On Friday, May 31 at 7:30pm, Tom's Place presents
Portato, Portato,
performing works by
Mordon Feldman, David Dunn,
Declan Seifkas and Laura Steenberge
Portato Portato is an Oakland/Santa Cruz quartet devoted to music of the 20th and 21st centuries, concentrating particularly on original and newly commissioned work. The quartet comprises Michelle Lee (flutes), John Ivers (clarinets), Jon Myers (percussion) and Jacob Lane (piano). Friday's program comprises three newish works (all from 2018) and a New York School classic:
Morton Feldman's Why Patterns (1978).
David Dunn's Whittling I (2018)
Declan Seifkas's Grove of the Ancients (2018)
Laura Steenberge's Byzantine Rites 4 (2018)
Web site: http://www.portatoportato.com/blog/
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/portato_portato
David Dunn's "Whittling I" (2018), written for Portato Portato, is part of a new series of works called "Heuristic Automata," which transcribe complex aural phenomena into conventional musical notation. Program note here: https://www.indexical.org/pieces/whittling-i
Declan' Siefkas's Grove of the Ancients (2018) for bass clarinet, flute, glockenspiel, piano and electronics, a Portato Portato commission, I believe. (Brief) program note here: https://www.indexical.org/pieces/the-grove-of-the-ancients
Score here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/szgq0j0co1igrcp/The%20Grove%20of%20the%20Ancients.pdf?dl=0
Laura Steenberge's Byzantine Rites 4 (2018) is for 2 singing winds, keyboard instrument, percussion, pvc pipe, ratchet pipe cutter and bluetooth speakers. At least that's one description that I found. In other places it says that that it's for voice, strings, harmonica, hurdy gurdy and pipes or for Pipes, metal rings, paper flags, rope, tuning forks, and silent bell. We will see. In any case, there's a program note here: https://www.indexical.org/pieces/byzantine-rites-4
Morton Feldman's Why Patterns? (1978) for flute, glockenspiel and piano, is a particular favorite of the Tom's Place management. Extreme thanks to Portato Portato for acceding to our request to revive it from their past repertoire. Why Patterns? marks the transition to Feldman's final period, whose pieces are characterized by extended durations, quiet dynamics, loose cellular repetition and scores layed out in long sequences of page-sized grids populated with conventionally notated pitches and durations. Feldman described Why Patterns? thus: "The most interesting aspect for me, composing exclusively with patterns, is that there is not one organizational procedure more advantageous than another, perhaps because no one pattern ever takes precedence over the others. The compositional concentration is solely on which pattern should be reiterated and for how long ..." (Morton Feldman, Essays, p. 129.)
Tom's Place
3111 Deakin Street, Berkeley CA
Directions: http://4-33.com/directions.html
Information: http://4-33.com/toms-place/index.html
Admission: donation. All proceeds go directly to the musicians.
Doors open at 7:00. Wheelchair accessible.
Cost: free -- donations accepted.