The university housed a one-of-a-kind performance on Feb. 5 by Yarn/Wire ensemble composed of two pianists, Ning Yu and Laura Barger, and two percussionists, Russell Greenberg and Ian Antonio. They visited Southeastern as part of their tour of the South.
Along with other selections, the percussion and piano quartet performed a piece written by one of our very own teachers, Philip Schuessler, called “Particle Fountain,” which made its first appearance that night, a world wide debut.
“I thought the premiere went really well; they seemed to capture the essence in what I was going for in terms of rhythm and energy and a lot of content,” said Schuessler after the performance. “They’re very precise, and the execution of the music is not always really easy music to play, but their ensemble was amazing.”
Yarn/Wire is a collaboration between composers and musicians working together to give the ultimate performance one would want to experience. Yu pointed out just how much the quartet and composers interact in order to accomplish a successful ensemble.
“The preparation often involves working with the composers, then working by ourselves, then working with the composers again,” said Yu, one of the pianists in the quartet.
Another goal of the quartet was to give teachers like Schuessler, whose highly modern sound is not what an audience expects to normally hear, a way to have their compositions heard.
“It’s just to get people exposed to this stuff because it’s new sounding and very abstract. You don’t know what to really listen to, and then it starts making sense,” said Antonio, one of the percussionists of the quartet. “So we’re trying to get this stuff out there just because people like Phil [Schuessler] or Daniel Koontz. They are not really just teachers; they’re composers too. So we want to get their art out there, essentially.”
The other pieces included “Flywheel,” composed by Daniel Koontz, “Linea” and “Symphonic Dances” from West Side Story by Bernstein.
The ensemble started with “Particle Fountain” and ended with “Symphonic Dances” to give the audience a taste of the modern music that has grown during this time and then taking the audience back and bringing them to familiar listening territory once more.
“The first half of the concert was contemporary music that was more focused on the atonal side of things where there weren’t familiar melodies that you could sing or hum; but there were many other aspects of features that were prominent such as things like rhythm and color,” said Schuessler. “The second half of the concert with the Bernstein piece brings an element of familiarity to the piece and shows the wide spectrum that an ensemble like this is able to cover in terms of what kind of music is out there.”
Schuessler was not the only onew who appreciated the diversity and talent of the quartet. Fellow students present during the event were able to appreciate the new, abstract sound introduced by the group.
“I think the combination of pianos and percussion creates a lot of interesting timbres and sounds that you don’t hear in more conventional ensembles, so it was really nice to hear,” said senior vocal music education major Heidi Matherne.
For more information about Yarn/Wire, visit their website, yarnwire.org.