Helix provides energetic advocacy for a rich variety of youthful composers
The HELIX! New Music Ensemble, whose home base is Rutgers University, is committed to the music of today. Of the ten works performed Sunday evening at Le Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village, six were world premieres. There were pieces by established composers, including Anne Cawrse, Viet Cuong, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, but also exciting ones from new kids on the block, all born in this century, who are honing their craft at Rutgers.
Conducting duties were divided among Tomás García, Nathan Sawyer, and Helix’s director, Kynan Johns, all of whom led the chamber orchestra with equal precision and commitment. García, who was recently appointed assistant conductor of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, frequently guest-conducts at Rutgers. Sawyer is working on a doctorate in orchestral conducting at Rutgers with Johns.
Calvin Bouch and Arya Jeraled aren’t even old enough to buy a drink at Le Poisson Rouge, an underground space that does double duty as a concert venue and nightclub. Not being 21, however, is no bar to talent. Bouch composed As Each Hour Passes for Helix in just a few weeks. He states that this work encapsulates the piece’s birth pangs, which progressed in fits and starts and ended with a flourish. It’s a big, exciting piece full of energy and contrasts, fueled by Bouch’s impressive command of orchestral color and rhythm.
As a composer and a saxophonist, Jeraled straddles classical and jazz. In his new piece, moments, the jazz comes tinged with funk. It’s no surprise that there is a great saxophone solo. Jeraled’s command of mood and style was displayed in big, bluesy moments to his fresh take on what sounded a lot like spy-thriller music.
Leif Haley, born at the turn of this century, is currently pursuing his PhD in composition at Rutgers, whose music has been performed on both sides of the Atlantic. Peace of Advice was originally conceived for a smaller six-instrument ensemble, but Haley reworked it for chamber orchestra for this concert. As the title suggests, its seven brief movements are uplifting motivational pieces that flow uninterrupted with warmth and beauty, enriched by expressive instrumental solos.
The three other composers whose works were premiered were all born in the Seventies. Alex Staten is a Texas-based writer, composer, percussionist, and photographer. In Rant of the Meek, he channeled protest in outbursts of biting dissonance, great plodding brass outbursts, and sinewy melodies, which dissipated in a spirit of calm.
New York-based pianist and celebrated composer Alon Nechushtan is a PhD candidate at Rutgers in music theory and composition. As a pianist, he has performed with many jazz greats. He describes his Ballet Méchanique as a mash of sounds coming out of a broken juke box, that is tuned to an imaginary ballet music program playing on the radio. It’s a big, wild, wonderful, joyous work in which Helix reveled.
Gregg Kallor is Helix’s pianist, as well as a successful composer in his own right. For this concert, he orchestrated the final movement of Some Not Too Distant Tomorrow, his suite for piano and string quartet. The quartet takes its name from the same passage of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. Some Not Too Distant is a stunningly beautiful, gentle string of melodies that unfold in shimmering waves of light, transparent sound, performed by Helix with the utmost sensitivity.
As for the four other works, the reading of Australian composer Anne Cawrse’s Musaic was light, clear, and refreshing. The piece is constructed from a single musical interval, a perfect fifth, and sparkles with the sounds of glockenspiel, vibraphone, crotales, piano, and harp. After a visit to the dentist’s office, David Lang’s son referred to laughing gas as sweet air, which became the title of Lang’s chamber piece. With its nonstop repetition of musical fragments and cheerful mood, Sweet Air was a burst of effervescent energy, rivaled only by the beginning of Bouch’s As Each Hour Passes.
The concert began with Viet Cuong’s Pulse Train, the title of which was taken from his physicist father’s description of a conical scan radar system. After reading it, Cuong was inspired by the term pulse train to fashion a piece that captured those words in sound. Cuong says that the piece chugs along like a locomotive, a ride that Helix finessed with warm sound and an open-hearted spirit.
The final work on the program, Julia Wolfe’s Tell Me Everything, was an assault to the ear, but that’s what she intended in this uproarious musical bolt of energy and craziness. Her inspiration was a cassette tape of a South American band testing out brass instruments for the first time. Tell Me Everything was loud, cacophonous, and chaotic, with out-of-tune brass blasts underpinned by perky Latin rhythms that at times coalesced into something approaching conventionality.
Tell Me Everything was a prime example that inspiration strikes in wonderful, crazy ways—a phenomenon that was apparent in every piece Helix performed.
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