No Nocturnal?!
New Music in Mexico City
On October 1 this year I gave a concert for the V Festival Internacional de Compositores a la Guitarra Pa’ lo Escrito. Organized by Guillermo Soriano, a student at UNAM, the five-day festival is a feast of new music for guitar. I was the second North American representative, last year West Coast composer/guitarist Philip Rosheger performed.
Each night featured a guest artist (called an in invitado) preceded by local performers, as many as six, playing their own works. Three-hour-long concerts were a bit much even for this advocate of new music, but there were inspired, dreadful, amusing and entertaining moments. There were the usual computer assisted compositions, the funky/folksy ones, the new-agey ones, and the totally dissonant, interminable contributions. But the weirdest, and perhaps most wondrous moment, was when a young man emerged from the green room with an array of PVC pipe and a low garden stool. Sitting cross-legged, he arranged the white tubes by attaching one end to his left foot. The other end was carefully twisted and aligned with the neck of the guitar. A capo! Foot-controlled!! Movable, like a traditional blues slide, but not occupying the left hand. The result: a very twangy sound, but with fabulous harmonic possibilities, this was not blues guitar! The gentleman played with great accomplishment, his leg constantly and accurately placing this movable capo wherever his bold imagination led him.
New Music in Boston
So what is our own new music festival like - why Festival 21? We present 21st century music and those who make it, play it and promote it, in any style from “pop arrangements” to “avante-garde”. Here’s why.
Recently I received a call from famed Greek guitarist Eleftheria Kotzia. We discussed the possibility of her coming to Boston for a concert and I told her about Festival 21. I asked if she does much contemporary music. Would a full program of new works be of interest to her? Her response, “Well it depends on what you call ‘contemporary’”? I explained that I am interested in presenting performers who are actively commissioning works or writing their own music such as Dusan Bogdanovic, Atanas Ourkouzounov, Ernesto García de León, Gyan Riley and Andrew McKenna Lee. She said Stephen Dodgson, Carlo Domeniconi and others have written pieces for her, but she is mostly used to presenters telling her, “Please don’t play the Nocturnal!” [by Benjamin Britten]
I nearly fainted. Now I know we live in an extraordinarily conservative age and we rarely see the Nocturnal programmed. I have heard younger players gasp when I say that I think it is one of the most important and wonderful pieces ever written for guitar. But how can a presenter tell a great performer not to play an unquestioned masterpiece. Please don’t show the Mona Lisa. Please don’t play the Rite of Spring. What kind of absurd self-censorship is this? What kind of intellectual vacuum is being created and supported by guitar sponsors? This is sacrilege!
Ellie went on to say how most presenters ask for popular pieces. Have you noticed the resurgence of Capricho Arabe and Asturias, the Sonatina by Tórroba, Sor’s Mozart Variations, etc? At least four important concerts in Boston have included the Sor in the past year alone. No offense to the great artists who played it, I enjoyed every single performance, but I can’t believe that with all the intense creativity from hundreds of composer/guitarists today that we still have to hear, more often than not, these overworked war horses.
But wait! Oh my God! I recently agreed to do a concert of - YES - standard Segovia repertoire, a concert on a 1931 Hauser to celebrate the 100th birthday of still-living legend Blanche Moyse of Brattleboro VT who studied with Segovia in the 30’s. I’m having a ball with, ehem, Capricho Arabe, Asturias, Hómage a Tárrega, and Villa-Lobos.
So that is why Festival 21 exists – not to discredit the old but to provide a haven for the new, the fresh, the experimental or risky. A place where, whether you love the old standards or not, you will be safe from the familiar. I am the gate keeper, trust me, they will not enter the doors of Festival 21. The Festival’s pioneering work in the music of TODAY is supported by grants from Augustine Foundation and D’Addario Music Foundation, and, we hope, you!
