The Oberlin Review
<< Front page News October 1, 2004

ConText Performers Collective sheds light on future of music

Could it be that the ConText Performers Collective has latched onto the gimmick that will save classical music, and therefore humanity, from extinction?

I’m talking about percussion/theater music, the trendy sub-genre of modern classical music from which the two members of ConText, Sylvia Smith and Ayano Kataoka, selected the pieces for their concert this past Tuesday night in Warner Concert Hall. And why not? After all, percussion has been hot in the modern classical music world for several recent decades because it seems slightly exotic, because it can remind the audience of rock music, and because it’s fun to watch people hit things. Elements of theater in classical music have a similar appeal, usually minus the hitting. Put together, they could be unstoppable!

Yet the pieces chosen by the female percussionist duo, all written by Mrs. Smith’s husband, composer Stuart Saunders Smith, generally did not concern themselves with the task of saving humanity at large. Instead, the audience was treated to a sometimes beautiful and always thought-provoking set of works focusing on topics like death, family, the search for the soul and Greenland.

My favorite piece on the program was the glimmering, icy Links No. 10 for solo vibraphone. Preceding the piece in this performance was a text written by Sylvia Smith about her personal relationship with the work, which she read in her antiseptically clear, drab voice. The associations created by this unusual performance device enriched my experience of the music that followed in a beautifully nuanced performance by Ms. Kataoka, a marimba specialist. It was characterized by a sparse texture, with light tremolos creating a haze over which twinkling dissonant melodies could glide, and it struck me as both the most complete and the most intimate statement on the program.

In contrast was the final work on the concert, And Points North, the only work that strived for grandiosity. Described as a “solo percussion opera in three scenes,” the work is about a Native American who travels in search of her spirit. The music in much of the work was generally well-conceived, in spite of some cheesy seed pod-shaking. It had variation and shape, and the use of the set as instruments kept the audience’s attention focused throughout. The opera featured a text spoken by the performer about her search, which came off as pretentious despite its unaffected enunciation by Ms. Kataoka.

Other works on the program showcased further cleverness on the part of Mr. Smith. The first piece, When Music is Missing, Music Sings was a duet for two sets of “found percussion”—it used instruments like ordinary bowls, pans, and glass bottles. With complex rhythms that wove themselves around the texture, this piece put me into a hypnotic trance broken only by slight pauses in the music. I was slightly put off by its formlessness, however, which resulted from the fact that the piece was a “musical mobile,” in which each performer was given eight pages and chose five of them to play in an order of her choosing. This type of piece is interesting but to my mind usually less satisfying than well-crafted, fully-determined music.

After this piece, Mrs. Smith performed three of Mr. Smith’s twelve Xylophone Poems. The poems, written by American poets, were serene in mood and fit well with the tinkling xylophone. In another work, Thinking About Anne Sexton, Mrs. Smith spoke a text about the American poet Sexton while dressing herself with fancy jewelry as the poet did just before committing suicide. The somewhat schizophrenic vibraphone music, precisely and musically performed by Ms. Kataoka, helped unify the piece into a coherent statement.

Finally, Family Portraits: Delbert began with a solo by Mrs. Smith in which she used mallets and a brush to coax music from some very sonorous branches, wood blocks, and newspaper. After this instrumental introduction, she began a monologue about Mr. Smith’s great-grandfather Delbert, which ended bizarrely and suddenly, in a way that soured my appreciation of the otherwise well-formed, rhythmically interesting piece with an image of Delbert dying chained to an asylum wall.

All in all, ConText’s performance came off as highly polished and frequently interesting, at least to an intellectual audience. Most of the works on the program were probably still too obtuse, with their modern pitch language and unusual performance art, to appeal to the general listener. Oh well. At least they seemed to hold appeal for Oberlin students, some of whom I heard murmuring appreciatively as they left the hall with new insight into alternative ways of making music. Perhaps this music’s affirmation that interesting classical music can still be created is good enough.
 
 

   

The Review News Service: News, weather, sports and more, in your ObieMail every Sunday and Wednesday night. (Click here to subscribe.)