New Music Haunts the Cat

Wide Variety of New Student Works Performed

Six of Oberlin's budding music composers showed off their work Wednesday night at the Cat in the Cream. With styles ranging from short piano and harp pieces, to odd avant-garde works pairing a bicycle wheel with a tom-tom, the Conservatory displayed its diversity to the 30 or so folks who came out to see the new music.

Starting off the night was an interesting piano piece by sophomore Alan Berg entitled "Early," performed by sophomore Melinda Faylor. The piece was highlighted by soft and subtle notes and chords played in repetitive circular patterns. This cold piece built slowly, beginning with simple and occasionally dissonant chords moving into syncopated single notes, and ending with louder chords and arpeggios.

Following Berg's piece was a short work for piano, cello, and oddly, contrabasson, played by double degree junior Dave Reminick, sophomore Adam Friedberg and junior Leigh Miller respectively. Written by senior Jim Altieri and entitled "Object for Rob," this piece began much the same way "Early" did, with quick, soft chords alternating between consonance and dissonance.

The cello would, at long intervals, play deep resounding sforzandos against the simplicity of the piano, while the contrabasson only came in once to finish the piece with the cello by mimicking its intense crescendos.

The third work in Wednesday's program was possibly the most unique. Titled "The Nature of Reptilian Sadness," it was written and performed by first-year Alex Buchla with accompaniment from senior Brain Chase on the tom-tom, this piece seemed to really capture the audience.

The work was comprised of two instruments, one more complex than the other. Chase played the tom-tom, while Buchla worked vocals and what was called a "modified bicycle wheel." The "modifications" consisted of the bicycle wheel, mounted on a square of light blue Styrofoam, hooked up to a sensitive microphone which had a delay effect triggered with a switch at the performer's feet.

Buchla also had a piece of tough string tied between a spoon held in his right hand and a knife which he held in the left. During the performance, accompanied by steady quarter-note syncopations on the tom-tom, Buchla yanked the string between the spokes of the wheel, banged his knife and spoon on them, and then ran the utensils around the edge of the wheel. These all produced hauntingly metallic sounds that resonated throughout the coffee house.

Buchla also had a microphone strapped to himself. With the mic in the collar of his shirt he made heavy breathing and swallowing sounds. It was in this way that he began the piece, with just this deep breathing and the tom-tom. During the middle of the performance he went to work on the wheel with the drum fading in and out at certain moments.

Toward the end Buchla activated the delay effect on the wheel and produced some truly unique sounds. But for his encore, possibly representing the reptile's transformation from "sadness" into madness, Buchla repeatedly stabbed at the Styrofoam under the wheel with his knife, much to the delight and consternation of his audience.

After his knife had made its mark on the Styrofoam, Buchla stood up straight and gave a little smile before the audience had a chance to catch their breath and applaud.

Following junior Kate Peterson's short piano work, "cinderalla in scrubs," was double-degree junior Shaun Van Ault's "Six Miniatures for Harp" performed by sophomore Sarah Mullin. The fifth miniature proved the most interesting for the audience when Van Ault got on stage to run a violin bow across the harp's lowest string.

This produced a deep dissonant droning affect which was only buffered by Mullin's steady bass notes.

To end the night junior Vincent Galianno took to the stage to enlighten his listeners about his piece. Grinning, he explained how the recorded electronic music they were about to hear was the final movement of the opera he had worked on with his brother entitled "The Adventures of Space Captain Zed." The piece began with a deep-voiced narrator going on about the year 3029 and the battles with space aliens Captain Zed was encountering in the galaxy Excelsior. The speakers were then flooded with beeps, bops and other spacelike noises until the audience heard laser blasts and the falling and apparent death of Captain Zed.

There wasn't much time to mourn, as the audience was soon treated to a space rock rendition of Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" which produced more then a few muffled laughs from the crowd. The piece ended with the voice of a little girl, among others, hopefully exclaiming, "I love you Captain Zed!" to the fallen captain. Overall, this little space ditty gave the crowd a good laugh and yet another hero to lionize.