2008-2009

Gods & Monsters, Fables & Film

This season we’ve found inspiration in our favorite movies, the myths we can’t shake and the machines that hum in what used to be the background. In three bold programs, including eight works that have never been performed in Chicago, you’ll see why Fulcrum Point has earned a decade-long reputation as the city’s leader in really new music.  Download press release here.

Season at Harris Theater for Music and Dance:

Other Concerts:
Concert Reviews:

Wednesday, November 12, 2008, 7:30 p.m.

Soundtracks in New-Art Music

Harris Theater for Music and Dance
205 East Randolph Drive, Chicago, IL

Johnny GreenwoodThis is the music that haunts you long after the lights come up. Herrmann’s slashing score to Psycho invented the sound of horror. Radiohead guitarist Greenwood unleashed the coiled tension of There Will Be Blood. Takemitsu tapped a fascination with aquatic life as deep as the ocean itself. And Nyman’s rushing melodies brought The Piano its rapture and sweep. These cinematic works --each accompanied by highlights from the films -- will set your spirit free and move you to lose yourself in ecstatic melody.

The net proceeds from this concert will fund Sound Tracks, Fulcrum Point’s innovative program that brings world and new music to Chicago Public Schools.

  • Psycho Narrative from 'Psycho' (1960) -- Bernard Herrmann
  • Popcorn Superhet Receiver from 'There Will Be Blood' (2007) -- Jonny Greenwood (Midwest Premiere)
  • Toward the Sea II from the Greenpeace 'Save the Whales' campaign (1983) -- Toru Takemitsu
  • The Piano For Strings from 'The Piano' (1992) -- Michael Nyman

Featured Artists:
  • Mary Stolper, flute
  • Kara Bershad, harp
  • Lori Kaufman, piano

Press Clippings

Sound Tracks


Ticket prices include a post-concert reception with the artists, featuring hors d’oeuvres by Rome's Joy Catering and wines generously donated by Chicago-based Vin DiVino Ltd. Importers.

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Tuesday, January 20, 2009, 7:30 p.m.

Modern MythsVajrapani

Harris Theater for Music and Dance
205 East Randolph Drive, Chicago, IL
View press release

Tap into the power of myth as Fulcrum Point harnesses music, literature and dance to explore the world’s most ancient archetypes. Melissa Thodos will unveil Aries, set to Stockhausen’s haunting, zodiac-inspired music. Danielpour’s sensuous song cycle illuminates Ranier Marie Rilke’s Orpheus poems, recasting the Greek story in tones so rich they could raise the dead. Vajracharya will dance an invocation to Vajrapani, Buddhism’s fearsome warrior-protector, and Vir’s Hayagriva darts into the concert hall like its namesake: the horse-headed man of wisdom in sacred literature from India and Tibet.

  • Aries (World Premiere) -- dance by Thodos Dance Company, music by Karlheinz Stockhausen
  • Sonnet to Orpheus (Chicago Premiere) -- Richard Danielpour
  • Vajrapani (World Premiere) -- dance by Prajwal Ratna Vajracharya set to traditional Tantric Buddhist music
  • Hayagriva (American Premiere) -- Param Vir
  • Sonnet to Orpheus (Chicago Premiere) -- Richard Danielpour

Featured Artists

Conversation with featured artists/composer Param Vir, from London, at Donor Room: 9:15 PM - 9:45 PM.  Ticket prices include a post-concert wine and cheese reception with wine generously provided by Vin Divino and food prepared by C'estSiBon!

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Tuesday, March 3, 2009, 7:30 p.m.

Dada Machinations

Harris Theater for Music and Dance
205 East Randolph Drive, Chicago, IL
View press release

Dada Machinations


The Dada movement blazed the trail for rock’s anarchy, pop culture’s self-consuming humor, and the outrageous investigations of Fluxus. Antheil’s Ballet mécanique fills the stage with airplane propellers, sirens, alarms, two grand pianos and eight synchronized player pianos—it vivifies the Dada manifesto. Carrying that spirit forward, Zuidam’s Three Mechanisms pulsates with the rebellious spirit of punk. Ter Veldhuis shares his pop media obsession using a boom box full of sound bites in Lipstick. And Miller’s Remote Music questions the very idea of performance.

Hanna Higgins and the UIC Fluxus Ensemble will stage performance pieces throughout the building before the concert; arrive early for the artistic mayhem!

To meet Jacob ter Veldhuis in person for a Q/A, please join us in the donors' room at the post-concert reception.

  • Three Mechanisms (Chicago Premiere) -- Robert Zuidam
  • Lipstick (Chicago Premiere) -- Jacob ter Veldhuis
  • Remote Music -- (World Premiere of a new version for multiple keyboards) Larry Miller
  • Ballet mécanique (Midwest Premiere of original version) -- George Antheil

Featured Artists
  • Mary Stolper -- flute/alto flute and boom box
  • Kuang-Hao Huang -- pianist
  • Amy Briggs -- pianist
  • Alison Knowles, Fluxus Artist
  • Simon Anderson, Fluxus Artist
  • Hannah Higgins and the UIC Fluxus Ensemble

Press Clippings

Special thanks to Consulates General of The Netherlands in Chicago and New York for Jacob ter Veldhuis' attendance at the concert.



Story & Clark Player Pianos courtesy of QRS Music

Photo: Essen Ensemble Musikfabrik; Photo credit: http://www.antheil.org

Ticket prices include a post-concert reception with the artists, featuring hors d’oeuvres with wines generously donated by Chicago-based Vin DiVino Ltd. Importers.

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Sunday, Feb 8, 2009, 11:00 a.m.

"WFMT's Live From the Morse" with on air host: Dennis Moore

The Morse Theater
1328 Morse Avenue (one block east of the Morse Red Line station), Chicago, IL
Admission $10

  • Madrigali Spirituali -- Vivian Fine
  • Quartet #3 -- Yuri Falik
  • 7 Popular Spanish Songs -- Manuel de Falla/Stephen Burns

Featured Artists
  • Stephen Burns, trumpet
  • Mathias Tacke, violin
  • Rika Seko, violin
  • Claudia Lasereff-Mironoff, viola
  • Mark Brandfonbrener, cello

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Monday, March 9, 2009, 6:30 p.m.

Devon Avenue, A Kendall College Monday Night Dining Series event

The Dining Room, Kendall College
900 N. North Branch Street, Chicago, IL

PathakKalyan Pathak's Indian Music Duo presents ancient Sanskrit chants, classical music compositions and poetry from various periods in Indian literature. Experience the famous songs of Meera, Kabir and Tagore and folkloric songs of north India, as well as stories accompanied by Tabla drums and Tanpura drones.

The musical performance and seating begin at 6:30 p.m., with dinner to start at about 7:00 p.m.

The Menu:
  • Duet of Indian Appetizers with Tamarind Chutney & Mint Cilantro Sauce
  • Tomato Lentil Soup
  • Cucumber Raita, Chick Peas & Yogurt
  • Tandoori Chicken, Cardamom & Saffron Scented Basmati Rice
  • Dessert - be delighted!

Tickets:
$38 per person. Includes non-alcoholic beverages and sales tax, but does not include gratuity.
Dining Room Reservations: 312.752.2328.

Tabla virtuoso and multi-ethnic percussionist, Kalyan Pathak, has played with many international artists from jazz, classical and jam band settings such as, Yo-Yo Ma, The Chicago Symphony, Fareed Haque Group, Howard Levy, Pacifica String Quartet, Theodore Bikel and Alberto Mizrah. Kalyan Pathak is currently one of the ethnic musicians teaching and performing at the CPS under the "SOUND TRACKS - Exploring the Global Cultures Through World and New Music" educational outreach program, a free program for the schools presented by Fulcrum Point New Music Project.

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Saturday, April 25, 2009, 12:00 p.m. and 2:30 p.m.

Fulcrum Point at the Master Class/Brass Choir Concert

Presented by the Elgin Youth Symphony Orchestra
First Congregational Church
256 E. Chicago St., Elgin, IL

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Tuesday, May 12, 2009, 5:30 pm.

Open rehearsal of works by Vivian Fung, Aenon Loo and Ng King-pan featured in the upcoming May 19 'Hong Kong at the Fulcrum Point' concert.

New Music Readings to celebrate MayFest
Presented by New Music Chicago
Darnton & Hersh Fine Violins Stradivari Music & Arts Center
30 East Adams Street, Suite 1200 (12th Floor), Chicago, IL

One hour, including informal discussion with musicians

Due to limited seating RSVP is required before May 8.
Please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with your full contact information
(Name/Organization/Title/full address/daytime phone number/email address)  

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Tuesday, May 19, 2009, 7:30 PM

Hong Kong at the Fulcrum Point

The Thorne Auditorium of Northwestern University
375 E Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL 60611
View press release

The 笙 Sheng meets the Trumpet! A rare collaboration featuring Stephen Burns and the Fulcrum Point New Music Project with Hong Kong's own Chinese Music Virtuosi, plus special appearances by the Thodos Dance Chicago and the Bei Dou Kung Fu Troupe. A one night only, old & new Chinese music concert experience celebrating the "Hong Kong Comes to Chicago 2009" Festival!

Guest Artists:

FREE ADMISSION

Click here to watch an excerpt video from the performance!

Presented by Fulcrum Point New Music Project in partnership with Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office New York

RSVP is required to redeem your e-ticket (Up to 4 tickets per RSVP)

Get e-tickets by emailing: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with full contact information before May 15
RSVP is required to receive your e-ticket for admission.

Paid Parking available nearby at the MCA (220 E Chicago Ave) or Erie Ontario Self Park (321 E Ontario St)



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Monday, June 15, 2009, 6:30 p.m.

Dusk Variations: A Chamber Series

Millenium Park
View press release

  • Droned by Dan Becker
  • Molten by Stefan Freund
  • Big Swiftly by Frank Zappa
  • Harry, You're A Beast
  • Orange County Lumber Truck
  • T'mershi Duween
  • Dupree's Paradise

Presented by the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Chicago
A preview of the concert will be broadcast on ABC TV news between 8 - 9:00 a.m. this Sunday, June 7.

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Chicago Tribune 06-10-09

Stephen Burns - guest conductor at the MusicNow finale concert on June 8, 2009

John von Rhein

"Various Chicago Symphony musicians took time out from the orchestra's Dvorak Festival to lend their talents to much newer music Monday night at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance. The season finale to the MusicNOW series was curated by CSO composers-in-residence Osvaldo Golijov and Mark-Anthony Turnage, each of whom contributed a work to the program.

Inspired by the music of Led Zeppelin, Turnage's "Out of Black Dust" (2007-8) is very jazzy, very loud and great fun, with restless meters and insistent rhythms that suggest a Saturday-morning jam session at the conservatory with the doors thrown wide open. The exhilarating performance by 10 CSO brass men and guests under Stephen Burns provided the raw energy needed to counterbalance the softer-edged works that made up the bulk of Monday's concert.

Jeremy Flower, a composer who performs on the laptop (a mini-synthesizer), took part in two of the four pieces, including his own "Self Destruct" (2009).

Scored for six strings, piano, marimba and laptop, the piece mingles soothing New Age harmonies and a Hollywood heavenly choir before breaking into a joyous rock groove near the end. This was its world premiere.

I enjoyed "Self Destruct" more than the other work integrating electronic and acoustic instruments, Michael Ward-Bergeman's "Three Roads" (2007).

The composer/performer played hyper-accordion, a bass accordion equipped with microphones controlled by switches and foot pedals.

The texts sung by Christina Courtin are derived from "road" poems by Dante Alighieri, Robert Frost and Walt Whitman. Her amplified, pop-singer-style vocals float in an otherworldly soup of pulsing, bell-like and environmental sounds.

Before drifting into the final song, Courtin abruptly smashed her violin to pieces, an act of violent catharsis that presumably (I'm guessing here) freed her spirit to travel Whitman's "open road" of love. This is the second piece of new music I've heard in two days that involved the destruction of a fiddle. Enough of this lazy gimmick, already!

The program began with Golijov's "Mariel," a lyrical threnody for solo cello over shimmering waves of marimba, played (from memory) by cellist Brant Taylor and percussionist Cynthia Yeh. One had nothing but praise for their performance as well as for the performances of their colleagues."

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Chicago Classical Review 05-20-09

When musical worlds collide, politely

Lawrence A. Johnson

Under the energetic and imaginative leadership of artistic director Stephen Burns, Fulcrum Point has been breaking down barriers between musical genres for over a decade, finding common ground between classical and rock, jazz, dance, and non-Western music.

Many varieties of stylistic hybrid were in play for “Hong Kong at the Fulcrum Point,” a concert presented Tuesday night at Thorne Auditorium. The evening was part of a month-long Hong Kong Comes to Chicago festival, an initiative equal parts commerce and culture. The former was manifest Tuesday with an opening speech by Hong Kong trade official Donald Tong and a slick, if somewhat heavy-handed infomercial extolling the virtues of Hong Kong for business and recreation.

The program featured an array of music by Hong Kong-based composers as well as works by Western composers of Asian descent. Fulcrum Point was joined by the Chinese Music Virtuosi, six musicians performing on traditional Eastern instruments.

The evening led off with the Hong Kong ensemble in Thunder in Drought and Autumn Moon Over the Placid Lake, traditional works that made a worthy introduction to the bracing sonorities and exotic (to Western ears) timbres of the Chinese instruments.

Fulcrum Point’s bridge-building between different genres was manifest in two works. Ng King-Pan’s Semblance of Invisible, heard in its world premiere, combines Chinese and Western instruments in music that is accompanied by a Tai Chi master. Dong Xia-fei’s fluid gestures reflected the music, highlighted by the haunting high sound of the huqin, a body-less stringed instrument. And Law Wing-Fai’s Yi Zhi Shan offered duo virtuosity as Lam Tsan-tong’s bravura solo pipa backed the vibrant improvisational dance of Mollie Mock, a dauntingly flexible member of the Thodos Dance Company.

The most individual work was Vivian Fung’s Chanted Rituals, heard in its Midwestern premiere. East really does meet West in the Canadian composer’s chant-based work for trumpeter and two percussionists, and Burns displayed impressive chops as soloist in the jazz-inflected opening Dance, switching to flugelhorn for the atmospheric central Prayer.

Loo Sze-wang was a forceful soloist in Tang Lok-Yin’s It is What it is, a scherzo-like concerto for the woodwind sheng, though much of the music felt like vamping without a strong idea.

The program was certainly offbeat and well performed by all the musicians. Though considering Fulcrum Point’s reputation for edgy, envelope-pushing programs—the group presented Antheil’s icon-smashing Ballet mecanique two months ago— much of the music sounded merely piquant and tame.

Aenon Jia-En Loo’s a bliss: day in, day out, composed specifically for the occasion joins all the musicians together. One kept waiting for the Fulcrum Point brass to explode at some point, but Loo’s work is content to have the Western instruments double the repetitive, easy-going lines of the Chinese players, making a rather anti-climatic coda to a diverting if over-polite musical evening.

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Chicago Sun-Times 03-05-09

Termites running the asylum

Bryant Manning

The late painter and film critic Manny Farber famously denounced movies that were self-important, preachy, ornate temples of a bygone European sensibility. "White elephant art," he called it. Instead, Farber much preferred "termite art," which constantly nibbled away at artistic boundaries, making spontaneous decisions with no conscious intention of becoming a masterpiece.

You could say Tuesday night's concert at Harris Theater was, more or less, a musical tribute to termite art. The tirelessly creative Fulcrum Point New Music Project dug up a handful of absurdist creations that festered and crawled under the floorboards of the 20th century. Artistic director Stephen Burns titled this entertainingly nutty program "Dada Machinations," a celebration of the coexistence of music and machine.

As one of its many exemplars, George Antheil's supremely chaotic "Ballet mecanique" (1924) may in fact be a Dada masterpiece. Yet it isn't hard to see why a relatively well-known work like this hadn't received its Midwest premiere until now, since a pretty penny is spent on the requisite equipment alone: eight player pianos, two grand pianos, assorted percussion, airplane propellers, sirens, whistles, fans, etc. Not to mention the tough task of coordinating countless human and non-human components in lockstep.

When accomplished, "Ballet mecanique" is a spectacle hard to forget, and Burns conducted with outsize ambition, giving the performance a primal intensity. The thousands of notes that poured over ritualistic drum cadences clutched the audience and didn't let go. Kudos to Amy Briggs, whose sheet music scattered about, thanks to an overly aggressive propeller, but who unflinchingly soldiered on.

From the John Cage school of Fluxus -- often characterized by humor and extreme simplicity --the world premiere of Larry Miller's "Remote Music" (1976) risibly featured three grand pianos awaiting slowly descending cords from the ceiling. Attached to the end of those cords were stuffed gloves, eventually plunking down on the piano keys and sending the audience into a fit of laughter. In Jacob TV's engaging 1998 "Lipstick," flutist Mary Stolper, as a one-woman show, produced sparkling timbres over a short-circuiting boombox.

Dutch composer Robert Zuidam's "Three Mechanisms" (1991) seemed like residue from the postwar avant-garde. Sounding like a Glenn Miller big band strung out on amphetamines, the music's clever rhythmical layers highlighted an otherwise long-winded chamber suite. Performances from the 14-piece ensemble were, however, thoroughly detailed and vibrant.

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Chicago Tribune 03-05-09

Fulcrum Point's heart belongs to Dada

John von Rhein

The only limits Chicago's Fulcrum Point New Music Project sets for itself are those of artistic director Stephen Burns' questing and apparently limitless imagination. The ensemble closed its 10th anniversary season Tuesday at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance with an absorbing program of new and new-old music made or inspired by machines.

The influence of Dada and Surrealism was strongly felt in George Antheil's "Ballet mecanique," one of the most notorious examples of avant-garde experimentation of the 1920s; and three works that carried his fascination with mechanistic processes into the late 20th Century.

At its New York premiere in 1927 "Ballet mecanique" touched off one of modern music's biggest scandals. Scored for 16 player pianos, two human-played pianos, three airplane propellers, xylophones, bass drums, electric bells, siren and tam-tam, its highly rhythmic din dragged the industrial age into the concert hall.

Fulcrum Point billed its Midwest premiere as the original score. Not quite: Burns used only (only!) eight player pianos and two propellers. The performance still packed a wallop. Antheil's chugging, noisy proto-minimalism at times suggests Stravinsky and Varese, but much less sophisticated. The Fulcrum Point players, synchronized to an amazing degree, made me glad to experience this once-shocking, now-dated period piece in the flesh. Once was enough.
Maximal minimalism was the driving force behind the Dutch post-minimalists Jacob ter Veldhuis' "Lipstick" and Robert Zuidam's "Three Mechanisms."

The Veldhuis was a delight, melding Mary Stolper's nimble flutes with a boombox blasting a manic collage of American pop culture and speech. The Zuidam pulsed with off-kilter repeating rhythms over dense modernist harmonies laced with big-band and Latin grooves.

Completing the program was University of Illinois at Chicago Fluxus Ensemble composer Larry Miller's "Remote Music."

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Chicago Sun-Times 01-22-09

Fulcrum Point balances modern realities with exotic myths in eclectic program

Hedy Weiss

As Stephen Burns readily admitted Tuesday night in his remarks to the audience at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, scheduling a concert on Inauguration Day -- particularly this Inauguration Day -- might not have been the best idea, and it was entirely inadvertent. Yet as it turned out, Burns' ensemble -- the ever-adventurous Fulcrum Point New Music Project -- delivered a fascinating program, "Modern Myths," that could not have been a more ideal reflection of the tremendously varied roots of the 44th president. And in their own way, the four artfully juxtaposed works on the program had more to say about the interplay of world cultures than any round table of television commentators.

Though contemporary ears have become a great deal more attuned to both atonal music and "world beats" in recent years, "new music," which draws on both these traditions, remains a very hard sell. But Burns has become a master at employing imaginative strategies to draw in even reluctant listeners. And the "Modern Myths" lineup, which looked at both European and Asian forms of myths, and what might be termed "cosmic currents," showcased several of them.

Guest artist Tantric Buddhist dance master Prajwal Ratna Vajracharya is part of "Modern Myths" at Harris Theater.

Burns began the evening with "Aries," a section of a larger work about the signs of the zodiac written by Karlheinz Stockhausen, one of the 20th century's most renowned new music pioneers. And he invited Chicago choreographer Melissa Thodos to create a work for her company of 12 precise, unaffected dancers that captures the music's playful sense of space and mythic characters. With its clever patterning, original gestures and cyclical structure, Thodos' pieces proved to be a sophisticated yet accessible evocation of the composer's musical mathematics, and it brought genuine accessibility to the score. Burns played the bravura trumpet accompaniment and almost became a 13th member of Thodos' cast by way of his graceful moves through the action.

American composer Richard Danielpour turned to the poetry of the great 20th century German lyric poet Rainer Maria Rilke for the texts of his song cycle "Sonnets to Orpheus." And the 15 razor-sharp musicians of the Fulcrum Point ensemble gave a sublime performance of this exquisite, gently mystical, alternately frolicking and meditative work. Soprano Mary Mackenzie (in an ivory gown that had a hint of classical Greece about it) was the radiant soloist who delivered immensely varied and expressive renderings of the cycle's six songs. Danielpour's music has a touch of eclecticism that recalls Leonard Bernstein -- alternately atonal, romantic, jazzy, dreamily impressionistic and always rich in color and nuance.

The Nepalese dance master Prajwal Ratna Vajracharya opened the program's second half with a solo performance of "Vajrapani," a traditional ritualistic solo evoking one of the more aggressive "protector" deities. A taped chant blended with the heavy necklace of bells he wore for musical accompaniment. The dancer did not even take a bow for this demanding and quite formal dance is, for him, less a performance than a sacred rite.

Finally, the program featured the American premiere of Param Vir's "Hayagriva" (horse-headed incarnation of the Indo-Tibetan deity Vishnu, who is associated with wisdom and knowledge). Vir, a Dehli-born composer now based in London, has conjured rhythms and colors vaguely reminiscent of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." His work is a stunner, with the sounds of harp, timpani, chimes, clarinet and strings all superbly rendered here. The composer was on hand for well-deserved bows, and he saluted the brilliant musicians in turn.

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Chicago Sun-Times 11-14-08

'Popcorn,' from 'Blood' score, gets a performance worthy of its significance

Bryant Manning

As Daniel-Day Lewis won the best actor Academy Award this year for his role as Daniel Plainview -- that ruthless wretch of an oil tycoon in P.T. Anderson's film "There Will Be Blood"-- the unbearably tense musical score that completed his character didn't even earn a nomination.

"Popcorn Superhet Receiver," written by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, was declared ineligible because the rocker hadn't written the music specifically for the movie, even though it was one of 2007's most original and compelling scores.

Oscar's stubbornness aside, artistic director Stephen Burns and Fulcrum Point New Music Project gave the Midwestern premiere of Greenwood's "Popcorn" in full Wednesday night at the Harris Theater. Launching its 10th anniversary season with a program called "Soundtracks in New-Art Music," Fulcrum Point provided images from each film that flickered above the mini-orchestra.

Influenced by Krzysztof Penderecki's chaotic "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima," Greenwood similarly piled on quarter tones into clusters to create the illusion of mental unrest in his disturbing soundscape. Violent pizzicati would give way to soft, anguished purring, and when the strings reached a fever pitch, it gave off the effect of pushing down all the organ keys at once. This was a score worthy of a concert setting, and Fulcrum Point's musicians gave it a memorable sendoff.

Almost 50 years later, the mama of all horror soundtracks, Bernard Hermann's all-string score to Hitchcock's "Psycho," still unnerves us. The chamber ensemble played possessed, from the zigzagging opening credits all the way through Norman Bates' final sinister smile. Strangely, Detective Arbogast's famous bird's-eye view staircase meeting with "Mother" was completely out of sync with the orchestra, and Hermann's signature shrieking chords didn't even begin until the detective was falling halfway down the stairs.

More optimistic in tone were Toru Takemitsu's thematic "Toward the Sea II" (featured in the 1983 Greenpeace "Save the Whales" campaign) and Michael Nyman's luscious score for "The Piano." Alto flutist Mary Stopler and harpist Kara Bershad partnered against the backdrop of this heavily Debussy-influenced music. While the few whale photos were provided with good intentions, they were ultimately unnecessary.

Burns rearranged Nyman's score to include a piano part, and Wednesday night was its world premiere. It was hard not to think back on Harris Theater's other film music night, when pianist Michael Riesman played Philip Glass' uplifting "The Hours" Suite. This was effusively emotional music, and pianist Lori Kaufman showed no signs of downplaying its full throttle neo-Romanticism.

Bryant Manning is a local free-lance writer.

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Chicago Tribune, 3-20-08

'Omega' Caps Off Fulcrum Point's Epic Journey

Michael Cameron

In an era of ever-shrinking attention spans, Fulcrum Point's five-year concert series, "Essential Arts: Essential Elements," seemed especially audacious at its inauguration in 2003. The ensemble reached the conclusion of the ambitious cycle Tuesday night at Harris Theater with works by composers dear to music director and conductor Stephen Burns. Subtitled "Omega: Earth on Fire," the rather grandiose evocation of a latter-day "Götterdämmerung" may have seemed like a rhetorical stretch, but Burns' commentary stitched together a plausible final act. Derek Bermel's "Continental Divide" opened promisingly, with bold statements that incrementally developed fissures. While intermittently fascinating, it succeeded more as a sonic experiment than a finished musical expression. Steven Mackey's "Ground Swell" grew out of a similar disconnect between ends and means, but the conflict worked itself out more fruitfully. Threads of Americana emerged now and then, but they were colored in unexpected ways. Exhilaration was the guiding force at times, while other passages seemed overcome by vertigo and fatigue. The sophisticated orchestration certainly helped Mackey's cause, as did the superb artistry of violist Hsin-Yun Huang. Her tone was rich and earthy, and she negotiated each phrase with remarkable agility and expressive acumen.

After some early imbalances between soloist and ensemble, Burns and company settled into an impressively authoritative reading. The most vivid memories of the piece were its risky, lopsided proportions. The opening movement ("Approach to Sea") was cut brutally short just as its material began to take shape, while the finale ("Sailing Away") was leisurely, loose and gently repetitive.

"Inner Demons" by the local composer Stacy Garrop seemed at first to be an unabashedly neo-romantic movement with source material redolent of sundry dances and hymn-tunes. The performance was committed and genuine, if a bit untidy. One of Bermel's mentors was Dutchman Louis Andriessen, the composer of the series finale, "Racconto Dall'Inferno." With a text from Dante's "Inferno" as inspiration, the work is a brilliantly evocative mono-drama, sung on this occasion by soprano Tony Arnold with complete technical command and deeply felt artistry.

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Chicago Tribune, 1/31/08

Chicago's Fulcrum Point Enters 10th Season With a Performance Full of 'Essential Elements'

John von Rhein

"The Fulcrum Point New Music Project is devoting the fifth and final season of its multi-year exploration, "Essential Art: Essential Elements," to a condensed recap of all the elements. Indeed, the concert that began the group's 10th anniversary season Tuesday at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance vaulted through time and space before reaching for the cosmic light.

Like another of Chicago's splendid contemporary groups, eighth blackbird, artistic director Stephen Burns' ensemble has hitched its star to the Harris Theater in hopes of attracting larger audiences and greater funding. The sizable, attentive crowd that turned out for Tuesday's event suggested it is well on its way toward realizing the first objective. The world premiere of Geoffrey Gordon's "Lux Solis Aeterna" (2007) shared the bill with the Midwest premieres of Sebastian Currier's "Nightmaze" (2005) and Richard Danielpour's "River of Light" (2007). Duke Ellington's "The River" added a symphonic jazz classic to this bracing and brainy mix of new music. Gordon's opus for 13 players -- the Latin title means "Eternal Light of the Sun" -- tries, and succeeds, to evoke cosmic beauty in a dozen minutes of acutely crafted music. The sun rises in iridescent shimmers and sprays of instrumental color, now quiet and glowing, now fierce and eruptive. There is a sacred subtext but the sonic evolution may be enjoyed as pure music, complete with a bebop interlude led by two saxophones. The multimedia "Nightmaze" lasts three times as long and packs half the impact. Currier's pulsing, nervous rhythms for nine-member chamber ensemble under gird a hallucinatory road trip based on a scenario by novelist Thomas Bolt. The text, read by Sandra Binion, has a sleep-deprived college student dreaming of speeding along a blackened highway that has road signs indicating psychic forks and turnoffs -- terror, death, ego, id, infinity and so forth.

I had a couple of problems with the piece. Sage Marie Carter's stark video conspired with the surreal text to reduce Currier's often inventive score to mere accompaniment. Also, entire chunks of narration were drowned out by the musicians or rendered unintelligible by the amplification. Danielpour's elegiac violin ruminations, framed by the piano's tart and muscular chords, were sensitively taken by violinist Sharon Polifrone and pianist Kuang-Hao Huang. Lovely piece. Burns' lush, 44-piece orchestra had a ball with the Ellington suite, and so did the audience.

All four performances, for that matter, represented Fulcrum Point at its considerable best."

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