Royal Irish Academy of Music Percussion Ensemble & Crescendo Percussion Ensemble
Percussion instruments completely filled the stage of the Irish National Events Centre for this afternoon’s percussion concert that featured talented ensembles from Ireland and Holland. The groups complemented each other nicely, with each presenting vastly different repertoire for much different sized ensembles.
The Royal Irish Academy of Music (RIAM) Percussion Ensemble performed four African-influenced works that employed four to twelve percussionists. First was Michael Udow’s African Welcome Piece. Udow composed this work after spending a semester in Africa, and chose to imitate common Ghanan dance rhythms and song styles. This work created a dramatic opening to the concert, as eight performers walked onto a dark stage rattling colorful bead-filled balloons in imitation of the African bull-roar. Udow called for but this instrument but conductor Richard O’Donnell joked that it had caused too many injuries in rehearsal to be safe for use. [The bull-roar is a thin board with slits attached to a long rope that is swung overhead at a considerable speed.] The RIAM ensemble performed the work with ease, and seemed to enjoy themselves…at least until the part that they’re required to shout and holler, as if they were having to consciously repress their well-bred behavior in order to perform such primal sounds on stage.
Omphalo Centric Lecture by Nigel Westlake followed, performed beautifully by four students on marimbas with some additional percussion instruments. The modern marimba is a descendant of the roughly made African marimba, which usually has only a couple of octaves of a select pitch set. Westlake incorporated African marimba patterns into this work, mixing them with some elements of minimalism and his own creative melodies. The piece is exuberant and, in spite of extensive unequal meters, retains a clear dance feeling. The excellent performing seemed slightly hampered by a gap of at least twelve feet between the two pairs of marimbas, which seemed to make it difficult for the quartet to lock-in in a very groove-oriented work. It was very nice to have four marimbas brought in from Adams, giving an even sound all four instruments, though this uniformity was diminished by the use of different types of mallets between the marimbists.
There are very few drum set concertos in the repertoire, so it was refreshing to hear Tom Nazziola’s From Here to There, which while not a concerto per se, featured drum set prominently. The work began as a trio with set, marimba, and vibes, as each performer presented non-rhythmic colorful ideas. The set functioned as a multiple percussion set-up at first, then funk and jazz licks began to punctuate the texture. At times the trio played music reminiscent of Frank Zappa, with unison mallet percussion and drum set melodies. Additional players entered later in the first movement and in the second movement, expanding the sonorities. The drum set had several short cadenzas, though it mostly stayed in close conversation with the other instruments. Overall, it proved to be a fascinating work, and a welcomed addition to our repertoire. I believe the soloist was named Garrett Bassett, though O’Donnell only mentioned his name quickly in passing and his name was not in the printed program. Regardless, he did an excellent job, easily jumping between roles as soloist and accompanist, and performed with fluid technique and a dynamic tone. He had great command of rock, jazz, and several Latin styles, including long passages in Afro-Cuban styles.
The RIAM PE completed their work with Jose Halec’s Hyperball. O’Donnell began by stating the composer’s intent in this piece was to imitate the African-jazz sound that was popular in the 1970s in such ensembles as the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Sun Ra, and other African American jazz artists who were trying to incorporate their African roots into modern jazz. Halec did this through using an ensemble similar to these influences, using African percussion, drum set, saxophone, and transforming a bass part into antiphonal timpani. The saxophone led the ensemble, playing some ensemble passages, but mostly creating improvisation-like passages over percussion vamps. While the effect was interesting, ultimately I was left unsatisfied for one simple reason: the composition was so close to an actual imitation of the original 70s artists that it just made the performance sound like a stale imitation. It lacked the firey passion and reckless abandon of these jazz artists; I would have loved to hear the group, after working hard on this piece, put the music down and simply improvise in the spirit of the style, using the vocabulary they had learned from working on Halec’s composition. That, I believe would have been a more satisfying event. The saxophone soloist, also unnamed, played admirably, but was locked into a strict piece of sheet music. This was not necessarily the fault of the performer, but of the piece itself.
Overall, the RIAM members performed with excellence and maturity, had obviously been taught extremely well by their conductor and mentor, and presented repertoire that all had different connections to the African continent.
The Crescendo Percussion Ensemble, from Holland, took a different approach to percussion ensemble: that of the large percussion orchestra. Two of the works were for 15 or 16 players, and the ensemble literally filled the entire stage with instruments. In most percussion concerts filling the stage is the norm, but that is because multiple pieces are set up next to each other, each claiming a percentage of the larger stage. In these works, the whole stage was used for each piece.
The group started with an adaptation of one of the popular Animusic videos: these are computer videos with bizarre adaptations of normal percussion and rock music instrument played by machines. For this live presentation, the video was shown on two screens, while the conductor, Ria Kornet, conducted to a click. The performers were flawless, remaining aligned with the video throughout, which is no simple feat if you are familiar with this music.
Thomas Gauger’s Gainsborough quintet was a much more familiar percussion ensemble sound, featuring marimba, vibraphone, timpani, and two percussion set ups. The three movements had good diversity: some more rhythmic, some more melodic, but all delightful. The final movement had a march feel at times, and ended exciting.
Dolf de Kinkelder wrote two compositions that Crescendo performed at this concert. The first was Funeral Blues, and the second CrissCross. Funeral Blues was a setting of a poem of the same name by W. H. Auden, whose four strophes are recited in Dutch and English, via recording, at four points of the work. The piece began with a 50-second sound mass, a deafening scream of noise performed by the sixteen players hitting drums and 55-gallon oil drums. The volume was reminiscent of the opening of Verne Reynolds’ Scenes. The composer told me afterwards that this opening was intended to create a “nasty feeling” in the listener, a goal that was certainly achieved. As the sound died down, players presented individual swells, representative of “anger-filled swells of emotion.” The piece is actually a saxophone concerto, today performed excellently by Egon Smit, who was dressed in a flashy gold suit. After the long opening, the saxophone sang a beautiful lament for the lost soul, weaving long lines over the top of percussion textures. Smit adeptly handled the demanding technical challenges of extended altissimo passages and having to project over a large ensemble.
CrissCross was certainly the high-light of the entire concert. The eighteen-minute work for fifteen percussionists was written not only for Crescendo PE, but for the specific members of the ensemble. The score has all of the names of the players on the left of each page replacing where instrument names would normally be found. Kinkelder said that he had worked with the performers for several years and that he had learned all of the strengths of each performer. This was very clear in the performance: the ensemble was in complete unity, and there were no weak links in any way.
The piece featured large numbers of drums, three marimbas, two xylophones, gongs, oil drums, giant sawblades, and a visually-striking collection of wash basins on a table the entire width of the stage. Dramatic hits and silence began the work, slowly transitioning to mallet chords, with each instrument being performed by two players from opposite sides. Unison gestures were often employed, creating a powerful and commanding sound. The most striking element of the piece were the several minutes where all fifteen players stood at the front table, performing rhythms on tin cans, bus-boy bells, and gravel-filled basins. These instruments created sounds that I have never heard on a stage before: very refreshing. As the cloud of dust from the gravel began to wisp up into the ceiling, the drummers moved back to snare drums or mallet instruments. By the end, all fifteen musicians were playing fifteen snare drums, and dramatic gestures closed the piece similar to how it opened. One surprise was that Kinkelder instructed the conductor to bow to the audience before the final note of the piece causing quite a surprise for everyone in the audience.
Crescendo performed with amazing energy and skill. Ria Kornet has created a brilliant ensemble that is a strong role model, and has recruited and taught her ensemble members to play with great sensitivity and uniformity of sound. It was fortunate that those of us from outside of Europe could have the opportunity to see such a presentation. A special thanks to Adams Percussion for their generous loaning of enormous amounts of percussion for this concert and the whole WASBE festival.
©2007 WASBE and/or the contributing author/photographer