thirteen ways

I have already written several times about the rare joy of working with a singer possessing such diverse and fabulous gifts as the wonderful Ms Lucy Shelton.

8bb has been lucky this spring to play concerts with two other highly skilled singers, Tony Arnold and Julia Bentley. I had the opportunity to hear both at MusicNow concerts (the CSO’s glorious, diverse new music ghetto). Tony sang Jonathan Harvey’s Song Offerings last October, while Julia and Tony both whispered, shouted, babbled, screamed and moaned through Ligeti’s theatrical Nouvelles Adventures in April this year.

Much like Lucy, both singers “specialize” in the performance of new music. I don’t like the pigeon-holing effect of such a tag, but what makes them so suited to more complex repertoire is their rare combination of great preparation, solid rhythm and pulse, a refined ear for pitch and intonation, and, perhaps most importantly, the ability to be flexible in rehearsal and performance.

8bb played two books of George Crumb’s spare, evocative Madrigals a few weeks ago on a Contempo concert at the MCA. The Duv was a little stressed out that week, as the program was something of a percussion assault (it featured Matthew playing the “solo”  part in Takemitsu’s spellbinding Raintree from memory). But Tony’s light-hearted nature put us all at ease. She is so easy to work with that it made the difficult twists and turns of the Crumb seem like we were rehearsing a simple, tonal folk tune in 4/4 time.

Julia brought her gorgeous, incredibly well-behaved little son along to the first rehearsal of Michael LaCroix’s Twelve faces of the emerald for the University of Chicago’s student composer series, “Tomorrow’s music today”. While Julia screamed at the top of her lungs, “RECKLESS, LACKing in SELF conTROL: DAGGERS! FIREWORKS!”, to harsh, dissonant answering clusters in piano and percussion, her perfect cherub appeared totally at ease, quietly reading in an 8bb armchair.

By using the tutti ensemble sparingly, Michael’s powerful work solved the problems of balancing voice with the chamber group and also ensured great textural variety. In fact, the five instruments don’t play together until the climactic, hysterical last minute of the work. There is a huge spectrum of dramatic characters in this sometimes melodramatic interpretation of Dan Pagis’ quite odd poem. I could never could quite get over the (maybe intentionally, maybe not intentionally) humorous last lines of the work:

(Spoken with intensity)

You will never find the secret of my power.

I am I:

(Then whispered much more quickly and quietly)

crystallized carbon with a very small quantity of chromium oxide.