A Fallen Piano is Resurrected at Jack Straw

by Maggie Molloy

Fifty years ago, an upright piano flew from the sky and crashed loudly upon the ground near Duvall, Washington, smashing into pieces in front of an audience of avant-garde enthusiasts. It was dropped from a helicopter by the Jack Straw Foundation (then in the form of KRAB radio) as a fundraising event for the experimental radio station and their friends at Helix, the hippie newspaper.

Seattle Times clipping, 1968.

This month, that historic piano is being resurrected.

Piano Drop is a historical music installation now on display at the Jack Straw New Media Gallery. The exhibit showcases the remains of the fallen piano for the first time since the helicopter drop, along with archival film footage, historical documents, and new recordings of music composed and performed on the instrument.

And, you can even see the piano performed live. On Febraury 23, Jack Straw presents a special one-night-only live performance of new works composed for the instrument and performed by local musicians, including new works from Amy Denio, James Borchers, Jeffrey Bowen, and Luke Fitzpatrick, among many others.

Though all of the music was written in response to a clamorous piano drop, the concert pays equal tribute to the aleatoric sounds of near-silence; in the spirit of John Cage, each of the featured works is 4’33” or shorter.


Piano Drop is on display at the Jack Straw New Media Gallery through Friday, March 15. The live performance is Saturday, Feb. 23 at 7pm. Click here to learn more.

CONCERT PREVIEW: Viola and Vixens: Women in Classical Composition

by Maggie Molloy

Women ComposersIf you attended a major symphony performance anywhere in the U.S. last year, chances are you did not see any works by women composers.

Women Composers Statistic

Infographic by Rachel Upton and Ricky O’Bannon.

In fact, if you’re like most Americans, it’s quite conceivable that you have never seen a live performance of a symphonic work by a woman composer.

According to a survey of the 22 largest American orchestras, women composers accounted for only 1.8 percent of the total pieces performed in the 2014-2015 concert season. And of the performances of works by living composers, women accounted for just 14.3 percent.

To say that women are underrepresented in the classical music canon would be an understatement. Women are clearly not being heard—the question is, why is nobody listening?

Amber Archibald-SesekLearn about this and many more issues of feminism in classical music at Dr. Amber Archibald-Sešek’s FREE Viola and Vixens recital tonight, which features the WORLD PREMIERE of Seattle-based composer and clarinetist Angelique Poteat’s new piece, “Water Pastels.” Also included on the program are three other leading contemporary female composers: Rebecca Clarke, Libby Larsen, and Amanda Harberg.

I am also very proud to announce that yours truly will be presenting the pre-concert lecture on the past, present, and future of feminism in classical music.

My lecture will traverse the following topics:

     1. Who are some of the key women composers in music history?
     2. Why are these women are not included in the Western classical music canon?
     3. How does this relate to larger issues in feminism?
     4. How can we begin fixing the issue of women being underrepresented?
     5. What might the future of classical music might look like?

I won’t give too much away, but I will say it’s an event you definitely do not want to miss!

Viola and Vixens is on Thursday, March 31 at Seattle University’s Pigott Auditorium on Capitol Hill. This concert is FREE, though donations will be accepted to help fund the Seattle U viola studio’s upcoming trip the American Viola Society conference in Oberlin, Ohio. The pre-concert lecture starts at 6:30 p.m., and the concert starts at 7:30 p.m. For more information, please visit this link.

ALBUM REVIEW: Feral Icons

by Maggie Molloy

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When you hear the word “feral” used to describe a musical instrument, the first thing that comes to mind is probably something wild and ferocious like an electric guitar, a saxophone, maybe even a double bass—but probably not a viola.

Unless, of course, you are composer Peter Vukmirovic Stevens. In his latest album, titled “Feral Icons,” he explores the tempestuous and untamed territory of solo, unaccompanied viola. The performer on the album is violist Mara Gearman, a Seattle native and a member of the Seattle Symphony.

Stevens is a Seattle-based composer, pianist, and multimedia artist whose music is deeply influenced by visual media, literature, and travel—and “Feral Icons” is no exception. The music was inspired, in part, by his travels and his interest in art history.

“I’ve been surrounded by icons my whole life, growing up,” said Stevens, whose first musical influences came from the Serbian Orthodox church where he sang during church services as a child. His new album was especially inspired by the rich history of icon paintings in places like Cyprus and Bulgaria, where he recently visited.

“I was doing my research on that art form, which I think is unique in the Western world in that it’s very symbolic,” he said. “The work is done anonymously by the artist, and the amount of symbolism that is present in icons was a great vehicle for adding live musical ideas as musical representations of icons and people that I admire…Each piece is sort of an icon, a painting in itself of a particular attribute.”

The album is a suite of six pieces for solo, unaccompanied (and very assertive) viola which combine the instrument’s rich tone with an exotic harmonic language and a thematically rich musical arc. For Stevens, the pieces on the album collectively represent a single entity, though each is varied in its symbolism and character, as is brought out through Gearman’s commanding performance.

“Watching her play is like a display of power,” Stevens said. “She is a tremendous player. In order for solo instrument pieces to be communicated, having somebody of her caliber is really important to bring the music to life.”

The opening title track, “Feral Icons,” begins with broad, full-bodied bow strokes that highlight the viola’s rich, raw tone. The expressive melodies are perfectly balanced against double-stop harmonies and unrelenting rhythms, creating a gorgeous contrast of musical textures.

It is followed by the melancholy reveries of “Sovereign, I,” a pensive and heartfelt musical meditation. The musing melodic lines ring across the viola’s entire pitch range above rich harmonies. In fact, Stevens considers the spacing of harmonies to be one of the most important aspects of his harmonic thinking.

“The benefit of working with a string instrument is that you can play the same note sometimes on three or four different strings, and it allows you to create different tonal effects and different timbral effects,” he said. “And it’s nice that it’s not a piano, because you have all these different strings available to think about the color of the sound you want and where it is on the fingerboard.”

The third work on the album, “Sanctuary,” is an opulent exploration of color, with textural interest created through dreamy, sweetly ringing melodies contrasted with lush chords, percussive flourishes, and the occasional, deliberate silence.

The next piece, “Ex Nihilo,” takes its title from the Latin phrase meaning “creation out of nothing.” Expressive melodies, aggressive rhythms, forceful double-stops, and shifting tempos create a richly varied tapestry of musical textures.

“Bloodlines” follows with its haunting, romantic melodies dancing above a low drone, and the album comes to a close with the breathtaking lyricism and visceral energy of “Black and Gold.”

And balanced against the power and intensity of 45 minutes of solo viola, Stevens manages to maintain the sincerity, the vulnerability, and above all, the beauty of a single, unaccompanied instrument.

“It’s a wonderful challenge to write for a single instrument,” he said. “That a single instrument can carry the entire musical vehicle that is needed for a good piece of music to be realized. And that challenge is so exposed. It’s a wonderful metaphor for the individual, for a single person just trying to process the world around them. The solo instrument is a wonderful means of expressing that individuality and that complexity within each of us.”

A “Feral Icons” CD release party and performance featuring Gearman will take place at Seattle’s Steve Jensen Gallery on Capitol Hill this Saturday, Sept. 12. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and the performance begins at 8 p.m.

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