Riverrun
Riverrun 2024
October 3-13
Albi/Tarn/Penne/Toulouse, France
Review by Ken Waxman
Photos by Susan O’Connor
Steps from Albi’s Episcopal City, a UNESCO designated World Heritage Site first developed in the 11th century, those interested could skip forward 1,000 years to participate in the annual Riverrun Festival of creative music.
Albi, a city of some 50,000 people, located about 80 miles north of Toulouse, has hosted this annual music festival for the past eight years. This year’s program took place in various local venues as well as those in neighboring areas, including Toulouse.
One concert which clearly demonstrated this apotheosis of sounds took place on October 11 in Albi’s Grand Théâtre, where the local Ensemble Dedalus performed its interpretation of Julius Eastman’s “Stay on It”. Fidelity to the theme characterized by frequent repetition of the defining motif, with the title vocalized most often by flutist Amélie Berson with other musicians intermittently joining in, still left space for individual input from the nine-piece group.
As the exposition moved from player to player, episodes of smoothness and stridency often alternated. One part of the performance included a romantic-styled interlude from pianist Denis Chouillet and trumpeter Christian Pruvost’s mellow portamento. Equally prominent were bright bow slides from violinist Silvia Tarozzi and a pressurized buildup with four mallets by percussionist Stéphane Garin. While more obtuse score departure sometimes came from the trumpeter and the pianist, the most overt individualism demonstrated there and during the ensemble’s subsequent encore, came from artistic director and guitarist Didier Aschour. Hand pops and buzzing textures on his string set added to the group’s distinctive take on Eastman’s work.
Forgoing improvisation but bringing glowering tension to its performance of Phil Niblock’s “Looking For Daniel” was the 10-piece Ensemble Model062, which played the final set of Riverrun 2024 in the Athanor arts space, near the Grand Théâtre. Performing with a backdrop of the projection of Niblock’s black and white film of Lesotho farmers working intently to break sod, move rocks and other back-breaking tasks needed to plant crops, the group members sonically reflected the pressurized vigor on the screen.
With affiliated chords protracted into a narrative, the entire ensemble played as one, stretching musical undulations into a soundtrack that seemed filled with undifferentiated solid notes. Melding the horns, percussion, strings and reeds into a solid mass, overtones from these sections often amplified the musicians’ timbres, making the performance itself even more dense.
Especially intense were sul ponticello motifs which united the strings of violinist Hadewijch Hofland, cellist Jan Willem Troost, bassist Vasilis Stefanopoulos, and the dual guitars of Ezequiel Menalled and Santiago Lascurain. Ending with a sequence of concentrated room-shaking tones, an earlier face-off between the amplified guitarists, clarinetist Jorge López García and trumpeter Justin Christensen confirmed specific timbral differentiation.
The first piece Ensemble Modelo62 played was the premiere of “Mirages” by Spanish composer Clara de Asís. Outlined by feather-light mallet work by vibraphonist Klára van de Ketterij as well as a motif created by the doubling of clarinet, trumpet and Rebecca Lane’s flute tones, the resulting thick, dark exposition was followed by a climax of resonating guitar chords and brass smears.
Earlier that day in Albi’s small Protestant church, a few blocks from a major thoroughfare, Ensemble Model062 members Lane (flutes) and de Asís playing synthesizer, presented a chamber recital of focused minimalism entitled “Distances Bending”.
Set up among the wooden pews of its simply furnished nave, the confined drone piece, which took into consideration the room’s spatial dryness, featured the synthesizer alternating amplified high-pitched and pointed or spare buzzing wave-form rumbles that defined the piece’s lower-case affiliation. However, the composition’s elevation in form and volume depended in part on the trills, squeaks and flutters projected by Lane that arose as she pulled airy modulations by blowing into a transverse flute, alto flute, dog whistles and miniature organ pipes.
Another notable duo concert took place on the festival’s second night Théâtre Garrone, which had been repurposed from a compact workshop in Toulouse into an arts space. Ironically entitled “Soundless”, this recital’s composition was played by two Americans, Ellen Fullman and Theresa Wong.
Plucking, picking, scraping and shaking the multiple 30-metre-long string installation that stretched the length of the room, Fullman surmounted the 10,000-steps-a-day-for-health goal by constantly walking forward and backward between the two parallel sets of strings that were anchored and tuned with small rocks set designated distances apart.
Dissident basso, treble, and fragmented timbres and drones were produced at points when Fullman attached clips and other small objects to the horizontal strings, while the speed of her ambulation and hand pressure altered and distinguished the composition’s progressive flow.
Meanwhile, Wang switched between tabletop guitar and cello, often using a bow on both string sets to create bubbly wave forms or clipped frails that gave the nearly hypnotic, seemingly non-stop, buzzing of the long strings’ contrapuntal or drawn-out affiliations.
Suggestions of Hawaiian guitar-like echoes, e-bow vibrations or precisely formal cello-stops made Wong’s creative inserts as unique as the dual tonal harmonies from all the strings. Attaining role reversal in the penultimate minutes, guitar twangs became more prominent, while the long strings’ scrapes and vibrations dovetailed into Wang’s concentrated output before fading.
Riverrun’s most unusual presentation took place on the afternoon of October 9 in the Gresigne forest’s Espace Fontbonne in Penne, about 50 kilometres from Albi.
Rustic and remarkable, five of France’s outstanding soprano saxophone stylists – Michel Doneda, Lionel Garcin, Violaine Gestalder, Alexandra Grimal and Guillaume Orti – situated themselves high in the branches of five of the natural space’s mammoth moss-covered trees while the expectant audience listened below.
As reed textures drifted from one woody perch to another, the trills and beeps of the saxophones mingled with wind puffs, pelting rain splatters and occasional bird calls, as the experienced improvisers bent notes into solo flights or duo calls-and-responses. At points one musician would begin a phrase which would then be completed by one or another of the other players. Although their brief reed chirps occasionally sounded more avian than those from the birds themselves, the quintet also outlined parts of a Messiaen composition and brief, multiphonic improvisations.
If there were any drawbacks besides the unabated rain which poured down during the concert, it was that the elevated situation of the players made individual identification or even location impossible to determine. Nevertheless, the saxophonists produced few fowl notes.
Group performances in the vocal arena were also Riverrun features, with three variations on October 12 at Albi’s Athanor arts space. Wrapping up with an acapella version of Cornelius Cardew’s “The Great Learning – Paragraph 7”, other highlights were a performance of Anna Holveck’s “Fugues” by nine local conservatory students as well as “And if that mockingbird don’t sing”, a solo by Holveck herself, realized as she matched her live voice with other pre-recorded voices.
With audience members seated in near-darkness on the floor or on chairs in groups of three, each singer of the Cardew piece moved quietly, and unexpectedly but carefully through the crowd in response to an also-moving director’s cues. The chosen pitch and breath length of each singer was determined by repetition of words plus responses to others’ pitches and syllable-stretching.
While the irony of English phrases being sung by predominately French speakers existed, the polyphonic projection of the phrases made up for that. Taking advantage of the room’s spatial qualities, the sounds reflected from the walls, floor and ceiling came to the audience from all sides, ending up uniting drones and lyricism. By the finale the choral mixture sounded almost ecclesiastical, especially as the final phrase was proclaimed in unison. This too would have been ironic for Cardew who styled himself a revolutionary Marxist.
In Holveck’s set, and without an obvious political message, student singers moved around the performance space singly and in groups almost as if they were a tableau of dancers.
Vocalizing from different locations throughout the auditorium, they harmonized both with each other and with additional sounds emanating from each performer’s earbuds. After a pause the nine returned inserting tiny microphones into their mouths, creating unexpected textures which allowed them to pass phrases among themselves.
After another pause, reacting to the voices that emanated from the set of audio speakers that were rolled on stage before her entrance, Holveck then duetted, challenged or sang in counterpoint to the pre-recorded melodies which were expressed through the speakers in a panoply of languages from English to Portuguese to Yiddish.
Notable as a sound exercise, Holveck’s bel canto voice could probably have been as notable on its own.
Throughout the festival, a series of solo performances allowed for comparisons of how individual musicians deal with the challenge of performing New music without accompaniment, either acoustically or with electronics.
Acoustic playing was coupled with an architecturally significant space on Riverrun’s opening night. In Toulouse’s worn 18th Century Église du Gesù, Frédéric Blondy used the venerable building’s mammoth pipe organ for an interpretation of “Occam XXV”, Éliane Radigue’s first composition for organ. The score was initially worked out in consultation with Blondy, who has also performed it in other locations.
Presented in partnership with le Festival Toulouse Les Orgues, the swirling drone piece took advantage of the setting as tremolo tones from the organ, situated high above the building’s sanctuary, drifted downwards in long, simple lines to the audience in the pews below.
More soothing than strident, evocative and pressurized glissandi created by different organ ranks buzzed, vibrated and coalesced without a climax, but with a simple completion.
Three days later at the Musée du Saut du Tarn, a metalwork factory converted to an arts space close to Albi, Jacques Puech mixed textures from the 19th and 21st century with a cabrette. He amplified with floor pedals and software patches the homespun tones produced by the instrument, a regional bagpipe where squeezed bellows replace the blow stick and the chanter.
The result was simultaneously classic and current. While the instrument’s characteristic juddering vibrations were present as he played specially commissioned compositions – and at one point added boot-heel stomps on a wooden board for an additional rustic feel – thinner and electronically distorted phrasing was heard alongside the initial themes. These subtle changes in velocity and pressure multiplied the instrument’s flanges and whooshes during the performance, creating a program that managed to be both exclusive and everyday.
Two individually distinctive solo electronica sets — the modular synthesizer of Switzerland’s Thomas Ankersmit in the Grand Théatre just before the Ensemble Dedalus concert on October 11, and the deconstructed organ of Clément Vercelletto in the Athanor preceding the Holveck/Cardew vocal presentations on October 12– were far more than opening acts.
Adapting a variety of harsh textures and droning wave forms, Ankersmit manipulated his oscillators and filters to create a thick industrial, almost undifferentiated mass, although airier tempos were occasionally evident in interludes of feedback and chance passages. Overall, changeable modules evolved and extended turbulence and tranquility, with concentrated clamor a constant leitmotif.
Unlike Ankersmit who played on dark stage behind his instrument, the components of Vercelletto’s deconstructed organ were splayed across the brightly lit Athanor auditorium floor. Building up from lumpy organ-like sounds from his laptop, sputtering oscillations and metronome-like clips arose in tandem, or after pauses from individually amplified percussion creations. Besides producing jiggly metallic vibrations which were adapted and reverberated from the other noisemakers, Vercelletto occasionally blew through an elongated tube emitting textures between bagpipe and recorder.
Sometimes wandering from one output source to another, he consequently emphasized near-vocalized clangs and polyphonic wave forms that kept building at different tempos until they reached a loud crescendo. Closing down each component in turn signalled the set’s conclusion.
Dedicated to showcasing a wide variety of creative sounds during the course of the festival, Riverrun also screened the film “Deep Listening”, Daniel Weintraub’s feature on pioneering composer and teacher Pauline Oliveros, as well as Myriam Pruvot’s “Antenae”, a short film on an inventive modern lute-player. Both showings were in the cinema in the same building as the Athanor.
Furthermore, on three separate occasions, Myriam Van Imschoot, assisted by Tomoko Hojo directed a series of workshops. The sessions were dedicated to putting into practice deep listening, and expanding the imaginations of non-musicians to create innovative sounds on their own.
Featuring unexpected sounds from the near-primitive to the futuristic, this year’s Riverrun festival exposed those interested to a cross- section of innovative music and ideas. This is one part of the festival credo that will likely be expanded in years to come.
Please visit the individual Artists‘ pages for CD reviews and more photos.