Excerpt of Gesualdo’s “Tu m’uccidi, o crudele” (1611), followed by the parallel excerpt of Sciarrino’s orchestration (1999?). Old musick! New musick! Yeah!

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A couple of weeks ago I had my second go at a baffling, beautiful, and fiendishly awkward piece by Salvatore Sciarrino, Le voci sottovetro.  My first meeting with the piece was in September, as a violinist, with Red Light‘s concert at Symphony Space — nearly picking my nose in 99th position, to achieve Sciarrino’s very particular timbral desire for his re-orchestration of four Gesualdo madrigals (the aforementioned technical difficulty was in the first of these, “Gagliarda del Principe di Venosa”).  After getting over myself and my performer-side pet peeves about string writing, I started to fall in love with this piece.  I was already in love with Gesualdo madrigals in general (so thorny and bizarre and soupy…), and I’m now getting into Sciarrino’s timbral imagination…

My second meeting with the piece was last month with Alarm Will Sound, during a residency at the Mondavi Center in Davis, California.  Though this time as the singer.  I’m still trying to figure out how to negotiate the palette of colors available across a given range (in this case a smokey low F# to floaty high G).  The voice is WEIRD, and amazing…  Singing Sciarrino was so fun, because I felt like it was totally okay that I’m not a hefty singer with great bel canto technique.  Like a bass clarinet playing up high ppp, or a violin up in 99th position on the D string, I’m a little awkward, but I’m trying new colors in my instrument.  Thanks, Sal.

Here’s the Sacramento review of the whole concert (and I got a shout-out).

Totally unrelated — but back in September I saw So Percussion play in Philadelphia. As always, I loved them (they did part of Paul Lansky’s Threads). A few days later, while on the train, I made this little doodle, based on a thought I’d had: “In another life, I played a very big drum.” Basically, I kind of wish I was a percussionist… This cartoon could also probably be called “tribute to so percussion, near the secaucus station” –

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And finally, something delightful from the Nederlands Dans Theater.

Tags: alarm will sound, gesualdo, mondavi center, red light new music, salvatore sciarrino, so percussion

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