Unruly Music Festival doesn’t ‘play’ by the rules

According to the dictionary, the word “unruly” describes people or things that resist management or control. This serves as an appropriate title for a three-day set of local concerts that prides itself on cutting-edge performances that won’t conform to most of the understood “rules” of musical performance.

UWM’s Unruly Music Festival is in its fourth season and will make its downtown debut Tuesay at Marcus Center’s Vogel Hall. Don’t be fooled by the fancy venue though — this is no black-tie affair. In fact, think of it almost as the opposite to the experience of listening and watching the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Instead of perfectly playing timeless classics down to the last note, Unruly celebrates sounds you’ve likely never heard before. Some of the sounds come from traditional instruments, while others come from one tool you may be using right now — a laptop computer.

In addition to a new venue, the festival has expanded to three nights from the traditional one. Artistic Director Christopher Burns expressed excitement over how much the showcase has grown in four seasons and the exposure the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts will offer. When Burns is not directing or playing in musical festivals across North America, he is an assistant professor of Music Composition and Technology at UWM.

Each night, Unruly features a different theme. The first night is called Recitations with Susan Bender, in which the composer and artist lends her voice to a musical score that is both playful and heart breaking. It is slated to put a more theatrical twist on a typical music performance. A note to musical purists: don’t expect a straight-forward lyrical piece. Just like life, the music isn’t always pretty.

“There’s a lot of work with sighs and mutters and all of the sounds we make that aren’t verbal,” says Burns, who believes in working with ‘sound art’ and other mediums like video projection to complement the musical experience.

The second night, the music goes high-tech and experimental. It’s a bit of computer geek-meets-concert virtuoso. The Milwaukee Laptop Orchestra, or MiLO as it’s affectionately called, is a mix of professional musicians, UWM students and computer-savvy community members. It’s a group said to be the only one of its kind in the country.

The laptop orchestra is basically what it sounds like: about a dozen laptops creating music collaboratively. Again, it isn’t a purely melodic experience — the ‘music’ can range from stirring baselines to light, airy sounds that resemble raindrops. As Burns explains, “The basic idea is to get together an ensemble of folks, and to say, what could we do with this instrument that we couldn’t do with some other instrument?”

It sounds simple enough, but it is an intricate process that requires advanced skill in music composition and software programming. Upon seeing the setup, it looks very complex. Yet as Burns sees it, “the virtual simplicity is that what you type in makes a sound, like a percussion instrument.”

He compares the laptop orchestra phenomenon to the late Les Paul. Like Paul’s work in the beginning, it is all still a very abstract idea to many. In the music industry, however, it’s more acceptable. Techno groups like Daft Punk, alternative rock kings Radiohead, or hip-hop superstar Kanye West and others all first created a wall of sound on a computer — probably by musicians similar to those in MiLO.

On the final night, the festival closes with a new chamber music group called C2. In this piece, artists-in-residence flautist Lisa Cella and cellist Franklin Cox play classical music with a modern twist. It features works by avant-garde composers Elliott Carter and Kaija Saariaho, as well as specific works created by young composers. One musician notes, “It’s not classical music as Beethoven or Mozart would have written it. They’re playing it as people are writing in 2009.”

Burns hopes the festival is an enriching experience not only for the audience, but for students who perform, too. He’s not worried about the wild nature of Unruly, either.

“We want to train our students to be the most creative and expressive musicians that they can be, so exposing them to the kind of unusual and experimental activities in the world is really important,” he explains.

 

Unruly Music runs 8/8 -8/10, 7:30 p.m. nightly. The university will also host a Spring Festival, 4/15-18. Individual tickets and package deals available, call the Marcus Center box office: 414-273-7206 or visit the Peck School of the Arts Unruly website.