Ojai, CA — “We are multiple, painstaking, free,” three voices sang here in mock form on Saturday night. “We call you to the table of your loved ones.”
As a mission statement for 2022 Ojai Music Festival, You can hardly do more than that. Each year, this four-day event is programmed by a variety of music directors, including violinists, conductors and composers.
This time, the stamps were collective. This fertile post-Bohemian valley north of Los Angeles flocked to soaring people last week. American Modern Opera Company — Known as AMOC, pronounced like running … well.
Much of the art these days talks about big games about interdisciplinary collaboration, but those who walk like AMOC, who count composers, choreographers, dancers, singers, instrumental players, and stage directors as 17 core members. Almost none.
At its best — whether to play a strange new pop musical about the collapse of Rome. A witty dance theater work about rehearsals. Or Julius Eastman’s intense and vast music — AMOC is a party, communal event, family dinner.
AMOC pursues the vision of opera as a free-moving, lightly staged aggregate, and works in a changing composition than traditional scores and script works. Many of them were exhibited in various places last weekend — inside and outside, under the scorching sun at noon, and happier, the calm stars.
How close is this group? As Ojai proved, it’s enough to confidently perform a complex and vast structured improvisation by George E. Lewis (Skittish) and Roscoe Mitchell (Bright) at 8am.
There is nothing The music is now very similar to Ojai three-quarters of a century ago, packed with morning-to-even schedules, different spaces, and a strong curiosity of the audience. Headed by Ara Guzelimian with stable hands, this festival is a relaxing one in Southern California — T-shirts and shorts, maybe a hoodie at night — but the repertoire tends to be harsh and readjusted.
Even the warning that the concert is about to begin isn’t the usual obedient bell, but the roar of electronic devices from the “Repon” by Pierre Boulez, the guardian deity of decades.
Hypercomplex Bourgian Modernism was not offered this year. The composer Matthew O’Coin, who founded AMOC with director Zack Winnoker in 2017, Written like wilted In a New York review a while back, about the “supersaturated identity” of Boulez’s music.
So what was the general style? It was widespread, in line with the openness of many young artists today. There were folk music adaptations such as spirituals, wing-like fiddle performances of Scottish ballads by violinist Kiel Gogwirt, and Ocoin’s hoodown “Shaker Dance”.
So did playing with texts, including a quest for how songs and spoken language could share space in the context of music. But the biggest new work in this stream, the collaboration between Carolyn Chen and the poet Divya Victor, Anthony Chan’s “Tense Sound” will benefit from careful trim.
Different faces and moods Minimalism, including Philip Glass’s songs, and its heritage were portrayed and performed in the middle of Libby Park, part of Tom Johnson’s 1979 solo “Nine Bell.” It was characterized by percussionist Johnny Allen jogging the exact route around the bell and hitting gradually evolving riffs — sometimes delicate and sometimes violent.
Frederic Rzewski’s “Coming Together” (1971) is a letter written by an Attic prisoner who died in the uprising there, ironically by Davóne Tines of bass baritone, the most valuable weekend player. I told you. .. A very different definition of minimal: Sunday morning, Hans Otte’s “The Book of Sounds”, the epic of a solo piano played by Connor Hanick with control and sensitivity in the late 1970s and early 80s is rare. was.
The material here is seemingly simple. Decelerate to undulating lines, sometimes rugged chords, and sometimes speed up to a glass-style arpeggio flood. Harmony is subtly thicker and thinner. Emotions remain ambiguous and moods are meditative.
Birds flickering around the trees around the outdoor Libby Bowl, the main space of the festival, and acoustic illusions began to emerge from Otte’s trance. Near the end, you may have vowed to hear a mellow horn bark from the texture of the piano. And on Saturday morning, as suggested by cellist Jay Campbell, when he turned his head, his long drone vibrated when he played Catherine Ram’s “Cross / Collapse” (2010). I pulled out different pitches from the densely vibrating mix when floating sideways.
Best of all This weekend was Andrew McIntosh’s “Little Jimmy” (2020). This is a quartet for two pianists and two percussionists, named after a campsite in the San Gabriel Mountains. Macintosh made a field recording a few months before the fire was devastating. The result is a subtle reflection of the climate crisis and what can be recovered from the ashes.
Macintosh refrains from recording and reminds us of a mysterious, shadowy, quiet and colorful world. Sometimes it dries out and sometimes it sparkles softly. Piano strings are manipulated with fishing line for metal crying. If you bow the vibraphone while tapping the tubular bell, it sounds like a tremor.
When you attend this year’s Ojai, you might think that music wasn’t written from 1800 to 1970. Here, the musical instruments of the times and the present are freely mixed, and the pipeline from the early days to the present is in full swing. Composers such as Cassandra Miller, Michael Hersch, Kate Soper, and Reiko Futing were playing with antique styles and fragments. Racchus, a small baroque band that shares members with AMOC, has been a guest throughout the weekend and joined flutist Emi Ferguson on Saturday morning in a lively Bach.
Some of the weekend collaborations were more honest than successful. It was not clear how the sudden stretch choreography was added to Allen’s already fascinating movements in “Nine Bell” and Iannis Xenakis’ “Ribbond”. Try college theater for Chen’s “How to Fall Apart” (swinging mirror ball, croissant thrown) and dancer or Schreber’s “cellist” (musician has a weapon for his cellist) There was a sign. Back; the metronome solemnly ticks).
However, the “Open Rehearsal” directed by choreographer and dancer Bobbi Jene Smith felt more nuanced. A by-product of Smith’s recent work, Broken Theater, it’s an angry, sometimes noisy, and inspirational meta-theater riff in the process of creation.
The performers live in the prototype (a moody director, a horny actor, a fighting brother) in a charged wild episode that suggests auditions, reviewing materials, and placement on stage. Like traditional roles, life and art are blurred. The instrumentalist dances. The dancer sings.
There was an important absence in this work. Just before flying to California, the wonderful soprano Julia Brock was tested positive for Covid. She would have been featured throughout her weekend, and her staged version of Messiaen’s “Harawi” promised to be a highlight.
It talks to AMOC The agility and depth of the bench allowed us to replace “Harawi” with Tyne’s “Recital No. 1: Mass”. It’s a blend of soul songs and spirituality with the elegant Latin setting of the Caroline Show. (Ariadne Greif bravely intervened for the block in another work.)
He sounded tired and muddy with two Bach arias, but in Moses Hogan’s “Give Me Jesus,” his voice was “mass” and brilliant, from airy to solid. It was powerful. The “mass” shows the path from being lost to being healed. Here, by a description of Tines’ improvised preacher style, which he described as a racist comment from the audience the night before.
He was also the magnetic center of the work of the once forgotten and now acclaimed gay black composer Eastman on Friday morning, a mix of rigor and exhilaration in this music, its ingenuity. I conveyed ingenuity and adaptability.
Tines was in command of the proclaimed counsel of “The Prelude to the Holy Being of Joand’Arc.” Originally performed on four throbbing pianos, “Gay Guerrilla” was more like a kaleidoscope here with a wider variety of ensembles. The hymn quote “God is my yagura” was usually played and took on a new effect when Tines belted it. Starting as an energetic jam, “Stay On It” moved towards a powerful march and flowed into a quiet and nimble elegy.
“We call you to the table of your loved ones” served as a metaphor, but for AMOC it’s literally reminiscent of the group’s annual Vermont Retreat classic meal. This line was sung at Ocoin’s “Family Dinner,” which premiered on Saturday. Claimed as a set of mini concertos that evoke collective energy and individual talent, this work felt like an ongoing awkward paced work.
A more attractive family dinner was “Rome is falling”. Doug Barriette’s smart bubble gum, the devastation of adorable hairy ancient history, and its apparent modern similarities are reminiscent of “bloody bloody Andrew Jackson” and “Hamilton.” The performers were as grinning as the audience.
And as a family dessert, a reply to “Stay On It” ended the festival on Sunday evening. It was a jumboree of multiple, painstaking, free, sweet-dancing full ensembles, presided over by Tines, like both Ojai and AMOC.