Yarn/Wire yarnwire.org “...hypnotic...” – Wall St. Journal "...compelling...Players Yarn/Wire - Ian Antonio and Russell Greenberg (percussion, pump organ), Laura Barger and Ning Yu (piano) - give a pungent performance, full of drama and unrest." - The Wire (review of the Negotiation of Context) "fearless" / "restlessly curious" / "spellbinding virtuosity" / "spare, strange, and very, very new" - TimeOut New York "Metal pipes rapped with soft mallets rang like church bells and pinged like flagpoles; microphones waved to and fro made the sounds wobble and pulse. Gongs — two hidden offstage and two suspended from the ceiling — murmured and roared, saturating the resonant room." - New York Times
Review: A Composer Inspired by Quarksand ChromosomesBy CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM MARCH 6, 2017
When a composer announces that her work is inspired by genetics, atomic particles,Möbius strips and the theoretical writings of Roland Barthes, you’d be forgiven forexpecting thorny music. Perhaps it makes sense, then, that what was billed as thefirst substantial concert in America devoted to Misato Mochizuki, a Japanesecomposer who is based in Paris and draws on a wide and cerebral range ofinfluences, took place at Columbia University.
But Thursday’s program at the Miller Theater, part of the Composer Portraitsseries, revealed music of sometimes startling sensuality wedded to the kind ofstructural clarity that can help a first-time listener make sense of things — withoutthe need for voluminous program notes or an advanced degree in biophysics.
Of course, difficulty in music is subjective. But what seemed to make Thursday’sconcert accessible was the strong presence of two elements: repetition and ritual.
The concert opened with a visually mesmerizing percussion solo, “Quark —Intermezzi III.” It began with the percussionist Russell Greenberg walking onto thedarkened stage swinging a buzzing bow, an instrument consisting of rubber bandsstretched over a wooden frame that creates a droning hum when it’s rotated, lasso-like, above the player’s head. Versions of it have been used in sacred rites fromancient Greece to aboriginal Australia, and it is easy to see how its eerie, moaningsound might be used to mediate between the world of physical objects and thespiritual realm.
“Quark” proceeds in brightly colored fragments that establish a given sonictexture before introducing a newcomer sound that, by turns, destabilizes or enrichesit. If the strange, ritualistic-seeming gestures performed by Mr. Greenberg helpedguide the listener’s eye, the repetition of musical elements helped draw the ear tomoments of change that could be experienced as intrusion or diversion — orrevelation.
Similar principles guided “Moebius-Ring” for solo piano (with the expressiveNing Yu as soloist); the rhapsodic “Au bleu bois” for solo oboe (the elegant JamesAustin Smith); and “Terres rouges” for string quartet, performed by the excellentJACK Quartet. In the squeaks, whistles and wilting pitches of “Terres rouges,” awork that makes imaginative use of extended technique, there were also hints ofcartoon humor and an affinity for pop music — another of Ms. Mochizuki’s diverseinfluences.
The evening ended with a dynamic performance of “Le monde des ronds et descarrés” by Yarn/Wire, an ensemble comprising Mr. Greenberg and Ms. Yu, as well asthe pianist Laura Barger and the percussionist Ian Antonio. Here, ritual was at theforefront again, with a carefully choreographed opening in which the twopercussionists, walking through the auditorium, dispensed resonant bell pings likescent. When the two pianists joined in, they did so first in unison, resulting in abright and warm sound.
Soon, the sense of community turned adversarial, as the players engaged inrhythmic competition. By the end, all had congregated at a single drum kit at thefront of the stage, whacking out hard-driving patterns in a scene that seemed tospeak simultaneously of competition and cohesion.
Misato Mochizuki Performed at the Miller Theater at Columbia University
A version of this review appears in print on March 7, 2017, on Page C2 of the New York edition with theheadline: A Composer Inspired by Quarks and Chromosomes.
Review: Yarn/Wire Plucks and Strikes,Rubs and StrumsBy CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM MAY 12, 2016
Concerts by the ensemble Yarn/Wire typically come with a ton of baggage. Thegroup is made up of two pianists, Laura Barger and Ning Yu, and two percussionists,Ian Antonio and Russell Greenberg, and when they perform, the stage is normallycluttered with instruments.
But on Wednesday at the Miller Theater at Columbia University, Yarn/Wirepresented the premiere of “Material” by Michael Gordon, who came up with anuncommonly elegant and visually mesmerizing arrangement: a single piano, played,plucked, strummed and struck by eight hands.
The director and designer Jim Findlay built a special set for the performance,with two tiers of seats encircling a nine-foot Steinway on a stage blocked off from theauditorium by dark curtains. The instrument’s lid had been removed, baring itsdignified innards — the gold-toned cast-iron harp with sections of strings fanningout like veins — studded with tiny paper markers. In two corners of the space, metalpipes hung suspended from the ceiling.
“Material” is part of a series of recent works by Mr. Gordon — among them“Timber,” played on six planks of wood called simantras, and “Rushes,” for sevenbassoons — that use acoustic instruments in a way that sounds uncannily likeelectronic music. Here, streams of rapid, percussive notes came together in delicate,complex structures that seemed to float in space. Sometimes one player rubbed afinger along the length of the string while another caused it to vibrate, creating
psychedelic arcs of resonance. In one section, Ms. Yu drew birdlike chirps from thehigh register of the piano by running a guitar pick over the strings.
Even with the Post-it notes offering guidance, the precision with which Mr.Antonio and Mr. Greenberg drew harmonic patterns from the dense web of stringswas dazzling. The variety of colors and textures on offer was also impressive. Thepiece, which lasts a little more than an hour, consists of blocklike sections that eachpossess a distinct character and shade.
In a program note, Mr. Gordon explained that he was inspired by theconstruction noise outside his home in TriBeCa. In “Material,” the insistentrepetition and metallic twang of those sounds are transformed into music ofmysterious theatricality. The tubular bells, chimed only sparsely, added to theceremonial feel. As did a passage in which Ms. Yu, wielding a pair of cymbals,solemnly approached certain audience members, extending them close to their earsas if to anoint them with their resonance.
Correction: May 17, 2016 A music review on Friday about the ensemble Yarn/Wire, at Miller Theater at ColumbiaUniversity, misstated the surname of one of the group’s pianists at one point. As thereview correctly noted elsewhere, the pianist, Ning Yu, is Ms. Yu, not Ms. Ying.A version of this review appears in print on May 13, 2016, on Page C12 of the New York edition with theheadline: Plucking and Striking, Rubbing and Strumming.
Yarn/Wire at ISSUE Project Room. Photo by Lou Bunk.
MAILINGLIST
Music April 6th, 2016
Masters of Their Own Realityby George Grella
Which came first, the string quartet or the String Quartet?There’s semantic and historical interest in the answer. It’s fairto say that the String Quartet, as a compositional genre, beganwith Haydn. Though he didn’t write the first stand-alone piecefor two solo violins, viola, and cello (that appears to have been Haydn’s older Viennese contemporary GeorgChristoph Wagenseil), he did institute it as a form and create some of its most enduring works. The practiceof the four strings playing together was not new in the 18th century. It was common for string orchestraworks to be played with just one musician per part (the separate notational line for the contrabass did notcome into widespread practice until the 19th century), and composers in the Baroque era wrote manypieces that can be seen as proto-string quartets: chamber sonatas for the four strings for which theharpsichord was optional.
Haydn himself didn’t set out with the concept of writing string quartet pieces. The composer, a violinist,would often play chamber music at the castle of the Baron Carl Joseph Edler von Fürnberg, in an ensemblewith the Baron’s priest and steward, plus a cellist. The Baron asked Haydn to write some new music thatthe group could play. And so the String Quartet began, like so many other enduring breakthroughs, out ofcircumstance and accident.
This matters because compositional forms and structures are inextricably intertwined with the instrumentsand ensembles for which they are written. Baroque counterpoint is to a substantial extent an exploration oftuning and keyboard technology, symphonies take advantage of the number of instruments in theorchestra, and the new virtuosity and complexity of 20th-century music is a story of the discovery of newinstrumental techniques.
And that’s why the ensemble Yarn/Wire matters. It is one of a number of accomplished new music groupson the contemporary scene, and it’s made up of the unique instrumentation of two pianists (Laura Bargerand Ning Yu) and two percussionists (Ian Antonio and Russell Greenberg). Before Yarn/Wire, there werethree notable compositions for this grouping: Bartók’s Sonata for 2 Pianos and Percussion, Berio’s Linea,and Crumb’s Music for a Summer Evening (Makrokosmos III). After nine years (the ensemble is
celebrating its tenth anniversary this 2015 – 16 season), its repertoire list approached seventy pieces,almost sixty of which were written in the 21st century, with thirty-nine (as of this writing) eithercommissioned by or composed expressly for Yarn/Wire. By existing and playing, Yarn/Wire is creating thetwo pianos/percussion genre in classical music.
This all started—as Greenberg told me in an interview at the ensemble’s rehearsal studio—at Stony BrookUniversity, where Barger, Antonio, and Greenberg were in graduate school. Along with pianist DanielSchlosberg (Yu joined in 2011), they began playing the Bartók, Berio, and Crumb pieces, while alsoexploring Steve Reich’s works for differing instrumentation. Playing led to further interest, then to publicperformances; praxis led to breakthroughs, and at some point an ensemble (and a genre) was born.
Since there was so little music actually available, the members went about looking for composers whowould like to write for them. Part of that process was educating composers as to just what they could dowith the unusual instrumentation. Composers learn some orchestration as a matter of course, but it takesspecific study with musicians to not only learn the subtle specifics of what each instrument can do, but themost effective way to notate those instructions. The array of percussion instruments that surrounds themusicians in their studio is a testament to just how many details there are to cover. Yu spoke of how thegroup spent time with younger composers, showing them the possibilities, and even mentioned working ona piece with an experienced composer who came into the studio and with almost every instrument at handwanted to hear, “How does that sound when you hit it like this?”
At ten years, this collaborative process is in full flower. The bloom burst with the group’s residency atISSUE Project Room, in 2012. Those not fortunate enough to catch that series of performances of new andcommissioned work can catch up with Yarn/Wire’s three volumes of Currents recordings, which capturedmusic performed in those concerts (yarnwire.bandcamp.com/music).
The recordings are a mix of the live ISSUE events and studio recordings, but all of them come together asboth a tidy and impressive survey of contemporary music and also as an ongoing practice and process:substantial windows into the the new musical possibilities that Yarn/Wire is both promoting andpioneering.
The three volumes are uniformly fascinating and exciting, with playing that is precise and full of purpose.They make for one of the outstanding new music releases of the past few years, and show Yarn/Wire at itsbest.
They also show why Yarn/Wire matters. Considered as a percussion ensemble—and the piano is fairly seenas a percussion instrument—and viewing the landscape of contemporary music, there are numerouspercussion ensembles—Sō Percussion, Mantra Percussion, Iktus, Red Fish Blue Fish—playing what is nowthe enormous repertoire of 20th-and 21st-century percussion music: Xenakis, Cage, Reich, and more. Loudand quiet, striking objects in time, producing complex timbres, laying out repetitive processes, these arecommonplace features (welcomely so) of the contemporary music scene.
Reich’s Marimba Phase is on the Yarn/Wire repertoire list, but it really doesn’t indicate what the ensembleplays or where it’s going. The three Currents volumes have the playful, digital age impressionism of
Thomas Meadowcroft’s Walkman Antiquarian; Christopher Trapani’s tense, mysterious, microtonalWriting Against Time; Ann Cleare’s gnashing I should live in wires for leaving you behind; the CarlStalling-like electronic transformations in Sam Pluta’s Seven Systems; and Mark Fell’s pulsating core, self,oscillation, not avant-garde dance music but dance music for the avant-garde.
This music, together with a new piece, Mind is Moving . . . , by Chiyoko Szlavnics, which the group playedat National Sawdust in December, and the world premieres of Alex Mincek’s Images of Duration (Inhomage to Ellsworth Kelly) and Torrent (with the Mivos Quartet), which it played at Mincek’s FebruaryComposer Portrait concert at Miller Theatre, stands alone as a new body of work in the classical tradition.Working with Yarn/Wire, composers have clearly taken advantage of the musicians’ skills and thepossibilities of combining the complex timbres of percussion instruments with the harmonies andsustained notes (not to mention extended techniques) of the piano. Particularly exciting is that MichaelGordon is preparing an evening-length work for them, Material. Yarn/Wire will play the world premiere atMiller on May 11, for Gordon’s Composer Portrait.
While all of this music is in an array of styles, it is remarkable how much of the music uses silence and wide,empty spaces. The fundamental action in the group’s playing is that someone is striking something—maybea drum head with a stick, or a piano key with a finger (and in turn a hammer a string). The fundamentalresult of that action is attack and decay, exactly like the use of percussion instruments in the commonpractice period of classical music. Yarn/Wire can play pulse-grid minimalism as well as any othercontemporary group, and they have, but the music they are helping create is in this curious way moreclassical, more traditional. Yarn/Wire has somehow stripped away decades of accepted practice for howpercussion music is supposed to go—repetitive and beat heavy—and, by starting with the basics, opened upan entirely new path for composers.
This seems to implicitly suit them, as if they are exercising unspoken values every time they work with acomposer. Talking about the long tradition of classical music, Antonio said he would like to somedayarrange Stravinsky’s Petrushka for the group, while Barger added that she would love to do TheNutcracker. It’s the next best thing to asking Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky for some new music.
CONTRIBUTOR
George Grella
GEORGE GRELLA is the Rail’s music editor.
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MUSIC
Review: Yarn/Wire Mesmerizes at LincolnCenter FestivalBy CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM JULY 16, 2015
Over the course of music history composers have emphasized different aspectsof music: melody, for instance, or harmony or timbre. On Wednesday evening,the Lincoln Center Festival offered a mesmerizing concert of new music thatexplored resonance as a central expressive device. The concert, at the StanleyH. Kaplan Penthouse, featured Yarn/Wire, an ensemble made up of twopercussionists and two pianists. They presented three world premieres byTristan Murail, Misato Mochizuki and Raphaël Cendo, who all found differentways to luxuriate in the sound-clouds this combination of instruments canproduce.
Mr. Murail’s “Travel Notes” sounded like gently psychedelic Messiaen,Ms. Mochizuki’s “Le monde des ronds et des carrés” investigated the benignand oppressive aspects of rituals, and Mr. Cendo’s “Direct Action” assaultedthe listener with a riotous excess of activity.
But what the works had in common was an obsession with the behavior ofsound after a given note has been produced. In these richly textured pieces,the beauty lay in observing the resonance trails of notes, which might taper offsmoothly or oscillate nervously, coo contentedly or expire with a soft moan.
Some of these phenomena were the product of a given percussion
instrument being struck — or rubbed or bowed — in a certain way. In “DirectAction,” a sweep of a soft mallet over a suspended metal sheet produced aheaving groan; a bow pulled along the bars of what looked like an open-toppedbird cage could sound uncannily choral. Ms. Mochizuki added a spatialdimension when she had the two percussionists, Ian Antonio and RussellGreenberg, move through the room rubbing the rims of prayer bowls so thatthe resulting golden hum trailed through space like incense.
The two grand pianos, freed of their covers, did much to shelter andextend these sounds merely by their presence. With their metal frames andresponsive metal strings, the pianos acted like acoustic caldrons in which aclangorous chord, such as one produced by all four players in “Travel Notes,”could brew intoxicating overtones.
But the two pianists, Laura Barger and Ning Yu, were far from passiveparticipants. In “Travel Notes,” Mr. Murail gave them luscious, Lisztianpassages. In one central section of “Le monde des ronds et des carrés,” wherethe initial meditative mood gives way to restrictive patterns, they playedrepeated scales that seemed to inchworm their way up the keyboards in what,by a trick of the ear, seemed like a continuous, futile ascent. The resonantbandwidth of the music also pulled back here to a more oily and dense sound.
Ms. Mochizuki’s work ended with all four musicians rapping out a fast-driving and complex pattern on a drum kit stationed at the front of the stage –the only time in this percussion-heavy recital that rhythm was king.
Correction: July 18, 2015 A music review on Friday about a Lincoln Center Festival concert ofnew music, at the Stanley H. Kaplan playhouse, misidentified thepiece that ended with all four musicians playing on a drum kit. Itwas Misato Mochizuki’s “Le monde des ronds et des carrés,” notRaphaël Cendo’s “Direct Action.”
The Lincoln Center Festival continues through Aug. 2; lincolncenterfestival.org
A version of this review appears in print on July 17, 2015, on page C3 of the New York edition
Yarn/Wire’s concert on Tuesday ended without Yarn/Wire. It speaks to thisunusual, insightful ensemble’s self-effacing focus on composers and theirmusic that after playing Mark Fell’s “core, self, oscillation,” the four members— two pianists and two percussionists, celebrating the start of their 10thseason together — left the stage and listened along with the audience to anelectronic version of the same piece.
While rigorous in conception, the austere yet sensual “core, self,oscillation” nevertheless surprised. At the start, somber piano chords,distantly spaced, underlay an uncertain rhythm played on shallow framedrums.
In the basement of Artists Space Books & Talks in TriBeCa — a regularhost for presentations by Issue Project Room, a frequent Yarn/Wirecollaborator, while its home in Downtown Brooklyn is renovated — each tap offingers on the skin of the drum registered with tactile immediacy. Both chordsand drum beats brightened, and then harsh mallet strikes on onepercussionist’s drum found a softer, gentler echo on the other’s.
Vigorously attacking a piece of pipe, the percussionists occasionally held itso that loud clanging muted to duller clunks. Gongs laid flat on tables in the
final section were vibrated to a subdued shimmer. In the electronic version,the chords were an ambient whisper; the percussion was milder and lessritualistic. Live, the work felt more ambiguous and less structured: Theperformances provided two different flavors of thrill.
Sam Pluta’s “Seven” involved a similar alternation of subdued and violentmoments. A quiet, glistening bell-like beginning quickly fell down a rabbit holeof crashing, jerky activity, marked by nature sounds played over loudspeakersand the weird, wheezy tone of two robotically stimulated snare drums placedamong the audience.
An increasingly insistent percussion duet was paired with an increasinglycataclysmic piano one, and then long runs of 16th notes in the pianos formed aflowing fabric for the jittery embroidery of uneven percussion rhythms. Muchof the music was anxious, but the writing had cool confidence.
The first piece on the program, David Bird’s “Mediums,” was the leastinteresting, pairing serene footage of New York City with a muddled mixture ofambient street noises and more mystical acoustic playing from the quartet. Butthe pianists Laura Barger and Ning Yu and the percussionists Ian Antonio andRussell Greenberg brought to all three works their characteristic combinationof precision and freedom.
A version of this review appears in print on October 1, 2015, on page C6 of the New York editionwith the headline: An Ensemble That’s Focused on Composers Offers Two Flavors of Thrill.
Three summers ago, ambling through what he calls a “westward-ho American visionquest,” Sufjan Stevens discovered the Pendleton Round-Up.
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Sufjan Stevens’s First Rodeo‘Round-Up’ Has Its World Premiere at BAM
A still from ‘Round-Up,’ a slow-motion video captured by filmmakers Aaron and Alex Craig. PHOTO: BAM
Jan. 19, 2015 7:22 p.m. ET
By STEVE DOLLAR
Fascinated by the century-old rodeo in eastern Oregon, the Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter immersed himself in its rituals.
“I felt like I was experiencing something that had been around for a long time, but I waseavesdropping on it as an outsider,” said Mr. Stevens, 39 years old.
The rodeo inspired his latest work for the stage, “Round-Up,” which makes its worldpremiere on Tuesday at Brooklyn Academy of Music.
The 75-minute performance, which runs through Jan. 25, pairs Mr. Stevens with theRidgewood, Queens-based chamber quartet Yarn/Wire, which consists of two pianistsand two percussionists. They create a hypnotic instrumental accompaniment to therodeo imagery, which is displayed in slow-motion video footage captured by filmmakersAaron and Alex Craig.
The show is different, though, than Mr. Stevens’s past BAM engagements, which includehis production of “The BQE” in 2007 and “Planetarium,” a celestial-themed 2013collaboration with composers Nico Muhly and Bryce Dessner.
“There’s no theatrical element at all,” said Mr. Stevens, sharing a table with Yarn/Wirein the lobby of BAM’s Harvey Theater following a recent rehearsal. “I want the focus tobe on the music and the film.”
Mr. Stevens’s paean to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway had sprawl and sweep. “It wasso much work, because I was having to grapple with this ugly urban expressway andextract something aesthetically redeeming from it, and I kept grappling with meaning,”he said.
In considering the rodeo, he wanted to simplify matters. “This is a little more restrainedand repetitive,” he said, adding that he avoided any sort of obvious musical themes orstyles.
No pedal steel guitars or campfire songs. “The music is way outside the tradition ofrodeo or any American western tradition,” Mr. Stevens said.
During rehearsals, Yarn/Wire keyboardists Laura Barger and Ning Yu played repeatingpatterns on their pianos. The percussionists, Ian Antonio and Russell Greenberg, stoodside-by-side, executing their own rhythms on twin vibraphones, which theymanipulated with bows during dreamlike passages.
Sitting adjacent,the Craigbrothersconcentrated onthe timing ofvideo sequencesflashing by on asmall monitor: aman grapplingwith a calf aboutto be roped; theintricatepatterns of aNative Americangarment; asurreal interludewith tinsel-
wigged hula-hoop girls.
“There’s a certain physicality to the repetitive nature of a lot of the movement,” said Mr.Antonio. “I find it really fun to get into a zone and concentrate on the sound and cyclicalrhythms.”
The music shifts through brief segments throughout its 75-minute course, eachreflecting a different rodeo activity.
“When you go to a rodeo, you’re seeing the same event over and over,” said Mr. Stevens,wearing a yellow baseball cap that read “Oregon.” “You see them do the steer roping, andthen they’ll do the calf roping, and then you see the buckaroos go out, over and overagain. If you look at the whole trajectory, it’s these repeating patterns of the same thing.”
Slowing down the action inthe video, he added, allowsviewers to focus on thesepatterns. “The way thehorse’s tail is flippingaround—if the music isemulating anything, it’s
that.”
Musician Sufjan Stevens in rehearsal. PHOTO: JASON ANDREW FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
‘‘The music is way outside the tradition of rodeo.’ ’
—musician Sufjan Stevens
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Yarn/Wire, which works with contemporary-music composers to expand the repertoirefor its dual piano-percussion ensemble, began meeting with Mr. Stevens last summer todevelop the project, which requires it to create the sonic impact of a much larger group.
“It’s fun to just make all that sound,” Ms. Barger said. “It feels like we’re a meta-instrument.”
Mr. Stevens, who had admired the way the outfit could move from more familiarchamber pieces to genre-busting commissions that reminded him of heavy metal, washaving fun feeling his way along with the musicians.
“We were talking about the gong today,” said Mr. Greenberg, eager to experiment withthe 34-inch tam-tam that was due to arrive for the next rehearsal. “We’ll see if it works.”
Mr. Stevens laughed. “Every show I do is ‘The Gong Show.’ ”
— “Round-Up” opens on Tuesday and runs through Sunday at the Brooklyn Academy ofMusic’s Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St.; 718-636-4100; bam.org.
http://nyti.ms/1y4hdFE
MUSIC | MUSIC REVIEW
Ripples of Muscle, Evoked Through Sound
Sufjan Stevens Brings the Rodeo to BAM
By JON PARELES JAN. 22, 2015
“Let ’er buck” is the slogan of the Pendleton Round-Up in Oregon, founded in 1910and now one of the world’s largest rodeos. Perhaps that brought out a contrarianside in the songwriter and composer Sufjan Stevens. His latest commission from theBrooklyn Academy of Music is “Round-Up,” a wordless, arty documentary with itsscore performed live for six nights at the BAM Harvey Theater, ending on Sunday.“Round-Up” was filmed in slow motion — 300 frames a second — and the musicdoesn’t buck; it’s steady and meditative, treating the rodeo as a ritual.
The music is performed by Mr. Stevens, on keyboards and electronics, andYarn/Wire, a contemporary chamber group of two pianists and two percussionists.Although one segment had a beat on drum and rattle, vaguely suggesting NativeAmerican music (the rodeo includes a Native American parade in traditionalcostumes) the score avoided Oregon’s local color for what might be BAM’s localcolor: minimalist contemplation. It was full of glimmering sounds — bowedvibraphone, pretty piano chords — with, now and then, something staticky orsprockety from Mr. Stevens’s electronics. For each segment — concentrating on onerodeo event, intercutting various competitors and performers — Mr. Stevens chose astrategy and stuck to it: a certain texture, a certain beat, perhaps with chromaticmeanderings, perhaps not. Calf roping got running, Bachian counterpoint, while asegment with a lone calf had Yarn/Wire singing a cappella harmonies.
The rodeo footage was filmed by Aaron and Alex Craig, brothers whosepartnership, We Are Films, has made commercials, documentaries and indie-rockvideos. They shot close-ups at the Pendleton Round-Up, sometimes filling the screenwith just an animal’s torso or part of a face. What was split-second action in realtime becomes a leisurely study of human and animal, skill and wildness, persistenceand brawn; the bull-riding and calf-roping sequences might please Eadweard
Muybridge with their anatomical detail. The bull-riding section had the mostdramatic music: dark, swelling minor chords building to cymbal crashes. The imageswere also telling; the bulls were waves of ominous muscle.
For Mr. Stevens, “Round-Up” is the companion piece and inverse to a previousmultimedia commission by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, “BQE”; rural instead ofurban, West Coast instead of East Coast. What they have in common, mostly, is hulahoops, which were onstage in “BQE”; in “Round-Up,” the camera lingers over hulahoop performances at the rodeo, twirled (very slowly) by women with lots of tinsel.
It was, in the end, a pleasant but not revelatory performance. Perhaps it was thepianos-and-percussion lineup, but far too much of the music was secondhand SteveReich, with its unswerving plink. As credits rolled at the end, Mr. Stevens playedacoustic guitar and sang, which is what he does on most of his albums. The wordswere about “wild horses” and “wild forces” — a hint of what the film and its scoremight have reckoned with more directly.A version of this review appears in print on January 23, 2015, on page C2 of the New York edition with theheadline: Ripples of Muscle, Evoked Through Sound.
3/25/12 Yarn/Wire Plays Percussion and Piano at Issue Project Room - NYTimes.com
A version of this review appeared in print on March 26, 2012, on page C3 of the New York edition with the headline: BellTones Are Ringing in Percussion and Piano Program.
a thin filament, with screws jangling among them.
Metal pipes rapped with soft mallets rang like church bells and pinged like flagpoles;microphones waved to and fro made the sounds wobble and pulse. Gongs — two hiddenoffstage and two suspended from the ceiling — murmured and roared, saturating theresonant room. Mr. Davis shepherded balances from a console behind the audience.
Where he provided an exacting score, Mr. Swanson, for his “Eliminated Artist.” recordedYarn/Wire improvising during rehearsals, then arranged a sequence of gestures andpatterns for the quartet to reproduce. During the performance, stationed amid theaudience at a table littered with tape decks and electronic effects, Mr. Swanson injecteddistorted rehearsal fragments and other sounds, and swirled the mix throughout the spacewith loudspeakers.
Since Mr. Davis’s piece emphasized metallic sounds, here Mr. Antonio and Mr. Greenbergfocused on wood and skin. Tranquil passages evoked frogs and insects peeping at twilight;at the work’s roiling peak, battered wooden planks were monkeys howling in a monsoon.True to the title, conventional instrumental roles were eliminated; Mr. Antonio and Mr.Greenberg tapped chromatic melodies on Rototoms (tunable drums), and plucked elegiacfinal notes on chords stretched across bass drums.
Yarn/Wire continues its residency on April 28 at the Issue Project Room, 110 LivingstonStreet, downtown Brooklyn; (718) 330-0313, issueprojectroom.org.
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