Juneau's ultra-avant-garde music presenter, CrossSound, criss-crossed Alaska with a series of programs starting at the end of August and ending Sept. 6 in Anchorage. Each of the concerts presented different material. At the event in the University of Alaska Anchorage Arts Building Recital Hall last Sunday, most of the music was by Matthew Burtner.
Burtner is one of Alaska's more successful arts exports. Raised on the North Slope, Bristol Bay and Anchorage, he is now a tenured professor of music at the University of Virginia and has a long list of "composer in residence" credits literally circling the globe.
The most agreeable and accessible -- relative terms -- of Burtner's pieces was "Kuik," a musical geography following the Kvichak River from its glacial source to the ocean. It featured video of water and Burtner's own narrative over the electronic mix of tones and other, indistinct, speakers and two live percussionists. The best part was soprano Jaunelle Celaire sweetly voicing the perfect fourth and minor second intervals that made up such melodic content as "Kuik" possessed.
In "Broken Drum," solo percussionist Morris Palter clanged on a rusty brake drum with metal rods and a hammer for about seven minutes, sounding like a persistent school bell or chuck wagon triangle, occasionally modified by tempo or hand muting. The result was like an hour at the rifle range without hearing protection.
"Mindcam" was the most riveting piece, not so much because of what one heard as because of what one saw. There was video of skate and snowboarders assembled by Burtner's brother, Jesse, but what I wanted a video of was Burtner himself, playing his metasaxophone. This is a big sax hooked up to sensors that pick up motion as well as sound -- sort of like a Wii. Tilting the instrument caused the computer through which the instrument was processed to create different sounds. Burtner swung the horn left and right, laying it horizontally, often not even having his lips on the mouthpiece, looking like a thrash-rock guitarist.
I'm not sure how well the equipment was actually working. Many times he made a distinct move without any perceptible difference in sound. The final work, "Portals of Destruction," had a similar non-effect. I have to presume that the original version, for eight different saxophones, had elements of separation and dimension that made the subtle shifts of inner voices more obvious.
In the Anchorage performance, Burtner presented the piece on solo metasax, accompanied by Palter in an ad hoc addition of drums that further obscured the already obscure and meditative tonal shifts. What came out of the computer was a single overwhelmingly dominant and constant low note with faint overlays of additional tones. I was reminded of dueling foghorns.
Nonetheless, it was the most successful excursion by CrossSound into Anchorage yet. More on the concert, including pieces by John Luther Adams and Canadian composer Owen Underhill, can be found online at adn.com/artsnob.
First Friday rambles
In all honesty, I was at "Lion King" on Friday night and had to make the rounds on a subsequent afternoon. The big show was the opening reception for Earth Fire & Fibre XXVII at the Anchorage Museum, which I hear was mobbed. The biennial exhibit is on the smallish fourth floor of the museum's new addition, adequate for the pieces on display, but a squeeze if more than 20 people show up.
Margo Klass' Juror's Choice Award-Winning "Book of Good Intentions" (actually four books) is rather small; it rather invites handling to examine fully, but it is in a glass case.
I was struck by the amount of beadwork included in the show. A homey beaded purse by Kate Boyan; mysterious beaded hands by Jeannie Bench; uproarious beaded tricycle by Paula Rasmus-Dede; beaded tide pool and vegetable images by Beth Blankenship, who also had an eye-catching necklace made of clothespins and titled "Domestic Goddess" in the show. Most impressive to me was Keith Appel's eight-foot-tall handwoven tapestry "Denali/The Great One."
Also at the Museum, was the statewide Alaska Positive photo exhibit. Juror Bill Owens gave the top award to Bonnie Landis, who had four haunting photos from her Whittier series included. Among other things, the photos display an odd flatness that combined with the usually geometric composition make you look twice to confirm that it's a photograph. Owens other selections often had the same effect.
Matt Johnson's water image "Surfaces" is pure pattern, for instance. It's almost impossible to make out the individual birds in John Schweider's frantic "Sandpiper migration."
Dione Cuadra has a picture of a husky standing on rock in front of psychedelically blue and translucent ice. It's titled "Mingma on the Edge of the Time-space Continuum," a concept that might apply to several of the photos in the show.
Rarefied Light opened at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art. Jay Barrett's Best of Show picture of soaking wet eagles looked like a painting in reproductions but turns out to be a real photograph when viewed up close.
Among the other startling images is Kevin Smith's "Fish Rack Akiak" with light glowing through salmon filets.
Larry McNeil was the juror for the small show at the Alaska Native Arts Foundation. Included in this show are photos by Da-Ka-Xeen Mehner and Erica Lord previously shown there, plus a couple of supernatural sunset scenes by Mike Demientieff Jr. and calmer studies by Carmen Bydalek among other things.
But what grabbed my attention was a gorgeous fancy parky by Anna Anvil near the Sixth Avenue door of the gallery.
Facing Fifth Avenue, taped to the glass of the Egan Center, are portraits of "50 Alaskans" taken by Clark Mishler at the downtown statehood celebration in June. See who you recognize.
Finally yet another juried show opened Friday, the Alaska Watercolor Society's 35th Annual Juried Exhibition, now on view at Virtu.
Juror Don Andrews awarded Best of Show to Marilyn Lee of Ward Cove for a figure study, "Wearing Her Art." (Personally, I preferred her moody "On the Eighth Day.") The technical work is remarkably good in this show.
Comment on what you're seeing around town at adn.com/artsnob.
Find Mike Dunham online at adn.com/contact/mdunham or call 257-4332.
By MIKE DUNHAM
mdunham@adn.com