HAMMERED

HAMMERED:
a concert of mostly-recent music by mostly-local composers

image by artist David Levine

MAY 24, 2014 AT 8:00PM

Admission: sliding scale, $10 - $15

The Berkeley Arts Festival site at 2133 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA

Program:

Mason Bates - Red River, for violin, clarinet, cello, piano, and electronics

Alden Jenks – HAMMERED, for piano and laptop

Bela Bartok – Contrasts, for violin, clarinet, and piano

Ian Dicke – Two Takes Three, for violin, cello, bass-clarinet, and piano

Alden Jenks - “Oh It's You” for singer-actress and laptop

            The Trinity Alps Chamber Players, a group featuring young virtuosi affiliated with the expanding Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival, joins forces with Bay Area composer Alden Jenks and soprano Amy Foote for a concert of recent music by California composers --- plus a rarely heard work by Bela Bartok.

            “Red River” for violin, clarinet, cello, piano, and electronics by Mason Bates will give audiences a chance to hear chamber music by a composer most recently heard with the San Francisco Symphony, performing his “Liquid Interface” for orchestra and laptop computer. Named after the local nickname of the mighty Colorado River, “Red River” traces the journey of the river from continental divide, past Interstate Highways, Grand-Canyon-Walls, Hoover Dam, and Las Vegas to its tragic resting place – the Sonoran Desert on the California/Mexico Border.

            The laptop plays an important role in the title work, “Hammered”, by A. Jenks. Here the computer transforms the sounds of the piano, played by Ian Scarfe,, and it also provides an independent keyboard-like “Ghost Piano” for Scarfe to interact with. In Jenks’s solo opera, “Oh It’s You”, the extraordinary young singer-actress Amy Foote experiences all the thrills and terrors of an encounter with someone new. The laptop provides musical accompaniment as well as speech sounds derived from the text (also written by A. Jenks). Jenks will be present to control the computer in both pieces.

            The youngest composer on the program, Ian Dicke, provides his 2011 “Two Takes Three”, a joyful and energetic study in rhythmic interplay among four performers: Doug Machiz, cello, Paul Miller, clarinet, Kevin Rogers, violin, and Ian Scarfe, piano.

            Back in 1933 a joyful energy was to be found in Bela Bartok’s “Contrasts” for clarinet, violin, and piano. Commissioned by legendary jazz and big-band clarinettist Benny Goodman, this work features Hungarian folk music is woven into the fabric of a sophisticated urban composition.