Review: Relache Ensemble

by Peter Burwasser

When the Relâche Ensemble is at their best, as they were this past Sunday in recital at the Wagner Free Institute of Science, they transcend mere music making. In a program titled "Electric Aether," there were a lot of interesting sounds, but also imagination-provoking allusions to history, science and personal nostalgia.

The work of the musicians was profoundly amplified by the space they performed in, the lecture hall of this largely hidden Philadelphia treasure. In an environment that is essentially unchanged since the time of Charles Darwin, all of the senses were pricked. Sound, of course, and, as always with Relâche, the sight of the panoply of instruments, both high-tech and traditional. But there was also the satiny feel of the well-worn seats, and the shadowy odor of slowly evaporating shellac, wonderfully intensifying, for example, the music of Charles Dodge, which employs sampled recordings of Caruso singing. The ghost of the great tenor, in black top hat and starched white shirt, seemed to wander in and out of the spirited solo performance of Andrea Clearfield on keyboards.

Annie Gosfield's "The Manufacture of Tangled Ivory" is inspired by an out-of-tune piano the composer remembers from her grandmother's house. Clearfield recreated this sound on a detuned electronic keyboard, at first conjuring the microtonal sound of Harry Partch, but ultimately exploring a sort of personal history that anyone might relate to. Crouching under a piano as a boozed-up uncle smashed away at the spinet, or maybe listening to late-night company from the safe distance of an upstairs bedroom? This highly entertaining work wound up with a gloriously noisy finale, evoking the childlike joy of marching around while banging at pots and pans.

Sampled music was again conjured for Ingram Marshall's "Dark Waters," this time an old Philadelphia Orchestra (Stokowski?) recording of "Swan of Tuonela," by Sibelius. Lloyd Shorter was the eloquent solo English horn player, in this somewhat overstretched but sincerely conceived elegy that makes a musical virtue of the scratches and hiss of old records.

The conversational quality that enlivens the Marshall piece would have helped in Gavin Bryars' "The Archangel Trip," written for the soundtrack to a documentary about icebreakers. This is a lengthy work proceeding in an unvarying pulse, based on bland harmonies, punctuated by a distractingly jagged drum kit part. What is the point?

Fred Frith's "Shading My Face It Shall Be You" was more thoughtful, mixing tape loops and live sounds, and playing with the remarkably rich acoustics of the Wagner lecture hall, but it could not emerge as a cohesive work of art.

This uniquely stimulating afternoon of cultural admixture ended on a sprightly note, with Randall Wolf's fun and punchy "My Insect Bride," featuring the Hohner Clavinet keyboard, which, if memory serves, was prominently featured in many a funk band from the 1970s.

Relâche Ensemble Feb. 2, Wagner Free Institute of Science

--Peter Burwasser