Sredni Vashtar and Friends

I can’t thank my thirty-odd musicians enough for making this concert the wonderful event that it was. Special kudos for some of the last-minute magic: violinist Noemy Gagnon-Lafrenais was sight-reading her part, having stepped in for an ailing colleague; Brian Poedy provided us with truly spectacular lighting design that we had never found time to rehearse in the hall.

We’ve received a very complimentary write-up in the Civic Center Blog.

Sredni Vashtar and Friends: October 30, 2011

Rehearsals started this week for the second production of Sredni Vashtar, coming to the San Francisco Conservatory’s Concert Hall on October 30 at 8 pm. In addition to the opera, we'll be hearing the premiere of the woodwind quintet version of Figments, and are very fortunate to have SF Symphony principals Jonathan Vinocour and Robin Sutherland joining us for the premiere of the Rhapsody for Viola and Piano. The concert starts with Contraption No. 1 for the Marantz Vorsetzer, and Keisuke Nakagoshi will once again be the pianist in the concluding work, Concertino for Piano and Percussion.

There's more information at srednivashtar.com (pictured above), including musician bios and the full text of Saki’s short story, “Sredni Vashtar.” A number of talented photographers have visited us during rehearsals; you can see the Vashtar Orchestra in several photo albums on Facebook: www.facebook.com/srednivashtaropera.

Do join us on October 30th for some fantastic performances!

SFCM Graduate Recital: August 27, 2011

I’d had grand plans for a production of Sredni at my summer recital, and when this couldn't come to pass — most of the orchestra musicians were busy with festivals — I unfortunately didn’t invest much energy in promoting the scaled-down event that took place on August 27 in the Conservatory’s Recital Hall. Unfortunate because this wasn’t just (as I’d imagined) a sort of run-through for upcoming October recital, but an intimate sort of event that radiated with the good will of both the performers and the audience. After the somewhat spooky debut of the Vorsetzer piece, Contraption No. 1 (which launched without warning on a darkened stage), Justin Houchin gave a passionate rendition of the Guitar Suite, a work which he developed with me as part of the SFCM Guitar Project. Then there was a vocal-piano version of Sredni Vashtar, with Sara Couden singing the role for the first time. Kevin Korth was at the piano, and while I’d had but one coaching session with the pair, they clearly picked up on every humorous or rhetorical flourish in the score and brought the piece to life through a dramatic engagement with the material and an exquisite sense of timing.

The concert ended with the Concerto for Piano and Percussion; SFCM-alumnus Keisuke Nakagoshi was the soloist. Recalling some of Keisuke’s Facebook posts regarding his love for Bill Evans' playing, I knew he’d be well-suited for this work, which blends a modern jazz vocabulary with a kind of parody of early 20th century modernist styles. Keisuke pulled through with flying colors — he owned the music and added much to it in his performance, including a lengthy improvised cadenza. The SFCM percussion ensemble, which premiered this work in December 2010, brought it back with renewed force and accuracy.

Once again, I’d like to thank all the musicians who participated as well as the warmly-encouraging audience.

The Mighty Marantz Vorsetzer

The vaguely predatory device on the left in the photo above is a Marantz Pianocorder Vorsetzer. The Vorsetzer (German, literally, “sits in front of”) has existed in one form or another since the end of the 19th century; it’s a device that can play a piano. The technologies employed are similar to those used in player pianos; the difference is that the playing mechanism is in an external unit with mechanical “fingers.” Thus the Vorsetzer will play any piano it can be rolled up to.

It just happens that I’m in possession of one of these; it was purchased by my parents in the 1980s, and has been dormant for at least two decades. I’ve had it shipped to me in San Francisco, and with the help of the SFCM Electronic Music Department — in particular Will Clark — it’s been reanimated. The purpose of this adventure, as the reader may have surmised, is to write music for the beast.

The music part is easy. Getting the Vorsetzer to play a piece is a little more challenging. It is a (early) digital device, so it doesn’t use a traditional piano roll but rather stores its musical data on cassette tapes. Fortunately, I don’t have to encode my music onto a cassette in an arcane 1970s digital data format; an enterprising engineer named Mark Fontana has written conversion software that allows one to feed the Vorsetzer MIDI data. So I'm now at work on a piece — written in a MIDI sequencer – that will be realized by the Vorsetzer at my Graduate Recital in August. While titles don’t usually come to me until after a work is written, the nature of this endeavor suggests that Contraption would sum things up nicely.