Con Students keep pumping out new works

Concert filled with provocative performance in Fairchild Chapel

Oberlin Student Composers have been working at a pace that the Conservatory's concert production office can't handle. Only a week after the last concert of new student works, yet another was held on Wednesday night in an almost-full Fairchild Chapel, this one being completely organized by the students themselves.

The concert opened with sophomore Vin Calianno's "I Met Her in the Garden Where the Lackies Grow ," for three saxophones, cello, viola, acoustic guitar, piano, and wooden chair. The octet was the largest group of performers all evening. "I Met Her in the Garden" featured very slow dissonant lines in the saxophones, strings playing long tones, mostly in harmonics, and single note ornaments in the piano and guitar. After this foundation of sounds was laid, it was surprisingly disrupted by a performer hidden in the back of the hall who repeatedly dropped a wooden chair to the concrete floor, creating a racket that, juxtaposed with the melancholy and dissonant strains of the on-stage performers, proved to be very unnerving and provocative. Perhaps one of the most memorable moments of the evening was to watch the entire audience literally jump from their seats at the sound.

If an entire audience jumping on cue was not to remember then junior Jim Altieri's "puffs of colored smoke trapped in soap bubbles" probably was. Altieri had blowing bubbles distributed throughout the audience and instructed that they be blown during the playing of his tapped piece. This effect, pioneered by the opening to "The Lawrence Welk Show," was delightful, and though a stunt that encourages such audience participation may risk attention to the music, Altieri's "puffs of colored smoke" was a wonderful multi-sensory experience for all.

Junior Kendra Juul's "nonsense part 1" for tape held many surprises as well. The piece was constructed with very industrial, machine-like samples, mostly low in register, and clanging bell-like sounds which created a very interesting texture and motion. The piece continually developed into a progression of noise which particularly suited the sometimes overly resonant Fairchild Chapel.

The other piece for tape that was excellently suited for Fairchild was sophomore Andrew Davis' "Piece." The work was a series of looped patterns at frequencies that caused the pews to vibrate. The repetitions of these patterns did not present a huge abundance of pitch material, but Davis, showing self restraint and a good sense of timing, closed the work at the perfect moment.

As full as these works for tape sounded in the hall, the works for piano came across as being very spare. Sophomore David Reminick's solo piano piece titled "memento" was perhaps the sparest of the evening. Though Fairchild Chapel is possibly the worst home for solo piano performance at Oberlin, offering only a thin sounding upright that isn't even on stage, "memento," because of its short length and subdued nature, worked very well under the logistical circumstances.

The other piece for solo piano and voice by junior Cory Dargel, titled "closing statement ," was perhaps the most moving of the evening. Performed by the composer, who sang the text of "I miss her so much everyday," entirely in falsetto, "closing statement" transcended the incredibly simple nature of its lyrics and repetitious block chords to beautifully end the first half of the concert.

The second half of the concert started in the dark, with junior Evan Gardener's "Pull My Daisy," for tape. With the lights off, the work of manipulated voice and sweeping electronic sounds was frighteningly reminiscent of the soundtrack to Gremlins. Gardener's work seemed loosely organized and in the end it was hard to know what the work was striving for.

The concert hall remained dark for sophomore Kate Peterson's "two dialogues," for tape. The works, connected by what the composer described as "their similar sense of space and time, or lack thereof," were both enjoyable and brief works that combined spoken text and other acoustic samples with electronic sounds. The first of these, titled "the loveliest and most beautiful landscape," was particularly provocative, owing its text to Antoine Saint-Exupery's Le Petit Prince, and using wonderfully manipulated samples of a clock and the reading of the text, "the loveliest and most beautiful landscape" was a highlight of the evening.

Peterson's "tall ships and microships," concluded the concert with a very light work for two Fisher Price glockenspiels. Though any music for toy instruments is hard to describe as anything other than "cute," it was an excellent do-it-yourself way to end the student organized program.

Concerts of Student Works are happening with more frequency this semester than they have been in recent years. With a department of incredibly active students who are self-sufficient in writing and presenting their own music to audiences that are larger than ever, the students of the New Music Department are the most aggressively active people in the conservatory.