KORI BARKLEY
Special to The Leader
Each semester Retro, the Fredonia School of Music’s faculty chamber music group, puts on a concert presenting music of the 20th century.
Last Tuesday’s Retro Special was not one to be missed. Held on April Fool’s day, School of Music professors Sinobu Takagi, Karolyn Stonefelt, David Rose, David Colwell, Mary Marden Cobb, Susan Royal, Marc Guy, Phyllis East and Maureen Yuen performed what they termed the “lighter side of 20th century chamber music.”
The concert was a blast from the start and the faculty made it clear that they wanted the audience in on all the jokes.
Cobb and Takagi opened the program arriving on stage in folksy outfits that resembled nursery rhyme characters. The duo performed Carrie Jacob-Bond’s song-cycle “Half Minute Songs.” Each song exceeded no more than five measures and included simple messages about success, forgiveness and gratitude while Takagi made comical gestures that coincided with each.
“Keep Awake” was the last song of the cycle and declared that “success never comes to the sleeping.” In the performance, Takagi had to wake Cobb up as she “fell asleep” on the piano.
Up next was the David duo. Colwell and Rose performed a piece titled “Moz-Art for Two Violins,” by Alfred Schnittke. “Imagine Mozart themes put through a meat grinder,” Rose said as they tuned their violins to produce a pitch that doesn’t regularly sound on the violin.
Within the piece, Mozart’s famous 40th Symphony in G minor was twisted in and around itself in various ways. Each violin played original melodies but with an accompaniment in a different key, producing rough harmonies and purposeful squeaking with occasional pitch bending.
The faculty had the audience in hysterics the whole time, particularly during the third piece.
Igor Stravinsky’s “Three Easy Pieces” was complemented with a somewhat impromptu skit. Featured on one piano was Cobb and East performing a march, a waltz and a polka, with Royal dysfunctionally turning pages for them. Meanwhile, Stonefelt had percussion instruments ready to play and was waiting for a cue, but never received one; she became confused and irritated. Shinobu appeared with a duster and began cleaning everything as Colwell took pictures with his iPhone.
“The original idea was to have someone walking across the stage doing something normal during each movement,” Cobb explained. “Then when we asked people if they would do that, it kind of took a life of its own.”
As the piece ended, the audience noticed some spelling errors. Instead of an intermission, an “intermissing” took place. In another typo the composer’s dates read as (1807-1742?). These were a purposeful addition of comedy to the performance.
After the intermission, Colwell and Rose performed another duet, however this time both on opposite ends of one instrument and accompanied by Cobb. “Sonata for Viola Four Hands and Harpsichord” by P.D.Q. Bach also featured sophomore musical theatre major Billy Blair.
“When Rose asked if anyone wanted to play the viola with two string professors, I couldn’t refuse,” Blair explained. “Ms. Cobb on the piano helped as the musicians followed very carefully as I hacked that bow at the poor viola. They were great sports and I had a blast!”
P. D. Q. Bach is a fictitious composer created by musical satirist Peter Schickele. According to Schickele’s website, “The name ‘P. D. Q.’ is a parody of the three-part names given to some members of the Bach family that are commonly reduced to initials, such as C. P. E., for Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. [As Bach’s ‘only forgotten son’] P. D. Q is an initialism for ‘pretty damn quick.’”
Next on the program was another P.D.Q Bach piece, “Four Folk Song Upsettings,” which involved Cobb and Takagi with a vocal and piano duet and Stonefelt on “devious instruments.” These included tuned plastic percussion tubes called boomwhackers, an ocarina (an ancient small wind blown instrument made of clay, with a few holes for change of pitch), a tuba mirum (a clear, plastic tube filled with water disguised as wine in the performance) and manicotti pasta.
“The Farmer in the Dole,” the fourth movement of the piece, was a parody of “The Farmer in the Dell” and included humourous lyrics like “Hi-ho spaghettio” and “You never know when the fertilizer is going to hit the fan.” Another satirical element was found in the name “tuba mirum,” as it was taken from a phrase in the Latin Requiem Mass.
The highlight of the night was the last piece, “Balloonology” by Chris Crockarell. Each of the nine faculty members marched on stage dressed in black with amusing accessories like silly hats and broken glasses. All at once they began playing balloons.
They produced a variety of sounds by plucking on the tied ends, inflating and deflating the balloons, rubbing their fingers along the rubber, rhythmically shaking rice inside of the balloons and popping them with paper clips. There was even a moment where they all screamed in time together. It was apparent that they were all having fun.
“‘Balloonology’ was actually the hardest thing,” Cobb explained. “You see all these serious faculty and heavy-duty performers and they’re out there trying to play balloons! [Rose] is like a virtuoso on the darn thing, so he’s the one who showed some of us how to do everything because we couldn’t get any sound out of it. Also, I picked up a balloon after I had popped the first one and I went to blow up the balloon and it had a hole in it. It was crazy!”
Throughout the concert, members of the audience were heard saying things such as “This is great. I’m so happy right now!” and “That made my day so much better!”
Due to such positive feedback, Retro is considering doing a similar comical performance style every couple of years.