Jerry HuiComposer, Conductor, Performer

Register Guard, 04/20/2007, Concert Review [original]

The desperate poverty of an Irish fishing family and the malaise of marital couples in 1950s suburbia are rarely subjects of opera, but they were the powerful topics of three one-act operas presented last weekend by the University of Oregon Opera Ensemble and Orchestra.

This welcome trio of seldom performed 20th century operas, a perfect fit for a group of students, included Ralph Vaughan Williams’ searing musical adaptation of “Riders to the Sea” by Irish dramatist J.M. Synge, a clever nine-minute opera by Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti, and Leonard Bernstein’s more well-known operatic dissection of marital woes, “Trouble in Tahiti.” advertisement

Each opera has its distinct musical style and its particular locale, which the musicians and the set and costume designers all carefully elicited. The head of the university’s opera program, Charles Turley, directed each of the three operas.

“Riders to the Sea” is considered Williams’ operatic masterpiece. Its orchestral score depicts the violent weather that haunts the Aran Islands off Ireland’s west coast and that sends many a fisherman to his death. In its more lyrical moments, the music underscores the melancholy of these people and their fate. The stark sets brought out the poverty of this family, which in the course of the opera loses its last son to the sea, leaving the mother and two daughters to mourn the loss of an entire family of men.

Jill Windes sympathetically sang the central role of the long-suffering mother. Lauren Green and Megan Williams took the pivotal roles as her daughters. While each voice was well suited to its role, the interaction among the characters was minimal. Instead of facing each other, the singers often turned toward the audience while singing even the shortest of sections. Still, overpowering sadness came through at the end as Windes sang of her last son’s death.

“A Hand of Bridge,” by composer Barber and librettist Menotti, was a delightful joke. Four large playing cards provided the background for two couples playing bridge, while all are lost in their own dreams. Maggie Lieberman, Kirsten Arbogast, David Fertal and Greg Guenther sang with good voices and careful characterizations, each having a short arioso describing such things as the purchase of a new hat, a desire for riches, an old flame and a dying mother.

Of the three performances, the most successful was Bernstein’s “Trouble in Tahiti,” a work later included in his opera “A Quiet Place.” Bernstein’s rhythmic virtuosity, his set arias and duets, and his Broadway-style tunes distinguished this opera from the other two. Reliable baritone Gene Chin played the husband, Sam, with dramatic intensity and a fine lyrical voice.

Megan Sand played his disillusioned wife, Dinah. She caught the ambivalence of her character, but her voice often was overwhelmed by the orchestra. While this husband and wife try to find some peace in their relationship, a jazz trio sings, as if in a commercial, of an idealized modern suburbia. The trio consisted of Kelsey Chun, Davique Gustavo (who looked a lot like local tenor David Gustafson) and Guenther. Chun, in particular, provided an artificially happy, well-sung counterpoint to the desperate marriages in real suburbia. The sets succinctly illustrated the mundane lives of these people. advertisement

Musically these performances displayed the wealth of talent in the UO opera program.

Each opera was led by a student conductor: Christopher Olin conducted “Riders to the Sea”; Jerry Hui led “A Hand of Bridge”; and Jamie Ratcliffe took over “Trouble in Tahiti.” The orchestra played extremely well for each conductor, and except for sometimes paying more attention to the orchestra than the stage, each conductor displayed a firm understanding of each opera’s style.

The Opera Ensemble had enough good vocalists to fill the many roles required for these three operas, and surprisingly, some of the best singers were undergraduate students. The diction was especially good, a necessity for opera in English.

That all of the work – singing, sets, lighting, conducting – was done by University of Oregon students speaks volumes for the UO School of Music.

Marilyn Farwell is a professor emerita of English at the University of Oregon who reviews vocal and choral music for The Register-Guard.

— Marilyn Farwell

Eugene Weekly, 06/08/2006 [original]

Another source for new sounds in Eugene is the University of Oregon. Some of the school’s irrepressible, forward-looking music students have created the Eugene Contemporary Chamber Ensemble to play contemporary and 20th century music, including works by UO student composers. This last show of the season, 1:30 pm on June 10 in Beall Hall, features a major work by today’s leading living composer, John Adams.

“Gnarly Buttons” is an utterly delightful romp for clarinet, which was Adams’ instrument as a child and teenager, and chamber orchestra. It draws on his memories of his father (a swing clarinetist), shape note hymns, folk tunes (its hoe-down movement includes banjo, mandolin and guitar and samplers that play accordion and cow) and more.

The concert also includes the world premiere of Luke Carlson’s “Eternal Horizon” for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion and piano. Music by the influential early 20th century composer Anton von Webern, Alfred Schnittke, one of Europe’s most important postwar composers, and a 1986 wind quintet by Montana-based composer David Maslanka round out the program. None of these pieces are easy to play though they’re all easy to listen to, and I applaud these intrepid UO students for bringing some of today’s most fascinating sounds to Eugene’s ears.

— Brett Campbell

Eugene Weekly, 06/08/2006 [original]

The UO School of Music has long been known for excellence in terms of letting students take control of their own destinies and create ensembles that match the scores they want to compose. Last year, master’s student Jerry Hui pieced together a 12- to 14-piece vocal and orchestral ensemble and dubbed it the Eugene Contemporary Chamber Ensemble (ECCE).

The group defies many of the traditional aspects of orchestra with its themes and instrumentation. “We explicitly do music from the 20th and 21st centuries,” says Hui, “and every term we’ve been trying to create a program that includes one piece from existing, established composers and then pair those up with pieces composed by people at the U of O.”

Hui has his own score being performed soon: a tune called “Behold!” which involves a brass-heavy sound of trumpets, two trombones and percussion.

“It’s pretty loud for sure,” says Hui, “but we also try to do a lot of chamber music that isn’t a solo or duet.”

The group features a brassline of trumpets and trombones along with woodwinds, strings, keyboardists and singers (Hui is the baritone). With the promotion of new compositions and a lineup unlike most ensembles you might see, the ECCE could be poised for a large- scale tour soon to come

— Dan Hoyt

Eugene Weekly, 11/22/2005 [original]

In 1950, Look magazine ran a review of a recording of avant garde composer Edgard Varese’s 1931 percussion classic, “Ionisation,” which somehow transformed the sounds of various drums and other clanging and banging instruments, sirens and piano into an evocative exploration of musical texture. A 10-year-old aspiring musician in California read the review, and was so intrigued by Varese’s photo that he bought the record, loved it, and a few years later tracked down Varese’s New York phone number and called him long distance.

That kid, Frank Zappa, later won fame as a satirical rock musician but never forgot his earliest influence. He eventually conducted Varese’s music and, just before he died, recorded an album of it. On Monday, Nov. 26, the Oregon Percussion Ensemble will pay tribute to Frank Zappa in a Beall Hall concert featuring guest musicians from the Eugene Symphony, 10 marimbas, six drumsets, electric violins, bass and a partridge in a pear tree. They’ll play versions of Zappa’s The Black Page, the world premiere of OPE director Charles Dowd’s “Magnesium Zapp No. 11″ (influenced by Zappa’s “Yellow Shark”), Christopher Deane’s ethereal “Vespertine Formations” and, of course, “Ionisation.”

Varese’s orchestra gave the American premiere of another landmark work by another 20th century musical rebel: Arnold Schoenberg’s (in)famous song cycle, Pierrot Lunaire. One of the first large scale works to slip the bounds of conventional tonality, it used strange half-singing, half speaking technique to convey the story of a sad commedia del’arte clown who sings to the moon and torments the stupid clown Cassander. A metaphor for the crazy suffering artist’s relationship to his audience, it’s a wild piece that influenced, for better and worse, a great deal of 20th century art music. And you can hear it for free at 5:30 pm on Saturday, Dec. 3 when the Eugene Contemporary Chamber Ensemble (a new student group dedicated to rarely heard music from the 20th and 21st centuries) plays it and other Schoenbergiana at Beall Hall.

Other recommended UO shows include the Oregon Wind Ensemble on Nov. 29 (Mozart, Copland and more) and University Symphony on Nov. 30 (more Mozart, Vivaldi, et al). A few holiday shows also deserve a mention. The Collegium Musicum sings and plays medieval English carols in a free show at Collier House on Nov. 29. And four UO choral groups will play 20th century music, including Francis Poulenc’s lovely “O Magnum Mysterium” and Peter (PDQ) Schickele’s “Three Choruses” setting e.e. cummings poems to music with an audience sing-along.

Eugene composer/pianist and UO music alum Rebecca Oswald will perform some of her lush, neo-romantic piano music (in the tradition of Mendelssohn’s “Songs Without Words”) at a CD release party at DIVA on Nov. 25; fans of George Winston and his musical kin should check this out. And Zappa himself might approve of the eccentric Gothic cello rock (not to mention the way-back vintage costumes) of Rasputina, who can swoop from a Pink Floyd cover to wry punky pop to postclassical cello duets in the same set. They’re at the WOW Hall on Dec. 4.

— Brett Campbell