MUSIC OF HEAVENLY LENGTH---AND BREVITY 
<>                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of Oct.  6-13, 2011
                                                                  Vol. 14, No. 13
            Some very fine compositions are too short. Others, too long. 
            Edgard Varèse’s “Octandre” (1923) for instance is too short. This seminal high-octane octet  from 1923 is a grand exercise in sound textures, utilizing the extremes of dynamic ranges, from the very top of the piccolo to the very bottom of the trombone range. The free play of dissonances by the winds had a cross-over influence with musicians as far afield as Frank Zappa, who in the 1980s  rented the Opera House here just to feature an all-Varèse concert.
            Does living in Alaskan isolation encourage works that are too long? You could argue that for John Luther Adams (no relation to Berkeley’s John Adams), the contemplative Alaskan who created the hour-long “Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing” featured Oct. 3 by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. Adams, 58, creates a continuum of New-Age music, such as you might turn on at midnight for relaxation, with ravishing sound textures and soothing sonorities. His music stands somewhere between, say, Ives’ “The Unanswered Question” and Morton Feldman---nebulous and fascinating. Adams uses the piano as gatekeeper, to key each new chord  for the 17-member mixed ensemble. It’s a work of exquisite beauty and statis. A brief segment with foundry-like clangors hardly provides enough waves to propel  this opus very far. But in smaller doses, I would welcome hearing more of the Alaskan Adams. Steven Schick, the SFCMP’s new artistic director, led the ensemble with clarity.
            The concert also featured a solo piece, Josh Levine’s “Transparency (Part One),” in which Daniel Kennedy pounded a double-ended bass drum, occasionally massaging the drum head for contrast.
            The concert was very well attended, with both Levine and Adams on hand for bows.
            San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Steven Schick director, Oct. 3 at Herbst Theatre, S.F. For info: Go online.

        ©Paul Hertelendy 2011
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           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.
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