Andy Akiho brings the magic back to Chamber Music Northwest's Summer Festival

Andy Akiho

Returning composer/performer Andy Akiho and friends gave a memorable concert on Wednesday July 11 at the Alberta Rose Theater, as part of CMNW's Summer Festival. Akiho's reputation (and audience) have grown over the years, as the packed house that night proved.

Joining Akiho, who performed several works on his primary instrument the steel pan, were Ian David Rosenbaum on marimba, Tara Helen O'Connor on flute, Jennifer Frautschi on violin, and the members of the Dover Quartet, violinists Joel Link and Bryan Lee, cellist Camden Shaw and violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt.

The decision to mic all the instruments at first was puzzling; in the opening work the flute came off as excessively shrill at parts, but balance issues were fine and did not favor one instrument over another, and it was clearly what the composer had in mind so while initially off-putting, through the course of the concert his choice bore fruit.

The opening piece was the world premiere of the flute/marimba instrument set for -intuition) (Expectation, the original having been written for trumpet/marimba. O'Connor joined Rosenbaum for this syncopated, jazzy work, set over a subtly shifting ostinato on the marimba. There were nice effects from the flute, chuffing and aspirating and exaggerated flutter tonguing. A difficult piece to approach but it sort of grew on you...

Karakurenai was next, with Akiho and Rosenbaum, and was a work for prepared steel pan featuring chop sticks, poster tack and other items according to Akiho. Based around a rigid, lengthy syncopation, this shorter work had a repetitive feel that could be meditative in the right circumstances.

Deciduous, featuring Akiho and Frautschi, came third. The opening highlighted the strangely mellifluous, odd almost tonal-shifting attack and decay from the steel pan. Radically shifting moods, from frenetic and harried to placid and thoughtful took place instantaneously, leaving the listener never quite sure of anything except where they were at at the moment. A series of harmonic shrieks from the violin over a whispering accompaniment from the pan was followed by an odd, chaotic chase. Some of the most violent and painful-sounding pizzicato I've ever heard--almost diabolical--and then a beautiful soliloquy from the pan, a joyous air and a pentatonic fantasy...this was a fantastic and engaging piece.

21, a piece Akiho and Rosenbaum performed here before, left an impression that perhaps for Akiho, often (but certainly not always,) the rhythm is the mistress, and varying pitches and timbres, melodies and instruments, exist merely to service it.

Ian David Rosenbaum

The second half consisted entirely of the LIgNEouS Suite, a work some of whose movements were commissioned by different groups, with the fifth and final movement being commissioned by the Dover Quartet, who performed it along with Rosenbaum. This performance was its west coast premier.

It opened with sul ponticello scritching from the strings, and a repeating pattern over a wild and intense performance on the marimba. Wailing away with mallet shafts bereft of their yarn heads, Rosenbaum performed incredibly rapid arpeggios and scale passages with alacrity, now raking the sticks across the marimba tubes in a cacophonous glissando, followed by hard, alarmingly loud snaps from a giant rubber band. The strings sang an unlovely but fascinating accompaniment. This and other movements may not have been a marimba concerto exactly, but they came close.

The second movement began with a ghostly suppuration from the strings over a murmuring marimba, struck with very soft heads that resulted in dissonant sostenutos as the notes hung in the air long after being struck. In this and in earlier pieces, unisons occured amongst the instruments that provided a fascinating sonic color due to the disparity amongst them.

Later in the work came more startling effects from the marimba, alternatively purposely assaultive and mysteriously otherworldly. Gloriously loud, stark chords came from the strings, and strange sawing sounds, wails, slaps and knocks on the body and fingerboards of instruments. Like all of his works, this exhibited exhuberant play with the world of sounds.

Two things struck me most about this concert: first would be Rosenbaum's virtuosity on his instrument. As a percussionist I have played the marimba a number of times, so have some small inkling of the challenges this instrument presents. I have never heard it played, nor imagined it could be played, the way Rosenbaum plays it. Simply breathtaking-and here give some credit to the composer-but a lesser performer could not have attempted nor even dreamed of giving the kind of performance Rosenbaum did. It was absolutely astounding, the most technically astute and artistically intuitive kind of exhibition anyone could hope for from a true virtuoso. Being somewhat biased toward percussionists, I have often felt the they are sometimes given shorter shrift than they deserve in the world of classical/art music. Let anyone who feels that way hear a performance like this. Enough said.

Another thing is the simple joy of not only hearing something you have never heard before, but maybe even hearing something that is unlike anything you have heard before. This is the great reward that exists for those who seek out new music, which is perhaps the foremost of so many reasons I always go to hear Andy Akiho when he is in town.

CMNW Summer Festival's first week features imaginative program by steel pan artist Andy Akiho

Andy Akiho
Photo by Da Ping Luo

Wednesday night, June 29, saw the return of composer and steel pan (known commonly but less accurately as the steel drum) artist Andy Akiho to Chamber Music Northwest's Summer Festival, for what Akiho joked was surely "the first all-Akiho and Schubert concert" in history. The program was presented at the Alberta Rose Theater, a hip, informal venue perfectly suited to the night's event.

The evening opened with two movements from Akiho's Synesthesia Suite, originally a set of fourteen tenor steelpan solo movements in all 12 equal-tempered keys (each named for a color) plus two movements for black and white. Akiho reworked at least several movements for a chamber ensemble consisting of steel pan, percussion, violin, cello and piano, on Wednesday played by Akiho, Ian David Rosenbaum, Brandon Garbot, Hamilton Cheifetz, and Yevgeny Yontov respectively.

The first movement was Hadairo (Beige).  It began with a strange, halted intro with a rhythmic follow-through. There was a pizzicato plinking accompanied by percussion (principally marimba). Akiho demonstrated an incredibly deft touch on the steel pan in all respects, but perhaps most surprisingly the range of dynamic effects he was able to elicit from his instrument. I confess to not having much if anything by way of a basis for comparison, but it seems that Akiho demonstrated a virtuosic touch on his instrument, if anything even more striking than when I last heard him at CMNW. If he's not a virtuoso, I'd like to hear who is. (Seriously.) The violin sounded nice over the percussion, but the balance was skewed toward the percussion so the violin was sometimes concealed. There was a striking and dramatic stop-tempo toward the end, and Akiho once again played with an eerily beautiful sense of striking dynamic contrast.

The Passacaglia from Akiho's Five Movements for Piano Trio saw Garbot, Cheifetz and Yontov take over. Cheifetz plucked out an extremely tricky passacaglia theme on the cello, which was the beginning of a fascinating polyrhythmic experiment that worked well as the piano wended its way in and out of mysterious arpeggiations.

Complex rhythmic interactions between instruments seems to be a hallmark of Akiho's compositions; 21 was next. A theme was recorded on a loop sequencer that formed an ostinato around which the two performers (Akiho and Rosenbaum) played. At one point Akiho used what appeared to be a pair of chopsticks to elicit a tinny, quiet effect on the pan, and Rosenbaum played an arresting series of glissandi on the marimba, an instrument that could be indifferent to subtlety in lesser hands. Akiho tapped out a rhythm on the tambourine with a foot pedal as he continued his steel pan heroics, lapsing into molto pianissimo stretches of sublime beauty.

The program returned to two more movements from Synesthesia: Murasaki (Purple) and Aka (Red). Much as before, these works were a triumph of color, dynamics and sometimes surprising interactions between diverse instruments. For anyone seeking a new and vibrant sound-picture, Akiho's composition are an intriguing and worthwhile prospect, and his live performances are imaginative in execution.

The second half consisted entirely of Piano Trio in B-Flat Major, Op. 99 D 898 by Franz Schubert. Garbot and Yontov were joined by Timothy Eddy on the cello.  The opening Allegro Moderato featured fine, singing pedal points from the violin, and the trio managed well the tricky subversion of rhythmic expectations that Schubert incorporates. The Andante un poco mosso of the second movement was like a cradle-song serenade, requiring incredible coordination between players. It was spectacular, transportative, and this group rendered it so sensitively that it formed one of the most subtly glorious chamber music moments I've heard in a long time. The whole work was phenomenal; to use the old saw one runs out of superlatives, and that is probably not the first time I've used that phrase in conjunction with CMNW Summer Festival performances. The musicians are simply spectacular.

An interesting parallel between Akiho and Schubert (and one does try to suss these things out, assuming the programming is most definitely not random) is that they both employ colors and timbres as important, essential elements within their compositions, not merely as window-dressing.  I look forward as always to the continuation of the CMNW summer fest, one of the highlights of the musical year.