The Polyaspora Festival commenced Tuesday, Sept. 24 at 5:30 p.m. in Leith Symington Griswold Hall at the Peabody Institute. The festival “centers Black and Brazilian perspectives in contemporary music alongside a showcase of new musical works by Peabody Conservatory students.” The Future is Now I was the first event of the five-day festival, featuring seven different compositions by current Peabody Conservatory students. Their presentations were followed by a performance by the members of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE).
The festival began with an opening by Associate Professor and Chair of Composition Felipe Lara. Lara said the festival planning took a year to prepare. According to the University, this was possible through a grant from the Nexus Awards — an award granted to projects and programs that are connected with the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center in Washington D.C.
The first presentation in this festival was Zac Fick-Cambria’s “Res ipsa loquitur.” In the recital program, Fick-Cambria described that the piece “speaks for itself.” The piece consisted of many sharp, buzzing harp string sounds, as if bugs were skittering along the surface of a metallic board, sending shivers up the back of the spine.
Harpist Nuiko Wadden created these sounds by gliding her hands vertically across the harp strings rather than in the horizontal direction that is more commonly seen in classical harp playing. The hand motion generated a zippy resonance that felt almost eerie, as if something ominous was hiding in the room with you. The piece also involved frequent aggressive hits against the harp strings, which contrasted from the traditional, graceful image of a harp playing on the stage. The constant use of a wide range of sound created a large thunderclap effect that echoed throughout the hall.
In contrast to classical music, the experimental nature of contemporary music pushes the boundaries of more traditionally-sounding music by exploring different phrasings and techniques. While the expression of classical music can feel quite anachronistic, contemporary music is something that can feel more familiar with our society today. In an interview with The News-Letter, the composer of the fifth piece, Antonio Sanz Escallón, explained that a key component to composing contemporary music comes from being invested in the performer and not solely the music.
“In the process of writing my piece, I emailed [its musician] some questions, and he got back to me,” Escallón said. “We didn’t meet until the day of the performance and had a sound check where we talked through the piece a bit.”
The second piece was “Lacky” by Jaze Matteo Wharton, performed by guitarist Daniel Lippel. Wharton said he wanted to emulate the feeling of constraint, underscored by “the constriction of spirit, situation and literal construction on the neck of the guitar.”
The piece began with some melodic lines, which were intermittently interrupted by pauses. Such patterns consistently repeated throughout the piece, but there was a perpetual, rhythmic ostinato that went back and forth between notes. In the slower sections, there was an interesting use of vibrato as Lippel brought out each note with a strong pluck of the strings to make every pitch distinctly stand out.
Similar to the first composition, a skittering effect is created by shifting the hand and fingers up and down the entire fingerboard, which is then followed by strong strumming on the strings with abrupt chords that seem to appear out of nowhere. The ending was very unexpected, as quite distinct notes were played together and left unresolved.
Comparable to any other creation of a composition, Escallón said one of the biggest challenges in composing his piece was how it exposed the music to vulnerability.
“It’s just one line with one pitch at the same time, so the material has to be very strong for people to want to [listen],” Escallón said. “I always think about what I want the experience to be like hearing the piece. From there, all the pitches, rhythms and textures come out.”
The third piece in the program was “Rosonantia Circuli” by Zhishu Chang performed by bassoonist Alexander Davis. It began with foghorn sounds mixed with interesting harmonic notes, which led to a singular held note that resonated throughout the hall.
To create the idea of “self-reflection and rebellion of social gaze,” as mentioned by Chang in his introduction, the piece grew with cacophonous sound effects. It paralleled moments in an individual’s life where they are furious and don’t know what to do with that anger, as if it is stuck inside of them. The noises in the piece kept on growing endlessly as it continued building up. The entire time it felt like every sound in existence was exposed through an overwhelming feeling of inability to escape the chaotic world. This sentiment was created through notes played back and forth repeatedly in a crescendo and decrescendo.
Following Chang, “Fractures” by Zixuan Chen — which, according to Chen, is about “the fractures of everything, including pitch and rhythm.” Similar to the first and second compositions, a lot of the sounds created by violist Wendy Richman were emitted by sliding the finger up and down the fingerboard. The effect was enhanced through harmonics with abrupt whole bow strokes. In order to create a more dissonant sound, the bow was played over the fingerboard, which is commonly done to create a more delicate note. The violist continued that sound by playing dissonant intervals displaying a large range of sound quality from having the fingers placed on and off the viola. The music was so peculiar that it felt as if some of the notes shouldn’t have been played together and, instead, as though they acted on their own.
Escallón’s piece “Etchings” was performed by oboist Nick Masterson. Escallón also said he normally starts his compositions with broad sketches and rewrites them five to ten times before finalizing them.
“[For this piece], I wanted to lean into the idea of a musician performing by themselves. The two different musical ideas alternate between having the musician be in a place where they’re trying to get the attention of the audience they’re performing for,” he said. “On the other hand, there’s music that’s very distant and isolated, as if someone is performing by themselves with no one around to listen to, and it goes back and forth.”
From the audience’s perspective, the piece started with a melody that felt very exciting and giddy then transitioned into a section that sounded as if it was questioning the meaning of life and the purpose of existence. This was done through a lot of trills with loose air at the end with long, dissonant notes. The pattern went on for a while, which disquieted the audience because they kept on wondering about what would happen next.
The final piece was Caleb J. Abner’s “History and No Lies,“ performed by hornist Kyra Sims.
In his presentation, Abner said that “the piece is full of mistranslations and continuations of alterations through transitions.” It began with blaring sounds being emitted from the horn, which created an interesting atmospheric sound. The variation between really low, buzzing noises to high, voluminous sounds continued for a while, trumpeting throughout the hall. Moments of silence existed between, but the piece mostly went back and forth between the two sections.
The rest of the festival week was set in the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue. The remaining events consisted of The Future is Now II, Composing While Black: AfroDiasporic New Music Today and Antropofagia: Brazilian Perspectives. All events were free and open to the public.
“There are so many opportunities for really unexpected and powerful things [in contemporary music],” Escallón said. “You just have to be open to how weird [the music] can get.”
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