Adam mentioned that Alexa has been busy with her group in Kalamazoo, Opus 21. Now you can believe us because she was mentioned in the New York Times last week! The article follows below. The pic is from the NY Times website. Our Alexa is FAMOUS!
May 1, 2007
Music Review | Opus 21
Post-Minimalist Inspirations, From Bells to Subway Noise
By STEVE SMITH
Correction Appended
The basic elements of Minimalism — tonality, rhythmic regularity, repetition of brief melodic cells — are reasonably easy to summarize. Post-Minimalism is harder to pin down: Composers lumped under this untidy rubric vary widely in style. Just how widely was demonstrated in a program presented on Saturday night by the adventurous new-music ensemble Opus 21, based in Kalamazoo, Mich., at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater at Symphony Space.
The tone of the concert was engaging and informal, with most of the composers on hand to introduce their pieces. The clarinetist Bradley Wong referred to Steve Reich’s “New York Counterpoint” (1985) as this group’s version of early music. Mr. Wong provided an alert account of a piece filled with the rippling rhythms and bubbly melodies that denote Minimalism to most listeners.
At the opposite extreme was the Dutch composer Louis Andriessen’s “Klokken voor Haarlem” (“Bells for Haarlem”), from 2002, in its New York premiere. This piece opened with a mildly dissonant three-note theme on piano, celesta, percussion and synthesizer. Its tiny, incremental shifts were occasionally interrupted by busy outbursts that suggested the tolling of the hour.
Even more jarring was David Lang’s “Stick Figure” (2001), in which Mr. Wong and the cellist Alexa Muhly offered gentle melodic swells and pulsations persistently shattered by harsh explosions from three drummers. The pianist Yu-Lien The provided enigmatic counterpoint.
Several of the young composers commissioned to write works for this program described their initial encounters with Mr. Reich’s music as epiphanies. Bill Ryan explored additive process in “Rapid Assembly,” opening with a perky melodic kernel that grew more elaborate and jazzy with each pass.
A crystalline shimmer of notes that flickered among the players gradually broadened into longer phrases in Mark Dancigers’s “Thaw.” The piece was rich in beguiling timbres; one especially memorable passage paired Ms. Muhly’s spiccato bounces with twinkling crotales. Anna Clyne’s bustling, inventive “Next.Stop” was filled with melodies and rhythms derived from recorded subway announcements and other urban noises, punctuated by distorted growls and buzzes. Voices were electronically stretched in a slow central section, the sound curiously reminiscent of a muezzin’s call to prayer.
Richard Adams, the founder and artistic director of Opus 21, simulated the effects of gravity in his tuneful “Free Fall” with a loose scattering of high notes accelerated and increased in density.
The program closed with the racing rhythms and sudden gearshifts of Dennis DeSantis’s “One Trick Pony.” Its title, he said, was inspired by his proclivity for writing seven-minute pulse-oriented works, like this one.
