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Kansas City's Online Journal of the Performing Arts

Bioluminescent sea creatures, orbiting space gondolas and Southeast Asian bells metaphorically swirled and circulated at the Unity Temple on the Plaza.  The occasion was the final concert of the Kansas City Electronic Music and Arts Alliance who presented Quadrivium Novum for a mind bending program of audio/visual imagination.

Quadrivium is a non-traditional quartet of top notch talent.  Rebecca Ashe, flute, Cheryl Melfi, clarinet, Mark Stuaffer, cello and Kari Johnson on piano, mix it up with energy and attention to minute detail.  Together just over a year, the ensemble plays everything "from Beethoven to Weber" but love collaborating with living composers. "We get to be involved in every stage of the creative process," says Cheryl Melfi of the world premier performance of Daniel Eichenbaums piece, Orbit.  She and Rebecca Ashe, both barefoot wearing  black, circumnavigated the stage stopping to perform at the stands located at the North, South, East and West compass points which were specifically set up to amplify their duet in slightly different ways.   The Northern point sounded very reverberant while the Eastern point seemed to be coming from a speaker behind the audience.   The piece incorporated not only the performers live but as they were previously recorded and electrified breathing and playing. 

Composer Jason Bolte's piece Scrap Metal featured pianist Kari Johnson as she pulled the music out of the guts of the prepared piano.  Her amazing musicality was evident as she strummed, plucked, scraped, rolled, banged and pulled the piece into fruition.  My only lament was that the piano wasn't lying on its side so I could see; first hand (not on a video) what was going on inside of the instrument.

Single notes gently called listeners to attend to E: Vespers by Mara Gibson.  Scored for flute, clarinet, piano and digital audio, it had a folk-like fantastical appeal.  The woodwinds sounded almost like angry birds that resolved into a haunting melody that left chills.  The intense rocket launching sounds felt out of place and seemed cliché.   Many of the pieces on the program utilized the outer space sound wash to support quasi melodic motives. 

A Slow Unraveling by Andrew Seager Cole was commissioned by the KCEMA for Quadrivium. All four players took the stage for a piece including electronic sounds and video images projected on the screen behind them.  The screen wasn't very large and seemed more like a canvas for moving two dimensional images.  The timing of the images and players was completely synchronized and connected.

I preferred the instruments playing together - apart from the electronic sounds.  This was the only piece where the four of them were able to demonstrate their prowess as a quartet and the extra sounds seemed to take away from their performance instead of enhance it.  I hope to hear them again in the future playing without electronic support.

The only piece that didn't work for me was the world falls asleep by William J. Lackey.  As esoteric as the liner notes were, ("inspired by the works of Charles Pierre Baudelaire") and as impressive as his biography is, (studying with Chen Yi, Samuel Adler, and Justin Dello Joio to name a few) this piece pitted the cellist against a laptop. Looking back and forth from music stand to lap top, I wondered what the cellist was looking at.  What secret information was being projected that the audience didn't know.  Was that information supposed to inform the cellist in some way?  Enhance his performance?  It was obviously a distraction and took away from the music.

Churches are interesting venues for electronic music concerts.  I hope to hear this Alliance again in a more dynamic venue that stretches the imagination of the listeners through even larger screen projections and dynamic audio.  Electronic music has been the domain of soundtracks and rock bands for too long.  There is still much to be learned the enjoyed through the uniting of organic and electronic art music.  Groups working in this genre are lucky in that their venue choices can push the boundaries of the traditional concert hall.  They could easily find stages in bars, parking garages, art galleries and even fine art movie houses.  The sky is the limit for the Kansas City Electronic Music and Art Alliance.  I can't wait to hear what they do next.

REVIEW:
The Kansas City Electronic Music and Art Alliance: Quadrivium Novum
Friday April 16, 2010
Unity Temple on the Plaza
707 W 47^th Street, Kansas City, MO
For more information www.kcema.net

By Megan Browne Helm

Classical, Vocal and Theatre Contributor

Megan Browne Helm grew up singing, dancing and acting.  Inspired by Emma Kirkby as a high school student in St. Louis she went on to study voice and sing with the Collegium Musicum at the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio where she also had a radio show of contemporary classical music on WOBC.  At the University of Kansas she had the pleasure of working with former Kings’ Singer, Simon Carrington in his Collegium Musicum and Oread consort. Years later, she was a choral fellow at the Yale School of Music’s  Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.  She is currently singing with the Kansas City Symphony Chorus under the direction of Charles Bruffy. 

 As a freelance music and culture writer her work can be found on KCMetropolis.org, presentmagazine.com, the Lawrence Journal World, Shawnee Magazine, Leawood Lifestyle Magazine and KC Parent.  She was one of 26 journalists in the country chosen as a NEA Institute Fellow for Classical Music and Opera at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. 

Her current interest is how classical music remains relevant through active collaborations with artists in different fields, including science.  She also sees a connection between classical music, travel and food as a way to engage all of the senses in a 360 degree cultural experience.  She blogs at raworganum.wordpress.com.