On June 1, the Portland State University percussion ensemble performed its final concert of the school year. The first half premiered student compositions in collaboration with Sonic Arts and Music Production students. The second half saw the ensemble perform Lou Harrison and Richard Dee’s Suite for Violin and American Gamelan. 

Lincoln Recital Hall had a healthy audience that night – not quite packed, but enough that you had to ask politely to get by someone to get to the good seats in the middle of the hall. The audience seemed to be largely supportive parents, the performers’ classmates, and some community members who wanted to hear music by Lou Harrison and PSU students. 

The show opened with a brief performance by the Percussion Techniques Cohort, on a piece called Traumatic Chromatic by Ralph Hicks. This cohort is made of students from a class for music education majors. They learn the basics of percussion instruments to assist in their music education journey.

Percussion can be intimidating for a band director, given the dozens of instruments available to even a modest high school band or orchestra. For the students, Traumatic Chromatic gave a good sample of the typical roles of each percussion instrument within an ensemble. The piece had the character of goofy circus music, built upon a rising whole tone scale theme. 

The student compositions were collaborations between Portland State’s Sonic Arts and Music Production Department and the Percussion Studio. SAMP students composed a piece for percussion and electronics, and the percussion students got a chance to see some contemporary extended techniques. This is exactly the sort of cross-department collaboration that offers a great opportunity for students. I wish I had had more opportunities like that when I was a student. The whole thing was facilitated by Dr. Caroline Miller, who hung out on stage left to run the electronics during the show. 

Most students elected to compose a tape part, requiring the performers to coordinate with a fixed track. The percussionists could listen in on in-ear monitors to a click track to coordinate with the tape part, which alleviates some of the anxiety of playing to tape. This also allows the tape to be a bit more rhythmically free, obviating the need for a clear “1-2-3-4” in the tape part. 

The first student composition was Two Thousand Feet Under by Joe Dahlin. It depicts a journey through an underground cave system, opening with a field recording of birds before descending into some murky territory. The percussion parts run the gamut of extended techniques: crotales sliding around on timpani, bowed glockenspiel, superball mallets rubbing against a bass drum head. It even included a contraption with a rope duct-taped to a small bass drum head, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

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The extended techniques worked well together, and the unique sounds served a larger thematic purpose — thus circumventing the all-too-common trope of student compositions becoming a meaningless showcase of their knowledge of contemporary extended techniques. 

Up next was March to Nowhere by Kristin Leitner. The piece was built from a buzzy synth lead, with some cool interplay between the snare and bass drum parts. It was a bit too long for me, however: Some changes to instrumental roles, a change in synth tone, or clearer themes could’ve kept the piece fresh and engaging throughout. 

Francisco Sipiora Gutierrez’ FM Lounge was one highlight of the first set. The title refers to the technique of Frequency Modulation synthesis, a way of generating complex sounds with little processing power. The density of the quasi-improvisational rhythms and the planing chord stabs remind me of drum-and-bass music, the footwork production of DJ Rashad, or whatever you call Aphex Twin. The piece was tricky, splitting up a complex sequenced drum set part into three separate bass drum, hi-hat and snare drum players. They nailed each solo’s drumline-like intricacy featuring flams, double stroke rolls, paradiddles and sextuplets. 

Walter Lester himself joined onstage for his piece, Yes Chef!, to trigger samples. The samples sounded like edited snippets of kitchen chatter and cooking sounds. Behind this the percussionists smacked pots and pans in addition to some more usual percussion instruments such as timpani, vibraphone, snare drum and frame drum. It was a fun piece. 

The audience was delighted by Carissa Grouell’s Junk Drawer. Grouell based the piece around common household objects the percussionists used for their incidental sounds: scissors snipping, staplers stapling, pens clicking, bells dinging and drawers slamming. The electronics were minimal, but the real key was the engaging performance. The percussionists showcased some good on-stage chemistry as well, turning the whole thing into a humorous performance-art piece. 

The set ended with Ian Sage’s mellow Storm Drain. The lights dimmed, creating an introspective atmosphere behind the ambient tape part and small steel tongue drum. The percussionists spent the piece adding color and texture to the mellow drizzle of the tape part. The composer himself added an easy-going electric bass line near the end, and the vibraphone joined the tape for a charming, cheerful melody near the end. Another highlight of the set to bring us to the intermission. 

Harrison and Dee’s microtonal masterpiece

One could call Suite for Violin and American Gamelan by Lou Harrison and Richard Dee one of the true masterpieces of “microtonal” music, alongside Easley Blackwood’s Etudes, Wendy Carlos’ Beauty in the Beast, and Ben Johnston’s string quartets. I’ve taken issue with the term “microtonal” before – micro compared to what? – but other options such as xenharmonic aren’t much better. 

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Harrison and Dee’s American Gamelan takes the spirit of the Indonesian ensemble while adapting it to fit Western harmony. It’s still a large ensemble of metallophones, but opts for a tuning closer to a Just Intonation major scale than the Gamelan’s typical slendro or pelog. It is similar to the Chinese orchestra, which takes the idea of a European orchestra (a large ensemble combining strings, wind and percussion) and adapts it for Chinese musical sensibilities. For instance, the Chinese orchestra has two separate groups of string instruments (plucked and bowed), while the European orchestra features only bowed strings of the violin family. Harrison’s American Gamelan included two vibraphone-like instruments, one with massive pipe-organ sized resonator bars, and four smaller instruments built from metal pipes, like miniature chimes. 

Before the performance, composer John Pennington came onstage to talk about these specific instruments (Gamelan instruments are always performed as a set, as each instrument is carefully tuned to each other). The gamelan before us was a replica of the set designed and built by Harrison and his partner Bill Colvig. They were also used by the LA Philharmonic for its production of Harrison’s opera Young Caesar. Pennington himself composed for the ensemble, in his piece Gitanjali. PSU percussion area coordinator Chris Whyte conducted the PSU percussion ensemble’s performance.  

The sound of the ensemble was great, and the PSU percussion students did a good job of keeping balanced and locked in through the intricate rhythms. Each member must be confident in themselves to stay locked in with everyone else. While the rhythms of each part may not be that difficult in themselves, coordinating all the parts together to form the signature cross-stitch of Gamelan music is quite tough. My favorite movement was movement VI, which featured no violins. The movement was soft and mysterious, letting low bass tones ring out over a creeping melody and repeated middle-register pedal tone. 

Splitting up the violin part were two students of Tomas Cotik: Eugene Howe and Charles Dalyrymple. The violin melodies were often pentatonic, figurative, and flowed up and down. A highlight of the two violinists’ performances was Dalyrymple’s tender solo during movement seven, Chaconne.