By Jenessa Farnsworth
For the first time this semester, groups of various BYU student and faculty musicians will be coming together to perform modern music and pay tribute to 20th century composers.
The Group for New Music, directed by Michael Hicks, will be performing an assortment of avant-garde and modern classical music. In honoring the late composer Morton Feldman, who died in 1987, the performance will feature one of his most recent works, “Palais de Mari.” According to Hicks, who will be playing the selection, the 25-minute piece is one of Feldman”s shortest compositions.
“It”s a great way for people to hear Morton Feldman”s style in a relatively short piece,” Hicks said. “Some of his pieces could run as long as six hours.”
Hicks said the piece, Feldman”s last piano composition before his death, is very slow and atmospheric.
“It”s the musical equivalent to large-scale abstract sculpture,” Hicks said.
In contrast to Feldman”s piano composition, the performance will also feature “Cuban Landscape With Rain,” an ethnic guitar piece, along with a multi-movement selection for baritone and clarinet based on the Lamentations of Jeremiah. There will also be a piece performed by a modernized player-piano called a Disklavier. The Disklavier plays melodies and compositions read off a computer disk.
“The Disklavier allows composers to write extremely complex rhythms that no human player could perform,” Hicks said.
In addition to the variation of the music played by the group, the actual number of members varies from semester to semester. Currently, Hicks said, there are about 12 players in the group, along with the Disklavier.
The group typically holds one or two concerts each semester. The concert on Friday, Feb. 17, 2006, will be the first of this semester. The second will be held on March 9, as part of a symposium to honor visiting composer Christian Wolff. Both Hicks and Asplund mentioned that Wolff was part of the New York School of Composition, alongside Feldman and composer John Cage.
Christian Asplund, who directed the group last year, said the type of music performed by the group mainly consists of modern classical music, though he says the genre can mingle with others.
“When you get into the most recent sort of classical music, there”s less of a barrier between classical, jazz and popular music,” he said.
Hicks, however, described the music performed by the group as avant-garde or experimental music.
“No composer likes either of those labels,” he said. “They think they might be misleading, but I think they”re fair.”
According to Hicks, the Group for New Music is more of a heading than an actual group. He said the performances typically consist of smaller groups coming together to perform new and experimental music.
“We never know from semester to semester what we might put together,” he said, adding that the program is always quite diverse in what exactly is played and that this performance will be an example.
The concert starts Friday night, Feb. 17, 2006, at 7:30 in the Madsen Recital Hall. Admission is free, and the public is welcome to attend.
(For comments, e-mail Jenessa Farnsworth at )
