Amid the chatter of misinformation and disinformation, listening deeply is arguably more important than ever. In two upcoming concerts, a Columbus contemporary music ensemble will perform string quartet works that show us how to hear the world around us.
Chamber Brews will perform inter/cepted, a program of works by American composers Mohammed Fairouz, Terry Riley, Zachery Meier and Pauline Oliveros. Performances take place on Tuesday, Dec. 2 at 7 p.m. in the Green Room of the Short North’s Garden Theatre, on the Johnstone Fund for New Music’s New Music at Short North Stage series, and on Sun., Dec. 14 at 6 p.m. at Seventh Son Brewing Co.
The Dec. 14 performance will also feature craft cocktails created by Seventh Son Brewing Co. staff in response to the musical works on inter/cepted.
The program’s title, inter/cepted, refers to what Chamber Brews Founder and Director Devin Copfer describes as the dysfunction of communication in today’s world.
“inter/cepted is about this yearning for communication and this yearning for finding the ways that we can communicate our harm, our hurt and our pain with one another. But also feeling that we don’t have access to that place in ourselves that allows us to really be listening. inter/cepted for me has always been about this act of communication, this act of sharing that so often gets split right at the moment of the communication,” Copfer said.
Deep listening is at the heart of the intention for the program, which Chamber Brews Cellist and Program Designer Sam Johnson created. That intention is borrowed from composer Pauline Oliveros, who developed the idea of deep listening as a holistic practice of awareness of the sounds around us.
Deep listening to the entirety of a soundscape is a metaphor for how we might actively listen to each other’s unique voices and find a place for them in our conscious experience.
“On this program we have four extremely unique composers that bring their own life experience into the fold. I wanted to create a program that highlighted those differences and explore how they come through not just in intention, but also in compositional technique,” Copfer said.
The works on the program highlight minimalist musical styles and improvisation. Minimalism calls on audiences to listen for often subtle changes amid musical textures largely based on repetition. Improvisation calls on musicians to listen to each other deeply and respond musically.
Playful explorations of musical form and timbre also invite audiences to listen intently.
In Prayer for Tranquillity by Zachery Meier, currently visiting assistant professor of music at Denison University, evocative sounds of resonant open strings and delicate bowings that sound like breathing encourage listening to the string quartet with new ears.
“To play with the bow as if it were blowing air, that is something that is really exciting to me, too. The sound that’s coming out of our instrument is the sound of someone breathing in and out. And that intimacy, it’s really astounding, to get to a place where there’s a stillness that feels extremely human,” Copfer said.
Mohammad Fairouz’s Prophecies, whose eight movements portray the human stories of personages in the Quran in a blend of Middle Eastern and Western musical styles.
“Even though these are stories that I’ve heard before, I’ve been deeply surprised and moved by their retelling,” Copfer said.
Terry Riley’s Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector consists of a series of musical modules that musicians can perform at any time and in any order. That approach recruits the musicians as not just performers of the work, but co-creators of it. It also opens the door for improvisation.
“If the ensemble chooses to include improvisation as a part of one of the modules, that’s up to them, and that’s what we are doing. So, there will be moments of actual improvisation as we’re playing through,” Copfer said.
Dedicated to Riley, Pauline Oliveros’ Seventy Chords for Terry: A Meditation on String Theory is not written in a traditional score with musical notes, but instead in a grid that, in verbal text, tells each musician in the quartet what type of musical gesture to play in each minute of the performance.
The evocative sounds Oliveros asks the musicians to create, and the deliberate pace of the work, encourage musicians and audience members to listen deeply to the soundscape of each moment.
“I love including Pauline Oliveros on a program as an invitation for our audience to engage with music that is perhaps not what they’re most used to, and then to explore in their own space, what would you be listening to? Would you be listening to the air conditioning? Would you be listening to the bartender making a drink? Would you be listening to the scooch of a chair? What are the ways that you yourself would engage with this piece? Copfer said.
Chamber Brews performs inter/cepted on Tuesday, Dec. 2 at 7 p.m. in the Green Room of the Short North’s Garden Theatre, on the Johnstone Fund for New Music’s New Music at Short North Stage series, and on Sun., Dec. 14 at 6 p.m. at Seventh Son Brewing Co.
