JACK Quartet & Lightbulb Ensemble

Fri., Jan. 13, 2017
Doors at 7:30pm | Show at 8pm
Peace United Church of Christ
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$20 / $8 Students & Artists
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New music champions JACK Quartet collaborate with the Santa Cruz/Oakland-based Lightbulb Ensemble (LBE) in a concert of new works for string quartet and contemporary American gamelan.

Building on the success of their 2015 performance of LBE director Brian Baumbusch’s epic Hyrdrogen(2)Oxygencalled “maddeningly beautiful … magnificent, and as intoxicating as a drug” by the Washington Post—the two ensembles premiere new pieces by three current and former LBE members: Santa Cruz composer Sarang Kim, Wayne Vitale, and Peter Sloan. Baumbusch’s Hydrogen(2)Oxygen will close the concert.

Hydrogen(2)Oxygen presents the first-ever collaboration between the Lightbulb Ensemble and the JACK Quartet. The work draws on the 2012 collaboration between Baumbusch and JACK entitled Bali Alloy, which premiered several works at the Bali Arts Festival in Denpasar written for JACK and a 25-member Balinese Gong Kebyar ensemble. Hydrogen(2)Oxygen comes from an aesthetic of molecular crystallizations, confluences of symmetry and asymmetry represented through non-coincidental rhythmic cells of contrary proportions and immense time cycles, and meanwhile explores the musical potential and the depths of raw expression contained in the contemporary string quartet and the American gamelan.

JACK Quartet

Deemed “superheroes of the new music world” (Boston Globe), the JACK Quartet is “the go-to quartet for contemporary music, tying impeccable musicianship to intellectual ferocity and a take-no-prisoners sense of commitment.” (Washington Post) “They are a musical vehicle of choice to the next great composers who walk among us.” (Toronto Star)

The recipient of Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award, New Music USA’s Trailblazer Award, and the CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, JACK has performed to critical acclaim at Carnegie Hall (USA), Lincoln Center (USA), Miller Theatre (USA), Wigmore Hall (United Kingdom), Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ (Netherlands), IRCAM (France), Kölner Philharmonie (Germany), the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), Suntory Hall (Japan), Bali Arts Festival (Indonesia), Festival Internacional Cervatino (Mexico), and Teatro Colón (Argentina).

Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell, JACK is focused on new work, leading them to collaborate with composers John Luther Adams, Chaya Czernowin, Simon Steen-Andersen, Caroline Shaw, Helmut Lachenmann, Steve Reich, Matthias Pintscher, and John Zorn. Upcoming and recent premieres include works by Derek Bermel, Cenk Ergün, Roger Reynolds, Toby Twining, and Georg Friedrich Haas.

Lightbulb Ensemble

The Lightbulb Ensemble is a new music percussion ensemble that champions experimental music, instrument building, and contemporary gamelan, “whose refreshingly innovative performances challenge conventional notions of how gamelan music should sound” (SF Classical Voice). The ensemble emerged from the culture of new music in the Bay Area centering around Mills College, and the longstanding artistic exchange between Bali and the US fostered by Gamelan Sekar Jaya. The group performs on steel metallophones, wooden marimbas, and other instruments designed, tuned, and built by Brian Baumbusch, Lightbulb’s founder and director. Performing only new repertoire, the group presents in-house compositions and collaborates with other artists of the new music community, including The Paul Dresher Ensemble, The Jack Quartet, The Center for Contemporary Music, Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang, among others.

Brian Baumbusch is a composer and multi-instrumentalist whose “harmonically vivid… intense… simmering” (NY Times) compositions push the boundaries of new music. He has spearheaded projects of both western and non-western music that are considered a “cultural treat” (Maryland Gazette). He has headlined performances at the Bali Arts Festival in Denpasar, The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, The Clarice Smith Center of Maryland, and Kresge Hall at MIT, Cambridge, among others. He has worked extensively with artists such as The JACK Quartet, Pauline Oliveros, Larry Polansky, Wayne Vitale, I Made Bandem, and Paul Dresher. In 2013, Baumbusch founded The Lightbulb Ensemble, a new-music gamelan ensemble performing on percussion instruments that he designed and built. He continues to be an influential force in the California gamelan community, both with his work in directing the Lightbulb Ensemble, as well as his work as director of the Santa Clara University Balinese Gamelan Ensemble and the U.C. Santa Cruz Balinese Gamelan ensemble, where Baumbusch currently resides.

Indexical’s Santa Cruz concert series is made possible through generous support by Arts Council Santa Cruz.

Arts Council Santa Cruz

Pratītyasamutpāda is a Sanskrit term for a Buddhist concept. Translated as “dependent-origination” or “contingent-arising,” it refers to two (or more) entities that bring each other into existence, by virtue of their relationship, which comes before the things related. Ready examples include the student and the teacher, the species in an ecosystem, the ideologies of major political parties, or the personalities and mannerisms of life partners. In each case, A does not cause B, and B does not cause A. Instead, A and B arise together, in a continuously unfolding process, reflecting one another like a photo and its negative, their essences enveloped within the heart of the other.

In this piece, the string quartet and the gamelan stand in this bi-polar relationship to each other. In the space opened between these two poles, pluralistic collections of sounds gradually come into being, grow to fruition, and then recede over time, sonic crest leading to trough following a logic both naturalistic and dream-like. Individual sounds will likely not be the listener’s focus. In fact (with a few exceptions) rhythms are not determined, and performers, following timers, have some flexibility and freedom in when (and what) they play. The system is the material, and the process is the event. So don’t try to catch each drop, just enjoy the rain.

“Oblivion” was composed around a few central ideas surrounding tempo and timbre. The composition experiments with an auditory tempo illusion created by accelerating or decelerating trills. Sometimes these resulting layers of tempos deviate from the original tempi. Meanwhile, the overtones from the steel metallophones are quite different from the harmonic overtone series produced by the strings. The fundamental melody is often doubled and sometimes tripled by this combination of overtones to enrich the timbral aspect of the work.

WATER is a meditation on flow and change – on the ways that water moves, morphs, and finds surprising new forms depending on its surroundings. Phase transitions are of special interest: How water jumps to a new state, infused with (or releasing) energy in the process. Ice cracks or sublimates, liquid water evaporates, steam condenses. These contrast with more gradual or undulating movement, the ebb and flow of a river’s downstream motion, or the push and pull of tides – taking musical form in the continual tempo changes of the last section.

Hydrogen(2)Oxygen was composed as the first-ever collaboration between the Lightbulb Ensemble and the JACK Quartet. The work draws on the 2012 collaboration between Baumbusch and JACK entitled Bali Alloy, which premiered several works at the Bali Arts Festival in Denpasar written for JACK and a 25-member Balinese Gong Kebyar ensemble. Hydrogen(2)Oxygen comes from an aesthetic of molecular crystallizations, confluences of symmetry and asymmetry represented through non-coincidental rhythmic cells of contrary proportions and immense time cycles, and meanwhile explores the musical potential and the depths of raw expression contained in the contemporary string quartet and the American gamelan. A breakdown of the movements are as follows:

I: Hydrogen (GAS) - this movement explores, in two contrasting sections, four non-coincidental polyrhythms, 7-11-13-17, that are divided between the sixteenplayer ensemble. The first section presents the cycles in their glacial state, slowmoving and unobtrusive. They are catalyzed by two tempo curves that begin to enact a large-scale accelerando through diverging click tracks that the players are listening two via ear-buds. At the height of this accelerando, there is a fission that splits the ensemble into four different tempo curves that progress through different polyrhythmic progressions for the duration of the piece, oscillating through chaos and order. The string quartet plays only open strings and natural harmonics, and the gamelan progresses through a melodic sequence that forms the foundation for the following two movements.

Below is a graphic representing the tempo curves in the piece:

II: Hydrogen (ICE) - this movement explores the color scape of the instrumentarium of the combined ensemble. Portions of the string content are inspired by the second quartet of Ligeti, and the gamelan parts attempt to create Quasi-Kebyar moments, evocative of early 20th century Balinese Kebyar music, though distorted and impeded.

III: Oxygen (AQUA)- this movement represents one full cycle of a four part polyrhythm (5-7-8-9). The string parts and gamelan parts spotlight each of these cycles individually until they combine toward the end of the piece. The piece is inspired by the image of a school of fish on a reef; all change direction in a unified manner but not at the same instant, and their movement seems both asymmetric and symmetric, unpredictable but inevitable.

This piece is dedicated to Michael Tenzer. (notes authored by Brian Baumbusch)

Brian Baumbusch is a composer and multi-instrumentalist whose “harmonically vivid… intense… simmering” (NY Times) compositions push the boundaries of new music. He has spearheaded projects of both western and non-western music that are considered a “cultural treat” (Maryland Gazette). He has headlined performances at the Bali Arts Festival in Denpasar, The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, The Clarice Smith Center of Maryland, and Kresge Hall at MIT, Cambridge, among others. He has worked extensively with artists such as The JACK Quartet, Pauline Oliveros, Larry Polansky, Wayne Vitale, I Made Bandem, and Paul Dresher. In 2013, Baumbusch founded The Lightbulb Ensemble, a new-music gamelan ensemble performing on percussion instruments that he designed and built. He continues to be an influential force in the California gamelan community, both with his work in directing the Lightbulb Ensemble, as well as his work as director of the Santa Clara University Balinese Gamelan Ensemble and the U.C. Santa Cruz Balinese Gamelan ensemble, where Baumbusch currently resides.

The Lightbulb Ensemble is a new music percussion ensemble that champions experimental music, instrument building, and contemporary gamelan, “whose refreshingly innovative performances challenge conventional notions of how gamelan music should sound” (SF Classical Voice). The ensemble emerged from the culture of new music in the Bay Area centering around Mills College, and the longstanding artistic exchange between Bali and the US fostered by Gamelan Sekar Jaya. The group performs on steel metallophones, wooden marimbas, and other instruments designed, tuned, and built by Brian Baumbusch, Lightbulb’s founder and director. Performing only new repertoire, the group presents in-house compositions and collaborates with other artists of the new music community, including The Paul Dresher Ensemble, The Jack Quartet, The Center for Contemporary Music, Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang, among others.

Deemed “superheroes of the new music world” (Boston Globe), the JACK Quartet is “the go-to quartet for contemporary music, tying impeccable musicianship to intellectual ferocity and a take-no-prisoners sense of commitment.” (Washington Post) “They are a musical vehicle of choice to the next great composers who walk among us.” (Toronto Star)

The recipient of Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award, New Music USA’s Trailblazer Award, and the CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, JACK has performed to critical acclaim at Carnegie Hall (USA), Lincoln Center (USA), Miller Theatre (USA), Wigmore Hall (United Kingdom), Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ (Netherlands), IRCAM (France), Kölner Philharmonie (Germany), the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), Suntory Hall (Japan), Bali Arts Festival (Indonesia), Festival Internacional Cervatino (Mexico), and Teatro Colón (Argentina).

Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell, JACK is focused on new work, leading them to collaborate with composers John Luther Adams, Chaya Czernowin, Simon Steen-Andersen, Caroline Shaw, Helmut Lachenmann, Steve Reich, Matthias Pintscher, and John Zorn. Upcoming and recent premieres include works by Derek Bermel, Cenk Ergün, Roger Reynolds, Toby Twining, and Georg Friedrich Haas.

JACK Quartet & Lightbulb Ensemble

Fri., Jan. 13, 2017
Doors at 7:30pm | Show at 8pm
Peace United Church of Christ
Add to Calendar
$20 / $8 Students & Artists
Buy Tickets

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