United States Tanglewood Festival 2024 [8] – The 2024 Festival of Contemporary Music: Tanglewood Music Center Fellows, Ozawa Hall, Lenox, 25, 26 & 27.7.2024. (RP)
The last weekend of July afforded an astounding array of music from more than 30 composers over the course of five days at Tanglewood. Even a slacker, who clocked in at the three concerts by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Andris Nelsons and three of the five 2024 Festival of Contemporary Music programs, heard 27 different works. Where else could that experience be replicated?
This year marked the sixtieth anniversary of the Festival of Contemporary Music, with Tania León and Steven Mackey as this year’s co-directors. Ed Gazouleas, director of the Tanglewood Music Center, León and Mackay provided straightforward general guidelines for the selection process for composers and the works to be performed.
The goal was to include composers of different ages and in many different career stages as possible. Another requirement was that the composers received much of their training in the US or are primarily based here. The overarching thematic framework was that the works be based on the idea of personal and public storytelling.
The awards for longevity go to 95-year-old T.J. Anderson, whose music was first performed at Tanglewood more than 50 years ago, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, who is a decade younger. Even at the opposite ends of the age spectrum, there were no truly unknown composers. The Millennials included Salina Fisher, Niloufar Nourbakhsh and Dai Wei, whose works are beginning to be regularly programmed.
With so much new music to digest, general impressions and snap judgments can’t be avoided. What lingers in the mind, however, is the astounding variety of musical styles presented in the first three Festival of Contemporary Music concerts, and the impressive versatility and musicianship of the young musicians who performed. Can there be anything more inspirational for music lovers?
The festival hit the ground running with the first work performed, Leila Adu-Gilmore’s United Underdog. It was composed as part of a large commissioning project entitled ‘America/Beautiful’ during the pandemic. Raised in New Zealand, Leila Adu earned a doctorate at Princeton University. In United Underdog, she pays tribute to the ordinary people who are the glue of American society and, collectively, make it work. It will be impossible to forget Zhaoyuan Qin playing the rhythms of ‘America the Beautiful’ with both arms taking down massive tone clusters on the piano.
Haitian-American Nathalie Joachim has forged a career as solo performer, educator and activist, all under the guise of activist. The Race:1915 for reciting cellist and electronics was inspired by artist Jacob Lawrence’s ‘The Migration Series’, 60 painted panels that depict African Americans leaving for the Northern states in the early decades of the twentieth century. The text, which cellist Luis Parra recited as he played, was extracted from The Chicago Defender, an important black newspaper of the time. Parra’s recitation of the harrowing words depicting the fate of African Americans in the Jim Crow South was as clear and penetrating as the sound coming from his instrument.
Estonian-American Lembit Beecher’s mother was a child refugee in German displacement camps after World War II. His Three Immigrant Songs for mezzo, soprano, horn, cello and piano addresses aspects of leaving one’s home from the perspective of three different writers. Madelin Morales expressed those yearnings for home by injecting emotion into recitative-like passages or permitting her voice to bloom gloriously in Beecher’s beautiful melodic lines. Jake Norwell’s horn playing was just as effective in creating mood and emotion.
Undoubtedly, the most provocative title was Niloufar Nourbakhsh’s Aid for Sex, but the subject could not be more serious. A 2018 UN report on sexual violence during the Syrian War inspired the Iranian-born composer to create the piece. Scored for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, piano and electronics, Aid for Sex is a musical recreation of the traumatic experience of a Syrian woman who managed to survive the abuse. It is a jarring piece in which Nourbakhsh creates a ‘sonic chaotic texture’ through her use of harsh, non-tonal harmonies.
Kintsugi, the traditional Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, was the inspiration for Salina Fischer’s trio for violin, viola and piano of the same name. Violinist Hajung Cho and cellist Alon Hayut created the dueling forces of permanence and the ephemeral by playing the harmonic sounds that permeate the score with precision, transparency and shimmering beauty. Pianist Seoyon Susanna MacDonald added a sense of completeness with the ostinato figures that signaled a sense of finality. The music slowly evaporated into thin air, bringing to a close this stunningly beautiful piece.
Science served as the inspiration for Nick DiBerardino’s Beet Juice for string quartet. The story transmitted through music was the 2009 discovery that beet juice increases the body’s ability to create energy from oxygen. For DiBerardino, that translated into exhilarating music which violinists Miyu Kubu and Allison Smith, violist Alyssa Warcup and cellist Mairead Flory propelled with great verve. DiBerardino’s sense of rhythmic nuance was a key factor in the work’s appeal.
In a panel discussion held during the weekend for the Musical Critics Association of North America, Andris Nelsons stated that supporting composers was the main mission of Tanglewood. These concerts made that manifest. What is even more impressive is the number of people who attended, whether seated in Ozawa Hall or relaxing outside on the lawn.
Rick Perdian
25.7.2024 – Various
Leila Adu-Gilmore – United Underdog
Miya Masaoka – Praying for a Sign
Trevor Weston – A.N.S.
Valerie Coleman – Portraits of Josephine
Nathalie Joachim – The Race 1915
Tania León – Indigena
Steven Mackey – Afterlife
26.7.2024 – Various
Steven Mackey – Sneaky March
Lembit Beecher – Three Immigrant Songs
Vijay Iyer – The Law of Returns
Niloufar Nourbakhsh – Aid for Sex
Tania León – In the Field
27.7.2024 – Various
Tania León – Atwood Songs
DaiI Wei – Partial Men
Angélica Negrón– Dóabin
Salina Fischer – Kintsugi
Nick DiBerardino – Beet Juice
Ileana Perez Velaquez – Vuelo
Steven Mackey – Measuring