Lipowski was opening the show with Mani.Matta (2008), one of a series of solo percussion works Billone has composed. Mani means "hands" in Italian and Lipowski did sometimes use his hands directly on the gong, as well as on the woodblock, log drums and marimba that made up the rest of his kit. More often he used a variety of mallets, sometimes two to a hand, displaying extraordinary technique as he flawlessly executed the difficult patterns. Most remarkable was how Lipowski found the pulse that Billone laced through the work, a kind of connective tissue that was more felt than heard. While there were a lot of hard, sharp sounds in the piece, there was a spellbinding section when Lipowski employed these huge, soft mallets to caress clouds of sound out of the wood. It created an atmosphere in the room that I could have existed within for a very long time.
Mani.Matta is a fairly long work at about 20 minutes and Lipowski threw himself into it, for a splashy, engaging performance. I'm looking forward to listening to it again in the recording by Adam Weisman, a Billone collaborator. You can also see an excerpt of Lipowski's world-premiere performance of Billone's Mani.Mono for springdrum here - fantastic stuff.
The second piece we heard was Ini (2003) for solo bassoon, the third section of Legno.Edre, a five-part work that lasts over an hour. However, Ini had never been performed before and we had the privilege of hearing it come to life more than a decade after Billone completed it. Adrian Morejon was the soloist and he had complete command of the extended techniques used by Billone. There were honking sounds and high, whispery effects, and an overall sense of tumult. Legno means "wood" in Italian and it is a long tradition to impart anthropomorphic qualities to trees, which is where I found my mind drifting as I listened. "Would it be nuts to say Billone's Legno.Edre is an elegy for the wood that created the bassoon?" I tweeted when the work ended. Not nuts, I say. Listen for yourself to another section of Legno.Edre performed by Chris Watford.
The final work was a U.S. premiere of Ebe and Anders (2014) for seven instruments, including two percussionists wearing gongs. They mirrored each other on either side of the stage with similar but not identical arrays that included a lot of metal, including large sheets of steel or iron. While Billone considers the trumpet and trombone the soloists in Ebe and Anders, it was impossible for the incisive clanks of the large metal sheets not to dominate. Occasionally, they traded sounds like dueling swordsmen, lending an air of gladiatorial combat to the music. The brass, along with electric guitar, piano and cello, sometimes provided relief from the hard textures of the percussion and sometimes exacerbated the industrial textures with brief explosions.
Lipowski's partner in crime was Matthew Gold, and joining them was Jeffrey Missal (trumpet and flugelhorn), Mike Lormand (trombone), Stephen Gosling (piano), Oren Fader (guitar), and Chris Gross (cello). All the players were excellent and navigated Billone's twists and turns with aplomb, ably conducted by Eduardo Leandro. The writing for piano, cello, and guitar was so advanced that they often sounded as one, although there was a moment when Gross dealt out a nasty riff that probably made Fader (and any guitarists in the audience) completely jealous.
The sense of ritual moment defined by Mani.Matta continued throughout Ebe and Anders, making the audience something more than just listeners. We were witnesses, actively engaged in bringing Billone's extraordinary music into the open. I felt lucky to be a part of it.
You can hear Klangforum Wien perform Ebe and Anders here.
The background to the image above is by the American artist Gordon Matta-Clark, the dedicatee of Mani.Matta.
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