UCLA professor directs “˜Shape Shifting Guitars,’ aims to introduce audiences to a new world of sound
Buzz Gravelle will perform in the “Quadruple Guitars” concert tonight both individually and together with three other guitarists. Tonight’s Schoenberg Hall performance is the last stop of the “Shape Shifting Guitars” tour and features UCLA performers.
Courtesy of MARC BENNINGTON
By Shannon Cosgrove
May 4, 2011 2:00 a.m.
Peter Yates, a music professor specializing in guitar, often composes his music in L.A. traffic.
He will perform some of these pieces at Schoenberg Hall tonight on his “Shape Shifting Guitars” festival that he directs.
The rest of tonight’s “Quadruple Guitars” performance of solo and ensemble pieces includes alumni Buzz Gravelle and Walter Marsh, who met each other in the late Theodore Norman’s weekly guitar ensemble at UCLA.
Gravelle is also a former student of Yates. Guitarist David Cahueque will perform with them, along with mezzo-soprano Alexandra Grabarchuk and soprano Ursula Kleinecke-Boyer.
Like the content of the pieces, the guitars themselves shift throughout the performances ““ objects such as electrical alligator clips are added to the guitar to make it a “prepared” guitar on one piece while the frets are completely removed in others.
In his original piece “Ray Say,” Yates adds beeswax, alligator clips and Styrofoam to the bridge of his guitar and more alligator clips and aluminum to the headstock for percussive sounds.
“In prepared guitar, you can use regular guitar techniques but gain access to this whole other world of sound,” Yates said.
Yates also said that finding wonder and mystery in these simple yet alluring sounds is what keeps musicians like him interested.
“It’s a process of burning in rather than burning out,” Yates said. “Musicians grow more and more into what they do.”
Yates himself grew more and more intrigued by the stories he researched to base his songs on, which include the kazoo inventor Alabama Vest, visionary philosopher Simone Weil and the proverb “he who races alone always wins.”
Yates will also perform “Handful of Dust,” based on a scene from his 2004 opera “The Mother Lode” about a ghost town in Bodie, Calif. While Yates includes actual events and quotes in some songs, he said he also allows room for poetic license, writing original lyrics for others.
“I’m drawn to an utterance that has character to it, that makes us step outside of our ordinary life and realize how much personality there is in just a few words,” Yates said.
Like Yates’ lyrics, the Theodore Norman pieces Marsh will perform also contain a narrative but no lyrics.
“2 Twelve-Tone Pieces for Guitar” depicts a hungry boa constrictor stalking a mouse, and “Exit” interprets the last gestures of a dying man, complete with the last beats of a heart that follow a 12-tone death roll in the end.
“Theodore Norman was a true trailblazer of guitar ““ he brought modern compositional styles to his music that were influenced by the freedom of the abstract visual arts,” Marsh said.
According to Marsh, Norman was not afraid to put tonal sounds into more dissonant passages in his modern pieces.
He also used the 12-tone system developed by Arnold Schoenberg, for whom Schoenberg Hall was named.
Gravelle will also perform his own exploratory pieces that push the envelope on classical guitar.
Gravelle is one of the few guitarists who plays the fretless guitar professionally. The frets are removed to reveal the whole spectrum of pitches a cellist or vocalist could express.
“This isn’t a joke or some parlor trick, this can actually be used to make music,” Gravelle said. “If you play guitar, you have to relearn the whole instrument ““ most people are scared off by this, but it intrigued me.”
Gravelle uses only two melodic intervals in his piece “4 bagatelles for 2 guitars,” cutting out the other 10 in an exercise similar to one practiced by writers who manipulate their work by using only certain letters.
Gravelle said the show will draw curious audiences who want to expand their musical horizons.
“I hope to give the audience something they’re going to immediately enjoy but also make them scratch their heads,” Gravelle said.
Marsh also said he hopes to give audiences a new perspective on the guitar.
“People will not only see what guitars can really do, but also how much fun you can have with them,” Marsh said.
