Remarkable Night
01/02/09 08:51 Filed in: Press
A remarkable night at Acadia’s Shattering the Silence By STEPHEN PEDERSEN Arts Reporter Sun. Feb 1, 2009
"Flutist/composer Derek Charke demonstrated his quality as both composer and performer Friday night on the third concert of Acadia University School of Music’s six-concert Shattering the Silence New Music Festival.
His Raga Cha for amplified flute quartet opened the program in Denton Hall by Acadia Faculty and Friends with captivating minimalism, featuring himself as well as flutists Chenoa Anderson, Jack Chen and Brenna Harriss. Charke led the ensemble with a series of chuffing bursts of air containing the merest hint of tone, played with exciting energy in a repetitive jazz-like rhythm. Chen echoed the chuffs while maintaining a machine-gun stream of short notes in step with Anderson and Harriss. The three flutes built a slowly unfolding harmonic spectrum over which Charke’s rhythmic thrusts danced and under which Anderson’s low-pitched alto flute painted a halo of resonance.
The admirable simplicity of the concept kept the audience riveted on catching the tiniest details.
On the second half, Charke returned to play Brian Ferneyhough’s Cassandra’s Dream Song for solo flute. Ferneyhough threw the kitchen sink at the performer with tremolos, multiphonics, tongue rams, key clicks, whistle tones, bent pitches and fourth octave notes, all arranged in a rapid fire series of gestures which also included singing and playing at the same time.
Charke described the technique as The New Complexity, in introducing this remarkable work. His mastery of everything Ferneyhough demands of the player was mind-boggling.
In other first half works, Acadia guitarist Eugene Cormier played a fascinating, if a little long-winded, transcribed improvisation by Carlo Domeniconi, called Koyunbaba Suite. The guitar is tuned down a minor third from its usual E minor tuning to the key of C-sharp minor. The effect was surprisingly bright for such a low tuning.
Clarinetist/professor Stan Fisher played the Abime des oiseaux movement from Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, written for violin, clarinet, cello and piano while Messiaen was incarcerated in a German prison camp in the Second World War. He was followed by Symphony Nova Scotia second clarinetist Eileen Walsh in a lively interpretation of Muczynski Time Pieces, accompanied by pianist Jennifer King.
Chenoa Anderson returned with pianist John Hansen and guest percussionist Russell Hartenberger on vibraphone to play John Luther Adams’s haunting exploration of the resonances hidden in slowly evolving work based on the harmonic "ladder" of natural overtones.
Conductor Mark Hopkins led the Acadia Wind Ensemble in Morton Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium and Adams’s Lollapalooza to end the concert. The Wind Ensemble is a student/community performing group not yet ready for prime time perhaps, but accomplished enough to give more than just an idea of what these works were about. Many moments of fine ensemble playing gave promise of potential development to a high level.
The Acadia Shattering The Silence New Music Festival, co-directed by Charke and Hopkins and in its third year, ends today. It is a valuable addition to the Nova Scotia music scene."
"Flutist/composer Derek Charke demonstrated his quality as both composer and performer Friday night on the third concert of Acadia University School of Music’s six-concert Shattering the Silence New Music Festival.
His Raga Cha for amplified flute quartet opened the program in Denton Hall by Acadia Faculty and Friends with captivating minimalism, featuring himself as well as flutists Chenoa Anderson, Jack Chen and Brenna Harriss. Charke led the ensemble with a series of chuffing bursts of air containing the merest hint of tone, played with exciting energy in a repetitive jazz-like rhythm. Chen echoed the chuffs while maintaining a machine-gun stream of short notes in step with Anderson and Harriss. The three flutes built a slowly unfolding harmonic spectrum over which Charke’s rhythmic thrusts danced and under which Anderson’s low-pitched alto flute painted a halo of resonance.
The admirable simplicity of the concept kept the audience riveted on catching the tiniest details.
On the second half, Charke returned to play Brian Ferneyhough’s Cassandra’s Dream Song for solo flute. Ferneyhough threw the kitchen sink at the performer with tremolos, multiphonics, tongue rams, key clicks, whistle tones, bent pitches and fourth octave notes, all arranged in a rapid fire series of gestures which also included singing and playing at the same time.
Charke described the technique as The New Complexity, in introducing this remarkable work. His mastery of everything Ferneyhough demands of the player was mind-boggling.
In other first half works, Acadia guitarist Eugene Cormier played a fascinating, if a little long-winded, transcribed improvisation by Carlo Domeniconi, called Koyunbaba Suite. The guitar is tuned down a minor third from its usual E minor tuning to the key of C-sharp minor. The effect was surprisingly bright for such a low tuning.
Clarinetist/professor Stan Fisher played the Abime des oiseaux movement from Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, written for violin, clarinet, cello and piano while Messiaen was incarcerated in a German prison camp in the Second World War. He was followed by Symphony Nova Scotia second clarinetist Eileen Walsh in a lively interpretation of Muczynski Time Pieces, accompanied by pianist Jennifer King.
Chenoa Anderson returned with pianist John Hansen and guest percussionist Russell Hartenberger on vibraphone to play John Luther Adams’s haunting exploration of the resonances hidden in slowly evolving work based on the harmonic "ladder" of natural overtones.
Conductor Mark Hopkins led the Acadia Wind Ensemble in Morton Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium and Adams’s Lollapalooza to end the concert. The Wind Ensemble is a student/community performing group not yet ready for prime time perhaps, but accomplished enough to give more than just an idea of what these works were about. Many moments of fine ensemble playing gave promise of potential development to a high level.
The Acadia Shattering The Silence New Music Festival, co-directed by Charke and Hopkins and in its third year, ends today. It is a valuable addition to the Nova Scotia music scene."
