In Review: The New Directions Cello Festival

A cello attacks a single note. Another joins, then another and another. They begin to pull apart, at first haloing the opening pitch with a microtonal smear, then broadening into a murmuration of intertwining melodies unspooling through the sonic depths. A bittersweet landscape unfolds, full of aching gestures and hallucinatory fragments that could be dream-memories of some old folk tune or other before, quite unexpectedly, a percussive groove kicks in and the quartet plunges headlong into the world of all-acoustic alt-rock.

So opened Saturday’s New Directions Cello Festival performance at Bombyx. The full festival ran for three days this past weekend, bringing together cellists from around the world to learn from each other and celebrate the possibilities of their instrument.

The Intergalactic Cello Quartet kicked the evening off. In addition to cross-genre performers, its members, Stijn Kuppens, Gunther Tiedemann, Dave Haughey, and Jeremy Harman, are all composers and improvisers, and their set comprised a selection of works written by each of the members except Harman.^[1] Despite sharing a common musical sensibility (at least for this project) of energetic pop-inflected bangers, differences in their voices were still apparent: Kuppens had a remarkable ability to keep his textures fresh despite the homogeneity of the ensemble, and Tiedemann conjured moments of surprising delicacy. Juxtaposed so directly against these deft works, Haughey’s offerings felt triter, though his arrangement of a Bulgarian folk tune was tremendous fun.

The Quartet had the vibe of an indie band, and I sometimes wished they had a lead singer to tie their songs together. As if in answer, Ben Sollee closed the night with a set of original songs. Singing and playing simultaneously, Sollee has an endearing goofy earnestness, as though acknowledging that it’s a bit odd to do Appalachian fiddle tunes on the cello while encouraging you to stomp your feet, sing along, and have a grand old time anyway. This open affect worked well in songs about loving fickle women or letting go of grudges, but jarred elsewhere. One number riffed musically on a Bach prelude under lyrics decrying the prison of masculinity — “It’s not impossible for me to cry, it’s just the hardest thing I’ve ever done” — but Sollee retained his unforced golden-retriever smile throughout, encouraging audience members to make a joyous noise in the pews.

In between came a heavily electrified set by Brent Arnold. During the Intergalactic set, I sometimes thought the mics were set too high, intimate moments washed out by being over amped. This became a real problem as Arnold began to manipulate his instrument’s sound and layer it over itself — his samples quickly built into a punishing wall of feedback. It’s a testament to his showmanship that he rode these squalls out until the system came under control, but several listeners fled before that point.

Those who did missed something wondrous. In his second number, the electronics gradually morphed from reverb into a jibbering mass of shrieks and moans. At first, this felt ominous, even claustrophobic. But as it continued in Bombyx’s polychromatic gloom, it transformed into an invitation that could have been the festival’s mantra: Here are some strange sounds, outside the boundaries of what you know how to hear. Let’s spend some time with them together.

In Brief

Shabbat kept me away from the first night of the festival, which is a shame, because the buzz in the room was that it had been spectacular. All the same, we are blessed to live in an age where hearing an artist live isn’t the only way to get a sense of what they’re doing, and I’ve been enjoying dipping in to the works of Helen Gillet, Shannon Hayden, and Naseem Alatrash. All three are still quite new to me, so I don’t have deeply formed critical thoughts yet, but Gillet’s classic chanteuse energy, Hayden’s dreamy unsettledness, and Alatrash’s ear-bending Arabic Jazz are all worth spending time with, for my money.

In other Jazz-related news, I was saddened to learn of the death of Abdullah Ibrahim since the last newsletter. I remain a respectful visitor at best to the world of Jazz, so I’ll leave the real obituary work to those with the pertinent expertise, but I’ve been revisiting the transcendent plateau of “Bra Joe from Kilimanjaro”, which, in a very different way, reaches for a kind of spiritual realm that I often feel that I’m chasing after in my own work. (For those who want a bit more pep, his early work still packs a heckuva punch.)

My ongoing quest to find sounds that speak somehow to to what I’m feeling in the current political moment has taken me this fortnight to Wang Lu’s Wailing, which captures my ongoing desire to scream and scream and never stop screaming about the horrors, though, obviously, there’s much more going on in it as a piece of music than that. According to the notes on her website, it draws on her childhood memories of peasant bands playing the same music for weddings and funerals to tie all of life into one grand drama of joy and despair. I hear it, I feel it. Maybe you will, too.

In My Calendar

SUMMER IS UPON US. In addition to the heat, various festivals are starting to kick into high gear. I’ll try to keep things day-trip-able from the general Massachusetts chunk of the Connecticut River Valley, but it’s a season for intrepid outings, so I may cast my net a little wider than usual. Even so, these listings are not exhaustive, they’re just what’s caught my particular eye. As ever, if you’re an artist, presenter, or publicist in the area, please add me to your mailing list so I can keep up with what you have going on!

Events marked with a Ø are free and do not require advance registration.

• Ø July 5, 10:00am: Tanglewood presents a mostly contemporary chamber concert featuring a world premiere by one of their alumns. Also on the program are works by the titans Elliott Carter and George Lewis, along with some Gabrieli to blast your ears clear of any lingering dissonances.
• July 8, 8:00pm: Also at Tanglewood, Samuel Barber’s evocative Summer Music for wind quintet meets a suite by Carlos Simon and a string quartet by Antonín Dvořák. Simon is relatively new to me, but I like what I’ve heard of his so far and am eager to deepen my familiarity with his output.
• July 9, 7:00pm: The New Hampshire Music Festival’s first orchestral concert features a seldom-heard work by David Diamond alongside a classic piece of Americana and two newer works themed around qualities of light. Perhaps a little far afield, but it’s a promising lineup to kick things off.
• July 11, 6:00pm: If you already plan to go to the 8:00pm Tanglewood show this evening, consider showing up a couple hours early for a pre-concert concert that includes John Adams’s ecstatic Shaker Loops and another work by Carlos Simon. The main show will doubtless be well played, but it’s the prelude concert that really has my attention.
• Ø July 12, 3:00pm: Congregation Ahavas Achim of Keene, NH, presents Weary Blues, a smartly programmed selection of works featuring baritone voice and cello. The conceptual through line here is strong, and I think it has the potential to cast some familiar works in a new light while also drawing attention to some rather less famous gems.
• Ø July 13, 1:30pm: If you, like me, work full time, you’ll probably not be able to make it to this concert of works by Tanglewood Music Center fellows, but if your schedule allows, definitely consider popping in. In years where my summers have been freer, I’ve heard some really astonishing things from the fellows. New music is always a bit of a gamble, but here it’s one that often pays off, and you certainly can’t beat the price of entry!