PEACE, PIANO, PIX: A RECITAL LIKE NO OTHER 
                                               By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of Jan.25-31, 2009
                                                                  Vol. 11, No. 53
        BERKELEY---One of the most creative and adventurous piano recitals was launched here by the fearless local artist Sarah Cahill, who will be touring her unique peace-piano-pix package around New York, Chicago, Houston and other sites in the coming months.

The event with no less than seven world premieres was given before the rousing crowd of 400 at Hertz Hall Jan. 25, greatly enhanced by video images put together by John Sanborn, matching the mood and accents of the music with considerable finnesse.

            Cahill’s departure point differed from such events featured around here in the previous war (Vietnam), where the music was one of war-protest. Here she solicited scores from composers seeking messages of peace, where possible, far more than of war. They responded with enthusiasm, in such numbers that another eight composers had to be held in abeyance---probably enough for a full second program.

            The musical styles have changed too. Nobody today writes in the severe dissonant serial mode that was in style back then. All of these works were tonal and, apart from some of Larry Polansky’s polytonal music, surprisingly consonant.

            Consonance in music is back and firmly in control---even when the political themes to be explored are highly dissonant.

           The overriding lesson of all this is what we learned from opera: conflict and warfare provide far more stimulating music than peace and harmony. If you REALLY want peace. save it for a swan-song scene in a conflict drama.

            So peace is hard to achieve---just as in real life. Also, a musician takes a great risk tacking three channels of video onto the live music: We are so vision-oriented, the video can easily overwhelm the sounds from the solo instrument.

            For instance, “There Is a Field” by Jerome Kitzke, 53, was arguably among the strongest efforts on display. But would that same impact have been made without the powerful images of dead Civil War soldiers in Matthew Brady’s searing photographs? The work evoked the chaos and revulsion over warfare like no other, with violent and capricious gestures.

            Yet more aggressive was “drum no fife” by the cooperative called The Residents, with a narrator’s cynical message “War Is a Whore We Need,” underlain by rich piano arpeggio effects. Mamoru Fujieda’s contemplative “The Olive Branch Speaks” blended perpetual motion with a Lou Harrison sort of tranquility.   

            The most astonishing? Surely the effort by a 17-year-old Bay Area student, Preben Antonsen, “House of War.” He uncouples the right and left hands to follow different meters, staggering accents, in a complex way reminiscent of Thomas Adès.

            Name composers also entered the fray. Terry Riley, 73, who is widely credited as the father of the minimalist movement, added an uplifting ragtime piece, “Be Kind to One Another,” notable for insidious charm and admirable fluidity in Cahill’s interpretation.

            True warmth of expression was not plentiful, strongest in Fredrick Rzewsky’s variations set “Peace Dances.” For meditation, there was the handful of slow, drawn-out chromatic chords in avant-garde artist Yoko Ono’s “Toning.”

            Like the Kitzke, Peter Garland’s “After the Wars” tied in to specific  recited poetic texts.

            Cahill, who has emerged as the number-one proponent of new music among Northern California pianists,  dispatched this large variety of new pieces with professional aplomb and considerable sensitivity. And Sanborn’s images were extraordinary, from the close-ups of two dancers in the Rzewsky (with multiple overlaps in stop-frame style), to aerial views for Fujieda, to fireworks for Garland.

            There was yet another lesson here: Play a contemporary program, add arresting visuals, and you will get a substantial, animated audience.

            This massive effort was the latest bit of brilliance in this epic Cal Performances season to round out more than 20 years of Robert Cole’s leadership concluding with his retirement in summer, 2009.

            Cal Performances. Varied attractions in music, dance, and other, on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. For info:  (510) 642-9988, or go online. 

                                       #
           Paul Hertelendy has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
                      #
                       Return to main menu