STROMA: intimate musical dialogues
STROMA musicians Ken Ichinose (cello), Anna van der Zee (violin) and Jian Liu (piano) perform Jenny McLeod’s Seascapes
Image credit: Chris Watson, SOUNZ
Composer Jenny McLeod knew that Douglas Lilburn loved as much as she did the restless waters along the west coast beaches north of Wellington. When she rearranged for piano trio two of her Tone Clock piano pieces as his centenary tribute in 2015, she chose music she had composed 20 years earlier for his 80th birthday. Seascapes, which opened Stroma’s recent concert, conjures both the ever-changing surface of the ocean and the currents underneath. We hear the presence of Lilburn too, his astringent lyricism, distinctive rhythms and fondness for repeated figures.
It was an astute programming choice for Stroma’s tribute to McLeod, who died at the end of last year. Through “Tone Clock” theory she had found what she called “her own true and original voice”. And in this trio, with its homage to Lilburn, she proved herself both part of a New Zealand tradition and an innovator steeped in European influence. With delicate, thoughtful playing, pianist Jian Liu, violinist Anna van der Zee and cellist Ken Ichinose revealed what McLeod once called the “whole radiant spectrum” “of the colourful Tone Clock language.
Stroma also paid tribute in this concert to another trail-blazing composer who died recently. Finnish-born Kaija Saariaho was an important European composing voice and her beautiful, shimmering works have appeared several times in Stroma’s programmes. This time Artistic Director Michael Norris chose her Oi Kuu for bass flute and cello from 1990, a work whose title translates as “for a moon”. In a stroke of serendipity, it was performed on the night of the “super blue moon” last week.
Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023)
“…beautiful, shimmering music”
The bass flute in the hands of Bridget Douglas sounded both otherworldly and somehow movingly human in its ethereal dialogue with Ken Ichinose’s cello. Oi Kuu is full of colour and texture, stripes of sound flickering and glistening, cello harmonics and flute multiphonics subtly creating a magical musical atmosphere that fades away gently at the end.
The “Face to Face” theme of the programme celebrated such intimate conversations. The next work, however, a world premiere, was described by composer Marcus Jackson as “a meditation in avoidance” about “collision anxiety”. Titled and finding air between us, it is an intriguing composition for sextet of flute, clarinet, trumpet, violin, viola and cello.
Players slip in and out of Jackson’s skilfully managed forward-flowing texture of sustained tones and little musical gestures. Avoidance or not, the effect is of a lovely harmonic coherence with shifting colours. Three sections, separated by little silences, become in turn more agitated, edgy and uncomfortable. In the final section the instruments are more individually assertive with extended figures in clarinet and trumpet, the work eventually resolving into spacious chords for a peaceful ending.
Composer Liam Furey at the piano with violist Nicholas Hancox and clarinetist Patrick Hayes
…his Disturbances 111: Light (2022) is eloquent and complex
Image credit: Chris Watson, SOUNZ
A hallmark of Stroma’s concerts is the high quality of the performances by top professional musicians. Liam Furey’s Disturbances 111: Light (2022), a sophisticated and inventive trio, was beautifully played by violist Nicholas Hancox and Patrick Hayes on clarinet, with the composer at the piano. Musical fragments, sustained tones and hints of music from the past reach out to the audience in eloquent appeal. A thoughtful conversation between viola and clarinet is interrupted, intensity builds, the piano plays continuous figures and then sustained chords that die away under flighty viola and clarinet flutterings. Timbres include piano strings stopped inside the instrument, sobbing melodies, ghostly disturbances. The audience was held, raptly attentive, by this kaleidoscopic, complex and sometimes puzzling work. Furey has dedicated it to his collaborators, violist Annabelle Thorpe and clarinetist Callum Anderson. I’d like to hear it again.
STROMA musicians Bridget Douglas (flute) and Helen Clinton (oboe) in David Mason’s Waipu
“…poignant melodies”
Image credit: Chris Watson, SOUNZ
The biggest ensemble of the concert assembled for the world premiere of Waipu by David Mason (Te Rarawa, Rangitane, Ngati Kuia). Mason is an Auckland-based composer and sonic artist, and his new piece is about his Northland hometown. The richly textured work traverses a range of emotions about Waipu and, in a largely tonal language that avoids sentiment, Mason expresses through poignant melodies the nostalgia and occasional melancholy he feels about the town. He also reveals his skill in orchestrating and managing the musical forces in the ensemble, which played with a nice sense of balance under the direction of Hamish McKeich.
To close this emotionally intense and thought-provoking programme, Stroma chose a brilliantly light-hearted work by Canadian composer Norma Beecroft. Turning 90 next year, Beecroft wrote Face à face, with her tongue firmly in her cheek, for her own 60th birthday in 1994. It’s a dazzling and engaging work for two bass flutes and a busy percussionist, with an inventive instrumental line-up that includes toy piano, tuned wine bottles and bamboo rattles.
Bass flutist Kirstin Eade watches percussionist Lenny Sakofsky tune his wine bottles for Norma Beecroft’s Face à face
“…hilarious and theatrical”
Image credit: Chris Watson, SOUNZ
Beecroft is well-known as an electronic composer and here uses amplification of the flutes as they converse in an increasingly hilarious theatrical work. Lenny Sakofsky showed off his dramatic talents, and even flutists Bridget Douglas and Kirstin Eade transformed into amusing percussionists, puffing and huffing into their instruments as the work built with a virtuosic rhythmic section to finish.
STROMA: FACE TO FACE, music by Jenny McLeod, Kaija Saariaho, Marcus Jackson, Liam Furey, David Mason and Norma Beecroft. Artistic directors: Hamish McKeich and Michael Norris. Wellington 31 August, 2023.
STROMA’s next concert, Ecstatic Science, is scheduled for 19 October 2023. More information here