Above: Claire Chase
Author: Shoshana Klein
Thursday May 25th, 2023 - Claire Chase’s Density 2036 project is long and ambitious: a 24-year long project of new commissions, inspired by Varèse’s famous flute piece Density 21.5. Each year, she performs an entire new program of works. This year, she’s 10 years into the project, so the 10 days leading up to this concert have been a recap of all of these new pieces, culminating in Thursday’s world premiere of a 50-minute chamber piece by Anna Thorvaldsdottir named Ubique. For this evening’s piece, the ensemble was composed of Claire Chase, flutes; Katinka Kleijn and Seth Parker Woods, cellos; Cory Smythe, piano; and Levy Lorenzo, live sound. The concert started with a conversation between Ara Guzelimian and Thorvaldsdottir, who described a blank page at the beginning of a composition as freeing - that composing a piece “starts with a sensation - finding something that doesn’t exist yet”
The introduction - which turned out to be a recurring theme - was a deep, low rumbling (not unlike the sound the subway makes in Zankel Hall, begging the question if that was an intentional move by the composer writing for the hall). There was striking low lighting around the ensemble, really creating a space that brought you into the beginning of the performance. The lighting changed throughout the piece in a way that was engaging and followed the different sections - adding some literal color changes to the musical color changes, very tastefully.
The piece seemed to have many movements (though if so, they weren’t indicated in the program) - some quite short and full of quick gestures and handoffs, others more slow-moving. There were more sections and honestly more tonality than I was expecting from Thorvaldsdottir. There were a few parts where bass flute and the two cellos mixed in really interesting ways - Thorvaldsdottir is always one for unique texture and sound, and this piece was no exception.
At about 40 minutes into the 50-minute piece, Chase finally picked up a C flute, as opposed to the Contrabass flute (named Bertha, as we were told in the pre-concert conversation) and the regular bass flute (whose name I do not know) that she’d been playing so far. The “regular” flute at this point in the piece was strangely light and really felt like a different world - a change from the usual where the lower flutes have the otherworldly feeling.
I didn’t feel like I got a good sense of the structure of the piece, but I still enjoyed it, and the recurring rumbling theme gave it some sense of unity. I imagine it would be interesting to be keeping up with the entire project of new flute works and really get to know Chase’s playing - undoubtedly her style influences all of these new commissions, and her explicit goal is for the new pieces to “expand the boundaries of the instrument”. It’s also worth mentioning that as ambitious as it sounds that Claire Chase played a full length recital every night for 10 nights this month, the plan for the final concert of Density 2036 is for her to put on a 24-hour long concert with all of the new music commissioned throughout the project.
~ Shoshana Klein