For the Ears and the Eyes

Master Chorale Presents an Artistic Feast With Cambodian Dancers and an Incredible Instrument
by Julie Riggott

Los Angeles Downtown News

Oct 31, 2008

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - Music Director Grant Gershon said the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s latest commission, Chinary Ung’s “Spiral XII: Space Between Heaven and Earth,” is “a great project, really inspiring, and also one of the most challenging commissions that we’ve brought to fruition - on just every level.”

Executive Director Terry Knowles said the Nov. 9 world premiere at Walt Disney Concert Hall, along with a performance of Lou Harrison’s “La Koro Sutro,” “will be the most visually interesting thing we do all year.”

Our interest was piqued.

Ung’s “Spiral XII” brings a 62-member chorus together with six soloists, including sopranos Elissa Johnston and Kathleen Roland; 11 musicians, including a Cambodian percussionist; and seven Cambodian dancers led by dancer/choreographer Sophiline Cheam Shapiro. Harrison’s piece calls for chorus, organ and harp and required shipping in a special instrument, an “American gamelan” inspired by the traditional Indonesian percussion instrument but designed by Harrison with unusual objects such as brake drums - the ones from cars.

This Sunday’s Downtown Los Angeles concert is the third installment in the L.A. Is the World series, a project developed by the Master Chorale to commission new work from master musicians who have immigrated to Southern California and composers also experienced in non-Western techniques. These collaborations allow the Master Chorale to be more innovative and expand its range from the traditional repertoire.

Meditation on the East

For “Spiral XII,” Ung was inspired by “Sathukar,” which he calls “the most sacred piece of music in Cambodian culture,” and a monument in the northern part of the country with pools representing the four elements and two intertwined dragons rising from the middle. The chorus sings, not a narrative, but a combination of words in many languages, including Cambodian, English, Latin and French, that signify compassion, spiritual creation, meditation and other Buddhist concepts. Cambodian vocal techniques are also employed. Sometimes, the voices sound like drumming, other times like chanting.

“From a purely musical standpoint,” Gershon said, “it’s about the sound and the evocations of individual words and phrases. “The individual words have meaning, but… they exist also purely as transmitters of sound and color.”

String, wind and percussion musicians - many from Southwest Chamber Music and one percussionist, Ros Sokun, from Cambodia - play music that Gershon describes as “complex, fluid and evocative.” Some are asked to use their voices as well, a characteristic of Ung’s music that “harkens back to Cambodian traditional classical music where there really is no clear distinction between instrumentalists and vocalists,” Gershon explained.

Ung, who was born in Cambodia, immigrated to the United States in 1964 and is now a composition professor at the University of California at San Diego. He said his music is “all about Western techniques,” but a trip to Cambodia in 2001 gave his composition a “renewed purpose.” From then on, his music was not just personal, but also “included the elements of my culture.”

The dance also draws on and expands traditional Cambodian forms. Cheam Shapiro, artistic director of the Khmer Arts Academy in Long Beach and Cambodia, is a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime, and her experiences and those of a nation oppressed by tyranny inform her choreography. (Nov. 9, coincidentally, is Cambodian Independence Day.)

At the end of the piece, the dancers and some singers will form a spiral. Gershon called it “a visual representation of Chinary’s idea of a musical spiral, something that bridges the abyss, as the title suggests, between heaven and earth.

“The whole thing is certainly breaking new ground for the Master Chorale, and I think for Disney Hall as well, to have a piece conceived from the beginning as music and dance completely intertwined.”

Though also inspired by Buddhism, Harrison’s piece has a completely different sound, one Gershon characterized as bright and rhythmic. Harrison, one of America’s great contemporary composers, was known for his innovative compositions infusing world cultures. He actually wrote 50 pieces of gamelan music, and his 1973 “La Koro Sutro,” his most famous, uses Esperanto (a universal language created in the late 19th century) text translated from the Heart Sutra.

In addition to the opportunity to hear the impressive Disney Hall organ, Harrison’s piece utilizes the aforementioned American gamelan, a huge apparatus played by six percussionists. It has gongs, drums and maracas, as well as metal pails, a baseball bat and other found objects - “just about everything but the kitchen sink,” Gershon said, laughing.

“It’s as much fun to watch as it is to hear.”

Concert starts at 7 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., (213) 972-7282 or lamc.org.

Contact Julie Riggott at julie@downtownnews.com