The rooftop garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is currently home (until 19th October, when it closes for a five-year renovation) to three large sculptures by artist Jennie C Jones. The pieces are collected under the name ‘Ensemble’, like a chamber group. The works borrow design elements from string instruments, inviting the viewer to listen and, when no music occurs, to imagine. Jones is a multidisciplinary artist whose sculptures and paintings reference the history of avant garde and African American cultural expression. She's also a composer, and two of her works were performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble in the museum's theater on Sunday, in conjunction with the rooftop show.
The compositions are another kind of invitation, asking not the listener but the performers to imagine. The ensemble members – a quintet for this performance, comprised of violin, viola, bass, clarinet, trombone, harp and percussion – played from five of Jones's rarely performed graphic scores, finding expression in her abstraction.
The ensemble itself cut across traditional genre boundaries. Among the assembled were violinist Modney, also a member of the Wet Ink Ensemble; bassist Brandon Lopez, more often heard in the Downtown improv world; and percussionist Clara Warnaar, whose efforts include playing new age music with rock attitude. But the performance achieved something rarely present in the performance of graphic or nontraditional scores: group cohesion, a singularity of purpose, It wasn't a vehicle for improvisation. The ensemble members, working with the composer, had taken an abstract score and through rehearsal (as is done with any composition) found a coherent and agreed-upon realization. They weren't exactly thematic statements, but there often aren't in contemporary composition. There was, however, a strong shared dynamic, understood areas of exploration
The visual scores were projected on a screen behind the players, painterly images with strong lines and only a couple of colours. Oxide Score (2022), the longer of the two works, moved initially in large, distinct blocks. The second movement was a beautiful, near stasis, with a wonderful single-note-with-overtones trombone solo that opened Into something almost thematic but more a mood.
Modney in particular played some beautiful passages that seemed predetermined (although perhaps not). He and violist Kyle Armbrust locked into segments they’d almost certainly explored before. Warnaar was a compelling force behind a large percussion array, including kit drums with parade bass, gong, vibraphone, glockenspiel and flower pot. Harpist Nuiko Wadden played a remarkable solo with soft mallets bounced on strings and pulled across the wooden frame, accentuated by the amplification of the entire ensemble. But it wasn’t like a jazz concert, there wasn’t a feeling of taking turns. And it wasn’t like a piece played from a score. In place of notated and synchronized parts there was familiarity with the score and with each other.
In a pre-concert conversation with composer and ICE artistic director George Lewis, Jones described her work as “a soup of ideas and cultural thinking”. If the work is a soup, she’s clearly the chef. What was so exciting about the concert was that everyone at the table was just as involved in preparing the meal.
