LENOX, Mass. — The sweeping Tanglewood lawns, spotless of dandelions, free from care. Nobody scanning the sky for weapons, or re-checking an empty cupboard; nobody fleeing, or hiding. Could this be where classical music loosens its privileges and becomes an important voice of inclusion and acceptance?
It might be happening already.
If there are rules for behavior in classical music, the Festival of Contemporary Music ignores them. Curated by prominent living composers and featuring the maximum-technique students of the Tanglewood Music Center, the new-music festival offers six concerts over a summer weekend, involving two dozen composers, concurrent with the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s nonstop open rehearsals and concerts. (This summer’s festival coincided with a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of BSO music director Serge Koussevitzky and the 100th anniversary of his appointment to the post.)
The Festival of Contemporary Music comes with an expectation of experimentation, investigation, and change. As BSO president and chief executive officer Chad Smith said at one discussion, “if someone writes a piece for 14 clarinets and mezzo, all sitting in a tree, this is where it should happen.”
Composers Tania León and Steven Mackey, both Tanglewood Music Center composing fellows decades ago (the new-music festival began in 1964), curated this summer’s program. Mackey and León included a work of their own on every concert, giving listeners a generous idea of their approach. For the rest, they chose American or America-based composers and music written almost exclusively in the past five years.
An opening program July 25 in Ozawa Hall epitomized the investigative spirit. Pandemic-era commissions by Leila Adu-Gilmore and Miya Masaoka probed the often angry American atmosphere, exploring with unique instrumentation or technique (pianist Zhaoyuan Qin playing much of Adu-Gilmore’s United Underdog with his forearms). Trevor Weston pitted marimba with flute in the aptly named A.N.S. (A New Sound). Nathalie Joachim wrote a musical graphic novel, The Race, its title hearkening back both euphemistically and symbolically, for solo cello/spoken word and electronics. Mackey’s Afterlife, for mezzo-soprano and percussion quartet, and León’s Indigena, a chamber concerto for jazz trumpet, amplified the multiplicity of ideas.
Different composers, different approaches. “The voices of our time,” León said onstage, “and everyone has a different accent.”
León and Mackey also have their own accents, and in addition to a work on each program, they each had a piece on the BSO’s regular Shed schedule (León’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Stride, Mackey’s concert opener Urban Ocean).
Mackey made choices that were personal, mimicking his own compositional style. A rock guitarist with extensive compositional training and influences, and decades of notable collaborations, Mackey writes intricate music, but in conversational style. He even included a children’s piece, improvised while balancing his infant son on the piano bench. He’s prolific: more than a dozen concertos, including Stumble to Grace, his piano concerto (also inspired by kids), which was performed here sensationally by Orli Shaham.
Mackey’s string quartet One Red Rose, coupled engagingly with León’s Cuarteto No. 2 in one program, epitomized their styles in small ways. One Red Rose occupies all four instruments almost continuously; often, ostinatos in a single instrument support the non-stop dialogue. León’s quartet shows the same insistent complexity, but with interruptions from dance sections that created a liberating casualness.
Mackey’s elegiac Afterlife (2021), for vocalist and percussion quartet, challenged. Miked mezzo-soprano Carmen Edano recited five poems over a jangle of percussion. The moving lyrics were presented in lugubrious sprechstimme, undermining their rumination on time and death. Too much intensity in the lyrics, too little listening space to absorb it. That said, a scat-like outro, out of character with the work, revealed Edano’s impressive instrument, and the quartet grooved inventively. Physical Property, for string quartet and electric guitar, showed that playing with sonic restraint can blend those disparate instruments — given the right composition.
León’s expansive career was given a loving glimpse during the festival. Her music swings and dances in turns, boils over in virtuosity at times, articulating her polyglot and uncategorizable experiences. Cuban-born, solfège-trained, immersed in multiple styles, and never afraid to make music dance, León shifts easily through styles.
Indigenia stood out. Trumpeter Michail Thompson soloed in a kind-of concerto for small ensemble — winds, horns, and percussion, with single strings on a part. The combination swung — conductor Samy Rachid, BSO assistant, made it happen. It sounded like Carnival had passed through the hall, a slightly out-of-control processional. Her Atwood Songs, five characterful poems from the well-known Canadian author, were perfectly suited to soprano Temple Hammen’s instrument.
León’s Esencia (a string quartet; only one movement performed) comes stoutly phrased, with a measured, static texture, strongly gestural and rhythmic. In the Field enigmatically sets five poems from Carlos Pintado in a musical walking tour of Philadelphia.
Stride, León’s Pulitzer Prize–winning orchestral work, actively seeks out its rhythms. It begins by purposefully obscuring them, with asynchronous strings and out-of-phase horns. As it coalesces rhythmically, it also dances. Rhythm doesn’t dominate or underpin the music, it participates.
On the closing orchestral program, Ser and Pasajes, both one-movement works, furthered the notion of León’s restless style. Pasajes, which began with a gorgeous meditation evoking the minimalist intensity of Arvo Pärt, moved all too easily from mood to mood — unfortunately not repeating any.
Many evocative works presented here deserve further attention, like Du Yun’s virtuosic harp solo for Li Shan Tan. Marcos Balter’s soprano sax solo Wicker Park, played by Hannah Hickman with such restraint and delicacy that the sax sounded like flute. Lembit Beecher’s three songs — two laments, one dramatic tragedy — from diverse immigrant situations, sensitively sung by confident mezzo-soprano Madelin Morales. Niloufar Nourbakhsh’s gently anguished lament for sexual abuse victims, Aid for Sex. Virtuoso Arthur Kampela, exploring extended guitar techniques — on a viola — in his piece Exoskeleton.
Vijay Iyer’s improvisational piano quartet Law of Returns rocked out, reflected, and provided room for improvisation. Salina Fisher’s Kintsugi— the most tuneful and unadorned work in this year’s new-music festival — creatively accessed that Japanese craft of repairing broken pottery. Angélica Negrón’s dóabin, for amplified vocalist and brass/wind trio, created an exotic atmosphere with recorded snippets of a “secret” language devised by isolated identical twins. The vocals were gibberish, baritone Holden James Turner mostly breathing deep Zen breaths into the mike.
Chinese composer Dai Wei, whose practices vary from throat singing to writing Mandopop, created a Björk-like scenario for voice, string quartet, and electronics in Partial Men. Works by T.J. Anderson (Squares, 1965) and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (Celebration, 1984) seemed to have been included for their vintage value. Zwilich’s rousing concert opener still sounds vibrant and electric decades after its debut, with multiple string and wind solos showcasing the Tanglewood fellows.
Additional works painted the picture of diverse America, focusing on topical concerns both personal and public. Compositions were influenced by immigration and loss, but also kidney transplants, sexual abuse, beet juice, broken pottery, secret languages, and airplane autopilots. Each inspiration created a unique profundity, and each composer strove to speak “genuinely and earnestly,” as Mackey said at one point. Music of many voices, with different accents.
