Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Arts & Entertainment writers offer capsule comments on this, that and the other thing ...

California EAR Unit

Richard Hines Members of the California EAR Unit are, from left, back row, Vicki Ray, Dorothy Stone and Marty Walker; front row, Robin Lorentz, Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick and Amy Knoles. Click photo for larger image.

Like the grinning and frowning masks of theater, we often categorize music as sad or happy, when in fact the best pieces cultivate real human emotions that fall in the shades between these poles. Such was the case with the performance by the California EAR Unit on Saturday at Bellefield Hall Auditorium.

The adventurous new music sextet appeared on Pitt's Music on the Edge series. Three of the six pieces it performed gravitated toward sadness, with slow and lamenting music anchoring them, but filled out emotionally in fascinating and complex ways.

Composer and EAR Unit percussionist Amy Knoles' "Squint" did so by juxtaposing crawling music with oncoming fast cars at night on a California freeway (projected on a screen), balancing the latter's innate compartmentalizing of humans with epic ambient sound in the audience-surrounding speakers.

In "Girlfriend," Julia Woolfe took nearly the same approach, although replacing the visual with an audio track of a horrifying car crash of some sort. It was musically more complicated, but not as compelling and far too long.

Computer maven Morton Subotnick's "ice.empty" paired a lamenting clarinet with computer-generated music and effects. The combination of clarinetist Marty Walker's manifest yearning with the un-organic sounds unsettled in a wonderful way. The ambiguity allowed the listener emotional latitude.

The night's three upbeat pieces also were anything but straightforward. Mathew Rosenblum's funny "Under the Rainbow" for flute and sampled voices landed on my ears more as a comment on art music's relationship to pop culture this time (Patti Monson premiered it on the series in 2002) than a purely fantasy piece. The subverting of flutist Dorothy Stone's rendering of a freeform impressionistic part by interjections by Porky Pig and "The Wizard of Oz" might indeed be an accurate account of the musical 20th century. The kaleidoscopic "Cendres" for piano, cello and flute by Kaija Saariaho and the tipsy rhythms of "Bleed Through" for full ensemble by Kerril Makan rounded out the truly edgy but open-ended program.

-- Review by Andrew Druckenbrod, Post-Gazette Classical Music Critic

Bodiography

Dancers, particularly ballet dancers, grow accustomed to receiving directions and corrections. But Bodiography's artistic director, Maria Caruso, has turned the tables on her company for its upcoming performances at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater in East Liberty at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.

"Multiplicity" will shed a new light on the company members, who will choreograph their own work on a range of subjects from insomnia to insects.

Some will follow the rock/pop ballet flavor favored by Caruso. Christena Jones tapped the movie "The Matrix" for "Internal Triumph," where life's "negative things turn into positives." Peter Boucher used Neil Young's music in "Some Day" to make a ballet honoring his late grandfather and the newfound love between his mother and her sister.

At the other end, Shannon Hritz wanted to "go as far away as possible," to the natural beauty of "Devorare Insectum," while Lauren Suflita turned to John Adams' opera "The Chairman" for an abstract contemporary ballet, "Synthesis."

And the cast for Jennifer Guy's "Insomnia" will forgo tutus for medical scrubs as they engage in a psychological thriller about the struggles of insomnia.

Tickets for "Multiplicity" are $12-$15. Information: 412-521-6094, ext. 5.

-- Preview by Jane Vranish, Post-Gazette Dance Critic

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