Martin Q Larsson; Wind Music (2/2)
Martin Q Larsson & women
(Photo: Ingvar Loco Nordin at the release party 27th May 2003)
Next, at track 6, one of the main works on the CD is placed; Refill for saxophone quartet and tape. At the release party the attendants could hear a version for saxophone trio and tape, since one member of the Stockholm Saxophone Quartet, who were to play the piece live, was taken ill.
Booklet comments:
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In 1995 Martin Q Larsson composed the electro-acoustic piece Påtår (Second cup of coffee) [or… Refill!] in the EAM [i.e. EA; electro-acoustic music] studio at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. Most of the sounds in the piece are recorded from an espresso machine and processed by old and new sound equipment, but there are also sounds produced from the magnetic strip on a travel card and a crash from the flight simulator F-18 (This sound is used by kind permission of Electronic Arts).
In 2000 the electro-acoustic piece was used in a dance performance in Arnhem, Holland, choreographed by Tony Vezich. For this occasion the composer added a quintet of alto saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, accordion and violin. As the piece, as well as the sounds, was recycled, the new title became Refill. Refill is also the name of a Swedish king, who ruled in the 9th century.
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Martin Q Larsson introducing his CD
at the release party 27th May 2003
(Photo: Ingvar Loco Nordin)
Martin Q at the release party:
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Refill… In the spring of 2000 I went to the little town of Arnhem in Holland. There was a very famous battle being fought there in the 1940s. I attended a marvelously inspiring course with five composers and four choreographers and a group of musicians and dancers. We made one production a day. We met in the morning in constellations of composer and choreographer, and then we got a concept, to have the premier the same night. It was all very rewarding and educational. However, due to an administrative error we happened to be five composers instead of four, which meant that each day one composer was left to himself. Consequently, I had one day off from the choreographers. I had already ahead talked with another choreographer; an Australian living in Germany [Tony Vezich], who had already choreographed one of my pieces – an electroacoustic work – to which I added some instrumental parts. I had had this in mind for a while, and now I realized it. I tried to sample or copy bits and pieces from my own music, getting into the sound, finding out what actually happened, and how it could be instrumentally notated and further developed.
Later on I happened to be here [in the Stockholm Saxophone Quartet’s basement rehearsing space at Tulegatan 53 in Stockholm] to promote some other composition that I brought with me, and chance had it that I also had the sheet music for Refill with me, and the Saxophone Quartet immediately decided to play it. They brought that into their repertoire, and the other one that I had had in mind to perform was scrapped! They were delighted with Refill, and have since then performed it all over the world.
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Three members of Stockholm Saxophone Quartet
performing Refill at the release party 27th May 2003
From left:
Leif Karlborg, Per Hedlund, Jörgen Pettersson
(Photo: Ingvar Loco Nordin)
Initially the beginning sounds just like someone snoring, but after all this introductory explaining, it is evident that we’re hearing the recorded espresso machine! Different Cageian small sounds from the espresso machine are added, like little gushes of steam or perhaps just leaking hot water under pressure. It’s a kind of musique concrète right here, and the elation of coffee hovers up our nostrils, caffeine cravings beginning to take their toll… Deeper and more substantial sounds roll out a carpet of dark timbres with inserted bell-like swells, as a steady backdrop for the minute rustlings of the machine. For a few seconds there it sounds like Pierre Henry’s Le Livre des Morts Egyptien, but that was made on the rolling chords of a grand piano, and not a coffee machine…
Per Hedlund & Jörgen Pettersson
of Stockholm Saxophone Quartet
playing Martin Q Larsson's Refill
(Photo: Ingvar Loco Nordin 27th May 2003 at Tulegatan 53, Stockholm)
The acoustic instruments of the Stockholm Saxophone Quartet gear up, and just when they start sounding like a feverish Archie Shepp or John Coltrane they are cut short, whereas the espresso machine is turned up drastically, in a wall of sound, dense as only an espresso machine wall of sound can be… The saxophones come back in a mad conversation which is left unsettled while dreamy leaks – I presume – are manipulated electronically, taking on modal characters and beautified timbres. The saxophones play in sudden simultaneous gestures, very briefly, and Martin Q’s diligent coffee machine manipulations move in wide motions, spiraling up under the roof like unselfish thoughts…
As the boiler keeps on a-boiling, the saxophone quartet gets into a serious saxophone jam, which it is hard to get out of, so better pull the breaks and stop short of a saxophone crash. The espresso machine again gets loud, as a legally sampled part from a computer game (the honorable Mats Möller explained the details of this in his speech at the release party…) talks at you for a short instance before the piece ends right there and then, no frills!
Per Hedlund of Stockholm Saxophone Quartet
playing Martin Q Larsson's Refill
(Photo: Ingvar Loco Nordin 27th May 2003)
Kakalorum at track 7 is another important part of this CD. It’s also the longest piece, finishing at 12:37.
Booklet comments:
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Kakalorum is an old Swedish word meaning fuss, noise or crackling. Kakalorum is written for a professional saxophone quartet and a saxophone orchestra of 8 – 100 saxophone players at various levels and ages. The piece is composed from an idea of collective individualism – every player participates on his own conditions, yet the result will be according to the intentions of the composer. The orchestra is divided into four sections, and each section is lead by a member of the solo quartet who plays a signal showing where a new part of the piece begins.
The composer talks about associations with water, rain on a tin roof or a rough sea. He also says that most important is the combination of four saxophone artists and 17 saxophonists between 12 and 40 with an independent thinking.
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Martin Q at the release party:
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Kakalorum… Jörgen [Pettersson] called me one afternoon and said: We’re going to Södertälje to meet some twenty youngsters who play the saxophone. Could you write something? It’s in three weeks.
Luckily, I had three weeks off, so I began writing all my wake hours, and then I was to meet them three weeks later, a Saturday at 10 AM. I had worked well into the night, and when I was finally finished and about to print it all out, the printer broke… Red lights shone everywhere and the computer crashed… At about 4 AM I finally got the machines working, and started the printout. I feel asleep as the printer was printing, hearing the rhythmical sounds of the paper being fed through the machine. I woke up when it got silent, rose to fix a paper jam or load more paper. Finally at 9:30 AM… I think I was to hand over the music sheets at 10 AM on this Friday, to rehearse the piece, and I was just leaving when they called and said: Hi’a Martin! Were we supposed to meet today, or…?
Yeah… I’m just on my way to you!
Uhu, well, you know, we’ve gotten a little ill here, so perhaps we can do it tomorrow instead?
That was quite fine with me, but…
In the end everyone thought it was quite fun. However, the funniest thing with this piece… I don’t know if that is printed in the booklet… but once in the fall of 2002 we were in Linköping [200 kilometers south of Stockholm], performing Kakalorum. The saxophone teachers said: Well, here are the premises. Good luck! Then we were left alone with these kids.
Later I traveled home with the saxophone players [the quartet that had played with the kids], and they told me that one of the kids maybe wasn’t that hot on the saxophone, but he enjoyed it immensely, and in Kakalorum he let go and went for it best of all.
The Kakalorum Ensemble consists of 15 youths between 10 and 15 years of age and a couple of adults. The kids are studying at Norrtälje Kulturskola [Norrtälje Culture School, on the coast north of Stockholm]
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When you read the booklet introduction to Kakalorum, it is easy to make analogies to Terry Riley and works of his like In C or Olson III; that collective individualism! Perhaps this is the sole point of contact, but it is interesting enough that a contemporary composer would think like that.
It starts, indeed, with a pulse not unlike the one in In C, but only for five or six beats. After that a film of tones are smeared over the premises; a full, fat film of sound. This in turn dies down into a whispering blow sound; the kind that Stockhausen is so fond of in most of his wind music parts.
The booklet doesn’t say much about compositional methods or of indications, but I’m sure the score sports a lot of specialized indications for the wheezing, whispering blowing sounds etcetera.
Inside the dense texture of saxophone colors individual outbreaks are introduced, sometimes together with the other soloists from the saxophone quartet, and perhaps – I don’t know, but it sounds like it – also from some of the kids.
It turns pretty hectic at times, like a smoky, ecstatic session at the Village Vanguard in the 1960s…
Other times the music calms down to give an impression of a calm swell of the sea, from distant, died-down storms below the horizon… and that’s when the musical texture gets transparent, glowing, exceedingly beautiful, vibrant with a restrained, withheld force of emotions that makes the smallest nuance of expression utterly important…
Later on the music is a jungle of dense growth to pass through, lianas dangling, monkeys jumping, showing their teeth, lions growling, elephants trumpeting in the distance… and you pass through the sonic vegetation, close down by the ground in a drone, the music rich all around you!
Valves tapping, clicking, the music oozes out into silence… Magnificent!
Martin Q Larsson & the producer,
Mats Möller of SFZ Records,
celebrating Wind Music with champagne
(Photo: Ingvar Loco Nordin, 27th May 2003)
Track 8 is a second version of Half The Truth About the Universe, but actually the original version; the one for solo flute. Jonas Augustsson is the soloist.
This is even more joyously dancing than the saxophone version at track 5, jumping about in a ballet of youthful ease and elegance, in a musical style that really is timeless, hard to pin-point as to the period, but easy to understand and identify with, concerning the feeling of light, carefree, swirling transparent thoughts and fresh morning air, easy to breath. Elegant!
The last work, on tracks 9 – 12, is Concerto for Virtuoso Wind Orchestra.
Booklet comments:
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The Concerto for Virtuoso Wind Orchestra was composed 1995 – 96, and the piece consists of rhythms from different parts of Africa; djembe rhythms from western Africa, tabla rhythms from northern Africa, and rhythms from the Banda Linda people. The Banda Linda is a small tribe in northern Zaire, and they often play together in wind ensembles with horns made of wood or antelope antlers. The music is mostly played in a hoquet style.
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Martin Q at the release party:
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The last piece on the CD is called Concerto for Virtuoso [Wind] Orchestra. It was a school project for composition students. It was written for Stockholms Blåsarsymfoniker [Stockholm Symphonic Wind Orchestra] which then still existed… We were four composers from Stockholm and four from Malmö who were supposed to write one piece each for the orchestra. I was working with this through the fall, and then I worked especially hard on it in December, and it showed that it really does take a lot of time to compose for an orchestra. Further more, I had written everything by hand, later to feed it into a computer. I got ever closer to the deadline. I sat with the piece all my wake time in January and February of that year, writing feverishly 18 hours a day. Still I passed all the deadlines. Finally it was to be premiered on a Friday, and on the preceding Monday morning I was finished with all the work and delivered the score to Stockholm Symphonic Wind Orchestra office at Myntet, Stockholm. A friend helped me to tape the sheets and so on. Then in the afternoon of the same Monday they called me and said: We have decided not to perform your piece. The parts came too late…
We called them and nagged and tried to persuade them, and I even went there for some more direct lobbying, and finally they agreed to play it anyhow. Later it was revealed that none of them had looked at the notes until Thursday afternoon, but it was performed on the Friday.
The piece is now available as a printed score, and hopefully I learned my lesson!
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The beginning is mighty, really Stockhausenesque, one tough beat setting things in motion, and an extended set of timbres laid out like a carpet, in which, after some time, a metallic percussion is struck just once, while the elastic timbres keep on spreading like the first rays of light from a rising sun through a mountain pass in Tibet, hitting the gold of the monastery with an almost audible might of light.
Sparse rattling sounds are interspersed, and slowly, very slowly, the pitch of the La Monte Young stasis is bent a little, in micro tunings. Another strike of metal, more light through the mountain pass, the whole monastery soon bathing in cold, golden light… as mighty beats of drums rumble through the lives of the inhabitants of this imagined habitat…
A flute melody, or perhaps a flute fluttering; a repetitious gesture of the flute – makes the music vibrate faster, as commotion and nervous activity picks up. Everybody is awake, life starts anew this morning as all other mornings, and the sense of holiness hovers in the luminosity of enlightenment…
In the middle of track 10, the second part of the piece, I feel a kinship with a part of Terry Riley’s Chinese recording of In C; the repetitious gestures of thin metal, the jingling-jangling feeling of the atmosphere of Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde album, and the sense of an age-old culture that is still fresh and new every day, like the freshness of anemone hepaticas in bloom each spring by the rune stones of Sweden, in reality much, much older than the messages about Vikings that didn’t return that are carved on the stones… Freshness and age…
The texture is made up of different layers of different tempi, really magnificently executed, nowhere falling apart or crashing in on themselves, though the risk of this must be immense in a music as intricate as this. When executed with the finest skill, even the most complicated artistic construction may appear translucent, light and transparent, as is the case here.
Track 11, part 3 of the piece, moves in thoughtfulness, introspective and attentively aware, totally awake in its meditation; a weightless consciousness hovering over a lake in the Karelian forest… reflecting its purity of thought.
Track 12, the last part of Concerto for Virtuoso Wind Orchestra, picks up momentum, the breeze picking up through the bay of the lake, chilly sensations fondling your chin, your cheeks, moving your hair cautiously, talking to you in fragrances from silent coniferous islands populated by foxes and badgers, and as the conclusion nears, the orchestra gathers might and force and delivers a rumbling thunder before sinking back into silence, the origin of all sound.
Martin Q Larsson’s CD Wind Music is an extremely interesting and enjoyable, exciting release. Congratulations, all involved, not least the producer who made it all possible; the honorable Mats Möller of SFZ Records!
Mats Möller of SFZ Records proving a point...
(Photo: Ingvar Loco Nordin, 27th May 2003)
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