Oberlin Percussion Group Offers Works By Cage, Xenakis and DeMey on Tuesday, March 21, 8 P.M., in Warner Concert Hall Story by Emily Manzo Photos by Linda Shockley
	THE PROGRAM: Thierry deMey: Musique de Tables (1998) Iannis Xenakis: Zythos (1997) (American Premiere) Music of John Cage: Second Construction (1940) Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs (1943) Nowth upon Nacht (1943) She is Asleep (1943) Third Construction (1941) RELATED: About the Performers/Speaker		Senior Jonathan Simon and senior David Schotzko rehearse for OPG concert. The Oberlin Percussion Group (OPG) is critically acclaimed for premieres and performances of new works for percussion ensemble. Under the direction of professor of percussion Michael Rosen, OPG will perform works by new music pioneers John Cage, Iannis Xenakis and Thierry deMey on Tuesday, March 21, 8 p.m., in Warner Concert Hall. OPG is composed of sophomore Walter "Hudie" Broughton (Duluth, Minnesota), sophomore Nicholas Elder (Lafayette, California), junior Reagan Fletcher (Canandaigua, New York), double-degree junior Scott Forth (Orchard Park, New York), freshman Timothy McKay (Fairfax, Virginia), senior David Schotzko (Aitkin, Minnesota), senior Jonathan Simon (Miami, Florida), junior Adam Sliwinski (Hudson, Ohio) and double-degree junior John Tarcza (Alexandria, Virginia). The group will be joined by professor of trombone, James DeSano, associate professor of singing, Marlene Ralis Rosen and Conservatory librarian/Cage scholar Deborah Campana. Sophomore Walter "Hudie" Broughton rehearses in the percussion studio. The first half of the program will feature Musique de Tables by Thierry deMey and Zythos by Iannis Xenakis. deMey's Musique de Tables will feature Broughton, Schotzko and Simon. Broughton describes the piece this way: "The deMey is a trio of percussionists playing on amplified desks with pick-up microphones taped underneath. It's a very theatrical piece; there's tons of hand cross-overs; a lot of show. We practice it in front of a mirror to make sure it's all clear. We perform it ultra-pretentiously, to the point where it's funny. It's a very comical, humorous piece." On Zythos, OPG will be joined by professor of trombone James DeSano. Scored for a six-marimba ensemble and trombone, the piece is incredibly slow: an eighth note is equal to two and a half seconds and a1/16 note is drawn out to about a second. DeSano says, "Zythos moves from the highest note on the horn, for a tenor, to the lowest. It really tests your ability to concentrate. It's fun to do pieces like this. It offers new sounds and it tests your mettle. The listener has to drawn his own conclusions." Junior Reagan Fletcher rehearses outside her practice room in Robertson Hall. The second half of the concert, devoted entirely to Cage, will include his Second Construction and Third Construction, written in 1940 and 1941, respectively. The Second Construction will be played by Fletcher, McKay, Sliwinksi and Forth. "Oberlin is unique in that we have tons of equipment," says Broughton. "Most people have a tough time pulling off a performance of Cage's works because they can't get enough sounds. We have so much of the weird stuff that you need for Cage, that we can sort through it to pick out the best sounds, not just scrounge through it to find the bare minimum." He adds, "Mr. Rosen approaches rehearsals with a great attention to form and texture. He has a great ear," says Broughton. "He's very particular about the individual sounds and his primary concern is shape." The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs, for voice and piano, will showcase the work of soprano Marlene Ralis Rosen and Michael Rosen on prepared piano. Rosen and Ralis Rosen have worked with Cage on several of his compositions, and bring to their performances an interpretive integrity not shared by many. The prepared piano, invented by Cage, requires that rubber, nuts, bolts, screws, plastic weather stripping and a penny to be placed between the piano strings, creating the sound of an entire percussion ensemble on a single instrument. James Pritchett, author of The Music of John Cage ((Cambridge University Press, copyright 1993), describes the unconventional use of piano: "The voice part intones a text from James Joyce's 'Finnegan's Wake' on only a few tones, while the pianist acts as percussionist: the keyboard cover is closed and no notes are played, the voice being accompanied only by the soft knocks of the pianist's fingers and knuckles on the wood of the piano." She is Asleep is an unfinished suite of pieces that Cage wrote in 1943. Scored for voice, prepared piano and percussion quartet, the vocalist must make many performance decisions as the score offers little instruction for execution of the vocal part. She is Asleep is divided into two sections, the first of which is for tom-tom quartet, where "the musical interest is less at the note-to-note level and more at the larger scale of variations in texture and density," writes Pritchett in The Music of John Cage. The tom-tom quartet will be played by Broughton, Forth, Sliwinski and Tarcza. The second section is for prepared piano and voice alone, featuring Rosen and Ralis Rosen. Double-degree junior Scott Forth in an OPG rehearsal. "Cage's Third Construction is unequivically his masterwork for percussion ensemble," says David Schotzko. The Third Construction, written for four players will be performed by Schotzko, Simon, Broughton and Forth. "Cage's compositional ideas in his First Construction and Second Construction for percussion ensemble are culminated in the Third," says Forth. "The combinations of sounds are genius-ly crafted. The polyrhythms stick out in a very appealing way, and the piece can really groove." Conservatory librarian and Cage scholar Deborah Campana will offer portions of her lecture about Cage's music interspersed between the pieces of the program. Campana is a music theorist who wrote her doctoral dissertation on the form and structure of Cage's music. Campana also spoke at the PASIC festival in Columbus last October, where the Oberlin Percussion group played pieces by Cage.
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