SFCMF Commissions - Helen Grime

Hats off to the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival for commissioning so much chamber music each year! Many thanks to artistic director Marc Neikrug, executive director Steven Ovitsky and the Festival's donors that make it possible. I was privileged to hear three of this summer's commisions.

Helen Grime is a 31 year old British composer who was commissioned by the SFCMF at age 29. In the pre-concert lecture Marc commented at length about her being a young composer. And, she is....young....likely with a bright future. Her piece, premiered opening night, was immature and not of the stature of most of the festival's commissions. In the pre-concert lecture she discussed the somewhat programmatic nature of Snow and Snow for Clarinet, Viola and Piano, but I did not hear it in the piece. What I did hear was a throw-back to the academic compositions we all suffered through in the 1970s, which is often the case with the SFCMF commissions. This is not "new music", it is 40 years old, and has been done over and over. Stick a fork in it, it's done! No, I am not a new-music-phobe, in fact, I have commissioned new music. Rather, I prefer not to hear a rehash of the 70s academics: cellos and woodwinds doing triplet plunks and burps, broken up by violins sliding on the finger board, veeeeeerrrrrhhhhhttt. How many times can one listen to that? It has no content, no meaning, and deconstructionism just doesn't make good music. Within that genre, Snow and Snow did not have the maturity, development and structure of many of the Festival's commissions. Headliner clarinetist, Todd Levy, did a fine performance.

Cameron and Canty

I read two novels that are not my usual cup of java: one is a period piece and one is a "place piece", for lack of a better word. But, they are worth commenting on. Both books deal with inappropriate relationships, in the sense that they are unlikely to work out. Peter Cameron's Carol Glynn is a period piece set in Britain of the 1950's. Most period pieces are set in much more distant times, which, of course, is what makes them period pieces. But, Cameron so evocatively creates the mores and language of this time, that many readers and reviewers consider it this way. The story is about three relationships that are on weak footings, and are part of a wobbly love triangle. The complexities of these relationships and the individuals slowly emerge in the story, which is vintage Cameron. There are a lot of character developments and cross currents simmering beneath a placid surface. In the end, the musical chairs exchange, although not in an arrangement that seems any more stable, which provides a satisfying close to the book. The book is written with Cameron's usual clear prose. I have read two of his other five novels, Andorra and  The City of Your Final Destination, and they are both worth considering.

Everything, by Kevin Canty, is set in contemporary Montana. The dialogue has a slight Western tone to it, not quite a dialect but pronounced, and there are loving descriptions of the landscape, and fishing. Hence, I called it a "place piece". This story is also about relationships that most likely will not thrive, this time among very independent people living in remote mountain areas.  By the close of the novel, there are no white picket fence resolutions, which feels appropriate for the story. Canty develops the characters and several relationships with empathy and without sentimentality.

Peter Carey's The Chemistry of Tears

Peter Carey's new novel, The Chemistry of Tears, is a delight. The story is filled with wonderful characters, as always. He has structured the book in a double helix twisting around a 19th century automaton. The first strand is the story of a grieving horologist, Catherine, who is a conservator at a London museum. She is given the task of restoring this extraordinary machine by her boss, who is ostensibly looking out for her well being after the death of her lover. As the story unfolds she learns how much he is directing the players, like the levers in an automaton. The second strand is the story of a 19th century father of a very ill child, who travels afar to commission the construction of this device, in hopes it will cheer his son to health. In both strands, the two protagonists encounter wildly eccentric characters who they must deal with to achieve their goals. Catherine is assigned a crazed, umm, enthusiastic, young assistant, who has ties to her boss & her former lover. Henry commissions a seemingly hallucinogenic clock maker, who launches them on a wild journey. First person chapters alternate between Catherine and the father, Henry. Catherine, while grieving, keeps us smiling with her irreverence. Henry, speaks to Catherine through a set of notebooks that he wrote on his journey, which she finds packed among the pieces of the automaton. In some chapters, the two voices are mixed together. Their goals and trials are linked over the distance of 150 years. Carey fills both stories with detail about complex automata, their construction and conservation, of course, all tied to the human beings involved. It's a lark of a fast read.

Hitchcock meets The Passenger in Denmark

I am finding that the best film making on the planet is being done in Denmark. One of my faves is director Susanne Bier, about whom I did a post recently. Today I watched an accomplished film by a less well known Danish director, Ole Bornedal. I strongly recommend his Just Another Love Story, from 2007. This is a great Hitchcockian tale & plot development: a fairly normal middle class family man goes sideways and gradually finds himself in deeper and deeper hot water. Anders Berthelsen plays this man who is unhappy with his happy life, and through some quirks of fate, assumes the identity of another man...in a big tip of the hat to Antonioni's The Passenger. In true Hitchcock style, he slowly gets more immersed in this stream of events, and loses more and more control. Likewise, the tension builds very slowly, from family dinners to white knuckle scenes. There is a plot twist towards the end that is absent in The Passenger and significantly adds  to the dramatic development. I won't say anything further, to avoid a spoiler. The bad guy is truly menacing, well played by the Danish character actor Nikolaj Lie Kaas. There is some wonderful cinematography by Dan Lausten, that supports the plot and is sometimes beautiful. Yes, you can stream a good copy on Netflix.

Where the Quantum Series Started

In January and February I was burnt out on the compositional complexity of my pieces done in 2011. So, I collapsed the elements down to something much more simple. Here are four paintings that I conceived as a set. Multiple coats of glaze give the layers of paint and images a greater sense of depth. The individual paintings were done on 8 X 8 inch panels, 1 5/8 inch deep.

New Palette for Quantum Series

Quantum Field #4, with a new palette and a different twist to the gold. 12 X 12 inch wood panel, 1 5/8 inches deep.

New Paintings Summer 2012

I started a new series of paintings using my recent elements in a new way. The backgrounds remain the same: spreadsheets, Tibetan script, Sanskrit and music. Is art autobiographical? I cover these with layers of acrylic paint which still reveal the underlying images. Small gold stripes float on top of this. They are translucent and sometimes reflective, depending on the light and your vantage point. So, these paintings are constantly changing as you move around them. What the heck, let's call them "Quantum Field". Here's Number 3, 10 X 10 inches on a wood panel, 1 5/8 inch deep. Number 1 and 2 are use a similar palette, 8X8 on panel. Number 4, in progress, has a different color scheme, stay tuned.