Ben Johnston Shines in Microfest Spotlight - Lat

Music review: Ben Johnston shines in MicroFest spotlight - lat... http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-microfest-joh...

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Music review: Ben Johnston shines in MicroFest Recommended on Facebook Like 224k spotlight Login You need to be logged into Facebook to see your friends' A rare concert for the master of microtonality shows why he is so well-regarded — at least recommendations. among the circles who are aware of his work. The latest trend among chefs: Comments 1 Share 38 0 Tweet 17 Recommend 17 Food tattoos 201 people recommend this.

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Composer Ben Johston, left, joins in the applause for the Del Sol String Quartet, who performed his microtonal composition "String Quartet #10," at Chapman University's MicroFest. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times / April Movies & Television 26, 2012)

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ALSO More than 20 years ago, the music critic John Rockwell described Ben Johnston in the New York Times as "one of the best nonfamous composers this country has to offer." What has changed is that Johnston is now, I'd suggest, our best

nonfamous composer. Blunt approach to film? Be real At 86, he isn't exactly unknown. The Kronos Quartet has long been one of his champions. He's a legend, at least in the Review: 'The Pianist of Willesden Lane' a resonant tale of survival world of microtonality, which explores the pitches that fall between the keys of the piano. NBA closers want the ball But Ben Johnston continues to be ignored big-time by our big at crunch time musical institutions. A rare all-Johnston concert Wednesday — which included the belated world premiere of his most recent major piece, 30 minutes long and written a dozen years ago — took place in a small recital hall in the music Fresh name and perspective for UCLA's performing arts series building at Chapman College in Orange. The program was K-pop is in the house, part of the annual Southern California festival of microtonal America music called MicroFest.

Ads by Google Johnston, who suffers fromParkinson's diseaseand uses a wheelchair, managed to make the difficult trip to the West Chefs' latest trend: food Coast for the event from his home in Wisconsin. The tattoos | Photos audience appeared to be mostly local students, but it was a historic occasion nonetheless.

It never takes more than a few seconds in any piece to tell that Johnston is up to something. The tuning may sound strange at first, but eventually it seems utterly natural. That is Ads by Google certainly true of Johnston's Suite for Microtonal Piano from 1977, which began the program. Tones in a blues movement, for instance, sound bent without actually bending, thanks to the tuning. Aron Kallay was the engaging pianist, playing excerpts from the suite on an electronic piano of his own invention (built around a spinet but with

1 of 3 4/28/12 8:09 AM Music review: Ben Johnston shines in MicroFest spotlight - lat... http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-microfest-joh...

computer tuning).

Johnston has turned to the Sufi poet Rumi in his late music. In 1998, at the behest of guitarist and MicroFest founder John Schneider, the composer wrote "The Tavern," settings for voice and microtonal guitar of texts about the spiritual aspects of intoxication. The follow-up was another Rumi cycle, "Parable," for mezzo-soprano, violin and clarinet. The singer for whom that was written stopped performing before premiering it. Johnston told me during intermission that he then began to have doubts about the piece and withdrew it for a time.

Both of these Rumi works were Wednesday's centerpiece. Schneider, who had originally performed "The Tavern" accompanying a proper baritone, now half sings, half recites it himself, in the style that is typical of Harry Partch's music (Johnston, as young composer, worked with and was much $129 for 5-Day Trial Package of influenced by Partch). Healthy Meals & Delivery (reg. $279.95) There is some of the musical magic lost in the this approach, but Schneider's dramatic intensity gives the text new immediacy. "Drunks fear the police, but the police are drunk too," Rumi tells us. With voice and guitar settling on pitches that are readily recognized, a listener somehow learns to more empathize with our everyday absurdities. Most Viewed Most Emailed Latest News "Parable" takes that kind of empathy to a new level. The mood is mystical, clarinet and violin often creating quietly ghostly harmonies in high their registers. Karen Clark, a Bay Area mezzo with Syria suicide bombing kills nine in Damascus experience in early music and new music, brought a rich intensity to stories about a mouse and frog 04/28/2012, 12:00 a.m. who become friends, about fish who leap from frying pans, about the force of friendship that causes a Member of Afghan elite forces blamed in attack raven to go underwater and grab a frog. on NATO 04/28/2012, 12:00 a.m.

Texts were not provided in the program and only some words were intelligible. At first hearing, a Blunt approach to film? Be real 04/28/2012, 12:00 listener couldn't quite be sure of what was happening. But that, in a way, enhanced that sensation of a.m. a profound music suggesting the freedom and danger of letting go of the ego. It will take time to Wayward dolphin lingers in Bolsa Chica wetlands digest this score, there is much to be gotten from it. The performance was stunning. 04/28/2012, 12:00 a.m. The concert ended with the first Southern California performance of the tenth of Johnston's 10-string Ford offers pension buyouts to 90,000 retirees quartets, written in 1995, and also the really belated Southern California debut of the exciting Del Sol and former workers 04/28/2012, 12:00 a.m. String Quartet, a Bay Area fixture for nearly two decades.

The Tenth has the quality of late Beethoven, in that it generates the sublime from the simplicity of classical models. The last of its four movements is a set of variations, but as in Elgar's "Enigma Variations," the theme is hidden until the end.

That theme is "Danny Boy" — yes "Danny Boy" — first disguised as a kind off-kilter, off-key Renaissance dances. When the tune finally arrives full-blown, harmonized microtonality, the feeling I got was of the room doubling in size, so vast were the sonorities. A much too famous tune by a much too nonfamous composer was made magnificent.

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charlesamirkhanian at 6:32 PM April 26, 2012 How wonderful that Ben Johnston made the trip for this event at Chapman. He is one of the truly important composers of his generation and it's a macrofeat for John Schneider to have produced this concert at the Microfest. Congratulations to all involved, including the tireless, fearless and multi-talented Del Sol String Quartet.

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