Last Saturday, Travis Alford a Ph.D. candidate in Music Composition and Theory and six other Brandeis graduate students composed pieces for the "Ecstatically Eclectic" concert at Slosberg Recital Hall. Each piece was specifically written for Talujon, a visiting contemporary percussion ensemble, to perform on stage.
"I love the act of creating, and I love taking some initial little scraps of ideas and watching them become something. I also love working with performers," Alford told justArts. "To me, they are just as responsible for making the piece as I am, which is probably why I'm also attracted to improvisation. Before it's performed, a piece is just ink on a page, visual art, and it becomes music when it's interpreted by the players."
According to Alford, there is a symbiotic relationship between composer and performer. The composer draws upon abstractions, "little scraps of ideas," and decodes them into a concrete musical language. The performer interprets the "ink on a page" and brings it to life.
The first piece, "Froschteichmusik," composed by Alford, started out with soft drum rumbling that constantly varied between crescendo and decrescendo. In the second piece, "Melancholia," composed by Mu-Xuan Lin, a graduate student, the musicians tapped lightly on the xylophone and marimba and beat softly on the drums. The piece seemed like it was always leading up to something, but the momentum never reached a climax. The tentative quality of the piece had a Sisyphus-like, unresolved nature that I found disconcerting; I felt trapped in a mysterious, ambiguous state of limbo where there is no sense of finality. This piece was not about rhythm or melody, but about this absurd experience, this other-worldly sphere that I had entered.
In another piece, "Duet for Vibraphone and Marimba," composed by masters student in Music Compositino and Theory Rebecca Sacks, two Talujon members seemed to feed off one another, engaging in a kind of musical dialogue. Matthew Gold played a central beat while Michael Lipsey seemed to improvise around this beat. In the last piece, "Tableaus," composed by Ph.D. candidate in Music Composition and Theory Christian Gentry, almost all of the instruments were played. At the very end, the musicians started breaking out into a chant and beating a gong. I was a little overwhelmed by the cacophony of sounds; there was so much to take in.
While some of the other pieces were a little unsettling because they had this uncanny foreshadowing quality, this piece was almost over-stimulating. Every time the musician struck the gong I felt a pang of anxiety. I felt attached to the piece; I could not hum along or sit back and clear my mind; I was a part of the experience.
The composers' backgrounds and influences varied. "I started hearing everything from Bach and Beethoven to Schoenberg and Ligeti basically for the first time, and it created this weird collage of sounds in my mind that I think is still present in my music today," Alford explained. "I went for a Masters at the New England Conservatory, where I was exposed to the 'contemporary improvisation' scene. This was a turning point for me, as I started to think more 'experimentally' about the nature of composition, its processes, and its reception."
Lin, who grew up in Taiwan and attended college in the U.S., explained that her influence stemmed from, "art, dance and Modern Theater. [She tries] to engage the narrative form out of different expressive art forms."
"I have been influenced by all sorts of music," another composer, Ph.D. candidate in Music Composition and Theory James Borchers said. "I've played with rock bands, jazz, orchestra, chamber music, Indonesian Gamelan, guitar ensembles, [and] avant-garde experimental groups."
California native Richard Chowenhill, a masters student in Music Composition and Theory described his hometown as "an area with an incredibly diverse music scene," and added, "I am driven by the desire to push myself past current boundaries and onto new levels of mastery and ability, with the ultimate goal of developing a new, unique and recognizable sound, the sound of my own artistic voice."
It was clear that each piece was composed by a different student-each piece had a particular nuance in mood and style, reflective of a distinct human perspective. There was something exciting about the raw nature of the music. The show contained so much diversity, in the assortment of instruments, the style of each piece and the student composers. During the entire concert, I felt an overriding sense of celebration of eclecticism and originality.