Aspen Music Festival (5): American Brass Quintet, Aspen Ensemble. 26.07.2007 (HS)

 

In their 37 years at the Aspen Music Festival, the American Brass Quintet has regularly presented world premieres. The latest, "Two Elements" by the jazz pianist and composer Billy Childs marks one of the more successful marriages of jazz and modern classical music so far in this year's jazz-infiected festival.  It debuted Wednesday in Harris Hall.

Childs has led his own jazz group and still works with singer Dianne Reaves, but the jazz elements play more as an undertone in this work. He wrote gorgeous intertwining legato music for the brass in "Water," rather like a modern cross between a Bach chorale or a 19th-century part song. With subtle tonguing and mellow, balanced sound, the brass rode gently over rippling figures played by Childs on the piano.

The second half of the piece, "Fire," used brass interjections like brief fanfares and stinging chords against piano music that got ever more complex. It worked well because Childs gave himself the semi-jazzy, technically demanding music and didn't ask the brass players to swing, just be themselves.

Louis Ranger, a former member of the ABQ who does duties as principal trumpet of the Aspen Festival Orchestra, replaced an ailing Raymond Mase alongside ABQ's other trumpeter, Kevin Cobb. The fit seemed seamless.

Mase conducted several works involving larger ensembles while recuperating from respiratory and lip ills. The ABQ flanked itself with members of the Lion's Head Quintet, composed of prodigious students, for beautifully articulated music of the 16th and early 17th centuries. There's nothing like 10 brass players in full cry to fill up the vibrant confines of Harris Hall, especially in the evening's finale, two of Gabrieli's Venetian Canzoni. Anthony Plog's charming Music for Brass Octet (from 1981) and Raymond Premru's "Tissington Variations" (from 1970) for four trombones, which assembles and dissasembles tone clusters, both were eminently worth reviving.

At its satisfying concert Tuesday in Harris Hall, the Aspen Ensemble proved anew the importance of communication and the experience of playing together regularly. The talented artist faculty here in Aspen can team up on Sunday for a chamber music concert on Tuesday and pull it off. But this group has been playing and performing together regularly, and it shows.

It's more than just the clean entrances and unified approach to phrasing and dynamics. The musicians anticipate what the others are going to do, and the music becomes more vivid because of it. That was apparent in a transparent and elegantly shaped a reading of Brahms' Piano Quartet No. 2 in A major, which closed the concert. It was a pleasure to hear the rock-solid intonation of violinist Dave Perry, and the fluidity with which violist Victoria Chang and cellist Michael Mermagen brought out the inner voices of Brahms' counterpoint without losing the overall arc.

Pianist Rita Sloan, one of the better collaborators among the festival's talented keyboard staff, managed to fit in snugly with the Brahms and all the music on the program. She has long performed with flutist Nadine Asin, the fifth member of the ensemble, who was featured in the three shorter pieces in the first half of the program. Asin's pure sound and classy style lent the requisite poise to Mozart's Flute Quartet in C major, which opened the evening, and Weber's charming Flute Trio in G minor.

But the piece that jumped out to me was Martinu's Madrigal-Sonata. The Czech composer's 1942 piece gave Asin, Perry and Sloan music ripe for invention and play (especially the pizzicatos and deft piano responses in the second half), and for my money could have gone on longer than its 10 minutes.

 

Harvey Steiman

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