February 10, 2025
“SPARK!”
Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) of Georgia
Atlanta, Georgia – USA
ensemble vim: Robert Anemone, violin; Nicole Frankel, flutes; Choo Choo Hu, piano; Laura Usiskin, cello; Emily Koh, technology. artist/composer pairs: Alan Caomin Xie + Ofir Klemperer, Kelly Taylor Mitchell + Chelsea Loew, Martha Whittington + Will Kim.
Chelsea LOEW: A Homegoing (2025)
┌ Ofir KLEMPERER: Destination Terminus (2025)
└ Alan Caomin XIE: Five Improvisa (2025)
Will KIM: Babel (2025)
Howard Wershil | 14 FEB 2025
A gardener chooses to plant a tree. Perhaps you see the tree being planted. Some years later, after the gardener has nurtured its growth, you may choose to return to that tree to see what fruit the tree has borne. The gardener may be there as well. A dialog ensues.
With the SPARK! initiative, ensemble vim has indeed planted quite the tree, and tonight we have the extreme pleasure of enjoying the fruit that tree bears in far less time than years.
As part of the SPARK! initiative announced in May 2024 (see my article on ensemble vim’s May 2024 performance), three visual artists were paired with three composers, with the expectation that the results generated from their collaborations would be unique, enticing and meaningful. Artist Kelly Taylor Mitchell was paired with composer Chelsea Loew; artist Martha Whittington with composer June Young (Will) Kim; and artist Alan Caomin Xie with composer Ofir Klemperer.
And O, what marvelous results did these pairings yield!
The first collaboration of the evening, A Homegoing, consists of four movements, each presenting the audience with its own charm and solace. In their collaboration, artist Kelly Taylor Mitchell and composer Chelsea Loew intersected on their mutual response to nature and how its boundaries function as both protections and barriers. Given the music created by Chelsea Loew, I would assume that Chelsea believes that nature’s sounds have a musicality all their own. Kelly’s beautiful handmade paper creation of overbeaten flax, Great Dismal Swamp bald cypress, and milkweed fibers for blowouts, base sheets, and pulp painting — singular in its own right — also serves as a guide for the performers, suggesting usage of their materials based on the colors, shapes, and textures found in various sections of the tapestry. This attractive score was further adorned by tassels, passed-down textiles, image transfers, raffia inclusions, and found bricks.
Kelly Taylor Mitchell’s handmade paper tapestry for A Homegoing intertwines natural fibers, textiles, and found bricks, serving as both a visual and performative guide in her collaboration with composer Chelsea Loew, exploring nature’s dual role as protection and barrier. (credit: Davida Cohen)
The first movement began with beautiful, warm, soft, sensual sonorities in a familiar, consonant musical language. I experienced lovely clouds of sound drifting through and around each other, creating a pleasing, uplifting sensation. The second movement was a bit more frenetic, rather freely mixing consonant and dissonant materials, interjecting almost impressionistic bursts of color and brightness. In the third movement, we were gifted with short, dramatic piano passages, and pleasant scraping sounds and lyrical harmonics on the cello, alternating with the flute and violin performers wandering about, stating their own gentler musical truth. The final movement was surprisingly scherzo-like, light, and spritely, with interruptions of scraping on a low piano string that, while usually indicating something nefarious in most contemporary music settings, here sounded pleasant and completely appropriate to the musical environment. At various points, I thought I heard crickets and other nature sounds quietly played through the amplification system’s speakers. Had such been happening secretly throughout the entire piece? The conclusion of the movement, and the piece, was a soft, pleasant fade-out, as if the piece itself were simply re-uniting with the elements of nature from which it so gracefully emerged.
I was particularly struck by the composer’s ability to use so few musical elements to forge so many satisfying textures and phrases. The musical language encompassing the very listenable sonic materials was quite successfully and skillfully brought up to date, fit for 21st-century audiences. The entire piece held one’s attention marvelously throughout!
For our second experience of the evening, Ofir Klemperer’s Destination-Terminus paired with Alan Caomin Xie’s Five Improvisa. The result of this second collaboration of the evening was nothing short of phenomenal.
According to composer Ofir Klemperer, he and visual artist Alan Caomin Xie began by exploring the idea of “origin” and “terminus,” beginnings and endings. With current world political situations, particularly October 7, 2023, in Israel, creating anxiety for Ofir, other Israelis, and many of us in the Jewish community worldwide, more attention was focused on terminations. Emerging from current events was the acquired sense that society seemed to be destroying itself. As the collaboration continued, the work became more personal, stemming from the zeitgeist of the times, yielding, for Ofir, musical materials of a different nature than originally considered. At some point in Ofir’s introduction, I thought I heard him use the phrase, “Perseverance brings mindful hope.” Perhaps I’m mistaken. Either way, for this listener, the materials he created and their usage reaffirmed the healing power of music and, ultimately, the power and value of hope.
Alan Caomin Xie, in collaboration with new media artist Alessandro Imperato, provided stunning visual motion projections on the back and adjacent side walls of the performance space that were visible upon entry to the space and throughout much of the concert. Most of these images were delicate, soothing, dreamlike experiences, mostly black and white (or sepia and white), with motions that may or may not have been in real-time, very occasionally punctuated by very brief, highly colorful, unnaturally over-saturated images of the active destruction of the Gaza strip. Outside of the crushing reality of Gaza, we were permitted to dream of a white horse running through a winter forest with snow or ash falling in the foreground; a beautiful butterfly whose internal composition occasionally became golden; the background of the horse appearing instead with the butterfly; children playing, dancing, moving, wondering; and other lovely images as well.
A butterfly glows with golden hues amid dreamlike, shifting projections in artist Alan Caomin Xie’s ‘Five Improvisa’ visuals,paired with composer Ofir Klemperer’s ‘Destination-Terminus.’ (credit: Davida Cohen)
The musical portion, commencing without the visual projections, began with clusters of tightly adjacent notes, fading in and out with pauses, seeming to intend to build towards a climax, but ultimately avoiding doing so. The musical language seemed delicately post-modern. We were introduced to a low electronic drone, above which the violinist provided a soaring, sad melody. At this point, the multi-layered visual projections began with smoke and jellyfish, sometimes duplicated two or three times, sometimes crystal clear, sometimes somewhat grainy. The war in Gaza was not ignored. A soaring cello was accompanied by visions of trees, smoke, and the golden butterfly. Ostinati ensued, growing in stature, followed by passages sounding decidedly classical stylistically, but accompanied by recorded sounds. What were these? Wails? Sirens? Crying? A young child’s grief? As the classical-sounding passages continued, the music became more active, somewhat dissonant, then more and more so. A new section began, with new visual images in the background. As our white horse dreamt through its forest of trees and snow (or ash), a repeated note yielded to slow, gorgeous arpeggios, continually transposing. The contemplative musical universe, having successfully presented itself, then quietly receded to a hopeful conclusion.
After experiencing this work, I felt more like expressing its value with poetry than simply providing a typical review. This was a fantastic work of music, showing incredible nuance and sensitivity. The accompanying visuals were sublimely suited to its sonic world. The combination of shifting musical phrases with shifting translucent images evoked, for me, a much more deeply emotional response than I usually experience as a concert attendee. This was truly a mature, effective work, and a wonderful, meaningful collaborative result.
The final piece of the evening, Babel, pairing the talents of composer June Young (Will) Kim with artist/sculptor Martha Whittington, was perhaps the most challenging of the three, both sonically and conceptually.
As Martha Whittington stated in her verbal introduction, red can be the color of a warning, but it can also be the color of a call to passion and hope. Indeed, her accompanying art was a voracious celebration of red, with a large red cotton canvas flag invisibly suspended from the ceiling, appearing to float at the end of its mast; a large red circle resembling a portal through which the grand piano could have traveled with a gentle push; a rich, red cotton canvas carpet with elegant low circular cherry wood pedestals on either end, upon which the performers (pianist in particular; other performers as required) would seat themselves at various points in all three of the evening’s presentations. On the concrete floor between the back wall and the massive red flag sat three golden reflective globes mirroring the room’s activities and an additional useful cherry wood pedestal higher than the others. Positioned on that back wall was yet another display of intense red, creating, in Martha’s words, “a familiar landscape, suggesting a distant sun, a shared destination, and the transition to a new understanding.” Ultimately, she concluded, the collaboration is about how we adapt.
Visual and sonic exploration: Martha Whittington’s striking red-infused installation for ‘Babel,’ a collaboration with composer June Young (Will) Kim, embodies themes of warning, passion, and transformation. (credit: Davida Cohen)
On the website for the program notes, Will gives an excellent, erudite explanation of the premise for his composition (exploring different aspects of language transformation), as well as distinct historical support for the existence of the phenomena he explores. The musical language of Babel is, for the most part, harsh, quick, sharp, loud, shrill, scratchy, and otherwise a sheer delight for aficionados of a post-serial, post-Stockhausen, post-consonant, sonically shocking, alarming aesthetic. You’ll find similar materials in many other contemporary and late 20th-century works, but here, those elements are highly compressed and condensed, varying in length, separated by short, medium, medium-long, and long silences, increasing drama and anticipation to an extreme degree. I do very much appreciate the kinds of materials employed, and I did find them successfully utilized here compositionally. That said, while still very much appreciating the mastery of Will’s compositional skills, this listener simply did not perceive the concept of “babel” to be ably expressed sonically.
The piece begins with the four instruments speaking what we assume to be the same “language,” then ostensibly departing to more independent, less-coordinated expressions. While a hint of such discord was suggested along the way by a briefly lyrical pairing of violin and cello, for me the concept didn’t hold and evolve. I waited patiently to perceive the “babel” but failed to do so, hearing only the ensemble of a strong, compelling musical work. This failure could easily have fallen squarely on the shoulders of this reviewer, but I would also suggest that the clear expression of such a concept would certainly be a challenge for any composer. Concepts and intents aside, the musical accomplishment is still impressive, and merits repeated listening. I found Will Kim’s pacing and musical language usage provocative, effective, and satisfying. And I am, in fact, a huge fan of musical silences!
While I didn’t sense a tight conceptual connection between the visual and sonic elements of the collaboration, I did appreciate how each seemed to feed on and contrast with the other, providing the audience with a perceptible interplay of sound and vision that would have been disappointingly absent had each element been offered independently.
Audience attendance this evening was phenomenal! Each of the ensemble vim performers featured this evening — Bob Anemone, violin; Nicole Frankel, flutes; Choo Choo Hu, piano; Laura Usiskin, cello; and Emily Koh, technology — gave extraordinary performances, rendering realizations of the evening’s works that fully represented the depth and aesthetics of each of the featured composers. Program notes and “about” information on a website may profess love and dedication, but the true test is in the live presentation. Through their undeniable talents and professionalism, ensemble vim expressed their love and dedication for these works superbly.
This wasn’t simply another contemporary music concert or even simply another concert featuring artistic collaborative efforts. This concert seemed epic and historical, powerfully showcasing the aesthetics of a different generation and their personal attitudes towards contemporary concerns and creative co-existence. I cannot praise ensemble vim and their collaborators and supporters enough for contributing to the creation of such an event.
Ensemble vim. More trees! More art! More music! They have the tools; the garden awaits ■
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- ensemble vim: ensemblevim.org
- MOCA Georgia: mocaga.org
Read more by Howard Wershil.
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