The Fully Automatic Orchestra Premiered
The self-driving orchestra, with vacant podium, has arrived at center stage.
Credit local composer Brian Baumbusch, 35, along with a Covid quarantine, electronics and a touch of Indonesia. Yes, finally, one tiny benefit we gained from that scourge of a Covid virus, leading to some invention and dispersion of musical ideas.
Marooned in a Djakarta quarantine last year, Baumbusch composed his “Polytempo Music” which was premiered here April 13 by the elite S.F. Contemporary Music Players. His inspiration relegated conductor Eric Dudley to a front-row seat looking on while the dozen musicians played their parts guided by electronic click tracks in earphones, set to such a variety of energetic beats and tempos as to be impossible to conduct.
It may sound like total chaos. But no, Baumbusch took his lead from Indonesia gamelan music, where slow and fast tempos are overlaid (a bit like Bach’s “Sleepers Awake” or “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring), and maintained some harmonic control.
This adroit derringdo led to an engrossing world premiere at the Taube Atrium, full of dense overlay and ear-caressing music. The work was fast-paced, with striking harmonic shifts, all a coherent dazzle of sound we need to hear again, then ending on a dime. The impetus for revivals remains there, as the 18 minutes presented here only comprised about a third of the entire opus according to one participant.
Dudley got up to lead a codicil section with an evolved waltz looming in the mist and wafting over—–a calm after a windstorm, akin to the storm-scene effect in Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony. Tranquility restored.
The evolution of “Polytempo Music” was not the sole fruit of the quarantine. Covid actually encouraged the isolation of the musicians, who learned their parts separately at home, then assembled less for rehearsals and more for sound checks and click audibility. Again, Covid forced musical innovation.
During the performance the guidance came from an upstage laptop, with the composer herding all the electronics like sheep. Unplug the laptop and the premiere would be lost—we live and die by PG& E.
Some prerecorded tracks also filtered in via loudspeakers overhead.
The concert opened with a live-instrument arrangement of the late expat Conlon Nancarrow’s “Study No. 3a” for sextet, with clarinetist Jeff Anderle at the forefront. The arrangement counters Nancarrow’s original musical thrust and method, wherein he had been totally mechanical—-all inscribed on hand-cut player-piano rolls, usually intent on defying human capabilities of play.
A rare aspect of the stellar conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen was on view with his septet, “Catch and Release” (2006). Focusing on this 25-minute work was challenged by the distracting, near-bare-chested attire on one player. Please, less distraction and tedium, more decorum!
Salonen’s audacity led him to use an unsettling, unorthodox ensemble, whose trumpet, trombone and drumming overwhelmed the strings and woodwinds. Nimble percussionist Haruka Fujii had to fast-step between the drums and a more ingratiating vibraphone. Its finale offered an exercise in staccato, ever more intense.
Artistic director Dudley is an amiable conductor with a nonstop smile, frequently bending his knees, seemingly irresistibly impelled by rhythms.
S.F. Contemporary Music Players in 52nd season with Baumbusch premiere, Nancarrow and Salonen, at the Taube Atrium Theater, San Francisco on April 13. Online: https://sfcmp.org.
