Merrimack River Current, MA
Nov 3 2006
Chamber Ensemble
By J. C. Lockwood</ a>
Friday, November 3, 2006
Interested?
You can’t bundle up the 17 short compositions that make up
"VOCE," the debut release of the Vardan Ovsepian Chamber Ensemble,
into a self-contained little package and describe the work as a whole
– other than advancing Gunther Schuller’s third stream theories –
essentially a fusing of classical and jazz.
No, this music is a world unto itself and, because of the
ensemble’s instrumentation – which includes Celtic harp and duduk, an
ancient Armenian instrument that looks like a recorder and sounds
like a cross between cello and human voice – it is a big world
indeed. The nine-piece ensemble weaves together improvisational jazz
that is equally informed by traditional classical music, 12-tone
serial composition and European art songs.
All that being said, perhaps the best way to understand these
pieces is to lift them completely out of their musical context. The
compositions are like poems, short films or, more accurately, like
paintings – appropriate because in its premiere performance this year
at the Firehouse Center for the Performing Arts, the ensemble, in
abbreviated form, played a series of compositions inspired by
paintings by Newburyport painter Gordon Przybyla, around which
swirled a multimedia show and dancers.
Yet, despite all of Ovsepian’s apparent compositional
adventurousness, there is a cohesiveness to the album that is
intuitive and structural. It has to do with the underlying sound as
well as the shape or character of the compositions – and that, says
the composer, is crucial.
"The instrumentation allows us to go to some very different
places," says Ovsepian. "I love that. But if there were no underlying
unity to the pieces, it would be a bad collection of different songs.
It would be a failure. The last thing I want to have is a bunch of
songs that are different from each other."
Assembling the band
Ovsepian started playing piano at age 5. In the early ’90s, he
studied music theory at Melikyan Music College and classical
composition at Yerevan Komitas State Conservatory, both in his native
Armenia. After studying contemporary composition at the Estonian
Music Academy, he jumped across the Gulf of Finland to attend the
Helsinki Jazz Conservatory and, from there, across the Atlantic for a
gig studying piano performance at Berklee College of Music.
Since graduating from Berklee in May 2000, he has been teaching
at The Musical Suite in Newburyport, and performing solo as well as
in groups with artists such as George Garzone, Mick Goodrick, Tim
Miller and others. He’s released three albums with the
Barcelona-based Fresh Sound- New Talent label: "Abandoned Wheel," his
2001 solo piano project; "Sketch Book," a 2002 release that features
future VOCE bassist Joshua Davis and percussionist Take Toriyama in
his quartet; and, in 2004, "Akunc," a new project that features the
quartet and cellist Agnieszka Dziubak.
Chamber Ensemble
By J. C. Lockwood</ a>
Friday, November 3, 2006
Interested?
You can’t bundle up the 17 short compositions that make up
"VOCE," the debut release of the Vardan Ovsepian Chamber Ensemble,
into a self-contained little package and describe the work as a whole
– other than advancing Gunther Schuller’s third stream theories –
essentially a fusing of classical and jazz.
No, this music is a world unto itself and, because of the
ensemble’s instrumentation – which includes Celtic harp and duduk, an
ancient Armenian instrument that looks like a recorder and sounds
like a cross between cello and human voice – it is a big world
indeed. The nine-piece ensemble weaves together improvisational jazz
that is equally informed by traditional classical music, 12-tone
serial composition and European art songs.
All that being said, perhaps the best way to understand these
pieces is to lift them completely out of their musical context. The
compositions are like poems, short films or, more accurately, like
paintings – appropriate because in its premiere performance this year
at the Firehouse Center for the Performing Arts, the ensemble, in
abbreviated form, played a series of compositions inspired by
paintings by Newburyport painter Gordon Przybyla, around which
swirled a multimedia show and dancers.
Yet, despite all of Ovsepian’s apparent compositional
adventurousness, there is a cohesiveness to the album that is
intuitive and structural. It has to do with the underlying sound as
well as the shape or character of the compositions – and that, says
the composer, is crucial.
"The instrumentation allows us to go to some very different
places," says Ovsepian. "I love that. But if there were no underlying
unity to the pieces, it would be a bad collection of different songs.
It would be a failure. The last thing I want to have is a bunch of
songs that are different from each other."
Assembling the band
Ovsepian started playing piano at age 5. In the early ’90s, he
studied music theory at Melikyan Music College and classical
composition at Yerevan Komitas State Conservatory, both in his native
Armenia. After studying contemporary composition at the Estonian
Music Academy, he jumped across the Gulf of Finland to attend the
Helsinki Jazz Conservatory and, from there, across the Atlantic for a
gig studying piano performance at Berklee College of Music.
Since graduating from Berklee in May 2000, he has been teaching
at The Musical Suite in Newburyport, and performing solo as well as
in groups with artists such as George Garzone, Mick Goodrick, Tim
Miller and others. He’s released three albums with the
Barcelona-based Fresh Sound- New Talent label: "Abandoned Wheel," his
2001 solo piano project; "Sketch Book," a 2002 release that features
future VOCE bassist Joshua Davis and percussionist Take Toriyama in
his quartet; and, in 2004, "Akunc," a new project that features the
quartet and cellist Agnieszka Dziubak.
VOCE, which has members spread across three states and has performed
as a unit only two times before, came together quickly after Megumi
Sasaki, a violinist who teaches with Ovsepian at The Musical Suite,
brought up the idea in an off-hand way in October 2005.
"Everything started with her," says Ovsepian.
He started collecting musicians, and by January he had a complete
band, starting with Sasaki and then signing on quartet members Davis
and Toriyama, then adding Andrew Eng on violin, Fabrizzio Mazzetta on
cello, Yulia Musayelyan on flute, Maeve Gilchrist on Celtic harp and
Martin Haroutunian on duduk.
Band in place, the pianist started writing and, within three
months, just about the time of VOCE’s Firehouse performance, had
penned most of the tunes for the new album. But he didn’t stop there.
In rehearsal, he kept getting ideas and kept writing. The musicians
in the ensemble "were very patient with me," Ovsepian said. The
inspiration came "so massively," that the 17 songs on the disc
represent only about 30 percent of the creative output.
The ensemble performed for the second time at Rutman’s Violins in
Boston, just a week before the album was recorded in May at PBS
Studio in Westwood and released, albeit unofficially, this week. The
disc features a series of energetic, evocative photographs by Hanayo
Takai at the Rutman’s performance. Her work became a part of the
performance, a last-minute improvisation that felt right. On stage
during the show, getting up close to the musicians, sometimes
blocking the sight lines of the audience, she looked like part of the
ensemble, almost like a dancer – recalling the "Stories as One"
performance. "It felt not like a nine-piece but a 10-piece ensemble,"
says Ovsepian. "It was an important part of the performance. It
affected everybody."
Tight discipline
On "VOCE," labels fall away. Songs feel and sound both modern and
ancient, are beautiful and sad, are moody and contemplative. Many
flow into each other. Titles like "Elegant Madness," "Dew," and
"Dreaming Paris" invoke a landscape, attitude or presence, but,
ultimately it’s a world left to the listener. The role of
improvisation is an important part of "third stream" compositions,
but on the VOCE debut, Ovsepian maintains a tight discipline over the
material, limiting the improvisational impulse – hinting, teasing.
This stance is most apparent on "Earth." The three-minute piece opens
with achingly beautiful violin and cello lines and then, led by piano
and flute, swerves in a completely different, happier, direction.
And, as the song builds to what should be a spot for the pianist to
stretch out, the song fades out.
Ovsepian says he is trying to capture a mood, or palette of
colors – all of which would get lost in an avalanche of soloing, no
matter how inspired.
"You listen to music and have a certain image in your head," he
says. "They have a certain character or presence. That would be swept
away by the ‘improv.’ I try to capture that mood and leave it there.
I don’t want to change or lose the mood or the color of the pieces."
In other settings, in concert, he says, "the ‘improv’ will take care
of itself."
Ultimately, the collection is held together by the sound of the band,
and the color and structure of the compositions, as Ovsepian says,
but, perhaps as important, is the emotional immediacy, the
insistency, of the pieces.
The release party for "VOCE" will be a loose event – not a
traditional record release party, not exactly a concert. The ensemble
will perform, they’ll shmooze a little, they’ll play a little more,
they’ll sell a few CDs. A formal release party will be scheduled
later this year.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress