The 2014 Tribeca New Music Festival is a five-concert series that ends tonight (18 May). Now in its 13th year, the Festival's mission is to bring "new works of living composers creatively engaged with our popular culture". That sounds fancy, but it just basically means the composers celebrated in this Festival are young and classically-trained, with a firm foundation in musical theory and practice, but they're also committed to merging their "music smarts" with their "street smarts". So what you get is a concert series that everyone can relate to - it's engaging, it's contemporary, and it's a wonderful way to see the upcoming musical talent that resides in this City.
I saw Concert #4 last night, called "Poetry in Motion". The session was curated by young Brooklyn-based composer Christopher Cerrone, whose work was also performed last night. In total there were 6 works showcased at the concert, and they were all musical compositions based on new poetry. So can we just talk about the challenge of that for a second? You're a young composer, and you've been given a poem - just words on a page. So you interpret the poem - elicit the key messages, and then you set it to music - you give the poem a melody. I mean, that is just astonishing to me that someone can do that. I caught myself wondering whether the poets were impressed with the way their work had been transformed. Was it what they had in mind too?
Pianist Karl Larson did an incredible job - from where I sat, I could see the musical notes on his pages and in some cases, it was all a mess of black crotchets and quavers, but his fingers just confidently danced all over the keys and it was great. The text was all sung by a fantastic soprano named Mellissa Hughes, who the New York Times has labelled "indispensable to New York's new-music ecosystem". High praise indeed, and totally warranted. As the works dictated, Mellissa's voice went from breathy and haunting, to gutsy and powerful. Sarah Goldfeather played the violin in a number of pieces, and also sang harmonies with Mellissa in others - young and multi-talented, doesn't that just drive you crazy? Likewise the electronic influence provided by Jacob Cooper, and Matt Evans on percussion reminded you that you're listening to the work of young composers - not stuffy old traditionalists bound by convention.
One of the composers was actually sitting in front of me last night. Eric Shanfield's work Borrowed Love Poems had its world premiere. Based on the poetry of John Yau, the work was comprised of 10 very different movements to match the ten verses of the poem. At the end of the performance, Mellissa acknowledged Eric sitting in the front row, and his applause was thunderous. I could tell he approved of the way his work had been presented, and of course I got a bit teary. It must be wonderful to work so hard on something, and then see it come to fruition exactly as you imagined it.
If you want to see the concert for yourself, the Tribeca New Music Festival team has got a recording on its website and it will cost you $5 to view (click the link here).
I can't remember where I heard about the Tribeca New Music Festival but I'm certainly glad that I did. And despite coming into the picture quite late, seeing the second-to-last performance in the 2014 series, I'll definitely be looking for it again next year.
