Crossing Over
The Talea Ensemble moves to Brooklyn
For The Brooklyn Rail, I wrote about the Talea Ensemble’s new home in Brooklyn and what they plan to do with it:
Whatever changes Talea makes to its touring, venue, or repertoire, what is not likely to change is the surgically refined quality of its concerts. In this first season playing in their new home, they have been making their way through, among newer works, Luciano Berio’s Sequenza series, fourteen pieces for solo instruments (one of them for female voice) that call for extended techniques and feats of endurance. In December, flutist Laura Cocks—whose dexterity and finesse on their instrument is unmatched in this scene—played a breathy and extraverted “Sequenza I,” while violist Hannah Levinson played an intense “Sequenza VI.”
In February, for “Sequenza III,” the audience heard distant muttering from the back of the hall before they saw soprano Lucy Shelton creep down the aisle toward the stage, book in hand. She whispered, hummed, and blubbered like a deranged poet, and begged the muse to give her words before finally collapsing into a chair, having either found them or resigned herself to the fact that they wouldn’t ever come. The drama was like watching a play with no clear story but infinite meaning. Preceding Shelton was [Adrian] Morejon himself, whose performance of “Sequenza XII” kept me on the edge of my seat but also exhausted me. The longest of the Sequenzas, clocking in at around eighteen minutes, the piece demands circular breathing (in through the nose while playing the instrument) almost the whole time, up until the last few minutes. Morejon’s lungs impressed me, but what stuck were his crescendi and diminuendi, perfectly gradual and lyrical. “Sequenza IX,” played by clarinetist Rane Moore, highlighted the acoustics of the hall in detail. When some of her notes lingered in the air, she listened to their slight resonance and started the next phrase on their heels—a duet with the prior phrase’s ghost.
Read the rest here.