Hannah Kendall’s portrait concert at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre opened with a harp solo played by Nuiko Wadden. It blurred lines between composition, improvisation, extended technique and string prepared preparation in ways not altogether uncommon but did so beautifully and with purpose, which is a tight phrase that could describe much of Kendall’s work: beautiful and purposeful. Add also to that list of descriptors ‘literal’. Kendall can be a very programmatic, often conceptual, and quite effective writer.
The harp in the opening Tuxedo: Diving Bell 2, for example, is inspired by a work by Jean-Michel Basquiat. The instrument is ‘creolized’ with Afro hair bands and other products, adding African influence to European tradition. In Wadden’s performance, the preparations suggested a multiplicity of not-quite-discernible voices, another theme recurrent in Kendall’s work.
The first half of the program built from solo to quartet to octet in three pieces also included on Kendall’s portrait album Shouting Forever into the Receiver. Tonight, the pieces were played by members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, an invaluable pool from which to draw for contemporary music concerts. When flesh is pressed against the dark was developed in collaboration with the fine ensemble loadbang, here performed by a quartet that included the excellent trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, whose muted lines soared above and swooped below the proceedings. Baritone Damian Norfleet was authoritative as a wordless, humming narrator. It’s an exciting and unpredictable work, at one point erupting in an unresolved fanfare, at others employing harmonicas, walkie-talkies and a music box, not as gimmicks but props and her sonic imagery.
The tools returned in Even sweetness can scratch the throat. They work well for her; the programmed music (in a sense) from the wind-up boxes and often inaudible voices through the two-way radios add to the suggestion of echoes of a story. In the end, the music grew sparse and a recitation from the Book of Job (by bassist Tristan Kasten-Krause) filled the room, even through the tinny and staticky radio.
The narrative thread in the second and third pieces came from Antonio Benítez-Rojo’s writings on what he calls the “Plantation Machine”. During an onstage conversation after the interval, the composer discussed life on plantations for enslaved people and what she sees as “an essence of hope coming out of horrendous situations” in their music. She called her own work music that “I couldn't have written had I not come to New York.” Born in London to a Guyanese family, Kendall moved to New York in 2018 to study at Columbia under George Lewis and Georg Frederich Haas. She has since earned her doctorate and is now teaching at the university.
The final piece – Building a Burning House, in its US premiere – is scored for 12 players, and called on five of them to blow into the whistle of tea kettles, inspired by a tradition among enslaved people to sing and pray into kettles so the plantation owners wouldn’t hear them. The prepared harp was again utilized, this time noticeably amplified. Bass and cello jabs and percussion were at times surprisingly pronounced, brass and reeds rumbled like a storm moving in in what worked like the third act of the evening drama. The mix of such evocative music and narrative framing made for an engaging and rather filmic program. Kendall has one opera, the 2016 monodrama The Knife of Dawn, to her name. It’s hard to imagine more and even grander storytelling isn’t in her future.
