Tell Me Everything - Bang on a Can 2016 Summer Marathon (Memory)
Day 5 of my Bang on a Can Summer Marathon 2016 memories (straight from canland.org) focuses on largest ensemble work I was a part of that day and the hardest piece overall I had to put together in a piece called Tell Me Everything by Julia Wolfe.
Composer’s Notes (taken from her “program notes” section on her website):
"Tell Me Everything' was commissioned by La Camarata of Mexico City and premiered at Festival Cervantino. The piece was inspired by a cassette tape that a friend had given me. The tape was of a South American band that had recently acquired brass instruments and were roughly playing together. It was a messy sound, cacophonous - everyone playing together and not together. It was joyful and unwieldy. There were so many times while writing this piece that I broke into laughter - wondering 'can I really write this, can it really go on like this?” - Julia Wolfe
Preparation
This piece was the most intimidating for me to learn out of the whole program right away. Sometimes, for large ensemble works that includes piano, the composer will arrange the piano part as essentially two parts played by one person. So in my right hand was one part of the ensemble, and in my left hand was the other. However, this piece was a crazy demonstration of rhythmic layering, with duples and triples layering on top of odd and even subdivisions and constantly switching which types of subdivisions fell on which hands. It’s probably the hardest piece of rhythmic music I’ve had to learn outside of arrhythmic pieces by composers like Stockhausen.
Rehearsal
When everyone got together to rehearse this piece, it was understandbly difficult to dissect across sections. Brad Lubman did a skillful job as a conductor rehearsing the ensemble, and since he is also a percussionist he was able to conduct polymeters and syncopations with ease! Among the dissonances and complex rhythmic layers, there were nuggets of things to grasp on to within the textures, which became easier to discern the more times we rehearsed.
Performance
What a fantastic performance! I’m sure to the audience it was a wild ride of dissonances and figuring out how to groove with the tune, so they weren’t far off from us as performers! This piece was equal parts exhausting, exhilarating, physically and mentally intense, and that weird kind of fun where you’re just laughing at how absurdly difficult this piece was to put together but you’re now enjoying yourself on stage! It’s such a unique experience, one that I always reference as one of the times I really felt pushed as a performer. So many great folks involved, that energy pulsating on stage and pushing out into the concert venue for the audience to absorb, it was one for the books. Bravo to everyone involved!
Check out the performance below or at the canland.org link here: https://canland.org/tell-me-everything/
Ensemble:
Brad Lubman - Conductor
Gina Izzo - Flute
Hila Zamir - Clarinet
Theodosia Roussos - Oboe
Garrett Brown - Bassoon
Tom Sanderman - Alto Saxophone
Allison Wright - Trumpet
Cole Bartels - Trombone
Tyler Taylor - French Horn
Dutcher Snedeker - Piano
Hope Wilk - Harp
Evan Saddler, Eric Shuster - Percussion
Kate Outterbridge, Maria-Fiore Mazzarini - Violin
Kieran Welch - Viola
Zan Berry - Cello
Cody Takács - Double Bass
