The Colby Echo

Issue date: 3/9/07 Section: Arts & Entertainment

Media Credit: Molly Warren

This year at Colby there have been many musical performances featuring exotic instruments, such as the Arabic Oud and the North-Indian Sarod. Last Saturday's concert also fits into the category of being exotic in that much of the music was created using electronic technology. Jonathan Hallstrom, professor of music theory and composition as well as conductor of the Colby symphony orchestra, shared with the Colby community his passion for manipulating sound through the medium of computers.

For one of the pieces, a microphone attached to a clarinet was also connected to a computer program; playing certain notes on the actual instrument triggered a pre-determined pattern of sounds from the computer. So in essence, a few of the pieces consisted of solo performers (Eric Thomas on clarinet, Lee Humphreys on flute, Graybert Beacham on violin) accompanied by and synchronized with electronic sounds. Hallstrom believes that his implementation of computers in his compositions does not replace the need for the performers but rather expands their instruments' capabilities.

To the average listener, Hallstrom's works for acoustic instruments, computer and video may have seemed rather unusual in that they are dissonant and lack a pulsating beat. So instead of a catchy melody and a beat that anyone could tap their foot to, Hallstrom's compositions explored variations in musical texture, with phrases swelling and waning in intensity and piercingly acute sounds of the upper registers of the instruments. The final piece, "In the Swallow's Space," featured a trio of performers (Cheryl Tschanz on piano, Graybert Beacham on violin and Karen Beacham on clarinet) and did not use any computers or electronics. This last piece had a dissonant and eerie sentiment about it and may have been inspired by Olivier Messiaen's "Quartet for the end of time," written in a German prison in 1940. Thus, Hallstrom's compositions expressed an element of the 20th century atonal music of Webern, Messiaen and Takemitsu.

Other compositions of Hallstrom's involved video technology, setting his music to visuals displayed on a large projector screen. The creations of Nikolai Barnwell '09 and Bryan Gattis '07 were premiered during the concert, the products of a class they took with Hallstrom called "Visual Music." As the senses became consumed with intense sounds and psychedelic visualizations, spectators' minds were able to drift away to places they are seldom taken on the average day. How is it that this "outer-space," "horror-movie" music appeals to the intellectual scholars thinking about tone rows and dissonance, as well as to the hallucinating stoners who are captivated because it sounds "trippy?" Does one enjoy the experience more than the other? Whether high on a mind-melting psychedelic drug or high on philosophizing about art and music from a completely different perspective, Hallstrom's computer music compositions inspire the musician to consider the infinite possibilities of sound and musical expression.

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