
A new concert series, Universal Language: A 21st Century Music Project, promises a vehicle and framework to bring Seattle’s positive art influence further. The series has commissioned composers to create new music for concert events in March and May. The series’ inaugural concert event, Inception, was in early January.
A full house sat on pillowed benches and wooden bleachers; Velocity Dance Center was transformed into a comfortable stage on Friday, January 9. The audience had all just become part of an aural discourse in a classroom where pencils were exchanged for ginger ales and microbrews in dark bottles. The room had a rich buzz and thick energy under the low roofing. A nine-person orchestra stepped into the warm lighting, which grew into a large spotlight and prompted audience applause to welcome the visionary of this whole thing, Brian Chin.
Chin, the director of the Universal Language Project (ULP), welcomed his attendees into a setting which fit clearly with Chin’s belief that new art music will be “increasingly collaborative in design, performed in smaller intimate settings, and substantially less genre specific.”
Appropriately, Chin commissioned Seattle composers Sean Osborn and Wayne Horvitz. Their original music premiered at the show, alongside the minimalistic, introspective “Angel of Memory” by Marti Epstein and group conduction by Horvitz.
Sean Osborn was selected to create the rhythmically complex “Un-concerto for Trumpet and Chamber Ensemble,” based on an idea that dated back to his and Chin’s conversations from 2009. Osborn’s sporadic organization of sound featured Chin on trumpet and concluded with engrossing variations over a modulating chord progression. The dubbed ‘un-concerto’ tuned the audience’s ears for what they’d experience the rest of the night: compositions rich in musicianship and far from Western tone centers.
Seattle conductor/composer Wayne Horvitz was deservingly commissioned on his “A Stammer for Tori.” The tangible energy was amplified when featured violinist Victoria Parker began to play. Professionally and passionately, she delivered magical melodies. The song of yearning got seemingly stuck behind heavy layers of far-related tones, intentionally. Appropriately named, though dubbed “silly” by Horvitz, the rhythm carried in an anxious, human way. The musicians paused for a break called for by the piece and had to hush down a cheering audience.
“Wait, there’s more,” Parker said kindly before falling into a final double stop on her violin. With Parker’s talent and interesting composition features such as bass counterpoint of the violin’s melody and high flute harmonies, the piece spoke clearly to the journey of communicating emotion.
“Music is music,” a young Gershwin, and Chin’s audience, were both told. Chin’s role of an inspirer and collegiate professor was sensed in his inspirational tone. The combination of his SPU university students and Seattle JazzED musicians in the crowd brought the event’s age average down to somewhere around 28, a good thing in Chin’s eyes. “[We are working on] bridging the age gap,” Chin told his audience. Behind him, a wide-eyed bassist in a baby blue collared shirt stood behind a seasoned cellist triple his age.
Chin acknowledged the fear of beginning to create improvisations and warmly welcomed Horvitz in leading the audience in a stimulating lesson on live unrehearsed playing. Horvitz explained his technique of “conduction” and hand signaling to players. This improvisational performance conducted by Horvitz joined the orchestra line-up with young JazzED musicians from the region’s diverse communities. It introduced the successful education partnership ULP has already made with the JazzED program. Horvitz will direct similarly in an Art of Jazz presentation of the Seattle JazzED New Works Ensemble, Seattle Art Museum, Thursday, March 12, 5:30pm.
Next up for the ULP Series
Innovative Seattle quartet TORCH will perform March 13, 8pm, in partnership with Nonsequitur (www.nseq.org) as part of the monthly Wayward Music Series, at the Chapel Performance Space. Chin, principal trumpet for the Tacoma Symphony Orchestra and the trumpeter for TORCH, notes that the group, well versed in jazz improvisation, borrows eclectic rhythms and distant harmonies of Stravinsky and Bartók. The group’s sound is poised between progressive jazz, post-rock, and contemporary classical music. Their original compositions are self-described as “a playful juxtaposition amidst our heady intellects and our groove-craving souls.” Also in the group: clarinetist Eric Likkel, vibraphonist Ben Thomas, and bassist Brady Millard-Kish.The season finale returns to Velocity Dance Center, March 15 and 16, and features a unique Brazilian jazz composition, akin to Stravinsky’s theatrical work The Soldier’s Tale, for seven musicians, narrator, and dance by Jovino Santos Neto.