Web posted September 8, 2005


Brian Wallace / Juneau Empire
 Shaping with wind: Alaska composer Matthew Burtner will present his new eco-acoustical composition "Windprints" during the CrossSound 2005 "Echography" main concert, 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 9, at Northern Light United Church.

In his studio at the University of Virginia, professor of composition and computer music Matthew Burtner uses a bank of Linux and Macintosh computers to create music about nature.

For some, that's a paradox: How can you get closer to your environment with a computer?

Burtner, born in Nuiqsut and now an internationally touring composer, finds that electronics are the most natural way to create what he calls "eco-acoustics," music that takes its structure from the sounds of nature.

"I had to learn the tools to deal with a lot of the technology as a way of analyzing and extracting the parameters of nature" Burtner said. "And that's something that's necessary to move beyond impressionism to root the work in ecology. Computers seem removed from nature. Sometimes I've found that computers allow you to appreciate nature more and understand it better. I find computer music very close to nature, more so than a lot of other music."

Burtner will debut "Wind-prints," based on the sounds of winds in Bristol Bay and written for a 12-piece ensemble, during CrossSound's main "Ecography" concert, 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 10, at Northern Light United Church.

The show will include two other newly commissioned pieces: a dual concerto for bassoon and sheng written by Berlin composer Il-Ryun Chung; and "Meadow Upon the Banks of the Nile," a piece by Egyptian-American composer Riad Abdel-Gawad that features bassoon and oboe.

The concert will also include three works that premiered at the festival in 1999 - "Barcarolle," by Marti Epstein for violin, viola and cello; "... there is none like you amongst the dancers," by Cord Meijering for viola, flute, changgu and kayagum; and "Suite for Four," by Oliver Schneller for cello, baroque flute, oboe and trumpet.

Burtner, who grew up in Naknek and was born near the Beaufort Sea, will give a 7 p.m. pre-concert talk about how his experience in Alaska shaped his use of environmental systems as a way to inspire musical structure.

"I think art is always leading people in certain directions, and it's important for us to resolve this disjointed relationship we have with our life in the natural world," Burtner said. "I hope that music is a bridge between music and ecology."

Burtner began writing "Wind Prints" by hanging a boom microphone in a tree on Bristol Bay during the summer of 2003 and recording the coastal wind in 12-minute samples. He turned the recording into a spectrogram, a line graph that detailed the frequency components and changes of amplitude in the samples. As he laid out the pages on his floor, each page representing 30 seconds of sound, he could literally see the amplitude shifts of the separate gusts.

He wrote the score on top of the spectrograph, basing the role of each instrument on the shifts in the wind's dynamic.

"I'm not interested in duplicating the wind," Burtner said. "I'm interested in what it feels like when you stand outside in the wind and it blows and it gusts. It affects our mind and our imagination. That's the metaphor of the relationship between the human being and nature."

The piece begins with ambient noise: the sound of a flautist blowing into the mouthpiece, the whoosh of sandblocks , sandpaper and rattles and a trombonist playing air, no notes. A minute in, the first gusts arrive and bring the first instrumental crescendos, which blow into the melody. The work does not include the actual sound of the wind, but does have seven melodies for the sample's seven gusts. It eventually ends with Wu Wei on the sheng, accompanied by oboe, flute and strings.

"We transition from the sound of the wind in a very direct way into something more abstract, which is more like wind as structure," Burtner said. "It's a different kind of piece than traditional classical music of Western music. The idea of structure really evolves from a human idea of what that includes: a beginning, a middle and an end. I really wanted the wind to make the structure."

Burtner was born in Nuiqsut, a village of 250 on the Beaufort Sea. His parents were schoolteachers.

They moved to Naknek, on Bristol Bay, when he was 6. He spent much of his youth gillnetting and playing saxophone, with no clear idea of what a composer really was. In the summers, he studied music theory at the King's Lake Camp in Wasilla and sat in with any bands that would let him on-stage in Naknek's bar scene. He began playing at the town's Red Dog Saloon when he was 14.

"I like the social aspect of music making and playing with ensembles, but I always had a problem with the music," Burtner said. "It felt like I was making someone else's music. It felt like the music wasn't close to me. It didn't match my experiences in the world."

A key influence was "The Twilight Sloan," a late-night free-form and avant-garde radio show hosted by Anchorage blues musician Gary Sloan.

"They played Tangerine Dream, Laurie Anderson; I recorded it on tape just to have examples of this kind of music," Burtner said. "I liked the idea of sustained sound, the drone or the glacial aspect of it, and that's something that I keep in my music - a ground or a line that runs through it. I called it new classical music, music without style, without genre."

Burtner returned to his teaching job last week at the University of Virginia after a year-long sabbatical at IRCAM, a research center for computer music and acoustics under the George Pompidou Center in Paris. Burtner was working on interactive media for stage performance and his second opera, "Imaq/Windcombs," based on the sounds of a river in Bristol Bay. The first half of the opera premiered in late August at the Quincena Festival in San Sebastian, France.

Wu and Underhill will play a dual recital at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 1, at the First Presbyterian Church in Skagway, and 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 2, at Northern Light United Church in Juneau. Chung (changgu) will join them on a few pieces.

The following weekend, all three will play with a 15-piece sinfonietta in CrossSound's main program, at 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 9, at Northern Light United Church, and 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 10 at Sitka's Sheet'ka Kwaan Naa Karidi house.

The term "echography," sometimes known as "ultrasonography," refers to the process of using high-frequency sound waves to visualize underwater objects.

In this case, it's metaphorical. The players are using work from the festival's past to map out a new direction. The program includes three newly commissioned compositions alongside three works from the first CrossSound festival in 1999.

"Echography" also celebrates CrossSound's 10th program, 20th guest artist, 30th concert and 40th commissioned work.

• SEPT. 1-2 DUO RECITALS: Underhill and Wu will both perform world premieres for the Sept. 1-2 concerts.

Underhill will premiere "Exabruptos 3," written by Peruvian composer Pedro Malpica. The piece explores the full range of the instruments and a variety of sound possibilities. Underhill was familiar with Malpica from a piece he wrote for Alea III, a company she plays with in Boston.

She will perform the West Coast premiere of "Primion Beta," written by Greek composer Alexandros Kalogeras, who worked with CrossSound in 2003. She has also arranged "Bell Ringing in An Empty Sky," a traditional piece on the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute), for the bassoon.

Wei will premiere "Spirit of the Bamboo" for the sheng. In addition, he will play three traditional Chinese solos for sheng and "Du bai," a 2003 sheng composition by Chinese writer Chen Xiaoyong.

The show will end with "Dragon Dance," an improvised piece featuring Underhill, Wei and Chung, on the changgu, a double-headed, hourglass-shaped drum, usually played with the palm of the left hand and a bamboo stick in the right hand.

Underhill, Wei and Chung rehearsed three times in Berlin.

"We sat down and improvised together to try and develop some commonality," Underhill said. "I've never played with a sheng player and he's never played with a bassoonist. We both come from different traditions, different parts of the world, different backgrounds."

• SEPT. 9-10 "ECHOGRAPHY PROGRAM": CrossSound's main program includes three new compositions alongside three pieces that premiered at the festival in 1999.

Those works - "Barcarolle," composed by Marti Epstein for violin, viola and cello; "... there is none like you amongst the dancers," by Cord Meijering for viola, flute, changgu and kayagum; and "Suite for Four," by Oliver Schneller for cello, baroque flute, oboe and trumpet -will be performed with new players.

Chung has written a dual concerto for bassoon and sheng that includes all 15 players in the sinfonietta. Chung has lived in Berlin since 1984 and specializes in solo guitar, chamber music and traditional Korean drumming. He also plays with Jocelyn Clark in the solo ensemble IIIZ+.

His work will be guest conducted by Stewart Emerson, an opera director from Berlin who will be in town to work with Opera to Go!

Riad Abdel-Gawad, an Egyptian-American composer who lives in Cairo and taught in Beirut this year, has written "Meadow upon the Banks of the Nile," a work featuring Underhill (bassoon) and Haines oboe player Nancy Nash, a former member of the Juneau Symphony.

Juneau's William Todd Hunt will conduct.

"(Abdel-Gawad has) really removed himself out of his Western background and all the way into the Egyptian music world," Hakenberg said. "It's probably the most different piece that we've ever presented in that sense. It truly is Arabesque."

University of Virginia composition professor Matthew Burtner has written "Wind Prints," a piece based on the sounds of the winds in Bristol Bay. Burtner was born in Kaktovik and grew up in Naknek.

• Korry Keeker can be reached at korry.keeker@juneauempire.com.

As a child in Juneau, CrossSound co-founder Jocelyn Clark used to go to the museum on the weekends to hear Walter Williams tell stories.

"He told these stories only in Tlingit, but he was a good enough storyteller that somehow we understood these stories, even though we couldn't speak the language," she said.

Years later, when she began studying the ancient narrative vocal tradition of pansori in Korea, she began to think about the cross-cultural possibilities of storytelling combined with composition. This week's CrossSound 2005 festival, co-organized by Stefan Hakenberg, grew out of the theory that through collaboration, music and story could create a new perspective on experience and place.

Since March 24, three teams of composers and writers have been working in Juneau, Ketchikan and Sitka on 20-to-30 minute multidisciplinary compositions for storytellers and musicians. The result, "RainSongs: Three Antiphonous Tales From Wet Lands," plays at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Chapel by the Lake. It also plays at the Sheet'ka Kwan Naa Kahidi house, Thursday in Sitka; the Saxman Tribal House, Friday in Ketchikan; and the University of Alaska Anchorage arts building, Sunday in Anchorage.

"The whole idea of storytelling and story-singing was on my mind, and we thought it would be a nice fit with Southeast Alaska," Clark said. "We wanted to figure out how we could make a program that really contrasted with itself, but still made sense in the context of where we are and where we live."

• In Juneau, local writer Brett Dillingham's story, "Klamott and the Land Otter People," is based on the Native tradition in which children are educated by their uncles. The protagonist, Klammot, is ignored by his uncle and grows up to be aggressive and cheeky. He mocks nature and is eventually lured underwater by land otters, the shape-shifting spirits of the river. Klammot's sisters and the rest of the people in the village must go to the shaman to ask for help in bringing Klammot back. The underlying theme: Mess with nature and pay the price.

Dr. Chan Park is the associate professor of Korean language, literature and performance studies at Ohio State. She wrote a libretto based on pansori, which she's studied since 1974. She plays all the characters in the story, not by moving but by changing her voice. She and Hakenberg have been discussing the composition since her recitals in Juneau last March and April. It runs about 35 minutes.

"This is, to our knowledge, the first time a non-Korean composer has written music for a pansori singer," Hakenberg said. "Just seeing it come together has been extremely interesting as a cross-cultural experience. It's a new art form - Southeast Alaska pansori."

"I am an outsider of Tlingit culture, and I did not want to make it sound like I knew it at all, because I don't know anything," Park said. "I came to it with dual respect and also the dual admission of ignorance. And due fascination with the culture that Alaska has to offer, and the strong conviction for the kind of shared myths, the shared-ness of the lessons, the timelessness. That gave me some strength."

The players are Mei Han (zheng), Ken Wright (violin), Andreas Brautigam (violin), Inés Volgar (violin) and Mark Wolbert (clarinet).

• In Ketchikan, storyteller, writer, radio host and arts administrator Keith Smith worked with 13 students from the Tongass School of Arts and Sciences Writer's Workshop, grades one through six, to write the Northwest Coast-influenced trickster story "Raven Goes To School." The story chronicles a mischievous trickster raven who's caught stealing fish and sentenced by court to attend a reform school. The raven promptly instigates a rebellion in the school.

New York composer Fred Ho, a writer, Asian-American activist and renowned baritone sax player, has worked with Smith to create the 22-minute composition "The Raven Suite." Ho has received three Rockefeller Foundation Multi-Art Projects grants, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and the 1988 Duke Ellington Distinguished Artist Lifetime Achievement Award from the Black Musicians Conference. He has worked extensively on stories involving the Chinese trickster monkey.

"Tricksters are fantastical creatures," he said. "They're monolithic representations of good and evil, but they have contradictory elements of all those characteristics. Tricksters are essentially rebels and destabilizers. They're outlaws. They're transgressors, violators. I feel we need to encourage that rejection of conformity, passivity and acquiescence."

Smith performs the song, taking on multiple personalities as the trickster. Ho's composition is written as a brass fantasy, with colorful parts for horns and odd changes to 98 and 1712 8 tempos. It's a departure for him, as he usually writes for woodwinds. The players are Dale Curtis (trumpet), Tia Wilhelm (horn), Wayne Houtcooper (trombone), Rob Holston (tuba) and Ho (bari sax).

• In Sitka, Korean composer Cecilia Kim has created a multimedia composition based on "The Story of Rain," a series of four poems by Sitka writer John Straley. Known for his mystery novels, Straley was influenced by "Love and Time," a collection of translated poems by Chinese Sung-period ku-wen writer Ou-yang Hsiu (1007-1072).

"I tried to write a series of poems that would create a mood and atmosphere that (Kim) could fill up with sound in anyway she liked," Straley said. "I turned to the Chinese, who are inspired by nature. And in these Chinese poems, there seems to be an open doorway between the mind and nature. I used that as the model."

Straley's work grew out of images from his journal - snapshots of rain, the gathering of clouds, the rising up of the water and the force of the rain.

Kim, a professor in composition at Sang Myung University in Seoul, has been experimenting with multimedia, film and modern dance since studying in Philadelphia in the early 1990s. Her composition uses instruments as a soundscape, more than an actual score or melody. Sounds move from one space to another, and the visual presentation includes dramatic lighting and a combination of projections.

Juneau performer Roblin Gray Davis is the storyteller, and the musicians are Jenny Quinn (viola), Sally Schlichting (flute), Karl Pusch (clarinet), Roger Schmidt (trombone), Clea Will (tuba) and Ed Littlefield (percussion).

• Korry Keeker can be reached at korry.keeker@juneauempire.com.

Courtesy of Mei Han
Coming to Juneau: Mei Han has made a name for herself as an innovator on the zheng.

Since moving to Canada from China in 1996, Mei Han has established herself as one of the pre-eminent Western-style innovators on the Chinese zheng, a 21-to-25-string wooden Asian long zither.

That's no small feat, considering the zheng has a 4,000-year-old oral instruction history that is constantly at risk of losing its nuances as its older practitioners die off. The instrument is still taught in China, but mostly in highly structured conservatory settings, where tradition is the rule.

"The notations have changed and the teaching methods have changed, so lots of subtleties have been lost in the last 50 years," Han said. "But we still have lots of old folk musicians, and people who keep rediscovering that there's lots of things that can be done with the zheng in terms of traditional playing."

Han will play a recital as part of the CrossSound 2005 concert festival at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 25, at Northern Light United Church. Tickets are $15 for adults, $12 for students and seniors.

The show will include traditional and contemporary Chinese and Japanese zheng songs. The instrument is quite bulky, so she can only afford to bring one of her zhengs from Michigan.

Han will also participate in CrossSound's Juneau residency, one of three Southeast collaborations scheduled for March 24-30. Teams in Juneau, Ketchikan and Sitka will be creating original scores. The result, "RainSongs: Three Antiphonous From Wet Lands," will play at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 2, at Chapel by the Lake. Friday ticket stubs are food for a $5 discount.

Han has been corresponding with CrossSound co-founders Jocelyn Clark and Stefan Hakenberg for the last five years. This is her first trip to Alaska.

"The beauty of the zheng is the subtleties, what we call the tail, the resonance, the bending notes," Han said. "It's not about Western harmony, how many keys you can play, how much modulation you can do. This instrument carries the value of the Taoism and the Confucianism, which is the relation between human beings and the nature."

Han lives in Ann Arbor, Mich., and teaches at the University of Michigan. She's premiered almost 50 zheng compositions since moving from China, many with her husband, Randy Raine-Reusch. She's also preparing a zheng-harpsichord duet for the 2005 Open Ears Festival in Ontario, Canada.

"Growing up in China, the country had endless political campaigns and movements, and lots of information - especially as it related to Western society - was banned," Han said. "As a performer, you only learn how to play the instrument. There wasn't much insight, and I didn't know much about Chinese history."

"When I came to the West, I started to really appreciate Chinese music and music from all cultures," she said. "It's certainly been mind-blowing, jaw-dropping, eyes-wide-opening."

• Korry Keeker can be reached at korry.keeker@juneauempire.com.