An eight year old showed me how to listen to new music
By Brooke Knoll
When I was eight years old, I was rocking out to the music of Hilary Duff, the High School Musical soundtrack and the classic rock songs my dad would put on while cooking dinner. But at 8, Morris Haelbig listens to new music being premiered right in front of him.
Morris is the son of Ken Thomson, the clarinet faculty member at Bang on a Can’s Summer Festival. This Wednesday, I had the opportunity to watch Ken perform alongside Fellows Abrielle Scott (flute) and JP Bernabe (bass) as they premiered pieces by three of the festival’s Composer Fellows.
Usually during the festival’s 4:30 p.m. recitals it’s hard to peel my eyes away from the musicians in front of me. This time, however, my eyes couldn’t help but float away from Ken, playing bass clarinet, over to Morris and his six year old sister, Polly — easily the youngest audience members in the crowd.
While myself and others were seated silently around the edges of the Prow gallery at MASS MoCA — close, but not encroaching — Morris and Polly were sprawled out on the floor, rolling around and basking in the sunlight that came in through the large paned windows.
As the musicians played a piece that was quiet and contemplative, Morris rested his head on the ground and closed his eyes. When composer Fellow Cole Reyes’ piece “Crackle” had the musicians playing fast, flurrying notes, Morris was writhing on the floor, almost swimming through the air along with the beat. “I don’t care what I listen to, I just like to listen,” Morris told me after the day’s series of recitals.
I’ve often thought about the way we act when we watch different types of musical performances. You’re expected to dance at a techno concert, bob your head with an IPA in hand at an indie rock show, and when you’re at a symphony hall you’re given death glares when you so much as clear your throat.
Why can’t we bob our heads and run around when listening to classical music? During my time at MASS MoCA, the gallery concerts have brought me physically closer to classical musicians than I’ve ever experienced in a more formal setting like a concert hall or theater.
After seeing the Minnesota Orchestra perform on a class field trip as a kid, I often dreamt of getting to sit in the center of the stage, and to close my eyes as they played the lush, verdant sounds of Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé Suite No. 2 — or, the Jaws-like opening of the fourth movement of Antonín Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony. When I got my license at 16, I would head bang along to the grand symphonies of Mahler alongside the pop-punk stylings of Panic! At the Disco as I battled rush hour traffic.
Morris is not only living that dream in public, but doing so unapologetically. During the final set of music in the Gunnar Schonbeck exhibit, he and Polly were chasing each other through the crowd as a classical accordion played dueling licks with a saxophone.
“It was very fun moving around,” Morris exclaimed afterward. “The music was funny. I like fast music, and I find fast music funny.”
Morris has been listening to this music his entire life. When I asked him when he started attending concerts like this he couldn’t remember — coming to MASS MoCA has been like its own season to him. It comes around every year without fail.
As I observed Morris throughout the afternoon’s recitals, I couldn’t help but want to join in on how freely he expressed himself and his reactions to the music. Why shouldn’t I laugh loudly when a horn makes a weird noise? If a bass breaks into a blues-y rhythm, why can’t I clap along?
Bang on a Can encourages these close encounters with music throughout the festival, breaking the barriers that have historically held audiences back from classically trained musicians. I have chuckled during concerts and whooped and hollered with pride after hearing a new friend’s piece performed for the first time, but I still hold myself back to a certain extent.
Morris taught me one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned during my week here. Music moves us all and we should be able to show it: unabashedly.
Brooke Knoll is a contemporary harpist, radio professional and digital marketer based in Kansas City, Missouri. She is an active improviser with the Extemporaneous Music and Arts Society and is an on-air host for Classical KC.
BOAC Fellows get catty in afternoon recital
by Molly McCaul
Imagine you’re a cat. Now play music.
Those were the instructions Bang On A Can composing Fellow Daijana Wallace gave the trio that performed her piece, “FGBG,” on Wednesday afternoon in MASS MoCA’s Schonbeck Gallery. And they executed it perfectly.
Wallace introduced her piece, saying that “if you’re familiar with the four-legged creature, this is about cats.” Then, three performing Fellows—William Pyle (alto sax), Iwo Jedynecki (accordion), and Sam Zagnit (double bass)—kicked off the final 4:30 recital of the BOAC residency. Sitting among a series of installations by Gunnar Schonbeck highlighting artist-made, playable instruments, the musicians played through fast-moving runs with precision, scampering up and down the notes with the ease of a street cat and evoking images of prowling, pouncing, scratching, and even the occasional impassioned meowl.
There was a frenetic energy to the performance, one that will not be unfamiliar to any cat owner who knows the word “zoomies.” Pyle, Jedynecki, and Zagnit passed around moments of intensity, each zipping up and down their respective instruments in quick succession. At one point, Pyle, entirely uninstructed by the written score, stood and faced the audience directly to play, which Wallace says speaks to “how much agency the composer gives the performers. In this instance, I wanted them to have pretty much complete control.”
Whereas typical sheet music denotes every element of the performance beat by beat, from the notes and when to play them to how and where to breathe, this score was more graphic—Wallace used jagged lines, swirls, and vague descriptors (like “pounce”) for entire sections of the score. This gave the musicians more leeway in interpreting the piece and allowed them to put their own spin on the performance. Wallace instructed musicians to imagine themselves as cats in their “kitty kingdom,” where they would run around the house, or play with humans, or pounce on prey. She says that she wanted the performers to be able to “interpret what they think it’s like to be a cat during their craziest hours.”
Because of this agency, no two performances are identical. “I’ve only heard this piece twice before the premiere [at Bang On A Can], and each time it’s going to be a little bit different,” Wallace says. “But for me, that’s like the most low-stress, low-pressure environment. Because not only is the audience experiencing it for the first time, so am I. So it’s actually more exciting—like happy exciting, and less anxious.”
The title of the song, “FGBG,” lists the note names, in order, of that fast-moving run that repeats throughout the piece. Wallace says that she settled on that order by returning to her memories with cats at home in Wichita. “Whenever we scare them, we go ‘ooga booga’,” explains Wallace. “In order to make this lick, I was thinking about the most ridiculous combination of consonants and vowels. So I have a bunch of iterations in a notebook. It’s, like, me going through which one sounds the most absurd.”
Recent Wellesley College graduate Molly McCaul is an arts and culture reporter with a passion for music journalism and live music coverage. They work full-time with GBH News, Boston’s PBS/NPR affiliate, and recently became a contributing writer at online music and arts publication Vanyaland.