SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

'Pieces of Eight': American Modern Ensemble, Galapagos Art Space, Brooklyn, NY, 13.12.2010 (BH)

Jonathan Newman: OK Feel Good (1999)

Hannah Lash: A Matter of Truth (2005)

Xi Wang: Three Images (2005-2007)

Armando Bayolo: Action Figure (2002)

Christopher Chandler: the resonance after… (2008)

Shawn Crouch: Adolescent Psychology (2007)

David Ludwig: Haiku Catharsis (2004)

Robert Paterson: Sextet (1999)

American Modern Ensemble

 Sato Moughalian, flute

Benjamin Fingland, clarinet

Meighan Stoops, clarinet

Victoria Paterson, violin

Robin Zeh, violin

Arash Amini, cello

Robert Burkhart, cello

Matthew Ward, percussion

Stephen Gosling, piano

Blair McMillen, piano

Robert Paterson, conductor

You have to admire the American Modern Ensemble’s pluck in programming Pieces of Eight: eight (count ‘em) sextets, roughly from the last decade, jostling onstage in the visually arresting Galapagos Art Space. Robert Paterson, AME’s director and conductor, spoke throughout the evening with each of the composers—while enjoying the idea that the audience was perched on lily pads. (The main floor seating has small islands surrounded by water.) So if now and then the parade of music seemed more than one’s brain could absorb at a single sitting, you could always let your gaze drift around the room, soaking in the crowd while guzzling a beer.

The fare ranged from the playful to the mysterious, from works explicitly intended to entertain, to those borne of more serious concerns. Jonathan Newman’s fizzy OK Feel Good, Paterson’s exuberant Sextet, and Armando Bayolo’s beat-happy Action Figure share a love of pop culture, with primary colors shiny and varnished, rotating like multiple Ferris wheels. I’d heard Paterson’s piece some six years ago and its energy hasn’t dimmed.

But other works were more inscrutable—pleasurably so—like the mysterious shimmering of Hannah Lash’s A Matter of Truth, with some instruments retuned, adding to its diaphanous veil. The glistening night sounds of David Ludwig’s Haiku Catharsis seemed a perfect companion to Christopher Chandler’s the resonance after…in which the physical properties of sound decaying might evoke thoughts of death or the afterlife. Shawn Crouch produced dreamlike agitation in Adolescent Psychology, and Xi Wang’s Three Images reflects her interest in Chinese history and nature.

Aside from the agile, alert performances by all concerned, one couldn’t help but notice the ages of the composers: Mr. Paterson turned out to be the default elder statesman, born in 1970, but Mr. Chandler wrote his opus in 2008 at just 22. And kudos for geographical diversity: the night’s composers—all of whom were present—hailed from New York, Dallas, Bowling Green (Kentucky), Miami, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. One could do much worse than to be sitting on an island, having a drink, and savoring a tasty slice of contemporary American creativity.

Bruce Hodges