Strung Out - Philip Glass
Resilient Hope - Michael Keaney
US and Jest Fa Laffs - Martirano
It-Ook - Philip Glass
New York Counterpoint - Steve Reich
Le reveil profond - Scelsi
GUBU - Donnacha Dennehy
Talea - Grisley
THE Crash Ensemble's concert at project @ the mint last night stretched the group in fresh directions. Philip Glass's Strung Out for amplified violin dates from 1967 and must be among the earliest of the composer's work to have received a concert airing in Ireland. The repetitive stasis, familiar from Glass's later work, is already in evidence here, the material sounding like excerpts from a Czerny study slowed down and reassembled in slight disorder.
Brona Cahill's traversal - the music on stands spread across the stage - combined a straight-faced discipline and subtlety of musical inflection which immunised the listener from the worst numbing effects of the material's banality.
By contrast, Glass's Ik-Ook, specially transcribed for this concert from the North Star album of 1977, is a self-regenerating burst of synthesizer energy, the sounds jingle-pretty, the sense of drive irresistible. David Adams played it with robotically impeccable precision.
Steve Reich's New York Counterpoint is one of the minimalist classics of the 1980s, solo clarinet against the ever-enchanting sound of a choir of pre-recorded clarinets on tape. Michael Seaver's performance, slightly dislocated in the opening section, soon settled into the familiar routine.
Two Irish composers were represented, Michael Keaney, through Resilient Hope, an exploration of the sound-world of the electric guitar, both live (Richard Sweeney) and on tape, and Donnacha Dennehy through GUBU, written in 1995, when he was a graduate student in the US and showing both exuberance and naivety.
Three highly-regarded composers rarely-heard in Ireland also featured.
Salvatore Martirano (192795) was a pioneer of computer music, whose UIUS & Jest Fa Laffs mixes quaintly-dated, machine-drilled synthesizer sounds with live performers.
Le reveil profond for solo double bass by Giacinto Scelsi (1905-88) is a meditative investigation into the sonic quality and normally avoided sideproducts of double-stopping on this instrument.
And Talea for ensemble by Gerard Grisey (1946-88), in its exotic spirals and recurring bursts of activity, takes the listener even further into a fascinating micro-tonal world.
