A different kind of travelling: An artist's Spiritual Journey

Art is something you turn to when you have lost everything: then it takes you on a spiritual journey.

That is what Dutch-American painter Luc Leestemaker told his friend Canadian Composer Vincent Ho before cancer stole him away last May.

Leestemaker was the muse behind Ho's newest work for percussion and orchestra, From Darkness to Light: A Spiritual Journey featuring soloist Dame Evelyn Glennie, which premiered on Saturday, February 2nd at the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's New Music Festival.

I attended this remarkable concert, which also featured a work by American minimalist composer Steve Reich, and decided to try my hand at writing a review of the evening. Here is the result, an appropriate inclusion on my travel blog because, after all, it's about travelling - of a different kind.

WSO Composer-in-Residence, Vincent Ho

2-Feb-2013

Manitoba Centennial Concert Hall, Winnipeg, Canada

Art and poetry inspire percussive works at the WSO’s New Music Festival: Vincent Ho’s world premiere of From Darkness to Light: A Spiritual Journey performed by Dame Evelyn Glennie, and Steve Reich’s The Desert Music.

Reviewed by Christine Mazur

Canadian composer Vincent Ho programmed an evening of rich contrasts for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s 22nd Annual New Music Festival’s finale: the world premiere of his own percussion concerto, and an established work by American composer, Steve Reich. Ho has hit his stride in the past few years as the WSO’s composer-in-residence and curator of the festival. He continues forward with this second collaboration with Scottish percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, following his 2010 work for percussion and orchestra, The Shaman in what is intended to be a trilogy.

Dame Evelyn Glennie (photo from Vincent Ho's website)

The contrasts between Ho and Reich’s respective works arise from their experiences, inspirations and personal styles. Ho’s From Darkness to Light: A Spiritual Journey, has roots in his close friendship with Dutch-American painter Luc Leestemaker who died of cancer in May, 2012. Steve Reich’s The Desert Music (1983) was inspired by the poetry collection of the same title by the late American poet William Carlos Williams.

In the program notes, Ho describes his work as “my personal response to cancer” which “expresses the awfulness of the disease and the fight that one faces: fear, uncertainty, shock and grief; the quest for healing, hope - the journey from pain and suffering to peace and acceptance.” On stage, Ho recalled Leestemaker as “a brilliant man” who felt that art was something you turn to when you have lost everything: art then takes you on a spiritual journey. Ho called Glennie “a modern-day musical Shaman” who is the medium through which the audience experiences the journey.

As with Ho’s previous orchestral works this latest is full of passion and raw power. Though some parts verge on bombastic, they balance with delicate reflective moments through quiet, melodic solos.

Always barefoot when performing, Glennie’s first steps began with warm vibraphone tones buoyed by shimmering strings and rippling piano, evoking Debussy. Basses and brass slid ominously, heralding tension and chaos in what became a recurring theme. The initial peacefulness crumbled as Glennie sawed away with a bedraggled cello bow at a strange device that looked like two small bowls attached to a handle and rimmed with metal rods. The result was a thin screeching, barely audible. With sudden chaos, all the musicians flapped their music while Glennie pounded away at a series of tom-tom and bass drums. The chaos subsided to the sliding brass and strings, with tympani booming back and forth like Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra Space Odyssey 2001 theme. Then, a siren-like wail erupted.

The piano, vibraphone and shimmering strings returned, woven with a menacing growl in the lower strings and brass. A theme of acceptance emerged in higher tones above steady piano arpeggios, with Glennie toning the vibraphone in a melodic pattern, until the violins shimmered into nothing.

Artist, Luc Leestemaker (photo from the Spectator Tribune)

Concluding the work, Leestemaker’s paintings were projected on a large screen behind the orchestra while Glennie performed her own piece “A Little Prayer” for solo marimba, lit by a stark white spotlight. Finally her mallets faded and Glennie stood still for a full minute of silence.

Where From Darkness to Light was inspired by Ho’s relationship with a living artist and friend, Steve Reich’s The Desert Music (1983) came from his love of William Carlos William’s poetry.

Composer Steve Reich (from www.stevereich.com)

Also driven by percussion (Reich studied jazz drumming, as revealed at a post-show talk), the minimalist pioneer’s work for choir and orchestra was rigidly structured. Three string quartets framed conductor Alexander Mickelthwate’s podium, behind which two rows of four marimbas fronted a row of brass and woodwinds, behind which the choir was strung out in one line.

Microphones proliferated the stage unnecessarily. What might have been a lovely and expressive theme in the strings was instead tinny and scratchy. The only performer who actually needed amplification was the percussionist banging four drumsticks together: 1-2, 1-2-3, what Reich later described as a Bartok or Stravinski-like Bulgarian dance rhythm.

Like Ho’s piece, one instrument started Reich’s work, followed by deliberate layering. However, Reich’s layers were precise with distinct roles for each instrument. A lone piano gave way to individual violins, each adding fugue-like counterpoint rhythms.

In excerpts from Williams’ poem The Orchestra, the music matched the lyrics: the line “It is a principle of music to repeat the theme” - was repeated. At the phrase “the facts to be resolved,” the music instead ended in discord. Another siren-like sound emerged - this time from the violas - uncomfortably loud with the microphones. The piece ended with the orchestra scrubbing away in swells, more like ocean waves than sand dunes in a desert, before coming to an abrupt stop.

At the post-concert talk, Reich was asked how he would advise young composers: he encouraged them to take part in their musical communities, learn from others, and “steal everything that’s worth stealing.” Asked why he writes music, he replied, “There’s nothing on earth I’d rather do.”