Also this issue:

Ghost in the Machine
Japanese psychedelia invades brains, raises spirits.
-A.D. Amorosi

Originators of the Species
The progenitors of progressive house sprout legs, go on tour.
-Sean O’Neal

The Gig

Jon Langford
-Paul Burress

Jello Biafra
-Patrick Rapa

Ryan Adams
-A.D. Amorosi

The Blind Boys of Alabama/ The Dirty Dozen Brass Band
-Sam Adams

The Chameleons
-Sam Adams

October 3- 9, 2002

music

Family Fugue

Home AWay from Home: George Crumbâs daughter Ann will sing his first new major work in five years this weekend. His son David is premiering a composition as well.

Orchestra 2001 puts the Crumbs back together.

by Peter Burwasser

For many in the Philadelphia new music community, not to mention the international scene, George Crumb is something of a father figure. His major works in the late 1960s and early ’70s created a unique and highly influential way of dealing with the tortured stylistic battles of the time. His landmark works, including Music for a Summer Evening and Ancient Voices of Children, can be wildly dissonant, violently noisy and filled with invented instrumentation. But Crumb’s theatrical sensibility, combined with a redemptive vision of melody and beauty, makes his music uniquely powerful and completely accessible for listeners, especially in live performance. And as a professor of music from 1966-97 at the University of Pennsylvania, he begat a generation of artistic progeny who are notable for the joy of discovery and fearless imagination of the teacher, while almost never aping the signature Crumb sound.

But George Crumb is also a father, literally. Two of his children have entered the world of music, although in different spheres, and will join dad in concerts of Orchestra 2001 this week. David Crumb is a busy composer, based in Oregon, and Ann Crumb has found a home on Broadway and London's West End in the world of musical theater. Local audiences may have seen her lead performance in the Wilma's Bed and Sofa, for which she won the Barrymore Award for Outstanding Leading Actress. She will be the singer in her father's first new major work in five years, a setting of five Appalachian folk songs entitled ...Unto the Hills.

The eldest Crumb is a West Virginia native, and although he has used some folk melodies, including revival tunes, in the past, and has been influenced by some sounds of country music, such as the hammer dulcimer, he has never before fashioned a piece overtly based on the music of his youthful environs. "This work was suggested by my daughter. Once I got started, I felt very much at home. I'm sure I knew this music as a kid."

He has selected such songs as "Black, Black, Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair" and "A Wayfaring Stranger," and, using the original texts, placed them in a continuous, played-through context. His delightfully lilting, soft-spoken voice that still betrays a touch of a Southern accent suggests that this will not be a conventional folksong setting, but will be placed in a "background that is abstract and maybe a little mystical. The setting will be different, but the tunes themselves will be intact."

One senses that Crumb, a man of highly refined satirical and humorous sensibilities, is being deviously disingenuous here. His music is scored for a large battery of pitched and non-pitched percussion and amplified piano. This may seem to be an astonishing choice as accompaniment to folksongs, but it is precisely the sound world in which Crumb has demonstrated special mastery in his past work.

David Crumb, who will have his "Primordial Fantasy" premiered in this concert, has an impressive list of awards and grants to his name, and an equally impressive list of teachers. Conspicuously missing from the latter list, officially, is George Crumb. "David and Ann were classically trained at home. But teaching composition is like the Freudian couch. You can't teach your own kids. I have tried to steer clear of it. I don't know how Bach did it."

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At a special concert in honor of Crumb's 70th birthday a few years ago at Swarthmore, a piece featured yet another member of the Crumb household. At the conclusion of his "Mundi Canis," the composer was on stage singing out "Yoda," as the family doggy leapt out for a triumphant birthday greeting. Master responded with an embellishment: "Bad dog!" Any pets invited to the Orchestra 2001 event? Says the composer, "No. Enough nepotism!"

Orchestra 2001, Sat., Oct. 5, 8 p.m., Trinity Center, 22nd and Spruce sts.; Sun., Oct. 6, 7:30 p.m., Lang Concert Hall, Swarthmore, 215-922-2190.