AFMM NY Times review 5/21/97

Off Key and Proud of It
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

NEW YORK -- To concertgoers with no musical training,
the concept of microtonal music must seem forbiddingly
complex. But the sound of it is familiar to anyone who has
heard a jazz singer bend a tune with "blue notes" or an
Indian sitarist play a raga.

The term microtone simply refers to the notes that exist
between the 12 pitches that somewhat arbitrarily divide
the standard octave. Any instrument with the capacity to
slide, including the human voice, of course, can activate
these spaces between the pitches.

Composers who ask performers to utilize these in-between
notes are dealing with microtones, and there are whole
organizations that propagate the practice, including the
American Festival of Microtonal Music, which is presenting a
weeklong series under the direction of Johnny Reinhard called
MicroMay '97.

The first concert was on Friday at New York University's
Loewe Theater. A good example of what makes a microtonal
piece microtonal was Elodie Lauten's "Discombobulations."

Its musical materials were nothing special, just some undulant
repeated riffs for flute (Andrew Bolotowsky), specially tuned
guitar (Jon Catler) and synthesizer (Ms. Lauten), over which
the soprano Meredith Borden sang elegiac melodies in a
stratospheric range. But the performers are adept at playing
between the standard pitches, so the result was like some
lilting minimalistic music that was slightly off pitch in a
pungent and intriguing way.

Bolotowsky demonstrated more of his skills at playing microtonally
in Frank Wigglesworth's wistful "Twin Songs" for meantone-tuned
baroque flute, and in a ponderous work for solo flute by Joseph
Gabriel Maneri with a title too long to cite.

Ms. Borden, joined by Catler on another specially tuned guitar,
also performed Catler's "Nightbird," which, with its exotic
harmonies, sounded like some strange flamenco dance. It is
hard to make a high-flying, bobbing microtonal vocal line not
sound simply like a singer singing consistently flat, a recent
example being Madonna's Oscar-night performance of a ballad
from "Evita." But in Catlin's tortuous vocal work, Ms. Borden's
microtonally tinged singing was confident and convincing.

There were also works by Edgar David Grana, Reinhard (a
work for tape called "Circles"), and Wendy Carlos, whose
"Afterlife" for six-person chorus, violin, fretless bass, cello,
percussion and tape received its premiere. With its slinky
bass line, and chorus chanting slightly sour "ahs," it sounded
like some switched-on mini-response to Ravel's "Daphnis et
Chloe."

The remaining festival concerts are Wednesday night and
Thursday night in St. Paul's Chapel at Columbia University,
and on Friday night at the Loewe Theater.



Copyright 1997 The New York Times

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