yMusic

A note from yMusic
Tonight’s program, in many ways, spans the breadth of our artistic practice. It opens with Eleven, written by our earliest collaborator, Ryan Lott; proceeds through a suite of self-composed works—a form of expression we found only in our second decade as an ensemble; and ends with the world premiere of a significant new work by Bay Area native Gabriella Smith, a longtime yMusic collaborator and singular creative voice. We love this music, which feels like an extension of who we are and what we hold dear.

Ryan Lott
Eleven
Composer Ryan Lott (who also makes music under the band name Son Lux) was the first person to ever write for us and, we suspect, the first to write for our specific group of instruments. In many ways, Ryan’s DNA is deeply embedded in our group’s sound and textures. From day one, Ryan’s vision for our band opened our eyes to the possibilities of our instrumental configuration. We have since collaborated with him on a number of projects, including an album of his compositions for yMusic, First, from 2017. Eleven is the opening track of that album, and one of our favorite ways to start a concert.

Three Elephants, Whosay, Cloud, and The Wolf
yMusic started to collaboratively compose our own music in 2019. While it’s not unexpected for a band to write new material in this manner, classical ensembles usually stick to interpreting pre-written scores. The impetus to write came after spending a significant amount of time on concert tours with artists Ben Folds and Paul Simon performing “off the page”—memorizing, re-writing, and sometimes creating arrangements on-the-fly.

During these tours, we started working out little ideas together backstage, right before concerts, or in an idle moment of rehearsal. Eventually, it was Paul Simon who took us aside and encouraged us to dedicate time to writing music together. We immediately realized this group was meant to work this way! As six finely-tuned and opinionated musicians, we had literally been training for this our whole lives.

This suite imagines plodding pachyderms, explores watercolor textures, finds a calming break in an anxious time, and ends with our exploring the loudest mood we can make as a group, piling joyful chords into raucous textures.

Gabriella Smith
Aquatic Ecology (World Premiere)
In 2014, cellist Gabriel Cabezas joined yMusic, and soon thereafter Gabe introduced us to Gabriella Smith, his close musical collaborator and onetime college roommate. We were immediately blown away by the clear voice, brilliantly wrought architecture, and inventive textures of Gabriella’s music, and we started commissioning her right away. Tonight’s world premiere represents the third piece Gabriella has written for yMusic, and the most significant to date. Gabriella writes about the piece:

Most people think of the ocean as a silent place, but in reality it is incredibly noisy and vibrant. These underwater ecosystems are alien to most—and yet most of our planet is covered in water. The ocean is our planet’s largest carbon sink, which makes it “the greatest ally against climate change” (according to the United Nations). Its health is vital for a livable future. In order to conserve aquatic ecosystems, it is important to feel a connection to them. One of my goals with this piece is to make the underwater ecosystems feel less foreign and more tangible to listeners, and to provide them with a connection to the ocean in a way they probably haven’t experienced before—through sound.
In this piece, field recordings (made with hydrophones) sometimes appear in their raw, unaltered state—particularly when yMusic is not playing— and at other times are processed in musical ways to become part of the ensemble. They appear in this order:

• A coral reef off the island of Huahine, French Polynesia—shrimp crackling, the sound of parrotfish eating algae off coral, grunting (recorded by Gabriella Smith)
• Many species of fish including croakers and herring—grunting and clicking sounds (from many places and sources)
• Ice melting—squeaking, bubbling, sounding kind of like birds (recorded by Francesco Fabris in Iceland)
• Plainfin Midshipmen, humming and growling (recorded by Gabriella Smith on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington, and by researchers in the Sisneros Lab at the University of Washington)
• Rain falling onto a creek, Green Island, Oregon (recorded by Gabriella Smith)
• Cetaceans, including dolphins and whales (courtesy of Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute)

— Gabriella Smith