Landscapes On the Borders of Silence

The Gelb, Oliveros, Reason Trio at the Clarion Music Center

October 15, 1999

Phil Gelb, Shakuhachi

Pauline Oliveros, Accordion

Dana Reason, Piano.

a review by William Osborne

Published in 20th Century Music Journal (December 1999)

The Clarion Music Center, a "world music" store, probably has one of the finest ethnic instrument collections of any music shop in the Americas.  They have instruments you never thought existed, so you can imagine the sounds that ensued as I entered along with a group of musicians long involved with the improvisational practices of Pauline Oliveros' "Deep Listening."  Curiosity quickened the air, engulfing the shop in a pandemonium of every sort of plucking, banging, thwacking, blowing, shaking, bowing, piping, thumping, ratcheting, and scraping the ear could conceive.  I wonder how the proprietor stands such a cacophonous "world din" everyday (her only moment of slight weariness seemed to be when I asked her how to play the "snake charmer") but apparently she does have her limits.  Over an old beat up spinet buried behind a pile of exotic drums, zithers, and an alp horn, is a large sign which says, "DO NOT PLAY THE PIANO."

As the audience filed into the small concert room in the basement--many with satiated grins from participation in the world "panharmonioum" above--I wondered how a trio of an ethnic instrument, a folk instrument, and a western classical instrument, each with a widely diverging sound, dynamic range, and heritage, was going to create a concert length improvisation--even with three such renowned musicians as these. 

It did not take me long to find out as Reason reached inside the piano to create almost sub-audible sounds of fragile beauty, joined after a moment with Gelb's long, windy, shakuhachi sighs and the exquisitely shimmering microtonal drones of Oliveros' specially built accordion in just intonation.  The music was so soft that I took notes only with the slightest pressure of pencil on paper, lest I disturb the music emerging and submerging in a silence of arresting beauty.  Occasionally Reason's hands rose into the light--they could have been carved by Michelangelo--and moved as if they themselves were listening.

Oliveros demonstrated a remarkable ability to meld the accordion to the shakuhachi, creating similar tremulous vibratos by moving her instrument with fluttering, butterfly motions of her hands.  She even made the lower tones glissando like the shakuhachi by half keying notes and letting the air expend itself out of the stationary bellows.  Her high sustained tones revealed the qualities of  just intonation, pure and delicate, long, slow crescendos, crystalline like a glass harmonica.  The first notes Reason played on the keys of the piano were similar, perfectly chosen, high, singular, shining like glass.  The musicians breathed together in a suspended silence.

Reason began to rub her hands tightly on the polished surface of the piano, creating high, barely audible, intermittent sounds, a distant wailing she suddenly submerged in a heavy, luxurious deep note of a single piano string languorously vibrating the air.  Then  her fingernails moved ever so lightly over the keys, a sensual rustle of ebony, joined by her long, delicate hands rubbing on the underside of the instrument.  These sounds and gestures, almost erotically beautiful, flowed into long, gently suspended drones of microtonal clusters created by the shakuhachi's glissandi and just intonation of the accordion.  A delicate phasing of waves sensually conjoined. 

Then floating upward came shimmering patterns of high, plaintive piano notes on a synthetic scale, fading to the eerie, throaty, howling tones of a conch shell Oliveros had brought from the store above.  Gelb, whose shakuhachi is his body, echoed similar throaty, sensual sounds.  From those distant, earthy, and yet alien calls came Reason's soft notes like the broken bells of an abandoned mission church, desolate, collapsing, returning to nature.

Oliveros began to twitch the accordion nervously with quickly moving, pointillistic fragments.  Gelb responded with high glissandi Oliveros caught in midstream with just intonation, creating microtonal clusters of exquisitely beating partials. The phasing touched the ears with caressing shimmers. Then Gelb and Reason became lascivious for a moment, thrusting breathy staccato notes around the silence while Oliveros refereed with a watchful drone.  She was always listening, and with the simplest gestures anticipated and melded perfectly with her colleagues.

Reason almost never played a chord.  Her exquisite touch created lines with a sinuous logic all of her own.  Slowly, led by her, they distantly hinted at swing, but with such an ominous, pointillistic fragility that the strangest image passed before me, perhaps engendered by the appalling social dichotomies of where I am living.  The music sounded like cyborg swallows darting through heat lightning over the orange, fiery glows of Oakland burning.  But before I could even think of how they took me to such an aberrant vision, the image kept changing, becoming much more physical, bodily, yet spiritual. 

Suddenly the music opened into an abrupt silence perfectly filled by the cry of a child from the street outside.  It was like coming to after a dream and remembering where you are.  The musicians continued, but the city still conspired to join, this time with the beeping of an alarm outside, groups of three repeated notes on a single strident pitch-- sacred bodies and infernal machines. Gelb surrounded us in a kaleidoscopic array of  notes, lilting and blurring, a rising swarm of monarchs swirling and flickering in an iridescent light.  Oliveros went to the dark depths of low microtonal drones.  The beeping conspired to destroy but it didn't touch their world.  I began to hear connections between the shakuhachi and accordion that I had never known before--the Chinese Sheng is a distant relative of the accordion, and with the shakuhaci melds into an ancient lineage of bamboo. 

Reason went silent.  Then as Gelb and Oliveros moved to the inaudible, Reason emerged into a solo indescribable, so light, Lorcian, starry, mystical.  Only when she stopped, and all was silent, did I realize the three note beep was still there.  Back in San Francisco, I sat among people longing again for sonic journeys, audacious and intricate, infinitely gentle landscapes on the borders of silence.