Local composers to premiere new music at Olympia's Traditions Cafe

Six Northwest composers will each present a new piece of classical music Sunday evening at a new Olympia Composers’ Forum, a concert of locally composed music at Traditions Cafe. It’s a great chance, say the composers, to hear fresh sounds in an intimate, comfortable venue.

“I wanted a place to hear new music in town, and there wasn’t anywhere,” said Debra Porter, a 58-year-old composer who moved to Olympia a year ago from Portland, where the new classical music scene is strong. “I thought I’d like to do something small and nice for people who hadn’t heard new music much, so they could see if they liked it.”

When Porter met Tacoma-based composer Shawn Meloy over the summer, he liked the idea, and the Olympia Composers’ Forum began to take shape, pulling in other local composers like Meloy’s Olympia student Nicholas Melton (a junior at the Tacoma School of the Arts), Olympia composers Scott Cossu and Laurel Gonzalo, and Portland composer John Vergin. Sunday is the first of what the composers hope will be informal recitals and concerts of their music every few months at Traditions.

“It’s small and intimate. … That’s what you want for something new,” Gonzalo said of Traditions.

Last weekend, four of the six composers were sitting in the Yenney Music rehearsal room, listening intently to a trio of viola, oboe and cello play through some of the music, with Gonzalo conducting. Porter’s piece “Breathe” flows in and out of unresolved, shifting dissonances in the strings, with the oboe ascending and descending on whole tone scales. It’s all quite hushed.

“Breathing is an exchange, so my piece ‘Breathe’ is an exchange for instruments, between melodies,” explained Porter, who wrote the piece in April. Meloy’s piece, written specifically for this trio and event, contrasts a slow, eerie movement of semitones set over major chords and open fifths with a brisk, Sergei Prokofiev-like dance that has a mischievous oboe flitting over pizzicato cello leaps like a marionette.

Melton, who is debuting as a composer Sunday night, has written a piano trio called “Momentum,” which will be played by fellow SOTA students. He’s enjoying the chance the forum gives him to work with more experienced composers.

Gonzalo, a founding member of the Pacific Composers Forum in Los Angeles who was commissioned to write a work performed at Olympia’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration this year, has written a piece called “Conversations” that exchanges fugue-like entries between the instruments in Aaron ­Copland-like harmony.

“In this political climate, people are hearing conversations that sound antagonistic,” Gonzalo said. “But the more we talk, the more we find common ground. By the last movement (in my piece), all points of view come together and say something beautiful.”

While Olympia isn’t known for aggressively championing new music like Seattle or Portland, the composers are confident that all it takes is making the music available, and folks will listen.

“The environment lends itself to new music,” Gonzalo said. “Musicians are eager to play. It just takes organization and someone like Debra. … I think we can develop a continuing series of new music, and will grow audiences.”

Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568

rosemary.ponnekanti@thenewstribune.com

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