NORTH ADAMS (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Venturing back to live performances and finding a classical-music institution in rude health can be like putting on a pair of old jeans and discovering, with relief, an easy fit.
Thats how it felt to attend Bang on a Cans LOUD Weekend festival, held throughout the Mass MoCA complex here Friday and Saturday, a return to form for the new music collective after 15 months of hosting streamed concerts.
With over 20 hours of performances, you could see one familiar look after another all of them hallmarks of the fabled, free Bang on a Can Marathons in New York City. But here, in a two-day, paid-ticket environment, there was more time for each musicians set to take on an individual character. And even though a few artists copped to first-day-back jitters, most appearances unfurled with crisp, defiant polish as if they had spent no time away from audiences.
That was particularly true of pianist Lisa Moores show Friday, which featured pieces by Philip Glass, Don Byron and Martin Bresnick and a world premiere from Frederic Rzewski, who died in June. The set was confirmation of the interpretive insights she has brought works by these composers on her recordings. And the Rzewski premiere Amoramaro, subtitled Love Has No Laws was bittersweet: an alternately seductive and prickly reminder of all the music of his that can no longer be written.
Amoramaro, commissioned for Moore by her husband, is nonetheless something to treasure (and, surely, record). Its occasionally lush chords half-remembered and half-transformed from the American Songbook commingle with austere, flinty runs that make trapeze-swing connections between distant registers. And its climactic, banging clusters could have been inspired by Rzewskis experience playing Stockhausens Klavierstücke. That it all held together, over 15 minutes, was evidence of both Rzewskis peculiar, personal palette and Moores keen feel for it.
Elsewhere, the festival delivered on boldface names: Its telling that this weekend had audience members asking one another, Which Kronos Quartet concert was better? For me, it was the Friday night one, a somber yet intense set that began with Jlins Little Black Book and ended with Jacob Garchiks Storyteller. That performance was more coherent than Saturday's, which was well played but more diffuse, including the premiere of Terry Rileys This Assortment of Atoms One Time Only!, an attractive but modest addition to the composers significant body of work for Kronos.
As at past Bang on a Can Marathons, contemporary and modernist trends from around the globe were present and accounted for at the LOUD Weekend. These included French spectralism (in the music of Gérard Grisey); minimalism (Riley, Glass and their descendants); and collective improvisation (from Banda de los Muertos, a jazz ensemble inspired by the music of Sinaloa in Mexico).
And there were solo acts throughout. Violinist, improviser and composer Mazz Swift brought Saturday night to an early peak with a presentation of her Sankofa Project, which she has described as re-imaginings of so-called slave songs, as well as freedom songs and my own versions of what Im calling modern-day protest songs. When Swift used subtle electronic processing to augment a few chest-voice notes or when she looped a striated violin passage to create a hazy cloud that supported spitfire solo lines her range of effects proved as protean as it was powerful.
In addition to the starry headliners, there were also students from the Bang on a Can summer institute, who were given moments to shine. A few of them seemed ready to build ensembles of their own, and perhaps return for future festivals. Saxophonist Julian Velasco, for example, excelled as part of a mixed professional and student ensemble in Julius Eastmans Femenine on Friday and as part of a duo playing Shelley Washingtons BIG Talk on Saturday.
Ken Thomson, Velascos seasoned pro of a partner in the Washington piece, was a virtually omnipresent force across both days, including as a member of the organizations house group, the Bang on a Can All-Stars.
Thomson and his fellow All-Stars made good on their moniker most forcefully Friday, with a ripping take on Workers Union a minimalism-influenced classic by Louis Andriessen, who died in July. And while the bands capstone set on Saturday night which doubled as the festivals finale was crisply and energetically played, its program was mixed.
That concert featured a new arrangement of Terry Rileys Autodreamographical Tales (soon to be released on an All-Stars recording), a work that seems destined to be a curio in the legendary composers output. Or a curio on top of a curio, since this version has roots in an obscure piece that Riley recorded in the 1990s.
Its text comes from a dream journal that Riley kept for a time. There are moments of low-key humor, and Tales skewers musical ego in a winning way; we get a sense of how often Rileys dreams involve other musicians complimenting his work. But the piece also rambles, and isnt always as clever as the subconscious might have hoped in the way recounted dreams tend to be.
Tales nonetheless offers stray pleasures, particularly whenever Riley dreams up a vamping blues or rock number joyously arranged here by his son, Gyan. Guitarist Mark Stewart took on vocal duties, since Riley has been in Japan since the start of the pandemic. (He did make a brief appearance in the form of a live, lighthearted video introduction.)
In the final hours on Saturdays lineup, listeners could sprint from a short set by the rising star Nathalie Joachim (singing and playing flute on excerpts from her celebrated album Fanm dAyiti), to a concert of Pandemic Solos, commissioned by Bang on a Can for its virtual marathons during the pandemic.
I couldnt bear to listen to those livestreamed marathons in the moment. I tried, but the troubled audio inevitable when artists were streaming from so many locations registered as microtragedies that distracted from the works themselves. I told myself I would hear some of them in the future; and I did Saturday.
A string of works for All-Stars bassist Robert Black opened the day, including Maria Huld Markan Sigfusdottirs spectral, spooky Pending. And after Joachims set, I heard a trio of searing and distinct pieces by Aeryn Santillan, Rudresh Mahanthappa and Anna Clyne, all written for Thomson.
This is a stealthy strength of Bang on a Can. It draws audiences in with grand names. But if the legends disappoint in a given hour, as Riley did, theres always the next set and the next generation to save the day.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.