wright chronicled his experiences as an embedded reporter with the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion of the US Marine Corps during the 2003 Iraq invasion. One of the statements which shocked me the most was made by one of the soldiers: "It's the ultimate rush -- you're going into the fight with a good song playing in the background". Evan Wright explained further: "This is a war fought by the first playstation generation. One thing about them is they kill very well in Iraq."

At that point, I realised that my next piece had to musically reflect on all of these connected facts, on a society which is more and more monitored, on the increasing importance of internet, networks and social media, which are fueled by video's taken with webcams and smartphones, on video-games and on wars fought like video-games, on the line between reality and virtuality which gets thinner by the day.

Stefan is able to make such associations perceptible by employing multiple perspectives in the piece, facilitating access to and shifts between the multiple agents he describes. The participants facilitating this experience are 4 live musicians (playing violin, cello, electric guitar, and percussion), pre-recorded videos of these musicians that are triggered by 4 assistants using Playstation game controllers (fulfilled by the members of Parlour Tapes+ and Dal Niente's conductor, Michael Lewanski), images of drone warfare, and webcams that can flip our attention from the warfare to those purportedly responsible for the attacks.

Stefan has designed an elaborate network of devices to make all of these factors integrate into a cohesive aural and visual experience. The setup includes 4 semi-transparent projector screens that can both display the pre-recorded videos in front of the live musicians, and also allow the audience to see through the screens to the musicians performing behind them who are at times illuminated by independent LED lighting systems. Other technical requirements include video projectors, laptop computers, external webcams, interfaces, microphones, various cables, multiple speakers and subwoofers, and a culminating sound board controlled by a sound engineer.

Making all of this work without a budget dedicated to the piece has been quite a challenge, one that requires generosity and flexibility from many. We are indebted to Stefan for his mentorship throughout the process (and who will be flying to Chicago to attend our performance thanks to the Flemish Government), to Dan Nichols, Brian Wach, and Northern Illinois University for their technical support, to Eric Fernandez for guiding me through the early recording sessions, and to Parlour Tapes+, Michael Lewanski, and my colleagues in Dal Niente for taking on this challenge with enthusiasm, and apparently with some lost sleep as well.

It's a Wild Ride

It's a Wild Ride

By Emma Hospelhorn

It’s a wild ride, bringing a new composition to life.  Especially when that piece has so many different components – flutes, clarinets, and a score, sure, but also improvised sections, motion capture sound manipulation, and a machine that “listens” to our playing and responds.

Sometimes I feel like the electronics in this piece are a third player. That third player is not human, and not always predictable, and Ben Sutherland, the composer/controller, is at once translator and trainer and magician.

When Ben presented us with the first draft of Who Are We Are Here in December, we had no idea what to expect. We sat down in front of the score, and found intertwined lines of singing and playing that dove and dipped in sinuous, gorgeous ways. A technical challenge to pull off, but, we agreed, SOOOO COOOOL.

But what would the electronics sound like? We didn’t know. We put on wireless microphones and walked into the “kinect space” – the part of the room that the motion capture device can see – and were at once surrounded by echoes of our own sounds. We spent hours playing with the machine, walking forwards and backwards and spinning around and playing and listening back to our own processed sounds coming back to us. After a while we weren’t playing anymore, just intoning weird, sepulchral phrases that sounded hilarious when the echoes surrounded us. We started talking like valley girls – “Eww, mah god. This. Is. Sew. Kewl.” and the machine chattered back at us, mocking us, playing with us. The whole time, Ben sat at the computer, adjusting tolerances, changing rules – making sure that the machine could see us, first of all, and then adjusting the rules of what it would do with our sounds when it saw us move.  

Now, the machine knows us. It knows the piece. On Sunday, Ben will be at the computer, but all of the different kinds of electronic sounds that join us in the world premiere of Who Are We Are Here will be triggered because the machine was listening to us – it saw me move through a certain space, so it triggered a recollection of my own sounds. It waited and then heard us reach a particular pair of pitches, so it triggered a metamorphosis that compressed our recorded selves into a series of ever shorter samples, becoming a drum machine. It listened for a different pitch as we played along with it, and disintegrated into a drone that we sang along to.

The machine is SO COOL. You’ll see.  

---

Dal Niente Presents: Emma Hospelhorn, flute + Katie Schoepflin, clarinet
Sunday, March 6, 2016
8:30pm
Constellation Chicago
3111 N. Western Avenue
Buy tickets here!

Preparing for Hard Music, Hard Liquor

PREPARING FOR HARD MUSIC, HARD LIQUOR

By Chris Wild, Cellist and Lead Artistic Coordinator

We hope that many attending Ensemble Dal Niente's fourth Hard Music, Hard Liquor concert on February 28 will be moved to celebrate with a visit to the bar at Constellation. For those of us preparing to perform on the 28th, however, we find ourselves currently in the midst of a sobering process. For me, it's been six months since I first cracked open the score to Beat (pronounced Bay-At) Furrer's Solo, initiating my preparation process during a summer "vacation."

In case performers, composers, or even others are interested, I am very happy to share my process for preparing Furrer's Solo:

- July: I look through the handwritten score published by Barenreiter, considering the piece's technical and notational challenges.

- July: Since the piece has two staves (each is used for different techniques at different times - probably employed largely to avoid excessive density of information), it's unmeasured, and also handwritten (and probably prepared in a rush), I first go through the score and draw lines with pencil to show how beats and rhythms align or relate.

- July: At this point in time I need to consider how the composer's notation of extended techniques (or as our conductor Michael Lewanski calls them, "techniques") compares to my existing method for editing and recognizing techniques in circumstances such as this where I am rapidly alternating between them. In addition to editing techniques, I also consider where I will play all of the harmonics (which are usually played pizzicato - plucked - in this piece) since harmonics exist in multiple locations. With this in mind, I go through the score a third time, modifying the labeling of techniques and using Roman Numerals to indicate strings for harmonics. Further on harmonics: I usually try to play them in the upper register of the cello (nearer to the bridge) because they are easier to find and isolate up there. When I am forced to pluck a high partial harmonic down low in its "first position" location (due to surrounding "low" pitches), I label those with "1P." For harmonics that are high partials beyond the edge of the fingerboard (of which there are many), I identify their location by their proximity to the heart shape in the middle of my bridge, using that as a visual reference. Once I have finished going through the score with pencil (perhaps now having spent 12 hours with it), I resume my "vacationing" and plan to begin learning the piece with cello in hand back in Chicago.

- August: back in Chicago, I begin to plod through the score at a painstakingly slow rate, maybe getting through one of the piece's eighteen pages every couple days or so. At this point, my process is influenced by my work as an orchestral conductor in that I use colors to codify certain techniques (left hand techniques and quiet dynamics are blue while right hand techniques and loud dynamics are red, for example, and I also employ a highlighter for left hand pizzicati). I find this process necessary because my work in other musical domains (conducting, teaching, being a full-time student) leaves me with very little practice time. I typically practice the cello less than what I request of my high school students, and I thank the heavens that I can get away with that. A trade off, however, is that the slow and intermittent process helps prevent me from becoming frustrated with the piece's numerous challenges. And since I'm now making performance decisions with cello in hand, some of my previous decisions end up being altered.

- September: Snce I'm getting closer to the concert date and will have my available time diminish due to the beginning school year at Northwestern University, I make it a goal to be able to perform pages of music without stopping at a tempo that is close to half of the written speed (eighth note equals 116-120 beats per minute). During the month of September, I probably succeeded in playing through the piece once, maybe twice, focusing on two or three pages per practice session.

- October: At this point in time, I start to get the sense that it isn't possible to play this piece (due to the rapid changes between techniques i.e. alternating pizzicato and bow, etc.) anywhere near the written tempo. Feeling nervous, I take my score and sit down with it and the recording that compelled me to learn the piece in the first place - Lucas Fels' recording from 2001 on the Kairos label. I am reassured when I conclude that Lucas' recording is on average two-thirds of the written tempo, and assume that this recording was made with Furrer's blessing. This is also when I find an excellent live video recording of the piece played by Ellen Fallowfield with tempi comparable to Lucas'. Normally I am very bad at accessing recordings, preferring to build an independent interpretation before consulting others', so in this instance my resorting to recordings is mostly to quell fear.

- November: This month is like the last, although at this point I am getting through twice as much music and at half the speed of the written tempi. When speeding up my playing, I notice that many of my previous technical decisions need to be altered. For example, Furrer has only occasionally indicated that pizzicati must be executed with the left hand. However, due to the speed with which one must go from pizzicato to arco (bow), I end up whiting out many of my right hand pizzicato indications in favor of left hand pizzicati, perhaps quadrupling the number of left hand pizzicati, so that the pulse of the music is less likely to become distorted. To execute these left hand pizzicati, I usually place my left thumb on the harmonic and pluck with a left finger, then quickly change to the following pitch and arco position as written.

- December: Now that I am within 2-3 months of performance, I place pressure on myself to play through large chunks of the piece at a time, and to do so at a speed closer to the tempi chosen by Mr. Fels and Ms. Fallowfield. I alternate this with slower practice, making sure that I can balance goals for increased speed with sustained accuracy. While on winter vacation in British Columbia for two weeks, I am able to practice for one day on a childhood cello of mine and invite my family to listen to me play, making it through about half of the piece in a half hour before leaving for a social obligation. The length of time it takes me to get through the piece is due to a number of starts and stops, because I simply cannot make a mistake (at any point in time while practicing) without stopping to assess it and (likely) mark a modifier into my music. My disdain for mistakes leads me to often swear at myself while practicing, but since I was raised to be a good boy, I avoid cursing in my parents' presence. Further, this "vacation" is also when I was asked to submit a program note for the concert program, still somewhat unsure of what my final tempi will be.

- January: My goal for this month is to essentially be ready to perform a month ahead of Hard Music, Hard Liquor so that I can gain comfortability with the piece and hopefully find at least one person to play it for. Some decisions are now overdue regarding my performance - for one, there is the issue of page turns since each page is quite large and moments of silence are few and brief. I notice that Ms. Fallowfield turns her own pages, adding a bit of extra length to rests. After consulting with my wife, composer Eliza Brown, we agree to have her be my page turner for the performance. Another option could've been using a tablet or laptop with my Bluetooth foot pedal turning pages, but I don't have a large enough device for this piece, and that process doesn't really gel with my editing needs. Also, in terms of instrument selection, I should say that I have only used my carbon fibre cello and bow up to this point in Chicago since there is lots of col legno (which I avoid with my best bow), the cello looks cool, and its reverberance is striking, helping the harmonic pizzicati ring radiantly. Also, in imagining my ideal performance condition and having technical performance requirements requested from me, I decide that I would like to have my performance be amplified. This decision reflects a few things - first, the performance venue is dry and quiet since there's no stage; second, I want to make sure that all of the minute sonic details can be heard in a party atmosphere; third, I also want to make sure that the sounds written for my voice balance with the sounds emanating from the cello.

- February: Now that my school year is getting daunting with numerous conducting obligations and a Dal Niente residency at Western Michigan University alongside my blah blah blah, I put semi-monthly times into my calendar when I must practice the solo. And, after consulting with Eliza, we decide that we will do a run-through of the piece together on February 7. That's tomorrow, fingers crossed... !

I have now addressed issues of how to perform music like Furrer's Solo, but little in my process reveals why one might choose to be so exacting. To summarize, my desire is to remove all questions of how to play before the concert so that I can lend as much of my consciousness while playing to listening and building an active interpretation (relying on muscle memory and notational recognition for technical execution). This final step is certainly reflective of our ensemble's mission to interpret and re-interpret everything we perform (why else would it be worthwhile for us to give second or third performances of works that others have already performed well?). Therefore, I will encourage questions such as what is a potential role of the vocal sounds written into the piece to influence how I make connections between musical material during my performance.

Although this will end up being one of my lowest compensated professional performances (if we're measuring by work hours), it's an opportunity that I'm especially grateful for. In what I believe to be true Dal Niente fashion, I plan to pair my musical rigor with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind (to quote Jim Harbaugh). And soon after performing, I look forward to joining you with a glass of hard liquor!

Updated March 4, 2016. Video of Chris performing Beat Furrer’s Solo at Hard Music, Hard Liquor on Sunday, February 28, 7:30 pm as part of the inaugural Frequency Festival:

Announcing A New Niente: Violinist Tarn Travers

Announcing A New Niente: Violinist Tarn Travers

Ensemble Dal Niente proudly announces the latest addition to its roster of musicians, violinist Tarn Travers! Tarn is a familiar face to fans of Dal Niente, having appeared with the ensemble on several past occasions including performances of Georg Friedrich Haas’ in vain and the recent Neue Musik Tour. Join us in welcoming Tarn to the ensemble, and enjoy getting to know a bit more about him in our Q & A below!

Q- Tell us a little bit about your background. Where are you from and how did you first get into music?
A- I grew up in Washington state for the most part, where my mom is the local violin teacher. I'm the youngest of four kids, and all of my older siblings played violin. Of course, I really wanted to be like my siblings and play violin as well, so I told my mom that I wanted to start when I was three. She said that I was too young and too immature, and I am sure that she was right! When I was five, some of our extended family came and visited, and all of my siblings took out their violins to play for them. I felt so left out that I went into a closet and found a tiny violin and sawed away on it as well, and I'm sure it sounded absolutely horrendous. My mom finally decided that it was time for me to start.

Q- What were some of your earliest experiences with contemporary music? How did those experiences inform and shape your career?
A- Honestly, it is hard to pinpoint my first experience with contemporary music. I first met and worked with living composers in high school, and it has been an interest of mine ever since. Though my taste in new music was a bit more conservative back then, my interest in living composers and lesser-known composers of our time has led to me being asked to perform music that was further and further out of my comfort zone. Though initially I had a pretty strong fear of the unknown, now I really enjoy the process of delving into the unknown in an attempt to discover a composer's world!

Q- Tell us about your experiences working with Dal Niente up until this point. What are you most looking forward to as you join the roster?
A- My first experience playing with Dal Niente was in Georg Friedrich Haas' masterpiece in vain. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my career! I had not played very much music that used this type of musical language up to this point, and I was just about as far out of my comfort zone as I could imagine. And yet I was struck by how everyone around me really seemed to be completely at ease with this type of music, not that I found this extremely comforting! But in spite of the terrifying practice and rehearsal process, I felt that the piece and the performance expressed something completely indescribable with words, and that made the entire process worthwhile. I was completely sold on the piece and the ensemble both.
I love playing with Dal Niente because the musicians are absolutely phenomenal. I love exploring repertoire and composers' sound worlds with them, and being among passionate advocates of great music. I'm really thrilled to be joining!

Q- Any fun, little known facts about yourself that you can share with our fans?
A- The only other passion that I have had since I was 5 is my love for skiing, which I started even before I started violin.

Getting Plucky: No Strings Attached - Q&A with Ben Melsky and Jesse Langen

Getting Plucky: New Music for Harp and Guitar

Q: When and how did the two of you dream up the idea of collaborating to commission new music for harp and guitar?

Ben:  Jesse and I have consistently remarked, after every ensemble piece that we’ve been included on,  (I think the first time was when we did a Radiohead arrangement in DN’s early days at Northwestern) at how well we play together.  It’s just really solid - which is rare - especially considering our instruments and how difficult it can be to pluck notes at precisely the same time.  In an ensemble, harp and guitar are often their own “sections” so to speak, which is kind of uniting in a way. We  face similar challenges incorporating our sound with the ensemble while trying to lining things up rhythmically. Anyway, we did some repertoire searches and decided we needed to add some pieces to that list.   It’s interesting how alike the two instruments are in sound, technique, and role within an ensemble and yet there is remarkably little written for two as a duet.

Jesse:  It seems like such a natural combination; it makes sense for the same reasons that a string quartet or a wind quintet make sense.  It seems strange that there isn’t already a large repertoire; and in that light we saw it as a rare undeveloped opportunity, which we’re eagerly exploiting.

Q: Can you tell us how you identified the composers that you ended up working with? What are the highlights of each piece that we'll hear on the January 23 performance at Elastic Arts?

Ben: We pretty much agreed upon Fred, Drew, Tomás and Kasia immediately and I’m beyond thrilled that they all agreed to write for us.  I think we were interested in approaching composers who had experience with harp/guitar (and with us as performers) who would explore the tiniest timbral details because of the breadth of sound colors available between the two instruments.

I don’t want to give away the game completely but I’ll say the four pieces are totally different approaches to the duet, and have some unique challenges as chamber music. You’ll hear some mysteriously beautiful microtonal tuning, a good heap of character/gesture/pantomime, and a kind of plucky kaleidoscope of sound. Stay “tuned”...

Jesse: When I heard Tomás’ solo piece (After L’addio/Felt) for Ben, my first thought was that I have to get this guy to write me a solo piece!  Followed immediately by the realization that even better might be a duo for Ben and me.  His plucked string writing is virtuosic in an intimate way that comes from a hands-on mentality, and sure enough in rehearsals Tomás is able to take my guitar from me and show me corrections and ideas.  Fredrick Gifford is very familiar with both the guitar and the harp, and the very idea of this duo evokes in my mind a Gifford-temperament soundworld. Kasia is an accomplished harpist herself, but the real reason we thought of her is her creativity with drama in performance, which we thought would (and, in fact, most certainly does!) mesh well with our pursuit of ensemble virtuosity.  I think Drew was an impulse...we just had a feeling that asking him was a good idea.  This impulse paid off richly in the incandescent ass-kicker we got from him.

Q: What are the challenges and rewards of uniting these two instruments as an ensemble?

Ben: 
Challenge: Playing all the notes exactly together.
Reward: When we do, it sounds awesome.

Jesse: I would add on the rewards side that it’s therapeutic to rehearse together.  If you play violin, or flute, or any normal instrument, you get to play with people who play in your family of instruments all the time.  For Ben and for me, if we’re on a gig, it usually means there aren’t any other guitarists or harpists in the room.  So rehearsing together is not only a joy, but a kind of relief.  Ben plays when I think he’ll play, at the volume I expect, with the phrasing I expect.  I think string players, wind players, singers and so forth have this experience all the time, but it’s novel for us.

Q: It's Dal Niente's 10th Anniversary Season. In honor of this special occasion, what have been some of your favorite experiences as part of the ensemble?

Ben: Certainly the Deerhoof Variations come to mind, both performances of In Vain, Schnee… I feel like this season I’ve watched the group really embrace its identity as a music collective, with the blog and the DN Presents series, everyone has contributed in original ways to generate excitement around what we do.  It’s not a specific memory, but I also would have to add how much I love hearing everyone’s ideas at meetings concerts etc.  It’s kind of like a little musical “think tank” - thinking up repertoire, concert ideas, composers to approach, then figuring out how to turn them into reality.

Jesse: At the first Party, neither Matt Oliphant nor I were on any of the pieces, and I remember us exchanging a moment as we realized how great it was to sit back and listen to our favorite people entertain us (and eat and drink all the while) for hours on end.  When I think of Dal Niente moments that I revisit and savor in my head, it’s always my friends playing, and my sitting back thinking how lucky I am to be in the room and listening.
 

Dal Niente Presents: Ben Melsky and Jesse Langen
Saturday, January 23, 2016
8:30pm
Elastic Arts
3429 W. Diversey, #208
Chicago, IL 60647
Tickets $20/$15 (cash only at door)
BUY ADVANCED TICKETS HERE!

Photo credit by Aleksandr Karjaka

Q&A With Mabel Kwan

Q&A With Mabel Kwan

Q: Tell us about your new album, one poetic switch. When did you decide you wanted to record an album and how did you choose the repertoire?

In the last few years I've gotten a lot of new pieces for various keyboard instruments, and I was interested in making an album where you could hear these pieces and instruments side by side. For my first solo album, one poetic switch, I chose pieces that were for piano and clavichord. I’m deeply grateful to Ray, Eliza, Ramteen, Santiago, Fred and Mauricio for their compositions, and for being such wonderful collaborators. The pieces on this album are highly contrasting, even though they were all composed within a few years of each other. I hope you'll give it a listen and I would love to know what you think of it.

Q: We'll be hearing the World Premiere of Fredrick Gifford's Graft Blossom on January 3 where you will perform on toy piano, clavichord, and prepared piano all within the same piece. How did you approach learning a piece that asks you to move from instrument to instrument?

I'm really looking forward to playing this piece on the concert! So actually, the prepared piano part is pre-recorded; it's eight separate layers of piano harmonics in the bass strings and the same pitches played ordinario in the middle range of the piano. You should've seen the intricate web of rubber mutes Fred and I devised to prepare all the harmonics! The clavichord part has two sections, one with lots of running notes, the other percussive and unpitched. The toy piano part works similarly to the running part that you'll hear in the clavichord. Like many of Fred's pieces, you can choose the order in which you put these sections together. It takes some getting used to switching between the different instruments; the width of the keys are different on each instrument so leaps take some practice, and also on the toy piano you have to remember that middle c isn't the one in the middle!

Q: What are some of the objects you will utilize in the performance of one poetic switch by Santiago Diez-Fischer? Was it a challenge to obtain any of the objects you've been asked to use?

I'm really glad to know Santiago's music through a previous work for Dal Niente, and I'm thrilled that he wrote this solo piece for piano. The objects are basically plastic tupperware containers, a plastic wine glass, and a bass bow. It took some time to find the right plastic material; also it needed to make a certain pitch around G/G# which you'll hear is a central note in the piece. There are actually quite a few pieces with objects on this concert. Alex Lunsqui's Glaes or "glass" uses marbles, sandpaper, wine bottles, glass jars. Mauricio Pauly's Patrulla reliquia has intricate playing techniques for metal slide, plectra and effects pedals. Of course I always enjoy playing pieces like Rebecca Saunder's shadow which is on the keys with the hands (and in this case, arms and elbows too).

Q: How long have you been a member of Ensemble Dal Niente? Can you tell us about one of your most memorable moments as part of the ensemble?

My first concert with Dal Niente was in December 2007 at the Green Mill. I don't remember what we played, but I remember the rehearsals, and the personnel, and how clear it was that everyone in the group was in it for artistic reasons, and that we would always seek to challenge ourselves artistically. So much has happened since then! There's the time we played in complete darkness for Haas's in vain, you couldn't see any of your colleagues, the music, your instrument, or the audience, and it was terrifying and profound. Then there are times like after they announced the Kranichstein award and Jesse photobombed our photo, or when Michael came out of the dressing room in pink pants for our New York concert with Deerhoof. I love that the group is always evolving, asking questions about how to do what we do even better, and I look forward to the things we will accomplish together in the coming years.

Dal Niente Presents: Mabel Kwan, piano
Sunday, January 3, 2016
8:30pm
Constellation Chicago
3111 N. Western Avenue
$15/$10
Buy tickets here!

Photo credit: Marc Perlish

Three Cities, Seven Cacti

by Emma Hospelhorn

You know where the best place to hear Helmut Lachenmann’s Guero is?

From the stage.

I know – impractical! But honestly, if you get the opportunity, it’s incredible. And I got to experience it three times this week, as Mabel Kwan performed Guero immediately after Carola Bauckholt’s intensely rewarding Zopf for flute, oboe, and clarinet – in Chicago, Boston, and New York. Our decision to perform the two pieces in sequence, with all performers on stage, was the culmination of a week’s worth of practicing, rehearsing, refining, and thinking about the way these pieces interconnect. I hope it worked for the audience; I know that it worked for me.

What’s it like touring with Dal Niente, you ask? Well, it’s indescribable. Please hold while I try to describe it.

Some Things That Happened on Dal Niente’s Neue Musik Tour

12/4/2015

Rehearsal, Chicago, IL

We’ve just finished rehearsing the extended bass flute/ percussion duet in Enno Poppe’s Salz. “Now there’s a sound with a 50 inch waist,” someone says.

12/6/2015

Constellation, Chicago, IL

8:30pm: The band is hanging out backstage. It’s showtime, but apparently we can’t go on yet, because there are too many people and there’s a line backed up past the door and they have to put out more seats. SUCCESS! 

8:45pm: At the end of Zopf, the instructions state that the oboist should turn a squeaky crank and the flutist should make noises with an empty cassette case for an indeterminate length of time. In rehearsal, Andy and I have been staring into each other’s eyes while we do this, and the mood has been intense. It’s intense now, but I’m losing control of my facial muscles. I can feel them curling. I don’t want to give in to the smile. The smile has a mind of its own. I’m smiling. I’m smiling at my colleague and he is turning a crank and I am scratching a cassette case and I’m smiling and the audience is staring and you can hear everything because it’s so quiet and I am so focused and I see his eyes widen, his chin rising, the barest hint of a cue, and we freeze. The piece is over. From somewhere behind me, I hear a delicate rustling as Mabel, who has been sitting at the piano this whole time, begins the Lachenmann.

12/7/2015

Midway Airport, Chicago, IL

6:15am: apparently our flight is delayed till 8:30.

8:30am: apparently our flight is delayed till 10am.

10:30am: oh, it’s because of the fog. I look out the window. Yep, fog.

11:30am: hey, we’re boarding! And they said it couldn’t be done.

4-ish pm: We arrive at our hotel. It’s a well-known chain, so I think I know what to expect. I am wrong. There is a giant atrium with streetlights and trees inside, leading to a raised area with a giant chessboard on it, which leads up to a pool. It kind of feels like a couple of small ghost children might appear and ask us to come out and play.

12/8

Busted trying to hang out in the hot tub past closing time, after a full day of composer workshops and readings at Boston University. NO REGRETS.

12/9

Tsai Performance Center, Boston. My aunt and uncle are here. They take a picture of me setting up chairs a half an hour before the concert begins.  I am a professional musician.

I can hear things in Mark Andre’s “...zu staub...” that I never noticed before – even as I am playing. I think I am falling in love with this piece.

12/10

NYC. Permutations.

Goddammit Andy don’t make me laugh

Lachenmann: I am spellbound. There is a strange ticking sound that I can’t place – is it part of the piece? What is happening?

Andre: I knew this piece was good. But I think tonight it is transcendent.

adieu m’amour (hommage à Guillaume Dufay) * I am spellbound again. That ticking’s back. What IS it? Oh. Andy’s watch.

Poppe. POPPE!!!!!!

Beer.**

 ----------------

*My sister thinks that the Spahlinger sounded like “a wistful cowboy ghost.” I think that my sister should be a professional music critic.

 **We make it to McGillicuddy’s for the After-Party.  I’m pretty sure it’s not called McGillicuddy’s. Our conductor takes a picture of the Manhattan he ordered. When I look at him, he says “What? It’s a Manhattan in Manhattan.”