Hardscrabble Songs - Part Two

I’d like to have written a follow-up to my previous post sooner, while the music remains fresh in mind, but mundane-but-necessary administrative writing has pre-empted it all week. I’m now faced with a backlog of shows about which I could write, so I’ll skip a stone across the proceedings and peck out some of the intriguing and enjoyable things to have passed. Especially memorable, though not always for the best reasons, was the third day of the Malcolm Goldstein Interface, last Sunday afternoon. Following the stormy Saturday night that preceded it, there was a healthy, post-cabin fever audience who seemed pleased to be out of the house on that sunny afternoon, and it was nice to see some old friends in attendance.

Malcolm began his spellbinding set of solo violin music with “Walls,” which incorporated a fantasy on a Balkan folk song as well as a deeply moving, self-accompanied recitation of a striking first-person narrative about the loss of a friend named Kazim (I don’t recall whose text it’s from). To follow, the depression-themed “Hardscrabble Songs” equally employed a mix of virtuosic violin scraping and vocal declamation of interleaved bits of poetic and evocative text (which brought some of Brion Gysin’s recorded works to mind). Certainly lighter in tenor than either “Walls” or the drawn out, extraordinarily delicate piece with which Malcolm closed the set, the “Hardscrabble Songs" were toughly wrought nonetheless, and the tight interplay between text, vocal timbre, and violin tone and timbre made it one of the finest multilateral solo performances I’ve heard.

Next on the program and, in advance of the event, something of a crown jewel in the lineup, was the AIMToronto Orchestra to perform two of Malcolm’s pieces, “Qerneraq: Our Breath as Bones” and “Two Silences.” The former featured vocalist Sienna Dahlen as a last-minute dep for Christine Duncan, who was working with Juliet Palmer in advance of the premiere of Stitch. From my vantage point, Sienna did an excellent job with the mostly graphic score that incorporated near-illegible shards of text from an Inuit poem. The problem, instead, was in the ensemble; in a word, given Malcolm’s aesthetic and philosophical priorities, the improvising (which was left quite open within certain parameters) was dominated too heavily by gestures.

By gestures, I mean sounds invested with a kind of subjective intent that is really the primary domain of players in the conventional field of improvised music (if that’s not a ridiculous contradiction) like the majority of Orchestra members. Instead, the music demands the execution of sounds that are as divested of ego as possible, so that the collection of timbres (“soundings,” as Malcolm likes to call them) is as mobile, open, and fluid a field as possible – enabling maximum surprise, for everyone involved. It’s a tall order for a fifteen-member group in one three-hour rehearsal and, unfortunately, it didn’t seem to come off this time around.

“Two Silences,” a fifteen-minute piece defined by three long ‘static’ (ever-changing) sound masses and the two brief spaces between them, suffered for more mundane reasons; on this one, the Orchestra simply played too loudly (myself included!) for the subtleties of the soundfields to emerge. And, like with many pieces of this sort, the fine line between fascination/beguilement and tedium was all-too-quickly crossed. Despite these limitations, the confrontation with Malcolm Goldstein’s music, not only by the AIMToronto Orchestra, but also by musicians all weekend long, introduced a philosophy of improvised music-making that is a far cry from that of typical Interface guests. Such exchange and development (as well as the fine sense of camaraderie that also defined the weekend) is really the hallmark of the Interface Series, and makes it the exciting and essential ongoing institution that it has become.

I had hoped to get to reports on visits by some other special out-of-town guests: Nova Scotian guitarist Arthur Bull (who played beautifully with Nick Fraser and Eric Chenaux on Wednesday) and Montéal trumpeter Gordon Allen and gambist Pierre-Yves Martel (who played beautifully with Rob Clutton on Thursday). Time, for now, is not allowing it. Bear with me as I attempt to corral into words the bumper crop of remarkable music that’s been filling my little studio.

Hardscrabble Songs – Part One

AIMToronto’s Interface with Montreal violinist Malcolm Goldstein this past weekend was significantly different than any of the previous Interfaces. For one, every note was played at Somewhere There, and it’s increasingly gratifying to be moving away from the odd acoustics and questionable comforts of the Arraymusic Studio, and to invite (force?) audience members to get closer to the action as they do at ST. For Malcolm’s music, in which the lightest bow-brush can carry utmost resonance, such dynamics here are absolutely ideal, as I hear them. An even bigger difference for the event, however, is the way Malcolm’s compositions took centre stage, with four of the six sets of music throughout the weekend featuring his composed works. Ad hoc collective playing, which usually represents the brunt of Interface activities, is not very interesting to Malcolm under such circumstances, though he genially took up the challenge twice during the weekend. Instead, the event was dominated by his very particular composerly aesthetic, one in which subtle, surprising sounds live as good and long a life as they possibly can, and in which instrumental technique and chops are reconsidered, reformatted, and redirected toward collective and, ideally, egoless ends.

Three Toronto ensembles took up the challenge of his conceptual/graphic/directed improvisation pieces, which take bows in the direction of his New York School forbears (Christian Wolff and Earl Brown in particular, at a guess). Each ensemble spent a three-hour rehearsal working with Malcolm in advance of the evening shows, and the task was clearly to find out the aesthetic and philosophical closures on which he’d quietly insist amid all of the objective openness furnished by the scores. Intriguingly, it was the eight-piece band-for-a-day, Ensemble for Now, assembled by Joe Sorbara, that had the clearest view on Saturday night. “Yosha’s Morning Song” was an ostensible feature for Susanna Hood, whose vocal part Malcolm cribbed from his boy’s babysong, and who cooed and whinnied brilliantly and with stunning concentration amid the tiny events and interjections from the rest of the group, which surrounded the audience from the circumference of the room. Language was the theme for the program, as it moved from its evolution to its devolution in the second piece, “Regarding the Tower of Babel,” as close as the music ever got to theatre all weekend. Here, ensemble members unraveled the meaning of a Babel parable by Kafka with the recitation of dictionary definitions that swirled and doubled back on each other, echoed by the lumpen pulses and parlando effects on the players’ instruments, until the piece left a still confusion – perfectly eerie on so stormy and foreboding a night – as its only residue.

Confusion was also on order to an extent on Friday night, when the found-sound improvisation trio Odradek (Michelangelo Iaffaldano, Andy Yue, Jim Bailey) interpreted two of Malcolm’s pieces: “The Seasons: Vermont (Summer)” and “Frog Pond at Dusk.” The former features a recording of sounds from around Malcolm’s farm in Vermont that merge with the operations by the ensemble. Michelangelo, as always, was right in the middle of the music-making, and the sound he extracted from his miscellany maintained a productive tension between synthesis and contrast with both the recorded sounds and those of his partners (including Malcolm, who sat in on the piece). Jim, on the other hand, seemed at a bit of a loss at times and, when he defaulted a few times to fairly bland mimesis, much of that tension was unfortunately lost. “Frog Pond” was particularly striking due to the way the score seemed to bewilder the group. These pieces are so open that it’s difficult to discern successful from unsuccessful interpretation, but there was an undeniable (if intangible) switch that took place – beautiful if disconcerting – as a clear view of the piece’s roadmap was replaced by anxious, furtive glances, tentative sounds, and general uncertainty. I loved it! Jim, Miche, and Andy, while committed music-makers, never seem to take anything overly seriously, and I thought I distinctly perceived a revelry in their own discomfort that is all too rare in this insecure world – musical or otherwise.

Expect a follow-up on the other sets, including Malcolm’s improvisations with Nilan Perera on Friday, and with Rob Piilonen and Chris Willes on Saturday, as well as his solo violin set and the AIMToronto Orchestra set on Sunday, in the next few days.