City Life (programme)
Concert of Agon in the Archa Theatre: The City as a symbol of culture

The other concerts and performances of Agon Orchestra in the Archa Theatre




City Life

October 30, 1999 in the Archa Theatre
Agon Orchestra conducted by Petr Kofroň

Program:

Petr Kotík
Solos & Incidental Harmonies

John Zorn
Four Your Eyes Only (Czech premiere)

Frederic Rzewski
To The Earth

Steve Reich
City Life (Czech premiere)

Agon Orchestra
Martin Čech, flute
Daniela Tarabová, flute
Jiří Šesták, oboe
Pavel Polášek, oboe
Tomáš Čistecký, clarinet
Tomáš Hustoles, clarinet/bass clarinet
Matouš Křiváček, fagot
Jaroslav Halíř, trumpet
Marek Zvolánek, trumpet
Tomáš Secký, French horn
Jiří Havlík, French horn
Ivo Kopecký, trombone
Jiří Třos, trombone
Jan Jaroš, tuba
Tomáš Ondrůšek, drums
Cecil Boiffin, drums
Ctibor Bártek, drums
František Čech, drums
Martin Kumžák, sampler
Kryštof Marek, sampler
Michal Nejtek, piano
Paul Kempson, piano
Bronislava Klablenová, harp
Jan Šimůnek, violin
Igor Lecian, violin
Tomáš Khol, viola
Kryštof Lecian, violoncello
Jiří Pellant, double bass
Ivan Bierhanzl, double bass/bass guitar

Petr Kofroň, conductor


City Life
© Boosey & Hawkes London

The idea that any sound may be used as part of a piece of music has been in the air during much of the twentieth century. From the use of taxi horns in Gershin's An American in Paris through Varése's sirens, Antheil's airplane propeller, Cage's radio, and rock and roll's use of all of the above and more starting at least in the 1970s, and more recently in rap music, the desire to include everyday sounds in music has been growing. The sampling keyboard now makes this a practical reality. In City Life not only samples of speech but also car horns, door slams, air brakes, subway chimes, pile drivers, car alarms, heartbeats, boat horns, buoys, and fire and police sirens are part of the fabric of the piece.
          In contrast to my earlier Different Trains (1988) and The Cave (1993), the prerecorded sounds here are played live in performance on two sampling keyboards. The is no tape used in performance. This brings back the usual small flexibility of tempo that is a hallmark of life performance. It also extends the idea of prepared piano, since the sampling keyboards are "loaded" with sounds, many recorded by myself in New York City. These different non-musical sounds also suggest certain instrumental couplings-thus woodwinds door car horns, bass drums for bass clams, cymbal for air brakes, clarinets for boat horns and several different instrumental doublings for speech melodies.
          City Life is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 pianos, 2 samplers, 3 (or 4) percussion, string quartet and bass. Like several earlier works, it is an arch form (A-B-C-B-A). The first and last movements use speech samples as apart of the musical fabric, and both feel like "fast" movements, though the actual tempo of the first is moderate and the fairly rapid tempo of the last movement is harder to perceive because of the many sustained sounds. The harmonies leading to E-flat or C minor in the chorale that opens and closes the first movement reappear in the fifth movement in a more dissonant voicing and finally resolve to C minor which then ambiguously ends as either a C dominant or C minor chord. The second and fourth movements do not use any speech whatsoever. Instead, each uses a rhythmic sample that determines the tempo. In the second it is a pile driver; in the fourth, heartbeats. Both start slow and increase in speed. In the second, this is only because the pile driver moves from quarter notes to eighths, and then to triplets. In the fourth movement, the heartbeats gradually get faster in each of the four sections of the movement. Both movements are harmonically based on the same cycle of four dominant chords. The third and central movement begins with only speech samples played by the two sampler players. When this duet has been fully built up, the rest of the strings, winds and percussion enter to double the pitches and rhythms of the interlocking speech samples. This central movement may well remind listeners of my early tape pieces It's Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966).
          For the first movement, a street vendor in lower Manhattan was recorded saying, "Check it out." The source of the third movement, "It's been a honeymoon-Can't take no mo", was recorded at a mostly African American political rally near City Hall. Most of the speech samples in the fifth movement are from actual field communications of the New York City Fire Department on February 26, 1993, the day the World Trade Center was bombed. They were made available to me though the courtesy of Assistant Commissioner for Communications Stephen Gregory. The samples heard in the fifth movement are:

"Heavy smoke"
"Stand by, stand by"
"It's full a'smoke"
"Full a'smoke"
"Urgent!"
"Guns, knives or weapons on ya?"
"Wha' were ya doin'?"
"Be careful"
"Where you go"
"Careful"
"Stand by"

City Life (1995) is a tripartite commission from the Ensemble Modern, the London Sinfonietta and the Ensemble Intercontemporain. The world premiere was performed by David Robertson conducting the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Metz on March 7, 1995. The German premiere was given by the Ensemble Modern, conducted by Sain Edwards, at the West German Radio in Cologne on March 11, 1995, and the British premiere performance was given by the London Sinfonietta at Queen Elizabeth Hall on May 10, 1995, Markus Stenz conducting. The American premiere was with Bradkey Lubman conducting my own ensemble at Alice Tully in New York City on February 10, 1996.

Steve Reich



The concert is organised in collaboration with the Society for New Music under support of Ministry of Culture of Czech Republic, Capital town Prague and Foundation Open Society Fund Prague.





Concert of Agon in the Archa Theatre: The City as a symbol of culture

Music, that which has been noticed in the recent years of the Agon ensemble, truly has something to say - primarily in city. In a city so large that there is also room for alternative sub-cultures or their embryos. This music says something like a memento or a vision. The New York downtown is their incubator - the definition underground, the projection a picture - where everything is changing. And the practice shows that the whole can remain complete even by the simple co-existence of all its compositions. However, the condition is that some parts should show certain degrees of coming back to life, in order that there is some energetic potential.
          Agon entitled its concert in the Archa Theatre "City Life" - based on the composition of Steve Reich, which they presented as the Czech premiere. In the evening's programme, they also included "Solos & Incidental Harmonies" of Peter Kotík and - again as a Czech premiere - "Four Your Eyes Only", by John Zorn. This accurate piece worked with an analytical objectivity, as an illustration of culture mentioned by Petr Kotík: "The culture in today's concept is a fetus of the civilisation in the city. "
          And what's actually happening with Zorn's work? It is a fascinating mix of styles, techniques, meanings, symbolism. The audience is greatly entertained with this music; in every moment, each audience member can catch a motive, a sound, a rhythm, an arrangement, or a suggestion or reference. Sometimes, it comes without warning, meaning without any formal musical preparation. Yet, at the same time, one can receive much stimulation to his reflexes. In the Archa Theatre, it had an incredible reception, thus encouraging the conductor Petr Kofroň and his ensemble to the play the massive composition in its entirety once again.
          Kotík's composition and especially Reich's composition are inspired from a similar source. Kotík's composition, as if it could be driven by the obsession to deliver a surplus of energy... is exhausted from it.... Reich´s "City Life", perhaps intentionally was almost identical to Zorn's work, as it was more temperate and more stylized. For the educated dramaturgical trait, it is possible to sign the polarization of the work by Frederic Rzewsky "To the Earth", giving the concert an even greater element of contemplation.
          In addition, the fantastic atmosphere is worth being documented, with special thanks that Zorn's composition was included in the concert. The concerts of Agon are slowly becoming as a rule.

Wanda Dobrovská, MF Dnes 2. 11. 1999
(The author is a musical critic.)