Mobtown Modern’s goal to expose Baltimore audiences to new music is … well, new.
Co-curated by saxophonist Brian Sacawa and composer/turntablist Erik Spangler, the Mobtown Modern series exposes innovative techniques and trends in new music. “When we say ‘new music,’ we mean contemporary classical music,” Sacawa said. “And there really wasn’t a whole lot of it being performed in Baltimore.”
Mobtown Modern’s first concert of the new year, “More Than Words,” features the works of five composers who make voice an integral part of their music. The compositions, performed tonight at the Contemporary Museum, include sounds and utterances ranging from overtone singing, moans and snarls to sound bites from American media.
How did you and Erik conceive of this idea?
I wanted to start a music series in Baltimore to showcase contemporary classical music, because there really wasn’t a whole lot of new music being performed in the city. In New York, new music is an established genre. It’s kind of become the thing to do to have a new music series in a small gallery that’s underground and word-of-mouth.
But I didn’t think it would be best for us to have [Mobtown Modern] in a small space because Baltimore doesn’t know too much about this kind of music. So I cold-called Irene Hoffman [Executive Director of the Contemporary Museum] and pitched her my idea. This was a year and a half ago. Ever since then, the museum has been an awesome partner.
What can the audience expect at “More Than Words”?
We have themes for all of our concerts, and this one is focused on works for voice — but not just singing. These are all works by composers who use the human voice in nontraditional ways. Like “Lipstick” by Jacob ter Veldhuis. He’s a Dutch composer, and he takes snippets of speech from American commercials or interviews and chops them up to make an electronic component, then composes an instrumental part to be mixed together with it. Or “Zansetsu,”a piece by Ken Ueno, which makes use of his special ability to sing multiphonics, or singing more than one pitch at a time.
Have you been as successful as you had initially hoped?
Yes, definitely. I think a lot of people generally are scared of new music, scared of things they aren’t familiar with. So as a result, our programming early in the series was more accessible so that we wouldn’t scare an audience away [laughs]. So we had a concert of minimalism, and of music inspired by rock music, hip-hop, and more pop genres. Once we establish trust with our audience, then we can take them into uncharted territory.
