Oregon Music News

The Third Angle New Music Ensemble put the accent on improvisation with an engaging and slightly maddening concert of works centered loosely on the idea of chance. The performance took place on Friday evening (March 5) at the Hollywood Theatre, an ornate movie house that was built in 1926 during the silent film era. Because each piece in the program used the large movie screen, the theater was an excellent choice for the concert.

The program opened with Ramon Sender’s “Fish Tank Opera,” which featured a large aquarium with four big, tropical fish swimming in it and ledger lines taped to the sides of the tank. Three instrumentalists (violist Brian Quincey, violinist Greg Ewer, and cellist Hamilton Cheifetz) and one speaker (artistic director Ron Blessinger) were each assigned a fish, and they played (or recited poetry) according to where the fish moved.

A camera helped to project the fish onto the screen so that the audience could follow along, and it seemed that each musician did his best. Perhaps a note was missed now and then, but this was no watered down affair. The music, for the most part, wiggled and flowed slowly and sporadically. The audience responded to the novelty of the piece with solid applause and chuckles.

Next on the program came Mark Applebaum’s “The Metaphysics of Notation,” which features a score made up of visual graphics and some numbers and letters instead of standard musical notation. Again the theatre’s movie screen came in handy, because the score scrolled across the screen and allowed the audience to see what the musicians would react to. What then transpired was a freeform performance in which various members of the ensemble wandered down the aisles, onto the stage (or not) and played all sorts of tones, microtones, blurs of notes, splats, blats, whaps, and everything in between.

The piece also had a bit of theatrics. At one point, flutist Molly Barth yelled at trumpeter Brian McWhorter to stop playing, and he yelled the same at her after she started playing. Flutist Alicia DiDonato Paulsen exchanged her flute for Ewer’s violin. Trumpeter Micah Wilkinson marched in lockstep with saxophonist John Nastos, and percussionist Mark Goodenberger. Todd Kuhns removed the mouthpiece from his clarinet and made some bird calls. Cheifetz was the least mobile but played gamely along with Quincey and ringmaster Blessinger, who at one point sat down and began an earnest conversation with an audience member. It was all sort of silly and probably very liberating for the performers. Some of the audience members realized that they too could join in the fun, but most were content to watch.

Following the chaos, the Third Angle Ensemble (with Beta Collide members Barth and McWhorter) assembled themselves on stage to perform David Schiff’s “Mountains/Rivers.” Picture’s of the Columbia River Gorge floated onto the screen while the musicians played Schiff’s lively and slightly jazzy piece. Schiff conducted the first part (“Mountains”) and played an electric keyboard during most of the second (“Rivers”). Soloists Barth and McWhorter improvised passionately with the orchestra, and the orchestra got a chance to improvise, as well, in the second piece by deciding (individually) how long to repeat a phrase.

The concert concluded with Terry Riley’s “In C,” which consists of 53 short, musical phrases that can be repeated an arbitrary number of times by each musician in an ensemble but must be played more or less sequentially. Third Angle handled this music with panache, but the accompanying abstract visuals were overwhelming.

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Extra Note: Third Angle will be travelling to China in May as guest artists at the Beijing Modern Music Festival, and they will perform “In C” with a number of Chinese musicians.