selected reviews, features & press releases
Bridge Records CD Arlene Sierra, Vol. 1, Nov-Dec 2011:
Best Albums of 2011 (Part 1): Arlene Sierra - Arlene Sierra Vol. 1
Just when you start wondering whether contemporary instrumental music doesn't have anything new left to explore, along comes this, the first compilation of Arlene Sierra's music • The earliest included work (Ballistae) is a decade old, but the rest of the pieces date from within the last five years • Sierra's music is fresh & unpredictable, & the works connected with creatures—the chamber piece Cicada Shell & Birds and Insects for solo piano—make a particularly strong impression • A vocal work, Two Neruda Odes, indicates a lyrical streak to her work, but this appears to be of only secondary interest; Sierra is most in her element exploring rather hectic, scurrying textures • Superb performances throughout; the "Vol. 1" in the CD title is nicely optimistic—one hopes it's not too long before there's a Vol. 2 •
Arlene Sierra is an American-born composer who has taught composition at Cambridge University and is currently Senior Lecturer in composition at the Cardiff University School of Music.
[Ballistae] is a remarkable achievement. From beginning to end the energy barely lets up, a constant, battering stream of sound which nonetheless maintains crystal-clear textures and an unwavering sense of forward motion before arriving at the point when the projectile finally hits its target …
[Two Neruda Odes] is stunning. The vocal line is challenging... but superbly expressive and wide-ranging, and above all, truly vocal. It is also magnificently integrated into the accompanying instrumental texture.
Colmena is the shortest work on the disc. The title means “Beehive” in Spanish, and the work “explores accumulation and change from micro to macro levels”. Composed following study of the nature of beehives, it is a superb scherzo for chamber ensemble, the music hugely colourful and brilliantly conceived for the forces.
It is brilliantly written... compellingly dramatic and exciting. The recording is very vivid and close, at one with the repertoire, and the performances are astonishingly virtuosic. It is billed as Volume 1, and I will certainly be looking out for Volume 2…
Musicweb International
American composer Arlene Sierra is presently based in the U.K., where she is a senior lecturer in musical composition at Cardiff University. Sierra has studied with some of the leading composers of our time, including Magnus Lindberg, and her music has already received many accolades.
There can be no doubt that Sierra has an uncanny ability to realize and build her musical ideas toward shattering conclusions, oftentimes literally so. But be forewarned: this is definitely not music for the fainthearted. …Sierra is fascinated with the martial arts and writes music that is as intense as it is complex.
How does Sierra realize musical warfare? By pitting instruments and groups of instruments against each other; by organizing thematic content in small, repetitive cells that move in organized, militaristic fashion; by favoring bright textures that slowly grow in complexity; and by gradually turning up the volume. The cumulative effect is highly potent...
But there is also a mellower side to Sierra’s music, which will likely also appeal to pacifists. That is featured in the remaining two works on this recording, Birds and Insects and the Two Neruda Odes. The former is a series of five mysterious works for piano, in which one hears hints of Ravel, Messiaen, Webern, and Berio.
Sierra’s setting of Neruda’s allegorical poetry—which pays homage to two common objects, the plate and the table—is truly masterly, as is the way in which she manages to build tension towards the end of the second ode.
The recording features uniformly excellent playing by musicians of the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Daedalus Quartet, soprano Susan Narucki, clarinetist Charles Neidich, cellist Raman Ramakrishnan, and pianists Vassily Primakov and Stephen Gosling. Jayce Ogren, who conducts the three works for larger ensembles, deserves special praise for his mastery of these complex scores. The quality of the recorded sound is outstanding.
***
News Feature on Sierra CD Release and work at Cardiff University School of Music in the South Wales Echo
***
Bridge Records CD Arlene Sierra, Vol. 1, July 2011:
The compositions of American expat Arlene Sierra are boldly individualistic, rhythmically challenging and the subject of a recent release from Bridge Records. Sierra – whose recent commissions include works for the New York Philharmonic, the Carducci Quartet and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales – worked primarily with electronic media at the outset of her composing career, and the pieces presented here still bear some remnant of that aesthetic. Unexpected changes in tempo, abrupt stops and unusual instrumental texturing give the pieces the smooth, polished beauty of some exotic music from the future. And yet, there is an emotional centre to this work that cannot be denied. Take for example the sense of peril expressed in the opening movement of Surrounded Ground, a piece that takes its inspiration from such disparate cultural artifacts as Aaron Copland’s Sextet of 1933-37 and the ancient military strategy guide, The Art of War. Juxtaposed with the tense, staggered phrases of this exposition, the first movement of Birds and Insects, Book 1 seems restrained, although the arpeggio preamble intimates a world so profoundly mysterious that a listener may enter it and never want to return. Strange and beautiful.
Scene Magazine, Ontario
A Stunning Menagerie from Arlene Sierra
At times, composer Arlene Sierra’s catalog reads more like an inventory of the Museum of Natural History with titles like Insects in Amber, Cricket-Viol, Cicada Shell and Birds and Insects, Book 1. Even her inclusion in the New York Philharmonic’s inaugural Contact! series in December of 2009, Game of Attrition, was based on Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Likewise, Sierra’s works are full of feline cunningness, birdlike chirps, beastly savage turns and serpentine seduction.
Unsurprisingly, then, the first in a series of Sierra’s collected works recorded for Bridge records reflects her animal collectiveness, starting with Cicada Shell and Birds and Insects, Book I, the former reflecting the deep-seated Stravinsky influence that reverberates through much of Sierra’s catalog (and captured in an aptly-timed recording by the International Contemporary Ensemble, who perform Stravinsky this week as part of the Mostly Mozart Festival).
Indeed, ICE factors heavily into this hot album, reappearing on Colmena and Ballistae. Colmena, Spanish for “beehive” (and this week’s free download) swarms and buzzes, particularly in the wind instruments, adding layer upon layer to the fluttering activity of violins, flute and piano. Ballistae, reflecting Sierra’s other apparent love for all things battle-related, represents the sonic equivalent of this medieval weapon—a sort of crossbow-catapult hybrid. Elsewhere, pianist Vassily Primakov takes on a nuanced account of Birds and Insects and the Daedalus Quartet go further into the breach with a kinetic and vibrant Surrounded Ground. Rounding out the collection is soprano Susan Narucki performing the hushed and haunting Two Neruda Odes. All works on display have the effect of a promising butterfly collection we hope will continue in future volumes.
...the US-born Arlene Sierra currently teaches composition at Cardiff University, while her own teachers have ranged from Michael Daugherty and Jacob Druckman to Magnus Lindberg and Judith Weir. But her work has its own character, in which historical and contemporary influences are fused into a highly flexible and distinctive style as well as incorporating a wide range of extra-musical ideas, including game theory, Darwinian evolution and military strategy. The opening section of the ensemble piece, Cicada Shell, is powered along by Stravinskyan motor rhythms, and there's an acerbic tang of the same composer in the sextet, Surrounded Ground. However, the foreground of the music is packed with crisp, vivid detail that's not at all hand-me-down. Sierra likes bold, highly coloured gestures; the piano cycle, Birds and Insects, is full of explosive chordal moments to punctuate the Messiaen-like flourishes, while two eloquent settings of Pablo Neruda are underpinned with busy, eventful cello-and-piano figuration.
Rating: ****
Composer Arlene Sierra is the closest thing to a “musical entomologist” that we will probably find in the world of contemporary music. The first word that comes to my mind when listening to her music is “spin,” and the accompanying visual is that of a spider weaving an intricate web with speed and dexterity, into which a myriad of other tiny creatures unsuspectingly wind themselves up. Indeed the titles of her pieces tend to gravitate towards the names of bugs and birds, and possess a whirling quality constructed of heavily layered snippets of musical material deftly orchestrated in such a way that the listener can enjoy the form and structure of the music from both a “bird’s eye view,” and also have a satisfying dig into the tiny details.
Music of Arlene Sierra, Volume 1 is the first CD in a planned series by Bridge Recordings devoted to the music of this British-based American composer. All of the works on this first installment are given sparkling performances with particularly standout moments in the larger compositions, played by the International Contemporary Ensemble.
The buzzing, simmering Colmena is appropriately titled, in that the word is Spanish for beehive. It is like an aural excursion inside that structure, listening to the delicate balance of roles played by the labor of thousands of creatures. Birds and Insects, Book 1 is a series of works for solo piano that can be performed separately, or mixed and matched at the whim of the performer. Running the gamut from fierce through frenetic to delicate and lyrical, I wonder if some of the music from these pieces—substantial in and of themselves—served as stepping stones for the larger works on this recording, or the other way around? Sierra also transfers her affection for “small things” to everyday objects with her attractive settings of Two Neruda Odes, choosing Oda al plato (Ode to the plate) and Oda a la mesa (Ode to the table) for soprano, cello, and piano.
Three of the works on this disc are taken from Sierra’s military-themed Art of War series. The ferocious Ballistae for 13 players is a musical thrill ride inspired by the writings of Roman architect and engineer Vitrivius, outlining the construction of a machine of warfare. In the three-movement Surrounded Ground, the interactions between instruments are determined in part by Sun Tzu’s writings on military strategy. In the first movement, “Preamble,” all of the instruments are marching in one way or another, as if they were re-orchestrated from a score for multiple snare drums. “Feigned Retreat” stretches out the lines into a slower progression of events, fortified by strings around which the clarinet line slithers. The last movement, “Egress,” brings the rhythmic material back in a far more syncopated, frenzied fashion as the music dances about in search of a quick escape. The first movement of the two-movement Cicada Shell possesses the “marching,” skittering rhythms particular to Sierra’s compositional style, forming gradual diminuendos that shape the movement into a series of hairpins. The arresting, ultra-high opening of the second movement begins with piccolo that slowly nudges other instruments into the sound field, creating the opposite effect of the first movement with phrases forming long crescendi. Here the characteristic quick outbursts and skips that tend to accentuate the vertical aspects of the score (at least to my ears) are elongated into flowing linear sweeps that rotate the music into an expansive horizontal field.
Regardless of which listening approach you decide to take with these works—the view of the forest or of the trees—or in which order you decide to take them, the music reveals complexity and insight that will make you want to press play again and open your ears even wider for the next listen.
In “Music of Arlene Sierra, Volume I,” one finds that, organic as a walk in a forest, Sierra’s music is a force of Nature. Her work features names like “Cicada Shell (1 and 2)” and some Stravinsky “Rite of Spring”-like phrases that call to mind the frenetic gait of these miraculous creatures. The “Birds and Insects Book I” selections evoke visions of the struggles... where no matter who prevails, situations end how they must. “Two Neruda Odes” are vocal works that have an ethereal feel, transcending the earthly denizens of her previous compositions. The music flows through the lyric, embracing the language, yet the music does not rest. Sierra composes with a great sense of the voices she’s writing, whether human or instrumental. She creates a musical landscape that has garnered her awards like the Charles Ives Fellowship, and she was the first woman to ever win the prestigious Takemitsu Prize in 2001. Her work is popular for its wisdom and wit, and this debut CD will assure her the larger audience she deserves.
QOnStage.com
***
European Premiere of Insects in Amber, Cheltenham Music Festival, July 2011:
The Carduccis contribution to the Cheltenham Festival was the European premiere of Insects in Amber by the American composer Arlene Sierra, currently head of composition at Cardiff University where the Carducci are quartet-in-residence. Her childhood in Florida had alerted her to the sounds of the natural world and she is clearly inspired by Messiaen and his response to the sounds of nature. Her approach to nature is unsentimental and her music is informed by transcriptions of insect calls and scientific research into insect behaviour.
The first movement, Gryllus Integer, is based on the calls of the Western Stutter-Trilling Cricket. Here the male members of the quartet, Matthew Denton (violin) and Eion Schmidt-Martin endeavoured to entice Michelle Fleming (violin) and Emma Denton (cello) with their mating calls. It was difficult to measure which of the two was more successful: the flamboyant Matthew or the more reticent Eion. The Double Viols movement evoked a past age and produced some nice sonorities; while the final piece, Fig Wasps, was notable for its hopping rhythms produced by the percussive action of glass rods against the strings. This was an interesting and unusual work, which will cause me to listen more intently in future to the bees and other insects that buzz around my garden.
Seen and Heard International
***
Bridge Records CD Arlene Sierra, Vol. 1, May/June 2011:
ICE appears on an intriguing new album of pieces by the American-born, UK-based composer Arlene Sierra, for whom Bridge Records has just begun a multi-volume series. This piece for 14 players from 2008, Colmena, is a buzzing blur of a thing. The effect seems just right, given that the piece's title means "beehive" in Spanish. It also possesses a remarkable brilliance of color, rhythmic dexterity and playfulness, all qualities fully brought out by [Claire] Chase and her colleagues.
A significant young composer, based in Britain, who has astutely been adopted by Bridge Records in America, to their credit and, I hope, their profit. This is all music of distinct originality and personality, played and recorded to highest standards. The ensemble music is complex but always clear, and one feels that every note is placed with intention. A strong recommendation, a disc which I will return to enjoy again...
Musical Pointers
Dedicated entirely to works by Arlene Sierra, this disc simultaneously gives an overview of the state of her art while whetting the appetite for more.
The world of winged creatures provides the impetus for the first two works.
The two equal parts of Cicada Shell— ...“Marziale’s” three main sections start out with brute force that is at one with the overarching subject matter, only to be gradually calmed as the intensity dissipates: liquid, dry or pizzicato in turn. “Misterioso expressivo” marvellously lives up to its billing, featuring thoughtful highs and brooding lows (especially well anchored by Joshua Rubin’s skill on the bass clarinet). The thematic germ (with a remarkable tinge of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring just prior to the incredible bombast) works well in all of its forms and the childlike violin (David Bowlin is crystal clear and secure in all ranges) provides much-needed relief and contrast to the weightier ideas.
[In] Birds and Insects—Book 1 Pianist Vassily Primakov employs his vast array of touches effectively, giving each of the five movements a distinctive colour. The moody feel of “Sarus Crane” finds its polar opposite with the antics of “Titmouse.” The extended, closing “Scarab,” with its stop-and-go construction ... is emotionally rich and superbly balanced.
Surrounded Ground might well be subtitled L’histoire de la tactique given its historical source: The Art of War by Sun Tzu. The dissonantly triumphant “Preamble” (where only the clarinet’s inability to match the pointed attacks of his colleagues causes any concern) convincingly set the stage for the coming manoeuvres.
[In] "Feigned Retreat”… a beautifully crafted viola line (Jessica Thompson) helps to refocus the ear. Once the “battle” begins, it’s not hard to imagine the violins’ bows as weapons, trying valiantly to survive the barrage of rapid-fire blasts from their musical combatants. The purposely jagged, dance of near-death (“Egress”) provides the requisite opening, leading to defeat with honour. If only real conflicts could be settled just as harmoniously!
The two settings of Odes from Pablo Neruda are engagingly sculpted. Soprano Susan Narucki’s consummate skill of moving into and out of all registers makes her the ideal interpreter. Cellist Raman Ramakrishnan’s tawny, eloquent tone is the perfect foil even as pianist Stephen Gosling provides stellar work as the “glue.”
Colmena (beehive) is a delightfully active, largely inventive sound painting. Conductor Jayce Ogren keeps his talented charges (special mention to James Austin Smith for his delectable contributions on oboe and English horn) artfully a-buzz.
JamesWeggReview.org
***
New York City Opera VOX showcase of opera-in-progress Faustine, May 2011:
...Artistic Director George Steel was on hand to assure us that, while the works of some Vox participants (John Zorn and Stephen Schwartz among them), have indeed been produced by the company, VOX is no mere scouting endeavor.
Still, if one were to handicap what Steel might next select for a full production from these readings, a good bet would be “Faustine,” a retelling of the Faust story with a female protagonist by Arlene Sierra. Paired with librettist Lucy Thurber -- a recent opera convert but already a sure hand at crafting memorable and singable lines – it was the most musically adventurous, tightly constructed and dramatically sound of the works-in-progress on offer.
Sierra’s musical language encompasses both acerbic dissonance where the plot requires it and, elsewhere, supple melodies of considerable sweep. Particularly riveting were her duets for the devil -- here unctuously played and vividly sung by countertenor Jason Abrams -- and the leading role, sung with earthy resonance by mezzo-soprano Jennifer Roderer. ...the Vox reading suggested that Thurber and Sierra are well on the way toward crafting a memorable new opera.
Musical America
***
Bridge Records to launch series dedicated to music by Arlene Sierra
April 05, 2011
Bridge Records is to launch a series of recordings of music by the Miami-born composer Arlene Sierra. Sierra has been attracting praise from critics and audiences alike in recent years and the Bridge series marks her debut on disc. She was one of the first composers to be commissioned by Alan Gilbert for his opening season as music director of the New York Philharmonic in 2009.
In 2007 she received a Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which described her music as “by turns, urgent, poetic, evocative, and witty. She has a keen appreciation of instrumental sonorities and the inherent drama of successive musical atmospheres. Intriguing, passionate, mysterious, her recent work, Cicada Shell, confidently announces the arrival of a significant composer.”
Composed in 2006, Cicada Shell is one of six works included on the new disc and is performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble, conducted by Jayce Ogren. The same forces also feature on performances of 2001’s Ballistae and Colmena from 2008. The other works are Book 1 of Birds and Insects, played by pianist Vassily Primakov; Surrounded Ground, performed by Charles Niedich (clarinet), Stephen Gosling (piano), and the Daedalus Quartet; and
Two Neruda Odes in a performance by soprano Susan Narucki, cellist Raman Ramakrishnan, and Stephen Gosling.
Funding for her debut CD was provided by the Aaron Copland Fund for Music and the Ditson Fund at Columbia University, New York.
***
LotUS Ensemble US Premiere of of Risk and Memory, October 2010:
Thursday evening was a good night for new music, as a new chamber ensemble formed by Baltimore-based composer David Smooke gave its maiden voyage performance at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania to an enthusiastic and supportive audience. Steven Buck and Shirley Yoo proceeded to throw themselves into the U.S. premiere of Arlene Sierra’s Of Risk and Memory for two pianos with gusto – it’s a great work and will hopefully find more performances on this side of the pond.
Sequenza 21
***
BBC NOW / Watkins / Kaljuste Premiere of Piano Concerto Art of War, September 2010:
This year's focus has been on the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, 75 this week; ... But an instant corrective was delivered by Arlene Sierra’s vibrant Piano Concerto, subtitled “Art of War”, which showed how static harmony and obsessive rhythm can serve as pivot for a mobile and eventful design. Huw Watkins launched into the solo part with energy and confidence, looking and sounding for all the world like the young Prokofiev. Pärt was unashamedly rebuked.
TheArtsdesk.com
Pärt wasn't the only composer featured at the concert; also included was the world première of a new work by Arlene Sierra, the first time i've heard her music • The subject matter of Sierra's new Piano Concerto, 'Art of War' is not without connection to the root of Pärt's inspiration • What sets the ancient Chinese text The Art of War apart from other works of that ilk is a preparedness to include spirituality within its considerations •
For a time in the first movement, 'Captive Nation', the piano hops around, at first seemingly playfully, but soon taking on a more determined, even provocative character • The percussion seem especially keen on what the piano is doing, while the rest of the orchestra seems more concerned with its own agenda • Sierra writes of the piano becoming "subsumed", but what's interesting is that this is not achieved (as one might assume, thinking militarily) through mere brute force on the part of the orchestra, but by a rather different kind of weight, one that perhaps connects with the Taoist enlightenment referred to above • There are certainly times when the piano's material seems 'indoctrinated' by that of the orchestra around it, so perhaps this is a vanquishment more rooted in ideology & behaviour than anything else; all the same, it's hardly a pushover, the piano putting up a doggedly feisty resistance to the increasingly vociferous outside forces brought to bear on it • It's also interesting that much of this takes place above an essentially dance-like compound metre, giving the conflict a curious but nicely effective lilting quality • The tables are turned in the second movement, 'Strategic Seige', the piano (in Sierra's words) "changed from instigator to saboteur"; she goes on to describe how "[the piano's] gestures chip away at a wall of sound created by the orchestra..." • The movement is more obtuse in its unfolding, although ultimately more weighty & a great deal more intense • The compound metre again makes its presence felt (perhaps there's a comment here on the frivolous, game-like nature of all wars), although what's above it is this time palpably destructive & audibly uncomfortable; indeed, as the orchestra's fabric is pulled to pieces, there's a potent sense of panic, the instruments, section by section, erupting while the piano by turns twirls & hammers beneath • That's when it's not taking a step back from the action; at the orchestra's most frantic moments, there's a real sense of the piano watching the destruction from a distance • It's a splendidly vivid work, & once again the BBC NOW are on top form, never letting the convoluted textures sound stodgy • As a first encounter with Sierra's music, it's very impressive •
Five Against Four
***
Counting-Out Rhyme, March 2010:
Pianist Dominic Saunders and cellist Sophie Harris [played] Arlene Sierra's rewardingly knotty Counting-Out Rhyme ... the most distinctive and expressive of the evening.
The Guardian
***
Collage New Music’s Boston Premiere of Cicada Shell, February 2010:
Arlene Sierra’s Cicada Shell opened the concert with the unique experience of a two-movement piece. A number of contemporary composers have approached a two-movements-of-equal-length model while incorporating some idea of dichotomy between the two movements. In Sierra’s piece, we find a mirror-image of sorts in the form, where the first movement is organized into a series of decrescendos while the second is organized into crescendos. The most effective aspects of the piece dealt not with the formal scheme, but with more microscopic elements. The first movement focused the listener in on a series of fairly simple, and very recognizable motives passing around the ensemble above a strong rhythmic drive. While new ideas were introduced, old ones appeared more sparsely, eventually fading away or transforming into newly developed material. The second movement possessed a slightly less present tactus in its eerie and constantly shifting backdrop, with extremely effective use of the piccolo in a small ensemble, courtesy of flutist Christopher Krueger. ... the work’s engaging narrative came across clearly, and was performed exquisitely.
Boston Musical Intelligencer
In Arlene Sierra’s 2006 septet Cicada Shell (Collage’s standard six here joined by Boston Symphony hornist Jason Snider) the balance tipped toward construction. Sierra paired a dense and intricate technique with a clear large-scale plan: a gradual paring down, then piling on, of often violent activity.
The Boston Globe
***
Hearing Things, November 2009:
[Soprano Claire Booth] showed her feisty, dramatic side in Arlene Sierra's Hearing Things. This pair of songs, setting an old poem by Carl Sandburg and a newer one by Catherine Carter, did indeed make one hear things, with [pianist] Matthews-Owen required to dampen notes with the left hand and then pluck strings intriguingly... these lived up to the title.
The Guardian
***
CompositionToday interview:
Arlene Sierra discusses compositional beginnings and upcoming premieres. To read the interview click here.
***
World premiere of New York Philharmonic Commission Game of Attrition, December 2009:
Ms. Sierra has long been fascinated by game theory and Darwinian evolution, and this piece is an attempt to evoke the process of attrition, as in natural selection. Throughout the bustling work, instruments engage and tussle with one another as if struggling to prevail and move up the musical/evolutionary ladder. Yet, as the title suggests, Ms. Sierra makes a game of it. Little cells of tightly confined pitches knock about with others, grow into larger gestures and then cut loose into skittish flights.
The New York Times
The new age of classical music in New York couldn’t be more aptly heralded than with Arlene Sierra’s Game of Attrition. ... At turns spry, savage, sly and seductive, Game of Attrition is a Stravinskian play among brass and strings, piano and percussion ... so enrapturing.
Time Out New York
Sierra’s piece is described by its title; an exercise in conflict and entropy that she described as using “organic, small musical cells, transitions,” written for chamber orchestra. It has a bright opening, followed quickly by a slow, repeated note. From that point, it becomes a work where instruments chatter with and against each other, one group developing a coherent phrase before falling back against the pressures of another. There are bursts of chords, sharp rhythmic attacks and ostinati layered over a subtle, consistent medium tempo pulse. A lyrical cello melody rises from the ensemble and leads to a contrasting contemplative section, before it too falls apart against the interjections of other instruments. As the texture slowly thins out, there are bursts of individual voices fighting against the tide – harp, piano, flutter-tongued flute, long tones in the brass – before the piece comes to a brief, final sense of coherence and then ends with a single attack. It’s a contemporary answer to Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony, and consistently interesting. The ear is involved and the organic developments and transitions move the music along to points that are both unexpected and natural, and as music propagates itself through time, the concept of attrition is a natural.
Seen and Heard International
***
Major funding for Arlene Sierra’s debut CD with Bridge Records is announced by the Aaron Copland Fund for Music.
Featuring the program from Sierra’s recent Miller Theatre Portrait Concert, performers will include soprano Susan Narucki and the International Contemporary Ensemble with Jayce Ogren conducting. Release is expected in Spring 2011.
***
New York Times review of Arlene Sierra’s Miller Theatre Composer Portrait concert, March 2009:
Music Review | Arlene Sierra: Odes, Bees and Battles in Textured Sounds
By VIVIEN SCHWEITZER
The American composer Arlene Sierra has been inspired by an unusually wide range of sources, including bees, poetry and Chinese and Roman military tactics. The excellent International Contemporary Ensemble performed five of her recent works on Friday, conducted by Jayce Ogren as part of the Composer Portraits series at the Miller Theater.
Ms. Sierra has studied with composers like Jacob Druckman and Martin Bresnick at Yale and Oliver Knussen and Magnus Lindberg in Britain. The New York Philharmonic will perform one of her works in December.
Ms. Sierra uses a colorful palette in compositions like “Neruda Settings,” for 10 players and soprano, based on odes by Pablo Neruda. In one, “Ode to the Lizard,” darting, coloristic fragments from a flute, a celeste, a harp and a violin are woven around the text. The music ebbed and flowed in intensity, reaching a peak at “To/a fly/you are the dart/of an annihilating dragon.”
The other three poems in Ms. Sierra’s set are “Ode to the Artichoke,” “Ode to the Plate” and “Ode to the Table.” Susan Narucki sang them (in Spanish) with expressive conviction.
In an onstage discussion with the WNYC radio host David Garland, Ms. Sierra said studying East Asian history at Oberlin College had provided fodder for compositions like “Cicada Shell” for septet. Militaristic and rhythmically driven in “Marziale” (the first section) and more subdued in the ensuing “Misterioso, espressivo,” the work was inspired by ancient Chinese battle tactics.
Military themes also figure prominently in “Surrounded Ground,” whose three movements — “Preamble,” “Feigned Retreat” and “Egress” — were composed as a companion to Aaron Copland’s 1933 Sextet. The marchlike rhythms of the first section are followed by a vivacious dialogue between instruments and an almost jazzy finale.
The program also included the world premiere of “Colmena” (Spanish for beehive), whose multilayered textures and colorful effects mimic those of its namesake insect.
The concert concluded with the kaleidoscopic “Ballistae.” Inspired by the ballista, an ancient artillery machine, the work is built on percussion riffs; uneasy, fluttering fragments; and repeated motifs, ending with a bang.
***
Distinguished writer and music critic Paul Griffiths writes of Arlene Sierra’s work:
The music moves through layerings of irregular repetition that combine to produce decisive forward motion, engaging or conflicting with a regular meter. Individual ideas are often simple—two pairs of chords with a firm rhythmic stamp, or perhaps a single rising interval, again rhythmically asserted, or even just a quick reiteration of one note— but the interlocking of these things on three, four, or five levels is intricate. Also, set against the offbeat striations, or else supporting them, there may be material that is less determinedly pulsed: sustained chords or slower, suppler melodic phrases. Often, of course, these will be drawn out of something in the more energetic layers, and will return. Often, too, there will be more than one process of increase or decrease, or of integration or disintegration, happening at once.
Neruda’s short lines and quick moves also make it possible for Sierra to write in the chain forms she favors, the music’s strong basic impulses maintaining continuity through cuts and swerves from one character to another. At the same time, the poetry fits the brilliant, energetic, flecked instrumental textures typical of Sierra’s music, while the flexible vocal writing, responsive to rhythm and imagery, is demanding all through in the interests of capturing the ecstatic luminosity of Neruda’s vision.
For the full Composer Portrait program notes commissioned from Paul Griffiths by Miller Theatre, click here.
***
Surrounded Ground, February 2009:
Arlene Sierra's sextet Surrounded Ground was a 2008 commission by the exemplary Chroma. Sierra reflects her disquiet at the militarism of her native US by using instruments to mirror a strategy from Sun Tzu's military treatise The Art of War. In the fast-firing Egress, the last of the three movements, the conviction reaches an intense peak.
The Guardian
***
The New York Philharmonic announces a new commission for Arlene Sierra as part of the 2009-10 inaugural season for Music Director Alan Gilbert and Composer-in-Residence Magnus Lindberg. Sierra’s commission for chamber orchestra is part of Contact, the New York Philharmonic New Music Series, featuring young composers described by Lindberg as “voices of our time.”
For more information about the New York Philharmonic’s Contact New Music Series, click here.
***
The Miller Theatre at Columbia University (New York, NY) announces the new 2008-09 season of Composer Portrait Concerts, including a full evening program of Arlene Sierra’s work.
The press release reads:
Arlene Sierra is an especially gifted composer. With an ear for color, her music is full of punch and grit. Drawing from many various sources, her works are influenced by Chinese battle tactics, the poetry of Pablo Neruda, birds, and stained glass windows. Miller-favorite International Contemporary Ensemble sheds light on this young and intriguing composer in a program with a world premiere commission.
To access the dedicated Composer Portrait page from the Miller Theatre web site, click here.
***
Reviews of Aquilo, BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Jac Van Steen, St David’s Hall, Cardiff, January 2008:
Sierra’s ‘Aquilo’ represents the genesis of one of these [Vitruvian] winds, evoking too the process by which it is later joined by three more winds and then an additional four, before emerging alone again and finally breaking down, returning to the elements of its original creation. ...it invites music of great fluidity and momentum as well as the layering of one musical line on top of another, and Sierra doesn’t turn down the invitation. This is high-energy music, turbulent and vivacious; but Sierra is attentive to variations of pace and volume, relatively serene passages juxtaposed with more tumultuous writing, quieter moments with climaxes. It got a performance of precision and clarity of texture, which brought out the piece’s pleasing sense of structural completeness.
Seen and Heard International
(The)... exacting approach to the elemental nature of sound was complemented by Arlene Sierra's Aquilo, in which the rushing energy of wind, fire and water was vividly captured.
The Guardian
***
A Conflict of Opposites, December 2007
Arlene Sierra's A Conflict of Opposites had a persuasive first movement, with the conflicting modes implied in the title expressively juxtaposed. The progress of the second, a dance, was more laboured, though it ended perfectly convincingly. [An] unexpected gem of a concert.
The Guardian
***
Arlene Sierra received a Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
The Academy states, "These prizes of $15,000 each, established by the Academy in 1983 in memory of Charles Ives, are
awarded annually to two composers of exceptional gifts."
Press Release excerpt:
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS ANNOUNCES 2007 MUSIC AWARD WINNERS
FIFTEEN COMPOSERS RECEIVE AWARDS TOTALING $165,000
New York, February 26, 2007 -- The American Academy of Arts and Letters announced today the fifteen recipients of this year's awards in music, which total $165,000. The winners were selected by a committee of Academy members: Robert Beaser (chairman), Martin Bresnick, John Corigliano, Shulamit Ran, Steve Reich, Gunther Schuller, and Yehudi Wyner. The awards will be presented at the Academy's annual Ceremonial in May. Candidates for music awards are nominated by the 250 members of the Academy.
***
Radio Interview, “Spotlight on Arlene Sierra” on WNYC
WNYC, New York City’s Public Classical Radio Station, features Arlene Sierra and her music in an hour-long segment of Evening Music with David Garland on 16 December 2006, 8pm EST
To hear the show, click here.
***
Review of Scarab from Birds and Insects, Spitalfields Festival, Wilton’s Music Hall, London, June 2006:
Philip Headlam’s Continuum Ensemble whisked us from Ancient Egypt to 13th-century China. ...we weren’t short of goodies.[as] Sierra expanded her thoughts, the better the scarab sounded... Douglas Finch’s keyboard grit was always an asset.
The Times
***
Muso Magazine (U.S. edition, Spring 2005)
Arlene Sierra writes for the column "Postcard from..." describing her experiences as an American composer living and working in the U.K.
***
The Times Higher Education Supplement (January 21, 2005 issue) published an interview with Arlene Sierra in their column "Who Got That Job?", written by Martyn Bull and featuring a photograph by Sam Friedrich. The interview covered her experiences leading up to an appointment as Lecturer in Composition at Cardiff University and aspects of the new post.
***
Anita Cheng Dance, Every Body Dance Alphabet
(and Unravelling from Four Choreographic Studies)
Merce Cunningham Studio, New York City
“The notion of an alphabet of bodily gestures has fascinated dancemakers in different ways... I assume that all the nine succinct little works Anita Cheng showed at the Cunningham Studio in January were based on her 26-poses "alphabet."
[The poses] vary interestingly, though, depending on what "letters" Cheng focuses on... Cheng's choreography for Unravel, to original music by Arlene Sierra, emphasizes Erika Bloom's lusher presence.”
The Village Voice
“The Cunningham Studio was an appropriate venue (January 9-11) for Anita Cheng to present her evening of miniatures: nine dances ranging from 2'30" to 11'00" long, with the timings listed alongside titles in the program. Besides structuring her dances around duration, Cheng's work shows Cunningham's influence in movement style and abstract content as well.
...Erika Bloom in Unravel showed a softer, almost dramatic facet of Cheng's creative thinking. In a brown dress, Bloom stirred her limbs; her back rippled sensuously; her focus implied an unspecific but definite intention. “
Gus Solomons, Jr, DanceInsider.com
***
Hand mit Ringen, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 25th Birthday Commission
Sarah Leonard, soprano and the Psappha Ensemble, St. Paul's Hall, Huddersfield, U.K.
"outstanding... a vivid danse macabre"
The Times
In its 25th year, the Contemporary Music Festival has done some commissioning of its own. Six young composers produced 10-minute pieces for Sarah Leonard and core members of the brilliant Psappha Ensemble. Of these, the focused aggression of Hand mit Ringen by Arlene Sierra made the biggest impression.
The Daily Telegraph
***
Oda al plato (Diadem) from Neruda Settings
Aldeburgh Festival, Jubilee Hall, Aldeburgh, U.K.
...session in the Jubilee Hall (18 June), where pieces resulting from the previous summer's composition course were played and sung, very well, by students from the Britten/Pears orchestra, energetically directed by Nag-Bushan Odekar. Such events are often pious duties; this produced a distinct tingle of admiration and enjoyment. All seven items had value: together with technical accomplishment they had something to say. Personally, I relished... Arlene Sierra's Neruda setting, ardent in lyricism both liquid and fiery.
The Spectator
arlene sierra,composer biography works performances, 12/13 reviews debut cd contact
listen: orchestral listen: vocal listen: chamber faustine art of war
ny phil: game of attrition interviews photos past performances
Cecilian Music, New York and London © 2012