SLSO brings the world to the Pulitzer

The featured piece was a world premiere of “Second Nature” by Christopher Stark, a local musician thanks to the Music Department at Washington University, where Stark recently was granted tenure, though he is a Montana boy with strong ties to Cincinnati. In the grand tradition of composers writing to the strengths of a particular musician, Stark composed the piece for Shawn Weil of SLSO, and Weil performed the piece on acoustic violin, supported by Stark subtly feeding in his electronic tracks.

The pre-recorded music that Stark delivered included field recordings that he made while traveling in several Asian nations with the violinist Weil, adding a buddy road trip movie vibe to the composition and performance. They also shot pictures, including moving pictures, which Stark provided to local video artist Zlatko Cosic, who produced a companion visual composition to be played as part of the premiere. I saw the Wednesday show, when the video unfortunately malfunctioned, though Zlatko showed me a snippet of his cell phone video of his piece successfully playing on Tuesday night.

Also on the program and in the house was an Argentine composer gone almost local, thanks to an appointment at Mizzou, Carolina Heredia. Her “Anotanzas” was performed by Yin Xiong of SLSO on cello, who sequenced his live playing to the composer’s previously recorded electronic sounds. The program also included another solo string piece – solo violin performed beautifully by Asako Kuboki  of SLSO – composed by LJ White, “Fly, Into the Light,” though White (now based in Sarasota at the New College of Florida) was the only composer on the show not able to fly (or drive) into St. Louis to hear and feel their work performed by attuned and expert musicians in a space, the Pulitzer, that is itself a work of art.

Yotam Haber drove in from Kansas City, where he teaches at the UMKC Conservatory, to see two of his string quartets (“break_break_break” and “From the Book”) performed, it’s safe to say, as well as they will ever be performed by Kuboki and Janet Carpenter on violin, Chris Tantillo on viola, and Xiong on cello, all of SLSO. As music brought Stark to St. Louis and Heredia to Columbia, it also brought Haber to Kansas City from the Netherlands, Israel, Nigeria and Milwaukee, which is a fantastic array of stickers for your luggage.

Tim Munro, who curated this set for SLSO, told the sold-out house at the Pulitzer on Wednesday that the program was all about journeys. In every way, that was true. All of the compositions took listeners on a journey across genres and musical norms, though all of the composers and musicians kept the sounds of strings bowed live primary over pre-recorded (or sampled and sequenced) sounds.

Stark’s composition, born of a journey he took with the fiddler he wrote it for, was especially colored by travel. As my friend Matt McBride remarked after the show, “Stark made use of an oscillating house fan and two microphones to increase the feel of the elemental journey. It ended when Weil completed his energetic performance, walked to the fan, and decisively pressed ‘OFF.'” Thus the composition and performance ended with a musician walking.

I was left reflecting on all of the arcs that brought these four composers and five musicians to this adventurous yet coherent program. It’s a very good thing that music moves all of these inspired people around the world and has led so many to St. Louis and its sister Missouri cities and that SLSO captured them in the Pulitzer for us this week.

Former managing editor Chris King is now The American’s classical music reporter.