by Douglas Detrick
“Concert Review: Jon Gibson and Ralph Gibson; New and Recent Works by Alexandra Gardner”
Interpretations Series: Job Gibson and Ralph Gibson, and the NOW Ensemble playing works by Alexandra Gardner.
At the November 18th concert on the 22nd season of Thomas Buckner’s Interpretations series, Jon Gibson and Ralph Gibson (no relation), both veterans of New York’s art and music scene, played a set featuring video and partly composed, partly improvised music to a full room at Roulette in SoHo. Ralph Gibson’s Typography, often worked with sustained, gently moving close-ups of various characters from different languages and certain familiar objects viewed from unfamiliar angles. His score consisting of a framework of themes, was fleshed out through Jon Gibson’s saxophone improvisation and Ralph Gibson’s guitar loops and effects. Jon Gibson’s One Waydocumented a journey by car to an unnamed destination and juxtaposed video shot from a moving vehicle and overlayed with stationary shots of similar scenery. The combination brought life to the still trees, and stasis to the moving landscape, giving both an other-worldly quality. Joking often about their shared surname, the two Gibsons played together as if they could have been brothers, as their playing meshed seamlessly with both video works.
The second set of the concert featured three recent electro-acoustic pieces for solo instruments and tape, and a work for New York’s NOW Ensemble by Washington D.C. composer Alexandra Gardner. The three tape pieces, Ónice, performed by Sarah Budde on bass clarinet, Mint Conditioner, a world premiere featuring Logan Coale on double bass and Bloomplayed by Leigh Stuart on cello, were all beautifully executed pieces in a medium that can often underwhelm due to the technical difficulties of coordinating a live, acoustic instrument with a pre-recorded electronic part. Gardner’s electronic soundscapes incorporated sounds sampled from the instrument featured in each individual piece, then altered and orchestrated them without rendering them unrecognizable. Another important feature of the pieces was a degree of flexibility built in to the pieces, so that the performers needed only to coordinate with certain cues in the taped part, not every note. The result was a refreshing mix of freedom and integration. The tape parts emphasized and expanded on the colors and textures of the live part, giving the performance a broadened, meta-instrument feeling, as if the live instrument extended beyond its normal range of techniques and timbres, almost as if by magic. One drawback to these pieces was a sometimes-inadequate amplification of the live instrument. Mostly the performers were amplified properly, but sometimes were outmatched by the loudest parts of the electronic accompaniment.
Gardner’s piece for the NOW Ensemble, with its characteristic instrumentation of flute, clarinet, electric guitar, piano and double bass, called Now or Never emphasized the interplay of counterpoint and rock-influenced texture at which this group excels. Beginning from simple repeating rhythms, the piece built up to several small peaks before returning to a beginning point to take similar material in a different direction. The piece then reaches a final, spirited climax before fading away. Gardner’s writing in this piece is joyful, and a bit whimsical with some elements of dissonance adding character to the lush, lyrical feeling of the work. Now or Never was a satisfying conclusion to a strong concert overall.
