Owls

Sharing Joy with Owls

In the beginning, there was a
Spotify playlist…

That’s how violinist Alexi Kenney and violist Ayane Kozasa of Owls described the genesis of not only this afternoon’s program but also the quartet itself. Both grew from the players’ desire to share music that they loved, that inspired them, and that they thought would be fun to play with each other. “That’s what it’s all about: finding the fun, finding why we did this in the first place, which sometimes—not always—can get lost in the fray or the frenzy of this lifestyle and career,” Kenney said. Kozasa concurred, “What we do is this fine line between this passion that we have, and it also has to be work to a certain extent. I have really appreciated being part of this group because it keeps reminding me how fun it is and how joyful it is to play music.”

That Spotify playlist—which ranged from Meredith Monk and Brad Mehldau to Leoš Janáček and Joe Hisaishi—also had prag­matic implications for the unique group, whose instrumentation (two cellos, a viola, and violin) has little music written explicitly for it. (The only canonical example comes from Anton Arensky, whose quartet the members were intent on not playing.) By adding music to the playlist, the members could share their interests and inspirations, and they began the compre­hensive process of finding music that they could arrange. They considered technical aspects of color and voicing, but also—guided by their joy of playing together—they asked themselves what each of them individually could con­tribute and bring to the whole. Ultimately, for Kozasa, by re­leasing herself from expec­tations, the mu­sical universe became wide open: “For this group, there are no prece­dents for how this should sound. That was so freeing for me. Starting from the mental­ity that any­thing is possible allowed us to explore not just our corner of classical music, but to go beyond that to find other common­alities in the musical Venn dia­gram with other styles.”

The end result is this program’s seven works, all arranged collaboratively by the ensemble and each with deep personal meaning for all members, including the two works by cellist and composer Paul Wiancko (who recently joined the well-known Kronos Quartet). “How I envision programs is usually energetically: how things are sculpted, how energy levels dip and rise and all of that,” Kenney said. The works each ebb and flow in due course, and most contrast feeling anchored and unmoored, still and moving. But the group’s playful spirit also finds resonance with the works selected: Themes of simple joys, innocence, and curiosity appear across the program. As Kenney noted, “There is so much life, and so much vitality, and so much joy of living and joy of music making. That might also be the through line: this love for life—this joie de vivre.”

Chick Corea
Children’s Song No. 12

For Owls, Chick Corea’s Children’s Song No. 12 bids a warm welcome to the concert as an opener but, for the composer, children’s music offered a unique artistic challenge. Inspired by Bartók’s Mikrokos­mos, which were also written with children in mind, Corea’s children’s songs were a path­way to pare down musical elements to only the necessities. He has been writing “children’s songs” and peppering them into albums since the early 1970s, when his own musical style shifted away from complex bebop toward melodic cool jazz. In Chil­dren’s Song No. 12, Corea immediately estab­lishes a slow groove with a syncopated ostinato harmony over which he lays tune­ful melodies—graced with blue notes—and call-and-response phrases.

Paul Wiancko
Vox Petra

According to composer Paul Wiancko, Vox Petra (Stone Voice) is “a double duo inspired by Isamu Noguchi’s iconic stone sculptures, which turn heavily unmovable masses while transforming the space around them.” A journey by manipulating a sense of space. The opening is large and un­centered, as if the initial motive was undecided on its direction, searching for momentum, only to disintegrate into arid elements that return at random. Two techniques contribute to spatial disorienta­tion: rapid, repeating notes that decre­scendo give a sense of something moving away (à la the Doppler effect), while high-pitch delicate harmonics activate enharmonic resonances beyond acoustical norms. In the middle section, propulsive rhythms anchor the music, and the energy undulates, providing a sense of cogent direction before developing into a driving Shostakovich-like scherzo. The final section shifts between these two sound worlds—the open-ended cur­­i­osity and directed moti­va­tion—attempt­ing to reconcile the dueling impulses.

Franghiz Ali-Zadeh
Rəqs

Franghiz Ali-Zadeh’s Rəqs pays homage to the composer’s homeland Azerbaijan, and the ubiquitous folk dances that accompany many facets of life there: from birthdays to funerals, weddings, farewells, and harvests. She writes, “In Azerbaijan, many different dances have existed since time imme­morial.” For Owls, the music represents an “explosion of joy,” as folk dances allow us to take pleasure in the simple life. The beginning features a 6/8 dance rhythm, whose chromatic complexity lends a sinewy and more intellectual quality that soon becomes a slow rhapsody led by the viola. After several languid slinking steps, the folk theme in 6/8 melody reappears, gentle and firm. Affable and lilting, Ali-Zadeh’s work deftly uses folk elements to counterbalance her avant-garde techniques and musical language.

François Couperin
Les Barricades Mystérieuses

Composer, organist, and harpsichordist, François Couperin was the most prominent musician in France after Lully and prior to Rameau. His style emphasized the two most valued French traits: douceur (gentility) and naturalness. His musical austerity illustrates douceur. Les Barricades Mystérieuses uses a strict repetition of a syncopated, upward leap in the treble against the simple strong beat accompaniment as the foundation to ex­plore the new harmonic language that was experimental at the time but is now com­mon practice. He emphasized naturalness by writing music meant to imitate nature, often giving his works descriptive titles like Les Barricades Mystérieuses (Mysterious Barricades), which may refer to literal walls or might be a metaphor for a woman’s eye­lashes. Because so much of his innovative style has become commonplace today, Cou­perin’s work may seem quaint to modern ears, and yet, that compelling leap-up that runs throughout conjures an image of a composer 300 years ago eager to capture a spark of joy in his music.

Trollstilt
(Monica Mugan and Dan Trueman)
Ricercar

In their duo Trollstilt, Dan Trueman and Monica Mugan bring together influences of Norse and American folk music to create extemporaneous compositions. Their Ricer­c­ar uses the straightforward harmonic language of folk music, with unpretentious and unadorned melodies, as its basis. These everyday musical materials, however, de­velop into fugal counterpoint with voices imitating each other in a loosely Baroque fashion—the title refers to the contrapuntal Baroque keyboard genre. Trollstilt’s work continues to grow in complexity before abruptly cutting back to the opening calm, as if things went too far and needed a re­start. The second time through, however, the thematic material is allowed to follow its own journey leading to a gradual denoue­ment on its own terms.

Wiancko
When The Night

Paul Wiancko’s second work on this after­noon’s program, When the Night, borrows from Ben E. King’s ubiquitous 1960s R & B song “Stand by Me.” Wiancko uses the first three notes of the song (“When the night,” or mi, sol, la) to write a “harmonically rich and texturally innovative celebration of all things cello.” From these most simple of means, Wiancko spins out an array of styles in rapid succession, like a set of variations on a theme. The opening statement offers a homophonic melody against a drone to help establish the basic musical materials, before moving on to arpeggiation and gradual deconstruction of the melody, dispersing it among the instruments. The shifting moods and styles continue leading to an explosive passionate climax.

Terry Riley
Good Medicine

Terry Riley’s Good Medicine shows all of the hallmarks of the composer’s ground­breaking minimalist style: bright consonant harmonies, driving pulses with devilishly hard rhythms, and repetitive motives that create a contemplative sound object. Yet by the 1980s, as composers turned toward a more personal neoromanticism, the mini­malists introduced tonal harmonic progres­sions and melodies with a greater emotional depth. Good Medicine takes the language and techniques of minimalism—the deep meditative music that emerges from radi­cally cutting down musical elements—and pairs it with bold melodies that are joyful and soaring. By oscillating between these styles, the work offers a transcendental ex­perience where contemplative meditation awakens a joyful euphoria.

In the end, the program that Owls has crafted invites us into a world of deeply moving music. But the group’s collaborative curatorial process—coming together as four individuals with different points of view openly offer their individual perspec­tives—may also serve as a reminder that true joy is found in sharing that which connects us with others. As Kozasa said, “I have one moment in every piece where I tear up, because it feels so beautiful, or sentimental, or as if you are seeing the world from above and the epic-ness of it; you are reflecting on humanity. There is something in every piece that makes me feel teary-eyed, which is a really nice feeling—a really, really nice human emotion to feel. And hopefully, at some point in the program, the audience can feel it too.”

—Eric Lubarsky

Eric Lubarsky works at Carnegie Hall as a managing editor, where he oversees pub­lish­ing projects for the hall’s educational and social impact programs and creates program books for main stage presentations and free concerts around New York City. He holds a PhD in musicology from the Eastman School of Music and his research is focused on con­cert life, per­formance revivals, and the early-music movement of the 20th century.