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For its season finale concert on Saturday, June 3, Seattle Modern Orchestra collaborates with Paris-based clarinetist Carol Robinson in a program centered around enigmatic Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi, with whom she worked closely. Robinson will also premiere a new work by SMO co-artistic director Jérémy Jolley, and celebrate the 90th birthday of renowned Seattle clarinetist/composer William O. “Bill” Smith with a performance of one of his works.

Carol Robinson grew up in the U.S. and graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory, but was drawn to Paris by the opportunities to study and perform contemporary music. Her activities led to an opportunity to work with Scelsi in Rome, where she had the intense experience of learning his music to his exacting standards. She has recorded extensively, including an album of the clarinet works of Scelsi on Mode Records as well as albums of works by Luigi Nono, Morton Feldman, Luciano Berio, Eliane Radigue and Phill Niblock. As a composer, Robinson has written for instruments with live and fixed electronics, and created music for dance and musical theater. Her work also includes frequent improvisation and multidisciplinary collaborations.

Scelsi (1905-1988) is an Italian composer famous for his Quattro Pezzi su una nota sola, a set of four pieces, each a meditation on a single note that is explored through timbre and microtonal variation. SMO’s Mystic Clarinet program will feature his Ko-Lho and Kya, both works that will transfix listeners with the organic gestures and surprising sonorities of Scelsi’s sound world.

Of Scelsi’s music, Robinson says, “I love the power of this music, its urgency and gripping emotional impact. I have always been fascinated by how it sounds simultaneously archaic and ultra-modern.”

William O. “Bill” Smith’s Rites for solo clarinet and tape was written for Robinson, commissioned by the CCMIX (formerly Xenakis’ UPIC studio) in Paris. Robinson and SMO will perform the world premiere of Jérémy Jolley’s Archipel… en résonnant à Venise… for solo clarinet, four instrumental groups and fixed media. Archipel… is based on Jolley’s memories of the sonorous qualities of Venice, Italy and places the musicians around and in the audience for a holistic listening experience.   

PROGRAM:

• William O. “Bill” Smith – Rites for solo clarinet and tape (1998)
• Giacinto Scelsi – Ko-Lho for flute and clarinet (1966)
• Giacinto Scelsi – Kya for clarinet and 7 instruments (1959) – Seattle Premiere
• Jérémy Jolley – Archipel… en résonnant à Venise…  for solo clarinet, 4 instrumental groups and fixed media (2017) – World Premiere

WHEN: June 3, 2017 – 8 PM (7:30 PM Pre-concert conversation with co-artistic director Jérémy Jolley and guest clarinetist Carol Robinson)

VENUE: Chapel Performance Space at The Good Shepherd Center

TICKETS: SMO Chapel Series Season Pass: $60 Adult

Single tickets: General $25 | Seniors $15 | Students $10

About Carol Robinson

To say that Carol Robinson is a Franco-American composer and clarinetist is perhaps too restrictive to describe the eclecticism of her experience and passion. In fact, she seems interested in everything having to do with sound. She is not someone who likes the middle ground, preferring the edges, the extremes. Her music is situated in those places of tenderness and rage, gentleness and power that come from experience and mastery. Trained as a classical clarinetist, she graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory before continuing her study of contemporary music in Paris thanks to a H.H. Wooley grant. Whether playing repertoire or more adventurous material, she performs in major venues and festivals the world over (Festival d’Automne, MaerzMuzik, Archipel, RomaEuropa, Wien Modern, Huddersfield…), and works closely with musicians from a wide stylistic spectrum. A fervent improviser, she prefers the most open musical situations and regularly collaborates with photographers, visual artists and videographers.

Carol Robinson’s recent recordings demonstrate the breadth of her work. In addition to her own compositions Billows (PLUSH), Laima (Expériences de Vol) and Cross-Currents (SHIIIN), there are also monographic recordings of important contemporary composers such as Giacinto Scelsi, Luigi Nono, Morton Feldman, Luciano Berio (MODE), Eliane Radigue (SHIIIN), Phill Niblock (TOUCH), as well as alternative rock, jazz, and classical music.

Seattle Modern Orchestra is fiscally sponsored by Shunpike.

by Shaya Bendix Lyon

Hear Stuart Dempster perform with Seattle Modern Orchestra / Solaris Vocal Ensemble on March 11, 2017 at the Chapel Performance Space.

Stuart Dempster’s living room emits a sound: a softly insistent rhythmic noise that my ears, then eyes track to an electrical timer plugged into a corner outlet. Long on this planet, plastic yellowed, its bits charge around in circles, increment by increment, with steadfast metronomic regularity.

I bring my thoughts back to S.M.O.R.E.S., the topic of our discussion. Dempster, 80, is a composer and trombonist; he’s premiering a new work by that name with the Seattle Modern Orchestra on March 11. The program also includes works by his colleague, Robert Erickson, who would have turned 100 this year. Erickson was part of a group of composers he commissioned in his early career that also included Luciano Berio, Andrew Imbrie, Ernst Krenek, Pauline Oliveros, Robert Suderburg, and several others.

(Lest you think this commission or his performance of it is an unusual occurrence, I should mention that Dempster’s many recent performances include a collaboration with Wayne Horvitz at the Asian Art Museum; an 80th birthday concert with William O. Smith, who was turning 90; several events with and in memory of his longtime collaborator and dear friend Pauline Oliveros; Bull Roarchestra at the Henry Art Gallery with Ann Hamilton; and a UW Dance Department commission with UW alum and Broadway/Merce Cunningham veteran Holley Farmer. Just last month, he led SMO in a performance of his work Choral Riffs with the Solaris Vocal Ensemble, who will join SMO to perform S.M.O.R.E.S.)

Dempster’s voice is low and gentle. As I record our conversation, I worry that the ticking timer will overpower it, but they work well together.

S.M.O.R.E.S., or “Seattle Modern Orchestra Resonating Enthusiastic Solaris,” was commissioned by SMO and Solaris Vocal Ensemble. The orchestration calls for mixed ensemble, voices, and audience – yes, audience – and seating is in the round, with the audience and Dempster at the center and the performers surrounding them. 

Like other pieces Dempster has written recently, S.M.O.R.E.S. pairs structure with improvisation. Both the audience and the performers will have a score and a part to play. Dempster himself will play the trombone as a conductor-leader, and the performers will follow his lead.

“I move around in a circle, giving information to different people,” says Dempster. “I give them information by what I play, and then I give instructions for them to stop, or to do something else. There is the danger that I ‘abandon’ players if I get involved with one section… If I play something else, or if I abandon a player, they have the option to change what they’re doing – for example, choosing a different register, or a different pitch.”

S.M.O.R.E.S. can be played for any length of time; this performance will run for about 12-15 minutes. Beyond that, Dempster says, “I do it in real time – so I can’t really tell you what’s going to happen.”

SMO and Solaris will prepare for the unpredictable in rehearsal, and each time they go through the piece, it will yield a different result. As for the audience, you’ll be humming! (Dempster’s advice: Don’t be timid.)

Joining S.M.O.R.E.S. on the program is a similarly structured piece, Milanda Embracing, written in 1993-94 and named for the child who greeted Dempster and his fellow artists with open arms at a studio at the start of a residency.

Milanda Embracing also involves audience participation. It is more complex than S.M.O.R.E.S., and – unusually – the audience will have a score of its own. (No music-reading skills are required.)

It also differs from S.M.O.R.E.S. in that it’s not led by Dempster. Performers read the instructions, which include directives like “Send sounds across space.”

“There’s no piece there, actually,” he says. “If you look at the score, there’s no piece. It’s what you should think in playing a piece, and through that, you can make a piece. It’s what I call the original minimalist piece – because there’s nothing there, among all this verbiage. But most of it is stuff people should be thinking about when they’re playing Haydn, or playing whatever.”

Dempster reassures that he’ll preface the performance with an explanation of the score and the piece itself, but that the players need the audience to join in.

“I have found that the kind of sounds that I make will be influenced by the kind of sounds that the audience makes, or thoughts that an audience has,” he wrote in 1994. “There is a beautiful feedback loop here.”

Also on the program are Erickson’s The Idea of Order at Key West, Pacific Sirens, and General Speech for solo trombone, commissioned by Dempster and written in the late 1960s by his colleague, Robert Erickson.

General Speech is performed with costume (an abstraction of a military costume) and lighting (for pomp and circumstance), and is designed to mimic the sounds of a military speech – specifically, General MacArthur’s “Duty, Honor, Country” farewell speech of 1962.

“MacArthur always seemed to be about nine feet tall,” says Dempster. “He had a huge presence in WWII, and certainly in Japan after the war. Erickson heard a recording of him speaking, and he was intrigued. We got together and decided to try this speech. I figured out a way to sort of say ‘Duty, Honor, Country’ on the trombone, and that’s how it got started.”

It was a 300-hour-long, side-by-side process. Dempster would start playing sounds, and Erickson would work on the score.

“First he’d say, ‘Play the words of the speech.’ After trying this, and then that, I would finally get it figured out. That would take 20 minutes, that one little phrase. Then he would ask – ‘What are you doing?’ – ‘I dunno…’ and we’d have to go back all over it again, trying to figure it out.”

After hours of working through it, they had a score that made some sense. (For a sneak preview, check out the video below.)

The sound of a speaking trombone is not only eerie, but unique to that instrument.

“Erickson – and others too – used to say trombone pieces were mostly piano pieces masquerading as trombone pieces, but when you start using the larger sound palate of the trombone, that’s a different thing,” says Dempster. “It’s idiomatic to the trombone to have all those vowels available. You don’t have that on harp, you don’t have it on piano, you don’t have it on much of anything.”

Dempster is a careful listener; he tunes in to everything from a passing garbage truck to the resonance of a specific corner of the Chapel space in the Good Shepherd Center, where this concert will take place.

“The building has a lot of sounds to offer. I was doing a piece one time – it was the centenary of the building in 2007. It was a Saturday afternoon, and there was a leaf blower outside. When it came my turn to play, Steve [Peters] started to close up the window. I said, no, no, open it! Of course it stopped fairly quickly once I started playing. And oh, the heating! It’s not as noisy as some classic new York heaters that just pound and crash and bang. The Chapel radiator is a little too polite (he laughs) – just one clunk once in a while. I like that. I always enjoy it when that happens.”

Of S.M.O.R.E.S., Dempster reiterates: Just listen! Listen to the performers, the sounds of the room, the surround. Resist the temptation to turn around, or even to turn your head around. Get used to people being behind you. If you do turn, he says, “turn really slowly so that you can change how the piece sounds by what you do in the audience.”

As our conversation winds down, I ask Dempster about the ticking timer. He laughs.

“Oh, that thing! That’s from the Sixties. I keep thinking I’m going to replace it. I probably said that 20 years ago, too.”

His tone sobers.

“You’re sitting here, and suddenly the power goes out. The refrigerator’s off, the heater’s off, and that thing is off. You do have this magnificent quiet. But – it’s been sounding like that for a very long time. In an odd way, it doesn’t bother me… it’s in there with all the other stuff I listen to.”

Come hear Stuart Dempster perform with Seattle Modern Orchestra and Solaris Vocal Ensemble on March 11, 2017. Concert begins at 8pm; arrive at 7:30 for a moderated chat with the composer. Tickets/more info here.

Seattle Modern Orchestra is fiscally sponsored by Shunpike.

“I do it in real time – so I can’t really tell you what’s going to happen.”

— Stuart Dempster

SEATTLE MODERN ORCHESTRA Featuring Solaris Vocal Ensemble: Double Portrait – Erickson / Dempster (TICKETS)

Saturday, March 11, 2017, 8 PM (7:30 PM Pre-concert conversation)

On Saturday, March 11, Seattle Modern Orchestra celebrates the centennial of American composer Robert Erickson and the 80th birthday of legendary Seattle trombonist and composer Stuart Dempster with a concert of their works, including the premiere of Dempster’s S.M.O.R.E.S., a new work for ensemble and voices commissioned by the Seattle Modern Orchestra.

Stuart Dempster is a pioneering trombonist, composer and improviser whose career includes commissioning Berio’s Sequenza V for solo trombone, and collaborating with Pauline Oliveros and the Deep Listening Band. He is well-known to Seattle audiences due to his active performance schedule and work on the faculty of the University of Washington.

S.M.O.R.E.S, like many of Dempster’s works, is a structured improvisation. Dempster creates the work by using the performers almost as a living sound palette.

“I move around in a circle, giving information to different people,” said Dempster in a recent interview. “I give them information by what I play, and then I give instructions for them to stop, or to do something else.”

Dempster’s Milanda Embracing (1993-94) similarly uses an open form, but provides a written score for the audience and performers to interpret with guidance from Dempster.

Robert Erickson (1917-1997), a former colleague and collaborator of Dempster, crystallizes the American pioneering spirit in music. He was one of the first American composers to explore Schoenberg’s twelve-tone system, experimented with custom-made percussion instruments and instrumental extended techniques, and worked extensively with sounds recorded on tape with or without live performers. His General Speech for solo trombone (1969) features Dempster imitating the speech patterns of General Douglas MacArthur (listen to a recording here). The three works by Erickson on this program give a glimpse into this underrated American artist.

PROGRAM:

• Robert Erickson – The Idea of Order at Key West for soprano, flute, clarinet, trumpet, viola and cello (1979)
• Robert Erickson – General Speech for solo trombone (1969)
• Robert Erickson – Pacific Sirens for percussion and variable instruments / voices (1969)
• Stuart Dempster – Milanda Embracing for various instrumentation (1993-94)
• Stuart Dempster – S.M.O.R.E.S. for ensemble and voices (2017) – World Premiere

WHEN: March 11, 2017 – 8 PM (7:30 PM Pre-concert conversation with co-artistic director Jérémy Jolley and guest trombonist and composer Stuart Dempster)

VENUE: Chapel Performance Space at The Good Shepherd Center

TICKETS: Single tickets: General $25 | Seniors $15 | Students $10

About Stuart Dempster

Stuart Dempster, born in Berkeley, California in 1936, studied performance and composition at San Francisco State College. From 1962-66 he was principal trombone in the Oakland Symphony under Gerhard Samuel and, since 1968, he has been on the faculty of University of Washington. Grants include: Creative Associate at SUNYAB (1967-68); Fellow in the Center for Advanced Study, University of Illinois (1971-72); Fulbright Scholar in Australia (1973) where he studied aboriginal didjeridu; a NEA Composer Grant (1978); US/UK Fellowship (1979); Guggenheim Fellowship (1981). His book The Modern Trombone: A Definition of Its Idioms was first published in 1979 and he has recorded on several labels including Columbia, Deep Listening, Nonesuch, and New Albion, the latter having produced his “Abbey” recording (NA 013) which has become, in the words of one reviewer: “…a cult classic.”

Dempster tours regularly as a solo recitalist performing his own works as well as his commissioned works by Berio, Erb, Erickson, and others, and also with the Deep Listening Band. His work exemplified by Sound Massage Parlor, and environmental/site specific works such as SWAMI (State of Washington As a Musical Instrument) have earned him a reputation as a composer/performer whose work is at once deep, meditative, and amusing. Deep Listening Band recordings include: award winning Deep Listening, with Pauline Oliveros and Panaiotis, recorded in the old Fort Worden (Port Townsend, WA) cistern with a 45″ reverberation, released in May 1989 on New Albion Records (NA 022); Troglodyte’s Delight, recorded in an old limestone quarry in upstate New York, released in September 1990 on ¿What Next? Records (WN 0003); and The Ready Made Boomerang, recorded in the above mentioned “Cistern Chapel” and released in January 1992 by New Albion Records (NA 044).

Dempster was the producer for all three of these CDs. In 1993-94 he was composer-in-residence in Minneapolis with Seattle’s New Performance Group as part of the Music in Motion project. Also in 1993 Dempster was commissioned by Meet The Composer’s Composer/Choreographer Project for a collaboration with Merce Cunningham for what has turned out to be highly acclaimed performances in the US and Europe. The music for that project was recently released entitled Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel on New Albion Records (NA 076).

About Solaris Vocal Ensemble

Solaris Vocal Ensemble aims to encourage a renaissance of innovation in the field of choral music. The group consists of twelve of Seattle finest vocal artists. Its debut project, sponsored by the Royalty Research Fund of University of Washington, was the commissioning of four new choral works, some utilizing electronics, by established American composers. These works were performed and recorded in 2012 and released on the Albany Records label under the title Floodsongs. Learn more about Floodsongs here.

Seattle Modern Orchestra is fiscally sponsored by Shunpike.

by SMO co-Artistic Director Jérémy Jolley

Wolfgang Rihm’s artistic output reflects a profound admiration for the expressive power of the European cultural past. The German composer has a truly deep knowledge and understanding of its literature, visual arts, and music. Born in 1952, he has spent his career addressing and reclaiming this past in the “tabula rasa” artistic climate of the previous generation: Boulez, Stockhausen, Berio, Nono, Maderna, etc… Although a great admirer of these composers, he claimed the right (yes, we are talking about ethics here!) of hinting or layering several references of his cultural heritage without any quotational intent.

Chiffre II (Silence to be beaten) offers a panoply of references to his own works as well as others. This work, which can be performed by a full orchestra as well as a sinfonia ensemble like SMO, is part of a series of pieces titled Chiffre I – VII and recalls the preceding Chiffre for piano and orchestra. Its subtitle refers to Varèse’s direction to the conductor in a section of his Arcana. The music brings Varèsian bombastic brass gestures with a returning and inciting rhythm pattern in the piano, reminding me of Berlioz’s “Songe d’une nuit de Sabbat” from the celebrated Symphonie Fantastique… (or it is just me?) …which perhaps is one of the central ideas in experiencing Rihm’s works: your interpretation of the work say more about you than the work… your approach towards history reflects your needs for the future…

On our November 3 concert, SMO performs Chiffre II alongside Baltakas’ Redditio (Latin for returning, or recurrence – note also that Baltakas was a student of Rihm) and Waggoner’s new Concerto for Piano. I believe this program will inspire a rich conversation on the unprecedented place of the past in contemporary life, as each composer, in their own way, brings their perspective to Nietzche’s idea of “the use and abuse of history for life.”

CHIFFRE II (Silence to be beaten) – Large orchestra version – performed by Klangforum Wien, Sylvain Chambreling, conductor. SMO will perform the sinfonia version.

Seattle Modern Orchestra is fiscally sponsored by Shunpike.