October 8, 2024
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
Atlanta, GA – USA
“vimmersive/subversive”
Nicole Frankel, flutes; Choo Choo Hu, piano; Emily Koh, double bass; Laura Usiskin, cello; Brandon Quarles, saxophone.
Emily KOH: Unseen
Marcos BALTER: Strohbass
Marta PTASZYNSKA: Moon Flowers
George CRUMB: Vox Balaenae
Mark Gresham | 10 OCT 2024
On Tuesday evening, contemporary music group Ensemble VIM (flutist Nicole Frankel, pianist Choo Choo Hu, contrabassist/composer Emily Koh, and cellist Laura Usiskin) launched their sixth season with a one-hour concert titled “vimmersive/subversive.” Joined by guest saxophonist Brandon Quarles, the concert, which took place downtown at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, featured a set of avant-garde soundscapes of modest proportions by Emily Koh, Marcos Balter, Marta Ptaszyńska, and George Crumb.
The concert opened with Unseen, a world premiere by Koh, who also performed it with saxophonist Quarles. The program included no notes about the piece except for a poem without attribution:
Stories unspoken, silent cries,
Invisible yet ever near,
My presence felt but not held dear.
With or without the poem, Koh’s work seemed to live up to its title, creating an auditory world where layers of texture and tone suggest the existence of something just beyond perception, offering a feeling of tension between silence and sound, with both instruments often hovering at the edge of audibility, blending their colors, with multiphonics from Quarles’ saxophones contributing to some of the tension and palpable atmosphere of unresolved anticipation.
Brandon Quarles (credit: Paula-Harding)
The second piece, Strohbass by Marcos Balter, bore many similarities to Koh’s work in terms of overall gesture and extended techniques. In it, Frankel, on bass flute, and Quarles, on baritone sax, further explored the timbral extremes of their instruments’ capabilities. Balter’s writing showcased many sonic possibilities, from the low guttural tones (the title, Strohbass, refers to the low-frequency “fry” register that produces a popping or rattling sound in the human voice) to moments of piercing clarity.
Marta Ptaszyńska’s Moon Flowers followed, featuring cellist Usiskin and pianist Hu.
Ptaszyńska completed Moon Flowers on January 28, 1986 at 11:39 a.m. (US Eastern time), and was astonished to learn later that at that very moment, the space shuttle “Challenger” had exploded soon after launch. “Therefore I devoted Moon Flowers to the memory of the seven astronauts,” she wrote in her program notes. However, the original inspiration for the music came from paintings by the French Symbolist artist Odilon Redon.
The work opened with a slow, intense theme in the cello, then joined by piano contrasted lyrical passages with more dynamic, animated sections, emphasizing instrumental mastery and emotional intensity. The extended techniques, combined with shifts in register and dynamics, highlight the work’s climactic moments before returning to the original slow theme and fading into silence.
The highlight of the evening came with the final work that brought Frankel, Usiskin, and Hu together to perform George Crumb’s Vox Balaenae (“Voice of the Whale”), written in 1971 and inspired by the songs of humpback whales. Crumb scored the piece for amplified flute, cello, and piano, incorporating an array of extended instrumental techniques that play a crucial role in creating the unique sound world of the piece.
Following the composer’s instructions, the performers wore black half-masks, adding a visual element emphasizing anonymity and mystery. They also darkened the hall except for a blue illumination from strings of chase lighting, mimicking an underwater environment. The cello is tuned scordatura, altering its tonal properties, while the grand piano requires special “inside the instrument” techniques like strumming, plucking, and muting strings with fingertips. Others included Frankel singing into the flute while playing, flutter tonguing, and creating harmonics.
Usiskin’s cello and Frankel’s flute danced through haunting, aquatic echoes, while Hu’s piano part added a fundamentally eerie and mysterious depth to the performance.
Even if all this sounds exotic to an audience attuned to Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms, the fact is that over the last half-century, Vox Balaenae has found its way into a solid place within the chamber music canon. And yet, it is still considered “avant-garde” by most “classical” programming standards.
With this somewhat brief, intermissionless concert, Ensemble VIM continued to demonstrate its value as one of Atlanta’s several intriguing contemporary music groups. The musicians certainly embodied the spirit of the four works they presented, fearlessly inviting audiences to experience music that treads outside of traditional mainstream boundaries. ■
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- Ensemble VIM: ensemblevim.org
- Brandon Quarles: brandonquarles.com
Read more by Mark Gresham.
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