Henry Brant's Orbits at the Guggenheim

An Out-of-this-World Performance!

It was a minor thrill to join the long line of people braving rainy weather outside the Guggenheim Museum to experience the East Coast premiere of Henry Brant's Orbits: A Spatial Symphonic Ritual (1979) on Sunday night. Like many others, I was shut out of the 7:30 performance, but I withstood the rainfall to enjoy the 8:30 performance. I hope that no one was turned away, because the concert proved to be one of the outstanding musical events of the year.

As mentioned previously, Brant was a leading proponent of spatial music—compositions created with the placement of sound in mind. In the case of Orbits, the performance design involves 80 trombonists, assembled in a semi-circle around the audience, abetted by an organ and a soprano (or higher-pitched sopranino).

At the Guggenheim, the audience gathered in the circular ground floor lobby, where organist William Trafka also took his place. Conductor Neely Bruce stood yards above him up the interior spiral, leading the musicians from behind a music stand. The trombonists filled about 300 degrees worth of two overlapping spirals above Bruce. (Robert Stolarik's stunning photo accompanying Anthony Tommasini's very positive New York Times review gives you a bird's eye view of most of the arrangement—I don't think it captured some higher-pitched trombones to the right, and I still don't know where the heck soprano Phyllis Bruce was. [UPDATE Neely Bruce wrote me that "Phyllis Bruce was in the very top of the Rotunda, where you would get off the elevator (in the curved 'bump' in the ramp, so to speak). It made no difference where she stood in the bump, so the idea was to have her basically invisible. The skylight so diffused the sound (she was immediately below it) that it was literally impossible to tell where it was coming from. A nice effect, don't you think?"] Also, as you can see from civilian photography including my video (below), the trombonists were not nearly as visible from the ground floor.)

As far as I could tell, the arrangement of the trombones approximated a conventional keyboard, with lower sonorities (including, I think, at least one valveless bass or contrabass trombone) to the conductor's left and higher sonorities (including, I think, at least one piccolo or sopranino trombone) to his right. According to the program notes, the composition subdivided the trombonists into eight groups that sometimes played en masse and at other times played independently, using a range of sonorities from a muffled rumble to coarse growls to clear upper-range tones.

At least one section was like a trombone version of The Wave you might see at a stadium: The trombones glissed upward from low tones on the left to high tones on the right...and then went into reverse. The sparingly used tone colors from the organ [the speakers were on ground level] complemented the trombones well, with the (seemingly disembodied) soprano voice almost floating independently through the Guggenheim's interior. The climactic overtone was exquisite.

Presented by the Guggenheim's Works & Process series in coordination with Make Music New York, this was a rare and marvelous event that was far more satisfying than I would have hoped. Even the great fit between the performance and the museum's acoustics was a great surprise to me. Who knew that Frank Lloyd Wright had designed a great performance for a large trombone choir (that reportedly included more than 80 horns)? (Having stood outside during the first performance, I also note that the building seems pretty well soundproofed.)

I hope that this performance gives new life to Orbits. If tuba and euphonium players can congregate annually for TUBACHRISTMAS, why can't trombonist gatherings for Orbits be at least a yearly phenomenon in New York City? It could become an annual ritual at the Guggenheim. It would also be interesting to hear it in other spaces, including concert halls, houses of worship, and stadiums in the metropolitan area and other locations near and far.

Perhaps these performances could also foster the long overdue development of an 80-trombone spatial music repertoire. If you're going through the trouble of recruiting several dozen trombonists for a performance, you might as well give them something else to play. I can imagine some interesting approaches....

Anyway, here's a video report (with some jitter) that I put together. There might be a pause as it switches from the first part to the second part (of two). There's more video out there, including footage of both performances by morguebabe.



Video by David Marc Fischer (11:23 total)

Coming Soon: 80 Trombones at the Guggenheim

Sounds Promising!

Free performances of Henry Brant's Orbits—a "spatial symphonic ritual" calling for 80 trombones plus sopran(in)o and organ—are scheduled for the great spiral at the Guggenheim Museum on Sunday night at 7:30 and 8:30 pm.

This could be pretty good! Brant, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize in music who died in 2008, devoted his career to the exploration of spatial music—how sounds don't have to emanate from a single physical location (like a stage) but instead can come from a variety of locations. Naturally, like any good composer with an appreciation of the Low Brass Union (LBU), he was attracted to the notion of composing for a mass gathering of trombones.

The Sunday night performances are part of this year's Make Music New York! festival. I'm afraid that many such events will be rained out—Water Music, anyone?—but thanks to Frank Lloyd Wright's foresight in designing the Guggenheim with a roof, the presentations of Orbits should be reasonably free from any precipitation—aside from the spit valves, of course.

Thanks to Manhattan Users Guide (MUG) for the lead!

GOODE IS GREATE

Friday night, at the 14,608th concert of the New York Philharmonic (Sir Colin Davis conducting), I heard Richard Goode perform Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58. It was one of the most impressive classical piano performances I've heard, mainly due to Goode's delicate and precise touch. His runs sounded like harp strumming; his trills were uncannily crisp and even. No doubt his piano had something to do with this; it seemed to be a superb specimen, very well-tuned.

Typically, the most prized seats for a piano concert are those that afford a view of the keyboard, so audience members can watch the hands on the keyboard. I often get such seats, but at this concert I sat in the first tier, in the first box on the side of the stage by the cellos and basses (and brass). So I could see Goode's face but not his hands, while I heard sound that came from the curve in the case where vocal soloists often stand. I think I'll be more open-minded about sitting in similar locations at future piano concerts.

Also on the program was Beethoven's "Leonore" Overture No. 2, Op. 72a, featuring (for me) the use of an alto trombone, which is considerably smaller than the more common tenor and bass trombones. I looked it up here.

The modern alto trombone is pitched a perfect fourth higher than the tenor trombone. It has very limited use, compared with the tenor and bass trombone, but it is used in the orchestra, where many composers, particularly Beethoven and his contemporaries, created the first trombone parts to be played on the alto trombone. The alto trombone also has a role in the Moravian trombone choir (where its traditional pitch is F more often than E-flat) and in the modern trombone choir. In addition, there is a large solo repertoire for alto trombone. To help alto trombone players cope with the solo literature (and cover both alto and tenor trombone parts without having to carry a second instrument), some makers offer an alto trombone with a valve section in which pressing the valve lowers the pitch a perfect fourth.

The alto trombone mouthpiece shank is the same as that of the tenor trombone. Players who double on alto and tenor trombones (which is virtually 100% of all alto trombone players) often choose alto and tenor trombone mouthpieces with matching rims but differing cups and backbores.

Rounding out the program was Ralph Vaughan Williams's Symphony No. 4 in F minor. Vaughan Williams is closely identified with popular, conventionally harmonized orchestral works inspired by British folk music, but this symphony caused a stir with its convulsive, discordant, more "modernistic" bombast. By coincidence, I had just seen Atonement on DVD, so I was in a position to contemplate the unease expressed in this Vaughan Williams work, which premiered in the early 1930s, with the circumstances that move the characters of Atonement out of their almost Edenic state during the oncoming years.

ALSO If I heard the Atonement commentary correctly, director Joe Wright (self-mockingly) calls himself a "cunt" as the credits roll! I was intrigued by Atonement's use of the word, with its D. H. Lawrence (and even Henry Miller) overtones.

Here is a YouTuber trying out an alto trombone. You can click on Source to read comments about intonation issues.



Source (1:03)