San Antonio — When San Antonio’s Musical Bridges Around the World picked the name of the organization, they really described their mission of presenting multi-cultural concerts. Sunday presentation at McAllister Auditorium at San Antonio College was a perfect example. It was the most unusual concert that most in the audience had ever attended. It was also one of the most exciting and memorable musical events you could imagine. The concert featured a trio made up of a Galician bagpiper, two percussionists, a viola virtuoso and an accordionist. While this may sound like the list for a musicologist’s scavenger hunt, it made for a wonderfully varied concert.
Galician Bagpiper Cristina Pato, featured with the Silk Road Project with Yo-Yo Ma, was joined by Victor Prieto on accordion and John Hadfield on percussion. The second half presented DuoJalal, made up of Kathryn Lockwood on viola and Yousif Sheronick on eastern percussion.
Neither percussionist played anything usually associated with percussion instruments. The Peruvian cajon, various rattles, and even an ordinary pottery jug (actually called an Udu clay drum) serve as instruments. Sheronick used a vibraphone at one point, but only to play a part originally written for the Japanese kora.
Pato is a miracle to behold. Just toss out everything you thought about the bagpipes from hearing the Scottish version. The Galician bagpipes are a completely different instrument. It is still powered by an air bladder, but there are three different drones that offer a barely noticeable sonic underpinning by sounding the fifth and the octave above and below. The solo part is played on a “chanter,” which resembles a recorder. However, it is a reed instrument and thus sounds more like a Baroque oboe of Shawn. It has drilled holes that create the diatonic scale, but this doesn’t limit an artist like Pato. With the use of different fingerings, only partially covering the hole, and the creative use of air pressure, she is able to play the entire chromatic scale for a number of octaves. She can also play quartertones and bend the sound, not to mention deliver flights of mind-boggling virtuosity.
Prieto is also a new take on the accordion. Forget Lawrence Welk. Prieto is a fine jazz artist. He plays an instrument that allows him to use the harmonic chords on the left hand side or change it to “free” bass, which only plays the single note. Add to that his use of complex jazz harmonies and creative use of the various settings that add octaves above and below, and you actually have a reed organ in a small package.
Hadfield was equally creative in his role as percussionist. His use of found objects, such as a piece of chain or a string of small wooden boxes, gave a fascinating underpinning of rhythm.
Most of the music that the trio played is based on traditional music from Galicia, which is situated in the northwest corner of Spain. Pato’s own composition, Lamento, opened the widely varied program. The other music they played was by composers unfamiliar to audiences such as JP Van Hees and Iván Costa. Traditional rhythms such as the muiñeira, (a type of Galician national dance) the Jota (from the north of Spain) along with the Alalás, are included and most of the pieces require some improvisation, as in the Jazz tradition.
DuoJalal, while just as exotic, relied on compositions written for the duo. Yousif Sheronick, of Lebanese descent, is another creative percussionist. He creates sound by snapping his fingers at the edge of an Egyptian frame drum, or dragging his foot across the Peruvian cajon. Kathryn Lockwood plays a standard viola, but the results are anything but standard. (When is the last time you heard a viola soloist anyway?) She imitates a gypsy violinist in one piece and a Middle Eastern reed flutist the next. Like Pato, she freely uses non-traditional harmonies and quartertones.
Their program was a fascinating collection of selections that are far from the usual music.
They opened with “Joy,” a composition by the jazz guitarist and Public Radio host and commentator John McLaughlin. He wrote for his Indian/Jazz fusion ensemble in the 1970’s called Shakti. This version of Joy was created especially for DuoJalal and is what the composer calls an extended “duet cadenza” marked by intricate rhythmic interplay between viola and percussion. Japanese composer Somei Satoh originally composed his “Birds in Warped Time” for other instruments—the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) and kora (21-string bridge-harp used extensively in West Africa). He made this version for viola and vibraphone (Birds in Warped Time III) for the duo. His roots as a minimalist composer of the 1970s are apparent.
Composer Kenji Bunch’s composition “Lost Found” was an experiment in sounds. The first movement, “Lost in Time” harkens back to the late Renaissance and the music of Heinrich Biber (1644-1704), who was an important figure in the development of violin playing and requires the use of scordatura (re-tuning of the strings other than the standard fifths). The second movement, “Found Objects,” requires the violists to play the instrument like a guitar with a pick. Next, “Lost in Space” refers to the spatial, un-metered notation of this movement—one that relies heavily on the discretion of the performers to make basic decisions about pacing, duration, dynamics, articulation, and in the case of the percussion, even notes and choice of instruments. The last movement, titled simply “Lost and Found” explores the music traditions of Scandinavia, particularly the Swedish Nyckelharpa (a keyed guitar with 16 strings, three melody strings, one drone string, and 12 sympathetic vibration, or resonance, strings) and the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle (similar to a violin but with eight or nine strings).
At the end of this highly unusual concert, the two groups collaborated on a wild improvisation, which brought the audience to its feet. Few of us had ever attended a concert that was so unusual and so thoroughly enjoyable.