An Evening of Pisaro presented by Barry Chabala (10/6/10)

At Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, NJ-based guitarist Barry Chabala presented 'An Evening of Pisaro', performing three of Michael Pisaro's compositions: 'appearance (2)', 'E lá fora' and 'Ascending Series (6)', with Travis Just (clarinet/melodica) and Tucker Dulin (trombone).

The first set consisted of one piece, 'appearance (2)', performed by the duo of Chabala and Just, a 35-minute version Chabala assembled for this concert from the original 55-minute piece. The piece is for two instruments: one for sustained sounds and the other for decaying sounds. The version in this concert consisted of seven 5-minute sections in which two musicians played the same pitch in unison in each 10-second event (8-second tone and 2-second pause). The pitches, timing and number of repetitions of the 10-second event were chosen by chance operations. In this concert, Chabala played 'decaying sound' on acoustic guitar, while Just played 'sustained sound' on clarinet.

After 20 seconds of silence, Chabala played a single tone four times on acoustic guitar with pizzicato, while Just simultaneously played a sustained sound on clarinet in the same pitch as Chabala's, slowly and softly. The first section of the sounds was followed by a long silence. There was almost a meditative atmosphere in the way the two musicians were introspectively listening to the silence. There were four sections of the sounds in the first five minutes, with long silences in between each set. Since the silence was so long and deep in this section, five minutes felt like a very long time. The next section had even longer silences between the sounds (in a different pitch this time). The lengths of the silences within each section of sounds were different every time, sometimes much shorter than the previous section, and sometimes longer again, while the length of the two musicians' performances in each sound event was the same throughout the piece. The odd relation between the different lengths of silences and the same lengths of the performed sounds caused a bizarre illusion as if time were gradually being stretched or shrunk during the performance depending on the frequencies of the sound events. Chabala and Just performed this piece beautifully with their simple but sincere approaches. The soft, modest tones of Travis' clarinet in this piece were especially impressive - which sounded like almost soft electronic sounds or the resonances of Chabala's guitar.

Then there was an intermission, followed by a second set consisting of two pieces. The first piece was 'E lá fora', again performed by Chabala (this time on electric guitar) and Just (this time on melodica). This 10-minute piece was originally meant to be performed outdoors, but Chabala brought his field recordings as a substitute of the outdoor sounds. (Chabala told me later that it was not field recordings, but live sounds from outside picked up with two microphones - one to a window at either side of the building to create stereo live environment sounds from outside.) The set started with the field recordings sounds from outdoor (which sounded like cars passing by on a street or waves in the ocean), then Chabala and Just played different tones on each instrument at the same time, to form a ten second long harmony, followed by ten seconds of silence. Every time they played different chords together, the tones of the guitar and the melodica changed their relations and created beautiful pools of harmonies that evoked for me the subtle fusions of different colors. The continuous field recording sounds from outside streets emerged in the silences between sounds, as if the volume of the field recordings sounds from outdoor were changing when the instruments were silent - the illusionary change of the relation between the sounds, silences and the environmental factors (time for the previous piece, field recording sounds from outdoor in this piece) was surreal and beautiful here again.

The last piece was 'ascending series (6)' performed by Chabala on electric guitar, Tucker Dulin on trombone and Pisaro's sine tones played from a computer. This nearly 40 minute long piece was originally written for Radu Malfatti. The most fascinating feature of this piece was the sine tones made by Pisaro, which were penetrating the whole piece. According to the score, "The basis of the sine tone part is an ascending scale of nine tones from F2 to G2, each tone lasting three minutes and with a minute separation between the tones. The sine tones fade in and out (they will not always be audible at the beginning or end)."

The vivid sine tones in this piece made me think of the long, almost eternal life of stars. It felt like watching several planets giving out vital light, throbbing steadily, slowly moving toward each other - when some sine tones and the sounds of the two instruments approached each other, it felt like some delicate tones of mixed colors of lights being born - which I found breathtakingly beautiful. The powerful wavelengths of the sine tones seemed to intertwine the listeners deeply into the music, so it felt like the pulses of the sine tones were reflecting those of the audience (or at least me). It had a calm but tremendous power in the whole piece, which captivated my ears from the beginning to the end. This is definitely one of the most intense pieces I have yet heard from Pisaro.

It was very interesting to listen to the three pieces of Michael Pisaro at this concert. The different nature of each piece represented a wide range of Pisaro's different styles of compositions - from the initial minimal, introspective piece with long silences to the ending piece which made me think that Pisaro's universe has an almost unlimited potential in the future.