The Ojai Post

I always walk in with an open mind as well as giving myself the flexibility that if there is a piece I don’t particularly like I can saunter out for a while. I attended Friday night and the Sunday four hour finale and only one time did I excuse myself for only about 10 min. I expected differently. Sometimes contemporary music can be a jagged pill, angular, disjointed, a symptom of a world in stress and overly intellectual. I listen with two sets of ears and look for both my heart and my mind to be engaged and moved. I came away enriched, provoked and wanting more.

Modern music has encompassed so many tonalities, atonalities, styles and technologies that the audiences are accustomed to vast explorations of sound. This year at the Ojai Music Festival we covered extensive new ground, from pastoral, to jagged, rock to medieval, electronic to elemental.

I was thinking about how to convey my experience of the several hours I sat in our beautiful Libby Bowl listening, musing, ideating and being transported into various realms from mythical to mundane. Images and impressions, this is what seems appropriate. Forgive the omission of most of the performers names, too numerous to mention. For more detailed event and artist info. see http://www.ojaifestival.org/

SLIDE (world premiere)
Steven Mackey b.1956 (composer, electric guitar) w/ Rinde Eckert (vocals) & Eighth Blackbird

Slide, a moving tapestry of players, archaic, precise,
Remnants of my youth, familiar, engaging,
Shades of Gentle Giant, Mozart meets Mahavishnu,
Bald men rocking the house, tenor spanking and caressing the air,
Serious bleakness, serious humor present,
Never a dull moment, except when deliberate,
De-liberated, almost too contained at times,
On the edge of noise, neurosis, yet not quite falling into the chasm,
Baroque meets beatnik meets Bowie on the chamber musician’s turf.

Thin lines between the inner and outer lives of humanity,
History is made relevant when learned from or completely let go of,
Weights and measures, science and religion meet in the middle where the language of night and day collide in symbol and metaphor,
I leave inspired, altered, with a lightness of Being.

DOUBLE SEXTET (2007)
Steve Reich b.1937 (composer)

Mirror image musicians flurry,
Sit in the center, capture stillness,
Privy to the master of pulse,
Micro and macro handfast in sacred space,
Knitting has never been so profound.

PASTORALE (1911,1919)
Igor Stravinsky 1882-1971

Songbird sings,
Yes, she sings,
I want to tickle her,
Like the ivory man tickles the keys,
The Rite of Spring becomes the summer,
Siren on the stage, siren on the streets,
Alas, faux folk in the hammer and sickle vein.

KITES FLYING (1992)
Victor Ekimovskij b.1947
for four recorders

The breath of four maidens,
Nodal points surround us,
Whirling, whispy, playful sound,
Knottingham would be impressed with such child’s play,
Intrigued when environment becomes the piece,
Crows fly, melodies dive,
The music invokes the breeze,
I watch leaves dance and smile.

TALL P (1990)
Pete Rose b.1942

Bop, B Bop, Blues in C
Feels more green to me,
Look mister, that thing is as tall as she is,
This is clean jazz, no smoke or rasp in here,
Though plenty of saliva,
Sputtering, soloing, spitting reedless Coltrane,
Magnificent bourgeois blues,
The kind you whistle while waxing your Lamborghini.
Or the inside of your thigh.

KAFKA SONGS (2003)
Lisa Bielawa b.1968
Carla Kihlstedt, violin/ voice

Belly full, kicking womb
Bowing, plucking, swaying,
Philosophy sung, humanity observed,
Center stage, is that Bjork I hear?
Fiddle in hand,
Pan shrinks at the power of these two muses,
Seamstresses of notes and song.

CONSTRUCTION #3 (1941)
John Cage 1912-1992

“Let me out of this Cage”… Peter Gabriel

WORKERS UNION (1975)
Louis Andriessen b.1939

10 becomes 12, becomes 17, becomes 24, becomes 32 or so….
Rhythmic orgy, locomotive breath,
Colonial hive, humming, heating
Steady, like a forgers hammer,
The river rushing past my window,
Color, timbre, incessant, intentional, acoustic punk,
The many as One.