Textures and Layers

From SFCMP program note writer Beth E. Levy, on Brian Current's Strata:

Brian Current’s music brims with energy—sometimes with the propulsive rhythms of minimalist music, sometimes with a more delicate sense of flux, but almost always with a sense of motion and playfulness about the treatment of time and texture. These features have won him numerous honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Barlow Prize for Orchestral Music and Italy’s Premio Fedora for his chamber opera Airline Icarus (2010).

Current’s temporal plasticity is especially compelling in his large ensemble scores For the Time Being (1999) and Symphonies in Slanted Time (2005). In the latter, Current explains, the music “is always speeding up or always slowing down. Rather than write music for a steady metronome, I wondered if it were possible to make the change in tempo the normal state of the music...using rejuvenation to create constantly changing textures.”

He has put these principles to a variety of expressive uses, in works such as Whirling Dervish (2010) or the orchestral tone poem Kazabazua (2002, revised 2006), which describes the “flow and restlessness” of a partially underground river in the Gatineau hills north of Ottawa.

Current’s virtuoso handling of instrumental ensembles stems in part from his work as a conductor. He has served at the helm of new music groups (the Esprit Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Ensemble Nouvel Moderne) and about 12 symphony orchestras. In addition, perhaps linked to his experience on the conductor’s podium, is a very sensitive, almost tactile treatment of musical texture—the interplay between discrete lines of material or groups of players in the moment of performance. This preoccupation is readily apparent in This Isn’t Silence (1998, revised 2001), which lends its title to a 1997 CD of his music released by Centredisques. It can also be heard in Current’s Concertino for flute, string orchestra and three flutes dispersed around the concert hall. Here, he “imagined blanketing the hall of with the sound of flutes positioned at the back of the room. At times they act as distant relatives to the solo line but more often they fill out the sound with tumbling gestures of their own.”

A similarly imaginative handling of texture can be seen and heard in Current’s new score, Strata. The title refers to the layering of musical material found throughout the work. “Often there are layers or patterns that overlap with themselves,” he says. “Musical shapes are also created by widening glissando lines played by the strings. In writing the piece I was looking for music that was very energetic and virtuosic, but also moments that are calm despite the surging activity.”


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Tradition, Influence, Evolution
Program includes the world premiere of Strata.
Monday, February 28 at 8:00 pm
Herbst Theatre, San Francisco
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