aeblog

minimal?

I don't know why they call it minimalist music. I guess perhaps it's perceived simplicity is what led to this label, but it sure doesn't feel minimal to me. I went to see BMOP's Minimalism concert last night and this was the best concert I have ever seen them give. The performance was excellent, in my humble estimation, but the real reason it was so good was because of the program. It started with some John Adams, moved into Philip Glass, ended with Steve Reich and also included a piece written by the BMOP composer in residence, Elena Ruehr. Adams, Glass and Reich are for sure the stalwarts, inventors, if you will, of minimal music, so it is no shock to see them on this program, but is had been a while since I had heard any of their music live.

What I like about this music is that in some ways it makes so much sense, yet in other ways, you can't believe what your ears are hearing. Much of it is very mathematical; simple motives repeated over and over in common tones and scales. Nothing totally crazy until the layering happens. One line upon the next over and over until this mass of pulsating sound is just oozing throughout the concert hall. You begin to hear rhythms that aren't actually there, it seems. At least no one single musician or group of musicians is playing the rhythm necessarily. It is the interaction between the layers and parts that becomes so exciting. I guess the cliche of the whole being better than the sum of the parts holds true here.

I could hear everything so clearly and seeing the musicians moving to the music was an added benefit. There were layers of long sustained strings countering syncopated clapping. There were vocal and instrumental layers; loud and soft ones. One time I nearly fell out of my chair at the shock of an additional bass part. The music was so full that I had forgotten, or maybe didn't even realize, that there was a whole range beneath what was being played that was silent. And then when it entered, the bottom dropped out and a monumental shift had happened. I can still feel it in my chest, re-living the moment in my memory. It was a deviously wonderful trick to play on us listeners.

But through all this, the pulse just kept on going. The pulse was where the music lived. It came out to show itself, but the roots were in the never-ending, steady pulse of life being attended to collaboratively by each and every musician on that stage.

It must be so fun to play this music. You have your own little part of the whole, diligently counting like mad and repeating repeating repeating while the entire world, it seems, flows around you and over you in a mollasses landscape of geologic shifts. Things change without you even knowing how, though the why seems perfectly clear: because it sounds good; because it *is* good. And here you are, doing your part. I wonder if any of the musicians ever feel like they are just along for the ride.

I left the show with reinvigorated interest in these three composers and have scoured my own collection for a few cds. They are not enough, though, so I have re-discovered how great our public library system is, and have ordered a few more cds to be delivered next week. I am incredibly excited for the ten cd set of Steve Reich's complete works. My god, this is going to be fun. Listening to his music at night in the rain in your car is the best way to listen, I think. I don't know why.