Summer Evening: Tenth Wave Music

It was a walk down memory lane, sort of, as we ate dinner at the venerable Tea House, a Stadium Village fixture for more than fifty years, I think, then drove the backstreets of Dinkytown looking for the University Lutheran Church of Hope. We were on our way to a concert scheduled to take place in the church courtyard presented by a chamber ensemble called 10th Wave (never heard of them). The program consisted of five or six compositions written in the last quarter-century by composers unknown to me.

What drew us to such an event? I would say it was the setting and the instrumentation: violin, viola, flute, clarinet, piano, and cello. Such an ensemble is likely to offer clear, open line rather than a flood of sound, and the clarinet in particular recalled to my mind pieces such as Stravinsky's "Pastorale," Poulenc's Clarinet sonata, and Milhaud's many chamber works for winds.

Of course, one never knows. They might just as well have presented a program devoted to compositions by disciples of Gyorgi Kurtag, Hindemith, and Skrowaczewski!

But there has been a healthy swing in recent decades away from post-war anxiety and doom-speak toward openness and lyrical expression, usually without the mid-century pastoral schmaltz.  A post-modern oddness and the revival of interest in deliberately—almost mechanically—repetitive figures helps to keep things fresh.

Here I am, analyzing recent trends in "classical" music like an Alex Roth wannabe. What do I know about such things?

I do know that I enjoyed all of the pieces on the program. The opening number, "Karakurenai," by Andy Akiho, was my favorite. It was written for a steel drum ensemble, but it sounded great with more traditional instruments. The pianist, Mirana Moteva, maintained a simple rhythmic pattern heavy on octaves and common intervals that reminded me of the works of the Armenian priest Komitas, who died in 1935. if that means anything to you. (You can hear a very brief fragment here.)  

"Eviogimenos," by Sungji Hong, was also very fine, though I don't remember much about it now. "Ralph's Old Records," by Kenji Bunch, offered a five-movement aural tour of the music the composer listened to as a child along with his dad. It started off with a rich, swooning rendition of a few bars of "Deep Purple" and moved on from there in several interesting, though less familiar, directions.

The performers were all top-flight, and it was wonderful to be reminded yet again how lovely individual instruments can sound when they're being played nearby.

It was a chilly evening. The crowd seemed to me a mix of younger middle-aged and elderly people: family and friends of the performers, budding young composers, a few parishioners perhaps.    

With its youth, ethnic diversity, contemporary musical focus, and agreeable aura, Tenth Wave has clearly got a good thing going. I want to hear more.