On Friday, January 15, the Greece Olympia School cafeteria
doubled as an informal music venue when the Buffalo-based ensemble Wooden
Cities along with Olympia students — led by their teacher, Aaron Staebell — presented “an evening of experimental music.”
And yet the experiment started long before the performance
itself. The student musicians learned how to produce a concert, from creating
and printing posters and tickets to engaging in media interviews and
participating in workshopping sessions run by Wooden Cities and its director,
Brendan Fitzgerald.
The concert consisted almost entirely of variations of an
improvisatory composition called “Cobra,” by the avant-garde composer John
Zorn. Rather than use notated music on a page, Zorn utilizes 20 cues, in the
form of letters written on cards. These cues may indicate that a musician plays
a duo with another person, or that the players trade
solos. One card calls for a drastic change in the style of music being played,
another card requires a change in volume, while yet another card asks for the
musicians to play “cartoonish” music.
Beyond these cues, which are given by a prompter (rather than
a conductor), the actual notes played are entirely up to the individual members
of the ensemble. Zorn calls this composition a “game piece,” and a sense of
play is inherent in the sound. The result is often as if one were rapidly
flipping between radio stations.
From the outset, the students’ composure and resourcefulness
directly translated to an assertive, convincing interpretation of this
sophisticated composition. While the sound produced by the student ensemble was
frequently — as one might expect — delightfully cacophonous, an accessible
groove emerged amidst the din. A soulful undertone with hints of jazzy big band
textures was also present. In this first variation of “Cobra,” sounds heard
included a guitar-bass duo that was reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady”
and the clarinetist and baritone sax player chirping back and forth using only
their mouthpieces. Regardless of what was played, the players constantly vied
for the prompter’s attention in order to improvise, so the music was above all
intentional.
Wooden Cities’ version of “Cobra,” presented as a sextet
(including two vocalists) began with a heavy dose of ambient drone influence.
The music quickly evolved into a wildly oscillating mix of sliding pitches,
frenetic strings, the imitation of bird sounds and the whistling of the wind,
among other sounds. Even a sample of Zorn talking about the piece itself was
included. All of this amounted to a series of engaging, yet fleeting, musical
moments.
In an inspired programming decision, Wooden Cities also
performed a vocal quartet arrangement of the 1946 Dadaist poem “Ribble Bobble Pimlico” by Kurt Schwitters. Arranged here by Wooden Cities Associate
Director Ethan Hayden, the vocalists stood around the audience, each in a
different corner, forming a square perimeter. This formation allowed the
audience to experience the sounds made by the different musicians in spatial
relation to one another, a kind of natural “surround sound” experience.
An exploration of phonetic utterances, “Ribble
Bobble Pimlico” features the titular phrase and the
additional lyric “good deal easier” almost exclusively. As the listener hears
the repetition of these spoken words, however, their sound and the impression
they leave evolve subtly. The intricate rhythms — complete with counterpoint — and
“sing-song” melodic quality of the work gave the impression of a strange
incantation, an absurdist ritual.
“Ribble Bobble Pimlico”
is an ecstatic composition, and the Wooden Cities vocalists performed it with
poise and gusto. Their willingness to be vulnerable and silly was laudable, as
they imbued a seemingly inane poem with seriousness of purpose. Like “Cobra,”
the piece deals with how we communicate with one another, through patterns and
anomalies alike.
In a final and most successful rendition of “Cobra,” which
combined Wooden Cities and the students into a potent 18-piece band, one heard
such varied sounds as a harmonica, laptop electronics, a squeaky and rusting
music stand, and even literal screams. “It’s really weird, but at the same
time, as [the listeners] pick up what’s happening, they notice how in sync
everyone is with one another,” says electric bassist and flutist Jay O’Neal, a
student at Olympia. “It’s more of a social language that hasn’t really been
thought up in words.”
Rochester-area music organizations and ensembles — classical,
jazz, rock, or otherwise — should take notice. A concert that educates and
empowers young musicians through the rare performance of experimental music, now
there’s an intriguing concept.
This article appears in Jan 20-26, 2016.
