FLIGHT OF FANCY, WITH CHARISMA
The New Century Chamber Orchestra scored twice over with a multi-media environmental musical package plus Palo-Alto-born guest leader named Alexi Kenney, who is a bona fide inspirational presence. In the Kenney format, forget the old-style spartan stage of such ensembles. His program adds naturalist projections covering every inch of wall and ceiling to supplement recent works by Gabriella Smith, Aaron Jay Kernis and Angelica Negron. The impact was formidable, a true eye-and-ear opener for chamber-orchestra patrons who are usually served far more predictable fare. I’d like to see the charismatic Kenney give a master class to orchestral conductors on how to revitalize a medium many consider sedate.
It was yet more refreshing, bringing to the fore both living women composers and the stellar Yale professor Kernis, who is too easily overlooked, encountered too rarely in California.
Kernis’ “Musica Celestis,” excerpted from a larger work, is a serene work rising to the sky, shimmering softly in a celestial ecstasy while leaving space for a subtle passacaglia as formality. Where have we ever heard more exquisite musical beauty? The all-string ensemble under Kenney made it sing.
Movements excerpted from Californian Gabriella Smith’s “Desert Ecology” featured recorded sounds of crickets and coyotes howling, while the cactuses on the walls pricked our tranquility. The musical sections ranged from earthy stability to string harmonics and later runs dazzling virtuoso runs by the players and the uninhibited Kenney, who flexes and moves about like a restless cougar.
On the chancy belief that more is always better, the Enescu Octet was triple-sized, swelling to 24 players with the addition of SF Conservatory music students on stage.
No question that guest Kenney was a catalytic presence when heard Jan. 19, broadening the spectrum of the NCCO while adding the students. But the extensive padding in the eight-person chamber opus was anathema to purists.
Instrumental in the program were non-instrumentalists Adam Larsen and Luke Kritzeck in video and lighting design, most successful with their slow-moving seashore waves, but merely distractions with 20-foot-high wild flowers being blown about in the wind.
Starting off with a seemingly independent quartet playing pizzicato before the rest arrive, Negron’s “Marejada” has been a pandemic-era piece, designed with isolated instrumentalists and audience in separate locales, avoiding spreading infection. Negron brings on some percussion, as well as violins imitating a frog native to her Puerto Rico.
New Century Chamber Orchestra in “Sonic Ecosystems”, Jan. 19-20 at the Hume Concert Hall, Conservatory of Music, San Francisco. For NCCO info: go online, www.ncco.org.
