Chamber Music Milwaukee fetes Libby Larsen

Thursday night, Libby Larsen said that she composed 3 Cowboy Songs (1979) because of her hypothesis that speech rhythms shape a region’s music. In these songs, she was going for American English, which means “simplicity, clarity and directness.”

Then Jeffry Peterson sat down at the piano and soprano Susan Bender stepped up to sing and they delivered exactly what the composer promised. Beyond that, they delivered all the wit in Belle Starr’s Bronco, a double entendre number about the delights a bronco-bustin’ man can deliver to a woman; the bluesy delirium that added power to Robert Creeley’s Lift Me Slowly into Heaven; and the ironic quotes of Streets of Laredo and Leaving Cheyenne beneath the earthy bluntness of an approving account of the death of Billy the Kid.

Larsen, 59 and based in the Twin Cities, has been in residence at UWM this week. This Chamber Music Milwaukee concert was the culmination of her residency. She appeared to enjoy the occasion immensely, and her warm and witty commentary added a lot to it.

The music, five brief pieces for assorted small groups, sounded just like her: smart, lively, welcoming. She is a tonal composer without apology. If I had to trace lineage, I would start with Charles Ives, because of the mischief in her music (such as the wacky “salt peanuts” exclamations in Blue Thirds, which guitarist Rene Izquierdo and clarinetist Todd Levy played so pointedly).

An acute ear for jazz and other vernacular styles informs her work. The terrific little Brazen Overture, for brass quintet, has a bit that sounds suspiciously like the brief saxophone breaks from James Brown’s I Feel Good. Larsen casts it as an especially persistent ostinato. Normally, an ostinato is an accompaniment figure, but this one keeps pushing to the top of the mix in a brazen way. What a fun, clever piece this is.

The excellent quintet comprised trumpeters Mark Niehaus and David Banas, horn player Greg Flint, trombonist Mark Hoelscher and tubist Marty Erickson (who killed with a virtuosic introductory solo). Niehaus also opened the program by playing Larsen’s Fanfare for the Women (1993) brilliantly, from the UWM Zelazo Center balcony.

The fanfare unfolds rhetorically in lengthening elaborations on an idea clearly stated at the start. The musical argument is engaging and substantial, but doesn’t wander from the brilliance and celebration that are the essence of the fanfare.

The structure is much the same in Larsen’s 1982 flute solo, Aubade, but the mood and emotional effect are completely different. As Caen Thomason-Redus played it, Aubade is a relaxed, dreamy awakening from slumber.

Larsen is the focus of a larger celebration of women composers at UWM, so it made sense to have at least one other on the program. Joan Tower’s A Gift was the biggest work of the evening.  Thomason-Redus, Levy, Flint, bassoonist Ted Soluri and pianist Elena Abend made their way through the meditative With Memories, With Song and With Feeling and finished with the whirring excitement of To Dance With.

Go here to hear some samples of Libby Larsen’s music.