For those of us who love classical music, performances usually fit into neat categories — operas, symphonies, oratorios and the like.
Once in a while, though, a new piece comes along that defies categorization.
Brian Baumbusch’s “The Pressure”, which makes its world premiere June 15 in San Francisco as part of this weekend’s Other Minds Festival 24, is just such a work. Asked what designation he gives it, the composer defers.
“I’ve been dodging that question,” says Baumbusch. “I’d rather leave it to other people to put a name to it.”
Baumbusch, who lives in Alameda and teaches music at UC Santa Cruz, does say that the work, based on a story by his brother, Paul Baumbusch, melds elements of German Expressionism, horror movies and graphic novels to depict a mysterious stranger who arrives in a small town promising to cure its ills.
Saturday’s performance will feature more than 24 players, including Baumbusch’s own Lightbulb Ensemble and the San Francisco-based Friction String Quartet, along with various keyboards, gamelan instruments, tubular bells and percussion. “Oh, and a giant thundersheet I made myself,” says the composer. Video projections by Spanish artist Federico Yankelevich will complete the effect.
According to Other Minds executive and artistic director Charles Amirkhanian, the work comments on contemporary politics “with a sort of Grimm’s fairy tale approach. It’s powerful — the story of a despot making people do things against their own interests while enriching himself.”
“The Pressure” has been several years in the making, and Amirkhanian said that its first rehearsal blew him away. “I was astounded by it,” he said. “The effect was mesmerizing. I saw right away that this was something remarkable.” Baumbusch, he adds, invented and built instruments specifically for the piece – “big metal xylophone things in the Balinese style” – and says the sound world they create is unique.
Baumbusch is clearly attracted to German Expressionism – “the time period on the brink of fascism, with these dark, Svengali-type figures,” he says. “We wanted to refer to that, even as we looked to our own time.”
Oddly enough, as they were researching the piece, Baumbusch says that he and his brother unearthed an episode from a 1950s television series that was scarily prescient. “It featured a character named Walter Trump, who proposed building a wall to protect the town from meteor showers,” he said.
“The Pressure” launches an Other Minds weekend that also includes a Sunday evening performance of quarter-tone music for four grand pianos by Ivan Wyschnegradsky. Amirkhanian met the late experimental Russian composer in the 1970s and says that Wyschnegradsky, a leader of the 1920s microtonal movement, is overdue for revival.
Then again, Other Minds has always celebrated music that goes beyond convention. Amirkhanian, who was music director of KPFA-FM in Berkeley from 1969-92, has made the festival a mecca for composers and new music lovers; over the years, he’s championed influential composers such as George Antheil, Conlon Nancarrow, Brian Eno and Laurie Anderson. But he says there’s something special about composers like Baumbusch, who are making music right here in the Bay Area.
“There’s so much new music out there,” says Amirkhanian, “and so much that isn’t playable by ensembles that use conventional orchestral instruments. Our goal has always been to go between the cracks. That’s how we got to Lou Harrison, Harry Partch, John Cage – all these people who really defined music. We continue to find people in that tradition – which I call the American experimental tradition – to carry that on and show, even though we’re far from the capitals of Europe or New York City, that the West Coast has this thriving tradition. There’s a different standard of creativity here.”
Details: Other Minds Festival 24: “The Pressure” by Brian Baumbusch, 8 p.m. June 15; “Ivan Wyschnegradsky, Music for Four Pianos in Quarter-Tones,” 7 p.m. June 16; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, San Francisco; $28-$55; 415-978-2787; www.ybca.org, https://www.otherminds.org/
Contact Georgia Rowe at growe@pacbell.net.
