Adore? No...

Went to see ADORNO perform works by Derek Bermel and a piece by Joel Friedman last night, accompanied by Dan and Hdez. Second new music concert this week, and I was disappointed again. As a clarinetist, Bermel definately has chops. But his music, while not awful, was not something I was really excited about either. Too much glissandi and growling for my taste, especially in "Coming Together." Sounded like the effect the Deak piece on the concert I heard a few weeks ago (the one with David Ogden Stiers) except that it didn't have the cool conceptual thing behind it, it just sounded like the adults in Charlie Brown. I guess those things feel like tricks to me, using techniques like that, or maybe that they were used so often, it felt like those were the only tricks in the bag. I don't know. Or maybe I'm just pissed because I can't do them =)

I think of all the pieces I heard last night, "Thracian Sketches" was the best, followed by Mulatash Stomp, and then I didn't really care. I definately liked that it took halfway through Thracian to finally get over the break, I liked that the piece started out subtone-ish and gradually got louder. I think it was a fairly successful solo instrument piece (and there are a lot of bad solo clarinet pieces out there...let me tell you).

Soul Garden, I liked the idea he had when he sang it at the keyboard, but as a string sextet, I think it got lost in translation. It didn't sound as soulful.

The post concert talk was stupid. It should have been a pre-concert talk, so we'd know what to listen for. And for a concert whose works were mostly Bermel's, and one of Friedman's, Friedman did a lot of rambling...most of which I couldn't follow.

Maybe the fact that I was/am sick had an effect on how I veiwed the concert, maybe it put me in a pissy mood so that I wouldn't have liked it no matter who I was listening too, but I think not. It is just disappointing to have two new music concerts in a single week, and neither of them being great.