The music department at the University of California, San Diego, has always been an incubator for novel performance techniques.
Half a century ago a Rockefeller grant enabled an Extended Vocal Techniques Ensemble to experiment there. Diamanda Galas pursued graduate work there, later blossoming into the Goth diva of new music.
A concert by the kallisti vocal ensemble on Friday at the Conrad Prebys Music Center Experimental Theater at UC San Diego maintained this rich tradition of innovation. The graduate student group, directed by Susan Narucki, presented five U.S. premieres, most from Polish composers.
Agata Zubel’s “Parlando” and “Unisono I” rapidly juxtaposed sung vowels, consonant strings, and breath sounds to create a type of language without any text.
Miguel Zazueta executed these quick changes with verve, a virtuosic performance enhanced by live electronics adding reverb and spatialization to his sounds. In “Unisono I” he was ed by percussionist Mitchell Carlstrom, whose wood blocks, drums, and cymbals seemed to filter or enhance Zazueta’s timbres, or to trade phrases back and forth. The synchronization between these two was formidable, and Zazueta’s vocal agility and virtuosic timbral changes were impressive in both works.
Colombian soprano Natalia Merlano Gomez performed S!C2 by Marta Sniady. Over a recording sounding like filtered white noise, she sang conventionally, circling around a central tone. As the recording assumed more pitch, she swept up and down an overtone series as if she were an electronic filter, an effect further enhanced by vowel modulations.
Melano Gomez commissioned Peruvian composer Macri Cacere’s “Cuerpo y Territorio” (Body and Territory).” It requires the singer to manipulate a sampler, live electronic processing, and to play ceramic and bamboo flutes.
It began with a loud trilled “r,” like a puma purring. Picking up a ceramic flute, Melano Gomez sampled it to create a loop, over which she spoke the Spanish text. Its many references to “tierra” (earth) were manifested in the ceramic flute (created by the composer). Later, Melano Gomez played small bamboo end-blown flutes which invite comparisons to Andean panpipes.
Polish-Canadian composer Piotr Grella-Mozejko’s “Hesperonis: Sen (à Perotin),” was the concert’s golden oldie, written back in 1990. It was scored for contrabass, and contrasted vigorous open string strums with ethereal harmonics played all the way below the fingerboard. Andrew Crapitto gave it a tasty performance, lightly enhanced by his own electronics.
If you parked below L.A.’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2016-2017, as you took the escalators to street level you would have seen sculptures of clouds suspended above. This installation, “Nimbus,” featured a rotating selection of music by Rand Steiger. “Falling Rising” set a Rilke text in English translation for two sopranos, commenting on the overwhelming emotion of happy things falling. This was sung with delicacy and minimal vibrato by Melano Gomez and Mariana Flores Bucio.
Former UCSD professor Phillippe Manoury composed “Illud etiam” for soprano and computer software created by professor emeritus Miller Puckette. Powerfully sung by Bucio, this was the one work on the concert which used a traditional operative vocal style, although the melodies and harmonies were 21st century.
The soprano needs to portray two characters, an Inquisitor and a Witch. Manoury’s music and choice of texts made clear which character was singing —declamatory, punchy melodies in Latin for the former, voluptuous French lines for the persecuted woman. The computer music frequently suggested bells, at times plucked strings, and elsewhere served as a chorus.
Flores Bucio’s firm tone and compelling performance make her worth watching for. However, it’s too bad that no texts were provided for “Illud etiam,” making a challenging work unnecessarily more difficult to understand.
A video of concert is available to watch at https://bit.ly/3kzxaKa.
