“Playing It UNsafe” is how the American Composers Orchestra characterizes tonight’s concert of works by Henry Threadgill, Joan La Barbara, Sean Friar and Laura Schwendinger at Zankel Hall, NYC. Afraid of classical musicians improvising? Multi-layered “sound paintings” of multi-tracked voice, electronic ambiance and instrumentalists sitting in the audience? Symphonic and light collaborations? Then walk on the wild side — or at least watch the fine videos by Jeremy Robins — like the two of Threadgill explaining his ACO-sponsored research and development project, below —
Threadgill wants the Orchestra’s players to take responsibility for listening to and creating with the interval sets he prescribed for “No Gates, No White Trenches, Butterfly Effect,” a commissioned world premiere expanding on strategies he’s developed with his small group, Zooid. La Barbara’s “In solitude this fear is lived,” inspired in this work by the late visual artist Agnes Martin, incorporates breath and voice, electronically processed and natural, in a wash of sounds. Friar’s “Clunker Concerto” features the percussion ensemble Line 3 as soloists addressing the possibilities of junked cars as drumming surfaces. Schwendinger and her cousin Leni Schwendinger, a lighting designer, came up with “Shadings,” a confabulation of photo imagery captured in Japan (“ephemeral architecture . . . Buddhist dry landscapes”) with orchestral writing promoted as “rich pearlescent tones, with shades of grey.”