DOUG AITKIN’S LIGHTSCAPE,
THE CENTERPIECE OF LA PHIL’S DAY-LONG
NEW MUSIC PROGRAM, OPENS AS AN INSTALLATION
AT THE MARCIANO ARTS FOUNDATION THIS WEEK
Noon to Midnight, a daylong festival of new music, is my favorite LA Phil program of the year. What’s playing? No clue. Is the music good? Unlikely. Is the centerpiece performance going to be the highlight of the day? Probably not. Pretty much the only thing guaranteed is you’ll get twelve hours of music. I think of it as a year of the Phil’s new music series, Green Umbrella, in a day. My friends look at me in horror as I describe it to them, but it’s the Phil’s most exciting show and unmissable for the musically adventurous.
Performances take place simultaneously all over Walt Disney Concert Hall. The first was Transparent City in BP Hall, by Michael Pisaro-Liu, playing electric guitar and “objects.” Fitting in with this year’s theme of “field recordings,” this was mostly the sound of traffic, combined with lots of roaring, rumbling, and feedback. Pisaro-Liu sat still for the most part, except for the final minute, a lonely guitar solo. Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin’s video I Carry the Universe with Me (2024) followed. It was twenty minutes of grainy black-and-white landscapes set to rumbles and nature sounds, overlaid with pretentious writings (“a pair of scissors on the wall next to a pair of scissors”). You’ve seen this before on museum walls and kept walking.
Up on the roof in the Keck Amphitheatre, Joseph Pereira led the USC Percussion Group, starting with Masakazu Natsuda’s Wooden Music for 9 percussionists. It was wooden and sounded like music. (I think self-explanatory titles is my favorite thing about avant-garde music.) Up next, they played the West Coast premiere of George Lewis’s Le témoignage des lumières (The Century of Lights), an incoherent, random piece involving bows and dragged rubber mallets.
LA-based Delirium Musicum, unconducted but led by Etienne Gara, was the first group of the day to play on the Hall’s main stage. They began with Andrew Norman’s 2012 The Companion Guide to Rome, a nine-movement suite performed by various string trios, duos, and solos, placed in different parts of the stage. With lots of variety and emotions, I enjoyed this quite a bit. However, it had an overall quiet and calm demeanor – not the kind of thing with which to start a festival and with everyone still hyped up. And even though it was the first piece by Norman that didn’t put me to sleep, the kids in the audience were in agony, exacerbated by the next piece, The Trees of Green-Wood, by Andrew Yee, in a world-premiere expanded string arrangement. Too much of it sounded like tuning and noodling, and took forever to get going. Soprano Laurel Irene sang a list of trees or something; in spite of being amplified, I couldn’t understand her. [Note: Parents, take my advice: Noon to Midnight is family friendly in the way that Grave of the Fireflies (1988) is family friendly. I say this with love, unless your kids are weird, they will probably not enjoy the festival.]
Next was the fourth movement of Philip Glass’s Violin Concerto No. 2, with flamboyant Gara taking the spotlight. This turbulent piece was thrilling and mesmerizing. Even Little Miss Fidget two seats down from me paid attention. Glass really is on a whole higher plain of composing. Best not to play anything after him, BUT THEY DID, with Desert Ecology by Gabriella Smith, a four-movement suite with desolate screeching, recorded howls, and a “nice climax,” the most positive thing I wrote in my notes. This snoozer lost the audience.
Back in the amphitheatre, the Isaura String Quartet, also based in LA, played the world premiere of John Eagle’s inside-outside, featuring field recordings of crickets and lots of string feedback. It was so noisy, that I initially mistook a passing douchebag on a motorcycle as part of the music. When this ended, half the audience fled. They followed this with another world premiere: Mingjia Chen’s the speed at which we change (What’s up with the lack of capital letters?). The string work was dreamy and pleasant enough, but countertenor Day Yang sang random notes and was out of tune. He was amplified, and I couldn’t understand him, either. The piece involved a field documentary recording of the composer in Monterey Park, saying, “I have no idea why I come here every night.” Well, come back when you do!
I had forgotten the first piece that the LA Phil New Music Group played on the main stage. Referring to my notes, my reaction was “Ohmigod, that was excruciating!” Raven Chacon’s Three Songs wasn’t that bad; after all, it was short! However, it’s emblematic of how lacking in pleasure it is to see so much of this work and how it sours in memory. Three Songs is a video triptych of three American Indian women banging on a snare drum while singing solos about enduring patiently. “Endure” is right. Another piece by Chacon followed: Horse Notations for drums, four strings, and wandering flute in five movements. It was very quiet, slow, droning, with unpleasant sliding violins. Plus crying babies and dropped phones. Not even 4pm, I had already had my fill of this kind of sparse shit. So did the audience, which performed a mass exodus at the fourth movement. Next, Odeya Nini sang in her world-premiere Come Close and Sea. It used recordings of the ocean, played with bowing on the vibraphone that droned, with strings to match. Pianists Joanne Pearce Martin and Vicki Ray played Dark Waves, by John Luther Adams, beautiful, undulating, and … dark. Johannes Bosgra provided appropriately moody abstract video animation of waves.
I caught the second half of the Calder Quartet’s set, starting with another piece by John Luther Adams: Canticles of the Sky for string quartet, which was clear and calm, the opposite of Dark Waves. They then played Steve Reich’s Different Trains, one of my favorite pieces. It’s an exhilarating and harrowing documentary that pairs recorded interviews with the quartet, who speed along, periodically playing the notes that the subjects say. Amplified and in BP Hall, I’m not sure if it was the acoustics or where I sat, it often sounded muddy. Still, a highlight of the day.
In the amphitheatre, RedKoral Trio played The Earth: A Blue Sanctuary, Light, Gardens of Organic Flowers, Underground Rivers, Lakes, and Pomegranate Lagoons, by Wadada Lee Smith. Another sparse and angular thing, the best I can say is that the title used an Oxford comma. I wanted to stay for Alison Bjorkedal’s Hum (Would it be a ground loop? A human hummer? It sounded promisingly ridiculous, but I’m sure I would’ve been disappointed.), but I got a tip that I should go back to the New Music Group on the main stage, though I suspect the recommendation was only because it was inside. It was getting dark and cold. Noon to Midnight really is better in the spring.
Molly Turner conducted the New Music Group in their amplified second set, starting with Fog Tropes, by Ingram Marshall. All-brass, it was dense, full of foreboding, and gave me a feeling of being physically dizzy. Overlaid were sounds of foghorns and gulls. Next was Alluvion, a world premiere by Derrick Skye, who also was at the keyboard and electronics. There were whale sounds, bird sounds, a booming pop beat with Irish and Indian flavor, but nothing was gelling and I kept wondering what point of it all was. It had no conclusion; it just stopped. Now came the low point of the day: Donnacha Dennehy’s Tessellatum, in a world-premiere arrangement for solo viola (played by Nadia Sirota) and strings, with video by Steven Mertens. Nothing went right, not even Sirota’s microphone, which was placed such that, if she were a man, I would have said he needed to trim his nose hair, her nose-inhaling was so loud. The music had sudden fits of energy, but mostly was gloomy, depressing, mellow, and uncompelling, made worse by Mertens repetitive and distracting abstract animation that’s bested by your basic Windows XP screen saver. I may be a little harsh on the music here, but the video (and her sniffing) made it impossible to focus on it. The suite was interminable and droves of people left after each movement, taking advantage of one of the joys of Noon to Midnight: you can escape into something possibly better. I would have, too, but, I think, dear reader, you would have excoriated me for indulging in that merciful bit of relief.
Ellen Reid, curator of this year’s festival, offered Oscillations: One Hundred Years and Forever, lyrics by Sarah LaBrie. For this performance, the USC Thornton Chamber Singers, conducted by Tram Sparks, were placed in the seating area of the amphitheatre, while the audience stood on the stage. It was a stunning, 180-degree assault of celestial singing. Above them, Hana Kim and Keith Sparks projected a map that felt somewhat like a starscape. I didn’t get the lyrics (“A door opens in all directions,” repeated), and the halting bass and snare drums were weird, but it was nonetheless beautiful.
Some of the most pleasurable experiences of the day were the art installations. Alexey Seliverstov brought The Cloud Orchestra, a setup of continuous bird, nature, and music recordings, offering people to play provided cassettes and records however they see fit. It was very interesting and deserved a space that encouraged people to stop and absorb it, instead of being placed in the lobby where people rush by. Threshold Music, by Chris Kallmyer, was wind chimes and bird recordings. Lachlan Turczan placed three large cylinders in the Carson Amphitheatre with bowls of water on top and subwoofers inside, producing visible standing waves in the water. Very cool, but one looked broken and it got too dark to see very much. The best of the bunch, and one of the high points of the day, was Lily Clark’s mesmerizing Dewpoint IV, a crescent sculpture where water beads emerge from invisible holes at the top, then roll down and up the superhydrophobic surface, until ultimately penetrating the slit in the center.
Finally, it was time for the centerpiece performance, the world premiere of Doug Aitken’s Lightscape, created in collaboration with, and performed by, the New Music Group and the LA Master Chorale, conducted by Grant Gershon, and which had been sold out for weeks. (Me: “Who’s Doug Aitken?”) Before the show even started, I was confused. The program lists about 20 pieces of music performed live, but one of them is Mad Rush, by Philip Glass, which is about 13 minutes, and Lightscape is 67 minutes. How does all this music fit and be satisfying? For something so anticipated, there were lots of empty seats. (It’s billed as a “live-to-picture concert experience.”)
Lightscape starts innocuously enough. Percussionists gather in a circle in a parking structure to bang on wood propped up on sawhorses. Then follows a series of barely-connected scenes about … modern California life or something. A struggling young woman drives around LA in a spotless 1970s muscle truck. A rich, sunbathing young woman turns down a glistening pool boy. A rich old woman eyes her old gardener (is it the same couple?), who then litters in her yard and walks into the jungle. There’s a lone cowboy on a horse who wanders all over the place, including a cemetery for jets. There’s a wordless scene at a payday lender. Beck appears out of nowhere. Offscreen, people repeat, “You can get lost. In the blink of an eye,” and, “On a clear day, you can see. Forever.” So. Profound. Performances, if you can call them that, consisted of dead stares filled with meaning. Having never heard of Aitken before, I thought this was Baby’s First Movie.
It was all very slick; clearly a lot of money was spent on this, but it felt like art by and for the rich. A large chunk of the video took place at Richard Neutra’s Tremaine House, which last sold for $12 million. Randomly, Joanne Pearce Martin plays piano there while a cougar roams inside. Other performers on stage were also part of the movie’s cast, which, frankly, I thought was lazy. It continued; a woman reads a book, titled “Silence,” on a beach while a plane flies low overhead. A man decides to run away from life or something, and runs, and runs, and runs until he finds a grand piano in the back of a truck, conveniently ready for him to play. My eyeroll at this had to have been visible on the opposite side of the hall. The movie visits workers at a fulfillment center, where they spontaneously break out into dance moves. Not dancing, but single choreographed dance steps. The whole thing was like a boring and pretentious Matthew Barney movie. [Side warning: the day you spend on Cremaster (1994-2002) is a day you’ll never get back.]
At an hour in (I checked), the movie finally did something interesting – a split-screen dance montage. However, it was over after about a minute, never achieving any kind of height. If you’re going to take inspiration from the likes of Abel Gance or A Place to Stand (1967), at least put some effort into it. Even 24 (2001-10) had more compelling split-screen editing than Lightscape.
As for the music, about half was performed live, the rest being part of the movie’s sound track. The long list of music I mentioned earlier? All snippets. I couldn’t tell when what I was hearing was live or pre-recorded; frequently, I looked down at the stage, only to find no one playing. So, congrats to the LA Phil mixer, I guess? The Master Chorale was barely used. A total waste of a concert.
After we got released, I checked out Josh Johnson, who was playing something pretty on the saxophone, but, as I wrote in my notes, “Oh God, not more bird sounds,” and I hopped right over into the listening lounge in the Founder’s Room. There, Sheep’s Clothing Hi-Fi set up a Quadraphonic sound system and played selections from the environments record series. I stayed there and unwound until it was time for the next performance.
The Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra was the final group to play on the main stage. They started with two pieces that had a happy, jazzy, big-band sound, with lots of improvisation. A pleasant palate-cleanser, but I thought an odd choice for the festival. Between pieces, they played documentary recordings from their past (gotta shoehorn that “field recording” theme in somehow!). During the music, Kamau Daáood and Dwight Trible recited poetry calling back to African ancestors and touching on black history and pride. I enjoyed it, but really perked up when pianist Brian Hargrove came on stage with a string quartet, playing a lovely and gloomy new arrangement that bookended the group’s relaxed third number. The performance went well past their allotted time and I was tempted to leave, but they kept adding exciting new elements. They brought on a drum group. Then dancers. I had a feeling everybody was winging it, but they were having a blast, and their happiness spread throughout the audience, who could barely contain their enjoyment. The Arkestra is a great group that knows how to put on a hell of a show.
Visionary States, a new Indian ensemble, led by Robin Sukhadia, closed the festival with some ragas. I was only able to catch the tail end, so I only got a hint. They seemed ok, except they also used … bird sounds. Curators, if you’re going to impose a theme, like this year’s “field recordings,” you all have to impose some kind of limits so that we don’t end up with bird sounds all day long.
In spite of all the crap I dish out, I still consider this an exhilarating festival, though I don’t understand how the Phil misses the mark with so much new music. I can’t wait for next year, but, please, LA Phil, keep Noon to Midnight in the spring. Bad new music is so much better in springtime.
* * * * * * * *
Noon to Midnight
LA Phil New Music Group
Walt Disney Concert Hall
reviewed on Nov. 16, 2024
Doug Aitken’s Lightscape plays the Marciano Art Foundation
as an installation from Dec. 17 to March 15, 2025
experience a Live Activation of Lightscape by eight singers of the LA Master Chorale
next activation: January 18, 2025 (tickets will be released on Tuesday, January 7 at 12pm)
