Celestial City

Ossia performing at Kilburn Hall on the University of Rochester campus in April 2015
Ossia performing at Kilburn Hall on the University of Rochester campus in April 2015

The music students here look a little stiff. They are sometimes awkward but most often confident and professional. They are so much fun watch as they scurry about, setting up for the next piece, then tuning and snapping into performance mode. Ossia, the Eastman student-run group dedicated to performing work by contemporary composers, put on their last show of the year, a program called “Colors of the Celestial City” (sounds like a Sun Ra title) and it was an especially good one.

Contemporary can mean almost anything but it is mostly defined by what it is not, European classical. Their previous show integrated programed music played through a sound system into the various performances. I could do without that. The students have access to every instrument imaginable. They are unbelievable performers and their theatre, Kilbourn Hall, guarantees the instruments will sound their best. Computer generated sounds coming through the PA just doesn’t sound as good in this setting.

After the first two pieces, a guy in the small group sitting near us said, “That first piece was avant garde but that second piece, I’ve never heard anything like that.” So the avant guard is now quantifiable, limited. This is contemporary music. Our favorite piece of the night, George Benjamin’s “Octet (1978)”, was something that reminded us of the dreamy soundtrack to Altmans “Three Women.”

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