Those Jangling 12-Tone Boots

Shades of Percussion, performed at Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall by Groundswell, University of Winnipeg, Thursday, May 12, 2011

Reviewed by John Herbert Cunningham

Those boots were made for jangling and that’s just what they did. I mean the gold cowboy boots worn by Diana McIntosh for her first performance of the evening, of course – but more about that in a moment.

Luciane Cardassi and Eric Bumstead with percussion instruments

The history of Groundswell goes back even further than the twenty years it has been in existence. That is because Diana McIntosh is one of the four directors — the others being Michael Matthews, Gordon Fitzell and Jim Hiscott. Back before Bramwell Tovey arrived to resuscitate the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, which had been floundering under an overly heavy layering of romanticism, McIntosh had come along and established her WAG concert series, Music Inter Alia, in 1977 bringing Winnipeg from the nineteenth into the twentieth century. Piero Gamba was still conductor of the WSO at the time and never a contemporary note marred the stage of the Centennial Concert Hall under his watch. Thank you, Diana, for relieving the boredom that once was the WSO and paving the way for Tovey and, of course, the current conductor, Alexander Mickelthwate.

That takes us to Thursday and those gold boots.

The gold boots were actually accidental. You see, the first piece on the program was to have been a composition, Halasana, by American composer Louis Cauberghs – a duo for drums and piano. Unfortunately an injury to one of the performers prevented this piece from being included. Instead, McIntosh, who was artistic director for the evening’s performance, interjected her composition ‘and 8:30 in Newfoundland,’ written in 1999 and performed at the Opening Gala of this year’s New Music Festival.

McIntosh reminded me following the completion of the concert that I hadn’t liked this piece when performed at that gala. In fact, I’d characterized it in the first review I wrote for The Winnipeg Review as ‘unmemorable’. I would like to now retract that comment. From the get-go this piece was more than memorable, on this particular evening. There could have been a number of factors for this. The placement on the program, opening rather than closing the evening’s performance, may have been one. Another, as McIntosh pointed out, could have been that she was more familiar and, therefore, freer with the performance. It could have been the much better acoustical performance space of Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall along with the multiple speakers arrayed on its walls. Or it could have been those gold boots with bells attached so that they jangled to the banging of a hand clapper that punctuated McIntosh’s march from the wings to the stage. My initial response was that McIntosh had worked on and improved the piece considerably but she assured me that this was indeed the same piece. The vocal techniques she employed transmitted at times through an echo chamber and punctuated with the sound of various small hand percussion instruments created an awesome opening to what would prove to be a very memorable evening indeed.

This was followed by the premiere of ‘Interchange,’ a composition by Aris Carastathis involving McIntosh on piano and Ben Reimer on vibraphone and assorted other percussion. The most interesting part of this performance was when McIntosh moved from playing the keyboard to reaching inside the grand piano to pluck its strings while Reimer struck the strings with his vibraphone mallets. This piece might have been more interesting in another context but, sandwiched between two of McIntosh’s compositions, it was the poor man out.

Although Stockhausen’s ‘Kontakte,’ which would be performed following intermission, was the featured composition, McIntosh’s ‘She Had Some Horses,’ composed in 2004, stole the show. The piece was performed by McIntosh, doing spoken text and extended vocal techniques, and by Ben Reimer on percussion, and they were joined by Sean Taubner on cello. They were accompanied by an electronic tape. The performance began before the piece did as it was fascinating to watch Reimer and a couple of others assemble various percussion instruments into a semi-circle into which he could insert himself. The focus of the piece was a poem of the same title by Joy Harjo, a member of the Myskoke (Creek) Nation out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. As described in the playbill, the piece concerned “a personal journey, an awakening into light, a confrontation with fear.” The composition was electrifying. Watching Reimer was absolutely riveting as he created a percussive soundscape. McIntosh’s intense recitation of the poem along with the vocal techniques she used to punctuate it was thrilling. Although Taubner wasn’t called upon as significantly as the others, the filigrees he inserted into the piece enhanced it significantly.

Before discussing the Stockhausen piece, a bit about serial music is in order. Early in the twentieth century, Arnold Schoenberg had developed a new compositional technique which involved the manipulation of a ‘tone row’ – a series of twelve notes that could be played with various permutations while avoiding a key centre. This, however, involved just the notes themselves. It wasn’t long before others, particularly Olivier Messiaen, extended this into the areas of duration, dynamics and other aspects of the notes themselves. This exploration was further extended by Karlheinz Stockhausen who saw percussion as the family of instruments that could best articulate and control these aspects.

And then there was ‘Kontakte’ which was composed initially in 1958 as a ‘4-track realisation’ for electronic music but was then expanded in 1960 and which Stockhausen titled ‘Kontakte for electronic sounds, piano and percussion.’ Stockhausen’s original tapes were used in this evening’s performance – by Eric Bumstead on an array of percussion centring around the marimba and Luciane Cardassi on piano and percussion. Two huge Chinese gongs had been placed during intermission. Each performer was given a set of Chinese temple bells. There were also wood blocks, wooden chimes, a crash cymbal, a glockenspiel, and assorted other percussion devices. Bumstead had a third Chinese gong at his station. The piece began with the playing of the electronic tape following which Cardassi dragged something around the rim of the largest Chinese gong creating this shimmering sound that then launched both performers into a blur of motion as they created a barrage of sound from their battery of instruments.

In the end, it was all good. And as those gold boots left the stage, the near full house enthused over another great performance by Groundswell.