IS REVOLUTION TYPICALLY IN THE AIR (ON A SUNNY FALL DAY)?

After some cold fall days, a spike in temps coinciding with the generous and gentle shining sun of November 19 (the day of our most recent, well attended, and quite wonderful Open Mic Classical which, incidentally, seems to have spawned the formation of yet another cape classical ensemble: a burgeoning string quartet) belied the revolution within the luscious reverberant halls of our structural host: The Brewster Meetinghouse, home of The First Parish Brewster Unitarian Universalist here smack in the middle of Brewster.

But no, this revolution didn't exactly clang and gurgle and bang like most revolutions. In fact, our ears were blessed with some of the most gentle and soothing sounds I've ever heard in my life.

But where did the flavor of last Sunday's Revolution BEGIN exactly?

I suppose it started with the storming of the Bastille in 1789. Well, sort of. The storming of the Bastille inspired the French to pull out all the stops an exact century later, when it hosted the Exposition Universelle in Paris in exactly 1889, into which strode one impressionable young impressionist: 

    Debussy (b. 1862)

At that infamous fin de siècle Parisian expo, Debussy became transfixed and (compositionally) transformed by a Javanese gamelan music ensemble synergizing surreal oscillating waves of percussive idiophonic glory (percussion idiophones include marimabas, marimba-like belafons, metallaphones as found in Java and Bali, xylophones, and the sensual and modern vibraphone).

Say goodbye to the played-out legato/staccato tricks of Mozart & Co. and hello to a whole new infusion of African and Indonesian democratic percussive textures that have since been woven strikingly into the Impressionistic European thread (assisted in part by the prevalence of pitched percussion in the works of Slavic Romantics like Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov  (b. 1844) and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky  (b. 1840)).

And who better to continue with this wonderful oscillating thread (in addition to composer Steve Reich naturally) than our featured guest and local cape percussionist: Amy Lynn Barber, who graced us with thoroughly unbelievably beautiful textures on her large, powerful, reverberant vibraphone. Her masterful command of this masterfully engineered sensual instrument was evidenced not only in some Finnish Folk strains by Zivkovic, and in some jazz by Mark Glentworth, but perhaps also (and perhaps most profoundly) with a quite unusual and captivating piece by modern Texan percussionist Christopher Deane called:

Mourning Dove Sonnet 

Just as Debussy was mesmerized by something outside his normal field of vision (aka: Javanese Gamelan music), so were we totally mesmerized by "Mourning Dove Sonnet" wherein composer Christopher Deane painstakingly transcribed exact pitches of bird songs and incorporated them quite directly into his captivating composition. The piece featured, believe it or not, BENT notes played on vibraphone with the aid of an upright bass bow. As magical as it was intriguingly innovative. Amy Lynn Barber played it masterfully, not surprising considering she is a recipient of the National Music Prize of the Czech Music Council (of which she was made an honorary council member), and also received not one, but two Fullbright professorship for researching and teaching abroad.

And while Amy Lynn's career is already quite illustrious, other musical careers were just beginning last Sunday. Case in point, brothers Didi and Song Rauchenbach (age 6 and 7 respectively) confidently played piano on some of their first performances ever.

A l l   in   a l l,   a   m o s t   s o n o r o u s   r e v o l u t i o n   i n d e e d.

So to all: thanks again / please come again / please spread the word from valley to hilltop so our wonderful cape classical community can continue to evolve and intertwine on our roads less traveled.

LOOKING  FORWARD