I Care if You Listen

Lisa Moore & Sō Percussion: Martin Bresnick’s “Caprichos Enfáticos” on Cantaloupe

Francisco Goya’s famous series of prints Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War) were created between 1810 and 1820, though not actually published until 35 years after Goya’s death, in 1863.  There are 82 prints in all, each highly critical of both Spanish and French rulers during the conflicts between the two countries in the early 19th century, and they are shockingly graphic: realistic depictions of mutilated corpses in the aftermath of battle and the effects of famine, and gross mockeries of the ruling classes and the clergy.  They are less high art and more a sort of proto-photojournalism.

Martin Bresnick’s Caprichos Enfáticos: Los Desastres de la Guerra, an 8-movement concerto for pianist Lisa Moore and Sō Percussion, begins with, of all things, a farandole/farándula––a popular, jaunty 6/8 chain dance.  In live performance, Lisa Moore plays the opening line of the farandúla on xylophone, alone on stage.  A percussionist enters behind her and seamlessly takes over the line, and Moore continues to the second line.  A second percussionist enters, taking over the first line, and the first percussionist moves to the second line, and Moore moves to the next layer, etc.  It’s torturous to try and describe the effect in words, especially since it’s been three years since I saw it live at the 2008 Canberra International Music Festival in Australia, but it really does look and feel like a musical chain dance.  It’s also just really cool to watch Lisa Moore play toms.

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Lightning Slingers and Dead Ringers by Lisa Moore on Cantaloupe

The titular composition of Lisa Moore’s new EP, composed in 2008, refers to a telegraph operator.  The metaphor is apt, as the piece is heavily charged with energy currents both active and awaited.  Moore performs the three tracks of Lightning Slingers and Dead Ringers on a keyboard controlling the Native Instruments Kontakt sampler, while simultaneously playing a Steinway D, producing an engaging industrial process balanced with a wide range of expressive piano timbres.  The sampler is well adjusted to produce raw, sine and sawtooth-like sounds more reminiscent of oscillators from the early days of electronic music.  The first track, “With enthusiasm and a little violence,” opens with an assault from the sampler outlining a stark tonic – dominant – tonic loop.  The piano joins in with ominous trills and accented dissonant chords, and the keyboard triggers samples of prepared piano, plucked in such a way as to evoke the sound of an Oriental zither. Digital blips begin to pepper the texture, as if Kraftwerk plays pinball nearby. The sampler’s abstract loop fades out so that piano voices can be explored more fully, combining samples of extended techniques (strumming, etc.) with standard live playing.  Annie Gosfield [the composer - Editor's Note] eschews the dense tone clusters of many contemporary composers and employs a language of short frenetic melodies and simple pitch sets, placed freely in time, so that the piano speaks and meditates, rather than singing.

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