Cover image: Sandbox Percussion (Photo: Noah Stern Weber)
A newcomer to Seattle’s classical music scene, Spontaneous Combustion New Music Festival opened its Seattle run on January 19 with the first of seven programs, ending February 1. The brainchild of composer Scott Anthony Shell, the idea was to present cutting edge new music along with some from recent years in a festival to take place simultaneously in ten West coast cities with top quality professional musicians and groups. Seattle’s concerts this year are being presented in many small venues around the city.
The fifth on the roster was Sandbox Percussion, an East Coast group which has been making a name for itself for several years, and the concert took place at Music Center of the Northwest Saturday night. I wish I could say the it was well attended, but with at least 17 other classical performances happening Saturday, including Seattle Opera’s Così fan tutte and Seattle Symphony’s blockbuster Brahms program, with the draw of Thomas Dausgaard on the podium, only 18 people made their way to hear Sandbox.
Those 18 were well rewarded, however, by hearing remarkable performances of seven works, two of which would possibly be familiar only to percussionists, and probably not often heard live. These were the works which began and ended the concert, both by Steve Reich. I had heard his “Music for Pieces of Wood” at the Cleveland Institute of Music many years ago and have hankered to hear it again ever since. With four players using one mallet each and a flat block of wood, each with a slightly different pitch and timbre, the work is one of increasing complexities of rhythm which shift and change, starting with just one player and adding the others one at a time, dynamics ebbing and flowing.
The four played the other Reich piece, part of a much longer work and titled “Drumming Part 1,” on four small drums. Occasionally one player would step back or maybe two, leaving the others to play, then gradually join in again in music that waxed and waned from slower to faster, louder and softer, at one time sounding like a torrential rain storm pounding on a roof, at others the quiet drip, drip of its last vestige of water. Both works were absorbing to hear, often hypnotic, drawing the listener in, and played with extraordinary precision and synchronicity by the members of the group: Ian David Rosenbaum, Jonathan Allen, Terry Sweeney, and Victor Caccese.
In between came works by two group members, “Sonata” by Allen and “Bell Patterns” by Caccese, as well as one by Andy Akiho who was here with Emerald City Music recently, and one by a friend of the group, the third movement of Thomas Kotcheff’s “Not only that one but that one and that too,” also Elliot Cole’s “Postlude.”
Each of these used different percussion combinations.,“Bell Patterns” included tiny bells like those you see on store counters to get someone’s attention and a vibraphone on which all were playing together. Repetitions which changed subtly and rose to a cacophony to one point kept the interest going. “Postlude” used not only mallets on the vibraphone but string bows which, drawn slowly up and down the edge of the keys gave a music of the spheres sound, like a glass harmonica, very soft.
Allen’s “Sonata” used a drum as well as the vibraphone but often it was the outside of the drum which was whacked and the differing rhythms coalesced and splintered again, while the excerpt from Kotcheff’s longer work had the four performers spread out around the stage instead of close as they had been, and included finger cymbals like hypnotic church bells. The sound was sometimes as soft as a clock ticking, or spare drops of sound, at others in a dancing rhythm. Akiho’s “Karakurenai” included xylophone and the inside of the piano with many changes and juxtapositions of instruments, rhythms, pitches, and volume.
All through the masterly skill of the four players, their absolute togetherness, and wordless communication made them seem almost like one player. Let’s hope they come back to a larger audience another time.
