Preview/Contest: New Creations Festival

New Creations Festival

Arcadiac, Saturday March 2, 2013; Sparkler, Thursday, March 7, 2013; A Toronto Symphony, Saturday, March 9, 2013

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra's New Creations Festival is the city's largest New Music spectacle — a chance to see some innovative musical ideas tackled by a full-sized ensemble in the grand canvas that is Roy Thomson Hall. More than celebrating a particular compositional school, this year's edition is a full-on embrace of technology.

That's largely because this year's special guest and featured composer is Tod Machover, Professor of Music and Media at MIT, whose work encompasses both traditional composition and technological innovation. He's spent decades thinking about performance and interactivity — his "hyperinstruments" paved the way for the Guitar Hero video games.

The first two concerts in the festival will feature some of his shorter works, but the most-anticipated is undoubtedly the première (on March 9th) of his newly-commissioned A Toronto Symphony, subtitled as a "Concerto for Composer and City". Part of the anticipation comes from the fact that no one's sure how this is going to hash out, given Machover's rather unique crowdsourcing methods, where "collaboration took place by blog and e-mail, via Skype and smartphone, using audio and video recording and streaming."

(In fact, I'll note tangentially, we can only hope that the contribution by Maylee Todd, recorded at last summer's ALL CAPS festival, made the cut in some manner. I can attest that it was sent to the right people!)

Listen! Maylee Todd - Hit Me 53 Times

Meanwhile, the first concert also heralds the return of Mason Bates, whose electronica-tinged compositions graced new Creations a couple years ago, but the most exciting selection comes from Nicole Lizée, whose "Arcadiac" provides the night's title. Lizée has arranged for and played with The Besnard Lakes, and her own work includes some material that you might file on the same shelf as your Sea and Cake records — she can also sometimes be found playing the turntable parts in performances of her own compositions. Here, however, the TSO will be playing her piece written for "orchestra and 1970s/1980s arcade games" — the outcome truly warms my 8-bit heart. (Check it out here).

Sparkler, the festival's second concert on Thursday, March 7, contains less technological wonderment — and is probably going the most-anticipated for most of this blog's readers, as it features the première of Owen Pallett's Violin Concerto. Well-known for his solo work — as Final Fantasy as well as under his own name — with his classical training Pallett has long been a go-to guy for indie rockers looking for string arrangements, and it will surely be a thrill to see him painting with an orchestra-sized canvas. Although the violin will be handled here by Pekka Kuusisto, I have no doubt that the author's voice will shine through — the fact that Pallett has indicated that the piece is inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space" implies it should fit right into the rest of his oeuvre.

Also on the bill that night is Kryštof Mařatka's Vábení. Mařatka doesn't seem to have much of a social media presence, and most of the material about him seems to be in Czech, but given this piece attempts to synthesize "sonorities of the musical instruments of the Paleolithic age [and] the birth of human language and of the earliest vocal expressions", I guess that's a bit beside the point. That this requires two separate choirs implies that this is going to be something of a spectacle.

TICKETS + MORE INFO

The New Creations website has all you need to know about the festival, including program notes on all the pieces. The TSO remains committed to making these events more affordable than the typical night at the symphony, so you can grab $20 tickets for all of the shows here. (promo code = "NEW") — or those 35 or under can get an even sweeter 2-for-1 deal (2 tickets for $14) until tomorrow afternoon (March 27th at 5 p.m.) through the tsoundcheck program.

CONTEST

Or... you could go for free! Thanks to the good people at the TSO, I am giving away a pair of tickets to Sparkler, featuring Owen Pallett's Violin Concerto. [Roy Thomson Hall, Thursday, March 7 at 8:00PM ]

To enter, shoot me an email to mechanicalforestsound@gmail.com, with "new creations" in the title and your name in the body. I'll randomly draw a winner on Tuesday, March 5th.

Festival: TSO's New Creations Festival (Saturday)

Toronto Symphony Orchestra's New Creations Festival: "Electronica Meets Orchestra"

Roy Thompson Hall. Saturday, March 5, 2011

This is an an expansion of my earlier notes which appeared here.

Once again, the festival's programming at Roy Thompson extended beyond the main concert, and I arrived early enough to hear some of the pre-show lobby performance by the Gryphon Trio, which sounded a bit like a mildly abrasive 'moderne' sort of chamber music — a stately-but-drunken mix of Bartók and "Rock of Ages".

That was curiously enjoyable, but I also had another tangential musical adventure in mind, so I took care to settle into my seat with enough time to listen to the orchestra warming up. I've always loved that random drift, the soundquilt of overlapping melodic fragments, from even before I knew anything about "ambient" or abstract music of any kind. It's actually one of my favourite things about going to the symphony.¹

The programme proper began with Gary Kulesha's Torque, which was simpatico with the later City Noir — and also paralleled the previous show's Short Ride in a Fast Machine with the brisk invocation of a sleek car ride. But Kulesha's piece, though designed as something sort and punchy to begin shows with a burst of energy, employed more of a atmospheric cinematic vocabulary than Short Ride.

And then on to the main event — Mason Bates' Liquid Interface. This night's title ("Electronica Meets Orchestra") was an interesting demonstration of the pace at which "popular" forms filter up into the high culture, and enough to make me wonder if, by the time they reach this level, things might have already moved on at ground level. Although it's not particularly my realm, "electronica", as a word or concept, has a bit of a turn-of-the-century whiff to it, coming off (in the accelerated world of pop forms) as a bit of a quaint attempt to create a marketable umbrella term for what is really a diverse rage of subgenres.

It also offers the promise of one of my least-favourite live tropes — the image of the lone figure behind a laptop, possibly pressing keys to control the music in vague and unfathomable ways — or just updating their twitter for all the audience might know. So, watching Bates take his spot in the orchestra, "playing" his laptop and drumpad, I was curious to see how everything here was going to meld.

As the title implies, Liquid Interface was a sonic exploration of various states of water, from icebergs sliding into the sea to the gentle patter of falling droplets to the overwhelming power of a gale. Bates' contributions were mostly percussive, and surrounded by the lushness of the orchestra, the beats sounded somewhat tinny and boxy. It's also interesting to ponder on whether the metronomic regularity that the programmed beats enforced on the orchestra² let the ensemble "breathe" a little less than they might have otherwise.

The various movements went in a few interesting directions and Bates also provided a lot of scene-setting sound effects, from the drip-drop rain patterns to the white noise of wind. There was one jazzy section that made this feel more akin to the night's next piece than I was expecting — but also a bit like a "pops" piece as well. On the whole, I wasn't particularly overwhelmed — I wouldn't say either half of the style collision did much to elevate the other.

Then again, the reason I was chuffed for this show came from the next selection, John Adams' City Noir. It was introduced by Adams as a sort of theoretical film noir soundtrack, unrestrained by film music's need to give way to dialogue — "you just get going, and you have to stop," he said of his frustrations with music cues.

The piece also functions as a tribute to Los Angeles, playing itself in its seedy, after-hours, dark-side-of-Hollywood guise. As such, the music did a good job of building up a tense texture of implied threats of violence alongside hints of glamour. Because of that pre-existing cinematic language, it was very vivid, and musically, there were homages to bebop and Ellington brushing shoulders against rushing car-chase tempos and moments of stillness like a foggy night in a desperate harbourtown.

By that measure, this was great fun to listen to, and a smashing success, right up to the bombasto ending. I don't know if this was pushing the envelope forward, technically speaking, like Adams' Harmonielehre (performed at the festival's previous show), but it was interesting as hell.

The night concluded with an after-show lobby party, featuring Mason Bates switching personas to spin some discs as DJ Masonic — another lively touch even if it's not my sort of thing. And anyway, wrapping up early-ish meant that I could rush off to another show to complete my evening.

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¹ I ask this in all seriousness: has anyone ever released an album just of orchestras warming up? If you had a bunch of source material and the sensibility to edit it, you could make something deliciously woozy.

² It's worth noting that John Adams conducted not only his own work, but Liquid Interface as well, wearing a click track in his ear for the latter. I have no particular insight, but it would be interesting to hear whether that drove any change is his approach and how he guided the orchestra.