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The world-famous percussion group Nexus comes to Windsor this week to perform with the Windsor Symphony.
Photograph by: Handout, The Windsor Star
Percussion ensemble loves improv
BY TED SHAW, THE WINDSOR STAR
September 30, 2009
Members of Canada's Nexus hear music in the strangest places.
The world-famous percussion group has gone to the four corners of the globe in search of new forms of expression.
And sometimes a noise at a construction site can inspire a composition. Sometimes, it's birdsong.
Nexus co-founder Bill Cahn is bringing two such compositions to Windsor this week to perform with the Windsor Symphony.
The Birds uses a variety of devices that imitate birds, like a hunter's duck call.
"People down through the ages have been fascinated by the sounds of birds," said Cahn. "They have come up with wonderful devices that copy bird calls."
Cahn calls for some of them in his composition.
The other work is titled Kebjar-Bali, inspired by Cahn's visit to the island of Bali.
"In Balinese gamelan orchestras, the bulk of the group consists of percussion, which is the opposite of traditional orchestras in the west."
A gamelan orchestra can sometimes include strings, woodwinds or brass, but always in support of the percussion. "The roles are reversed," said Cahn.
The word gamelan is derived from the Javanese word for strike or hammer. Cahn's work is named after the Balinese style of gamelan, called kebjar, which is a virtuoso use of rhythm and dynamics.
The six-tone scale of gamelan inspired Claude Debussy after hearing it at the Paris Exposition of 1889. He later used the whole tone scale in some of his works. Other composers famously inspired by Balinese and Javanese music are Olivier Messiaen, Bela Bartok, John Cage and Steve Reich.
Nexus was officially launched in 1971 following a concert of improvised music. The original group consisted of Cahn, Bob Becker, Russell Hartenberger, Robin Engelman and the late Michael Craden. A later member, John Wyre, died in 2006, replaced by longtime Nexus associate Garry Kvistad.
Each member enjoys a solid reputation as a solo artist and guest with other musicians. Some have academic careers -- Hartenberger is on the University of Toronto's faculty of music, while Engelman also taught there and Cahn teaches percussion performance at the Eastman School in Rochester, N.Y.
Today, Nexus tours the world performing concerts or conducting advanced workshops at universities and colleges. While in Windsor, the group will do workshops at the University of Windsor school of music, and perform a solo concert tonight at Assumption Chapel.
From the start, Nexus has made what eventually came to be known as World Music -- both Becker and Hartenberger are specialists in West African music.
The group also enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with the late Japanese composer, Toru Takemitsu.
Takemitsu's percussion concerto, From Me Flows What You Call Time, was written to display the talents of each member of Nexus. It is available on Sony Classics, one of 25 albums released under the group's name. Nexus has also issued 15 CDs on its own label.
Two of the group's documentary film scores have won international praise -- 1975's Academy Award-winning film, The Man Who Skied Down Everest; and for the National Film Board's prize-winning 2008 release, Inside Time.
From the very start at its first concert, improvisation has been a key element in a Nexus performance.
"Most classical musicians cringe at the idea of improvisation," said Cahn. "But all musical styles have improvisation, not just jazz."
Cahn promotes what he calls creative music-making, a free-form expression that is similar to improvisation but follows strict guidelines.
"You can still play whatever you want to play on any instrument," he said, "but using a certain set of rules and practices. Once you learn the guidelines, it can be very open-ended, very liberating."
tshaw@thestar.canwest.com or 519-255-6849
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