Oregon composers are having a moment. A season-long moment – thanks to ensembles like Fear No Music, which opened its 33rd season in Eliot Chapel Hall (September 28) with an outstanding concert dedicated to home-grown music. Supported by an eager audience, which filled almost two-thirds of the seats, the program featured outstanding works by eight Oregon-based composers, kicking off a season of concerts in which FNM will celebrate music created right here in the Pacific Northwest.
This was my first time in Eliot Chapel Hall, and I have to admit that I was very impressed by its warm and resonant acoustics. When FNM’s Executive Director Monica Ohuchi welcomed the audience, her words were loud and clear – without the assistance of a microphone. The same qualities supported each piece on the program, from the top-most notes to those in the basement. I am not sure why this space hasn’t been used more often in the past, but kudos go to Ohuchi, who is a Program Director at Reed College in the Performing Arts Music Division, for adding this venue to FMN’s performance calendar.
Speaking of which, the concert–entitled Generations and repeated at The Old Church the following Monday–marked FNM’s debut at Eliot Chapel Hall and also the eleventh year in which Ohuchi and her husband, Kenji Bunch – FNM’s Artistic Director – have honchoed FNM. The duo also anchored the FNM ensemble for this concert, which ran out of printed programs – a good omen for the rest of the season.
The music got underway with Incantation, written in 2018 by Paul Safar. Inspired by Czelaw Milosz’s eponymous poem, the piece began with violist Bunch pinging a small glockenspiel and cellist Nancy Ives tapping a cymbal while Bunch sang the first line of the poem, “Human reason is beautiful and invincible.” Pianist Ohuchi augmented them with warm textures that were matched by the viola and cello. She stirred things up with big chords that gradually evaporated until all that remained was a sprinkling of notes in the piano’s upper register, giving the marvelous effect of twinkling stars. The piece found its way back to the glockenspiel and cymbal with Ives intoning the poem’s first line again.
Cynthia Stillman Gerdes’ Love Love Wind Dust offered a meditative conversation between piano (Jeff Payne) and cello (Ives). A continuously wandering piano line suggested dust in the breeze – often with a playful vibe between the two instruments. After a demonstrative roll into the basement of the keyboard, the piece became agitated until things quieted down and took on a dreamy quality. Ives executed a lovely soliloquy, and after Payne rejoined her, the music resolved with a feeling of peace.
I didn’t need to know anything about Wayne Shorter’s music to enjoy For Wayne Shorter by Charles Rose, a fellow music critic at Oregon ArtsWatch. Performed by violist Bunch and pianist Ohuchi, For Wayne Shorter opened gently with a beautiful melodic line. It fluctuated between brief robust phrases and longer ones that flowed tenderly – kind of like the ebb and flow of ocean waves. After a final bit of bold, romantic turbulence, the piece moved back to its thoughtful, almost delicate opening style and closed quietly.
To lighten things up, Kimberly Osberg’s Extracted Wisdom conveyed a vivid and somewhat humorous sonic depiction of a visit to the dentist. Written for string quartet, this nugget of a piece evoked the clicks of an X-Ray machine and the slippage of consciousness before drilling into the matter. Violinists Keiko Araki and Inés Voglar Belgique, violist Bunch, and cellist Ives had a field day snapping the strings of their instruments, generating gnawing sounds, and breathing like someone under duress – all of which caused listeners to chuckle periodically.
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Kennedy Verrett’s Change for A Dollar came about when Verrett was sitting outside a bar and was asked if could break a dollar bill. The person asking the question went to several patrons but was always turned down. Ohuchi, playing a prepared piano, alternated deftly between buzzy tones and clear, normal piano tones – sometimes both simultaneously. At first I thought that the buzzy tones represented the fellow asking change for a dollar and the normal tones suggested the negative replies. But midway through it dawned on me that it was the other way around. In any case, the ending was unresolved and reminded me of Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question.
Conflicted thoughts about cultural identity permeated Citizen/Subject by Steve Lewis. It portrayed someone caught between two worlds – Poland and the United States – and the quest for individualism. Written for piano quintet – played in this concert by Araki, Voglar Belgique, Bunch, Ives, and Payne – Citizen/Subject seesawed between tense, strident passages and sections that evinced an ethereal stardust. Some passages were quite chaotic, and at one point it seemed that the strings were battling the piano. Scratchy sounds finally gave way to a series of gentle pizzicatos and finally silence.
Bonny Miksch infused I Found This Flower (originally composed for Pyxis Quartet) with an intoxicating harmonic soundscape. The FNM quartet (Araki, Voglar Belgique, Bunch, and Ives) elicited a tapestry of lilting melodic threads that were often intimate and intertwined. A steady climb upwards heightened the end of the piece but stopped in mid stride – perhaps suggesting that the path to another flower lies ahead.
The concert concluded with Henry Alexander’s The Customer Is Always Right, a rollicking number for four hands on one piano. The piece had a honky tonk vibe and both pianists (Ohuchi and Payne) seemed to have a lot of fun playing it. The piece drew from Alexander’s witnessing a customer complaint at a restaurant. But the storyline wasn’t all that important. The Customer Is Always Right got the audience’s juices flowing, resulting in cheers and enthusiastic applause.
These eight pieces and eight composers aptly displayed the vibrancy of the music scene in Oregon. It is quite astounding, and there’s more to come. It’s almost as if a renaissance of sorts is going on here. It’s great that FNM is leading the charge to get these works performed.
On a bittersweet note, the concert repeated Monday night at The Old Church–but that was the last one for stellar violinist Inés Voglar Belgique, who has played with FNM for the past 19 years and served as its artistic director from 2005 to 2010. She will be replaced by equally stellar Emily Cole, thank goodness.
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