Sarah Hennies is an American percussionist and composer who currently teaches at Bard College in New York State. Suoni per il popolo welcomed her last night in a two-part performance strongly marked by contrasting post-minimalisms.
In the first part, she was accompanied by her colleague Tristan Kasten-Krause on double bass, in a piece that unfolded slowly and built like a dynamic arch. Frictional drones on both double bass and vibraphone (Hennies rubs the keys of the instrument with the bow) open the piece, which is eventually disrupted by the use of objects such as a metal bar, cowbells and other resonant instruments. Then it’s back to the high-pitched rubbing, plunging the Sala Rossa into a bath of intense tinnitus. If Kitty and Puppy had been there, they would have had epileptic fits. That said, I really enjoyed this offering, a kind of study of timbres that are as much fusional as they are clashing.
In the second half, Hennies made way for the Quatuor Bozzini, who performed her score Borrowed Light, a Canadian premiere. A substantial and demanding work lasting an hour, it requires sustained concentration to grasp the subtleties of the transformations created in the endlessly repeated motifs.
To me, the first half seemed to lack breath and discursive purpose. Seduction too. I would have cut a good part of it. In this genre, Morton Feldman does it better, and more poetically. I was just about to give up when the second half-hour gathered momentum and became more interesting, with more dynamic architectural constructions that held the attention better. A friend present at the venue, who is used to the avant-garde and has seasoned ears, thought the opposite: she enjoyed the first half more, the second much less. Of course, I make no claim to the truth.
All in all, an evening of music of mixed quality and pleasure, but of impressive quality nonetheless.
