Above: composer Joan Tower
~ Author: Brad S Ross
Friday November 2, 2018 - Perhaps it is 2018, not 1992, that will someday be regarded as the real Year of the Woman. Given the recent successes of many women in culture and politics and the advances of the #MeToo movement, women now seem to be a more powerful force than ever before. Indeed, there were more than a few phenomenal women at Friday night’s concert of the American Composers Orchestra in Zankel Hall. This included a performance of one of America’s most celebrated living composers, that dame of American classical music Joan Tower, and two world premieres by Valerie Coleman and Alex Temple.
The evening began with a performance of Joan Tower’s eventful Chamber Dance, a somewhat discursive 16-minute work for small orchestra written on a commission from the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in 2006. Despite its relatively short duration, Chamber Dance is packed with musical ideas that ranged from pensive meditations to propulsive orchestral bursts. Its writing is firmly rooted in 20th century musical styles, sounding almost filmic during more dramatic moments, and features numerous solos to showcase the performers. This occasionally got the better of the ACO musicians, however, who struggled with clarity during some of the work’s more technically demanding passages.
Tower, who this year celebrated her 80th birthday, showed a spunky sense of humor in an amusing post-performance talk with the ACO Artistic Director Derek Bermel during which she teased an upcoming commission with New York Philharmonic—her first solo commission from that orchestra. This should come as exciting news to both fans of American classical music and the New York Philharmonic, which, despite being one of America’s flagship orchestras, has tended to favor more works by European composers in recent years.
Next up was the world premiere of Phenomenal Women by Valerie Coleman (above), a concerto for wind quintet and orchestra from which the program derived its name. A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Coleman is known for her mastery in blending American musical styles with political or Americana themes—a mastery that was on full display Friday night. Phenomenal Women was co-commissioned by the ACO and Carnegie Hall for the Imani Winds, a New York City-based wind quintet, which Coleman herself founded in 1997. After an opening movement that included the entire quintet, the five subsequent movements were uniquely devoted to a single soloist. Appropriately, each of these six movements is named after one (or many) phenomenal women.
The first movement, “Maya Angelou,” opened on sonorous, gospel-like cadences before a great crash signaled the work’s transition into exciting and more colorful terrain. An energetic flute solo harkened to Angelou’s famous singing “caged bird” while jazzy rhythms and gestures further stated the movement’s deep roots in African American musical styles. This was a electrifying way to open the concerto.
The second movement, named after the mathematician and longtime NASA employee Katherine Johnson whose work was critical to America’s endeavors in space exploration, featured virtuosic gestures by the oboist Mark Dover, whose playing was often punctuated with colorful arpeggios throughout the orchestra. The third movement, named after the tennis star Serena Williams, sported a much softer soundscape—one that appropriately matched the warmth of Monica Ellis’s flawless bassoon technique. The fourth movement, “Caravana,” which featured a wistful and elegant flute solo by Brandon Patrick George, was a highlight of the work, though somewhat less obvious in its title’s meaning—this being a salute to the caravans of immigrants, specifically women, coming to the United States in search of a better life. The penultimate movement “Michelle Obama” featured Dvořák-like harmonies that complimented a warm horn solo by Jeff Scott.
The final movement of the Coleman, named after the young boxer Claressa Shields, featured the clarinetist Mark Dover who brilliantly navigated the movement’s darker, almost frightening passages. He was eventually joined by the other players of Imani Winds and a full-ensemble crescendo, followed by several great crashes, triumphantly announced the conclusion of Phenomenal Woman and a resoundingly successful world premiere. It’s something that will demand to be heard many times again.
That must not be said, however, for the final work of the evening. This was the world premiere of Three Principles of Noir, a song cycle by the young composer Alex Temple. Temple, according to the composer’s bio, “writes music that distorts and combines iconic sounds to create new meanings, often in service of surreal, cryptic, or fantastical stories.” In fairness, that description could be perfectly applied to Three Principles of Noir, a rather silly time travel fantasy about an historian’s ill-fated attempt to murder the ancestor of a professional rival. What I wouldn’t call it is well-conceived, musically engaging (that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?), or just plain good.
The work’s musical voice is set rather fixedly in the realm of showtunes—indeed, much of the piece sounded like it could have been lost numbers from the musical Chicago. It is curious for a story set in three different eras (present day, the late 19th century, and the distant future) that the composer did not take advantage of more musical possibilities. Why not, for example, introduce a little cakewalk music for scenes set in the 1890s? Why not play with modern pop clichés for scenes set in the present? Why not try something wild and experimental for scenes set in the future? Alas, the musical style went virtually unvaried throughout its entire twenty minute duration.
Much praise should be given to the all-in performance given by the vocalist Meaghan Burke, but the part itself, which is wordy past the point of being overwritten, is unrelenting, pausing only for long costume changes during the time travel sequences. But, again, instead of applying any interesting musical gestures from the orchestra here, Temple opted for patched-in synthesizers, leaving the whole ensemble to sit quietly while Burke struggled to get in and out of her period attire.
In a pre-performance talk during which he warned about some foul language in Three Principles of Noir, ACO President Edward Yim described the cycle as “millennial.” One can only hope that other members of this generation will heartily reject such uses of the term, which seemed here to represent little more than kitschiness, pretense, and vulgarity. It was a frustrating way to send off an otherwise enjoyable evening of music at Carnegie Hall.
~ Brad S Ross