Dotted Notes

Leonard Lehrman ©2005

Jay Gottlieb, gifted pianist and composer, with whom I had the honor of sharing a composition prize in Fontainebleau in 1969, offered a piano recital at Mannes on July 23, 2005. Wished he had put some of his own compositions on the program, but I much enjoyed his unexcelled interpretations of works by composers he has known personally—Giacinto Scelsi (Four Illustrations on the Metamorphosis of Vishnu), Franco Donatoni (excerpts from Françoise-Variationen), Olivier Messiaen (two excerpts from larger works), Henri Dutilleux (a prelude), Luciano Berio (a suite), George Crumb (an excerpt from Makrokosmos, which Gottlieb dubbed “the Well-Tempered Clavier of our time”), and (fellow Harvard grad student) John Adams (Phrygian Gates). Ives appropriately opened and (with an encore) closed the program, well-titled “Contemporary Masterpieces,” a highlight of the International Keyboard Institute & Festival.

B.L.C. ©2005

Opus 21, the Michigan-based group, endorsed by William Bolcom and supported by several tuned-in foundations, again presented a diverse program of new music in New York on May 3, 2005. At Merkin in its prior appearance here we grumbled about the too much standard jazz on the program and that the selections were mixed kind of oddly. But this concert of mostly world premieres at The Knitting Factory was a much more neatly integrated event. It had a genuine theme, a tribute to Motown Music, hardly a stretch for a group from Detroit. But with selections by the likes of Frank Zappa, Michael Daugherty, Eve Beglarian and Daniel Bernard Rumain, this was no lightweight affair.

Zappa’s The Black Page, Nos. 1 & 2 (1976, 1988), arranged by Keith Horn, was a highly inventive and rhythmic study with a lot of gutsy solo turns by the full band of eight players. Beglarian’s Machaut in the Age of Motown (2005) was pretty contemporary stuff, a weave of chromatic harmonies in its essentially bluesy lines. Mr. Daugherty’s Walk the Walk, Mr. Rumain’s I Never Meant to hurt You (both 2005), and Scott McAllister’s Black Dog (2002) had relatively simpler ideas and could be enjoyed as mood music. But the percussive elements in Randolph Coleman’s dig it (1993) and Richard Adams’ West Grand Boulevard (2005) were just as fresh in style and metropolitan in feel as anything you’ll hear today at the Blue Note or any top New York night spot. The former is a sort of dance of commerce, and the street tribute a beautifully crafted work with a clocklike opening and rhythmic elements that just explode into wild, rush-hour turmoil. Too bad that the unremitting bugaboo of ours, namely, the turning off of lights in the audience, just wouldn’t allow us to interpret our scribbles and report anything but the names of Fred Hersch and Tom Knific. But we can tell you that the whole celebration ended on a head-bobbing upbeat note with Joe Hunter’s Lock It in your Pocket (2005), making this master of Motown our choice for champ of the evening. Opus 21, conceived and managed by the engagingly youthful Richard Adams, lived up to its motto that “great music is without boundaries,” and, may we add, that the new wave known as crossover is definitely here to stay.

From south of the border comes a new face at the keyboard, one Patricia Garcia Torres making her New York debut (Weill Recital Hall, Nov. 20). This comely senora plays with a fine balance of grace and strength, perfect for making Prokofiev’s First Sonata or Debussy’s L’Isle joyeuse sound like the genuine classics they are. The one very contemporary piece she handled with complete mastery was Sonata II by Federico Ibarra. One sensed an urgency in the composer’s lines, not unlike that of Chopin’s “Revolutionary” Etude, though one cannot claim the right to attribute the same sentiments to both composers. Sra. Torres embraced the work as if it had some special meaning for her. All of the selections on this mostly classical program were treated with the individuality of character that an exceptional pianist will discern by judging the composer’s intentions more than just the notes.