ISSUE Project Room : an open and versatile environment in which established and emerging artists conduct, exhibit and perform new and site-specific work

This Friday (2/19/10), ISSUE’s first-ever Artist-in-Residence Collective returns for their second monthly concert. The ensemble consists of Shannon Fields, Laura Ortman, Matt Lavelle, Shelley Burgon, Ryan Sawyer, and Jon Natchez (long-time collaborators from their 10+ years of work together in the now-concluded Stars Like Fleas). For the second residency concert, Jon Natchez and Matt Lavelle will present works to be performed by the collective. Shelley Burgon and Ryan Sawyer will lead the ensemble on 3/26/10.

To get everyone amped for the second installment of the residency, Shannon Fields and Laura Ortman have shared the recordings from their fantastic first performance. I‘ve included all three compositions from the show in a mix included below.

For the first draft of his half-hour opus Song Service #1, Shannon Fields augments the collective with no fewer than 20 guest musicians, forming a veritable chamber orchestra + 12-piece chorus.  As suggested by the title, the work transforms the audience into an intimate congregation witnessing the musical rites of an abstract spiritual ceremony simultaneously primeval and wholly modern in language and tone.

The piece opens with a warm-up of sorts as plaintive piano arpeggios prompt softly hummed a capella chords that abruptly explode into raucously jubilant outbursts. A series of gorgeous, intimately-linked vignettes follow: piano and harp invoke elegant, contemplative melodies as streaks of sustained strings and sonic noise and debris drift along the perimeters, accumulating and coalescing into dense, beautiful fabrications. The service ends with an ascending bass motif looping endlessly underneath a feverish build of vocal warbles, wails, and screams that repeat a glorious melody of infectious exuberance – primitive, manic, joyful, ecstatic, and cathartic (it comes as no surprise that Fields was brought up in a Pentacostal church).

Laura Ortman’s Shimasani returns the ensemble back to the core collective, yet the instrumental arsenal seems to remain roughly the same, as all six members have apparently mastered 3 to 5+ instruments each. Ortman’s composition begins as if in a smothering fog --  heavy, slow-pulsing chords of piano, low brass, and bass clarinet glide, quietly yet forcefully, beneath a thin haze of effervescent harp sparkling. An aching melody emerges out of the gradually unfolding harmonies, carried along by the hypnotic progression until a series of muted, quivering eruptions disrupts the rhythmic stability and reduces the texture to a lone harp.

While the harp reiterates a simple melodic fragment, cracks of light begin to leak through as the color palette shifts to lighter, transparent timbres that float softly upwards. Supple clarinet and flute melodies swirl amongst bright chimes and fluid cascades in the piano, creating a sensuous wash of calm, vibrating beauty. As the music circles back upon itself, the initial sequence of harmonies reappear; however, with the texture now stripped back to only piano and bass clarinet, the heaviness of tone effortlessly gives way to a concluding sense of tranquil meditation.