MUSIC REVIEW: Bandura music from Shtokalko to Stockhausen (10/15/00)

MUSIC REVIEW: Bandura music from Shtokalko to Stockhausen

by Marcia Ostashewski

I'm writing this review of the new CD "Experimental Bandura Trio" as I look out a cottage window, down a hillside, onto a lake. The music I'm reviewing was conceived in much the same situation. The three men who call themselves the Experimental Bandura Trio (EBT) - Mike Andrec, Julian Kytasty and Jurij Fedynsky - created and worked out, even recorded, much of this music in the midst of nature, while sitting around a campfire.

I wonder if being out at the lake has made me hear the music any differently? I think it has, because this music is about more than just notes on manuscript paper. It seems to be a part of musical traditions that think of sound differently, more holistically. Innovative playing techniques are intended to bring out sounds from the bandura we're not accustomed to hearing at Shevchenko concerts and on Christmas CDs.

The EBT musicians found their initial impetus for this music among private recordings of the bandura great Zynovii Shtokalko. Many of the pieces on the EBT's CD are heavily influenced by the material on these recordings, which is tonally rich and improvisational in nature. The creative works of the EBT compositions also draw upon wider-ranging musical developments, for example, Mr. Andrec states his composition "mosaic" is more influenced by the American composer Steve Riech than Shtokalko. In this first piece on the CD, the listener is surprised by strategic silences and fragile musical moments, only to be caught up again by cross-rhythmic fun.

One of the most rhythmically intense pieces on the CD, the EBT's interpretation of a traditional Macedonian oro builds from an introductory phrase into tight trio segments; the piece climaxes after repeating an exciting phrase, consecutively fuller and richer with each repetition.

"Hunter Nocturne II," a jointly composed new music piece of the EBT, offers the most unexpected and experimental sonorities on the CD; this piece is suspenseful with regard to both tone and technique. "Dumadance," the EBT's rendition of an Ostap Veresai tune, opens like the meandering introductory alap of Indian classical music. When the longer, more pulsed segment of the piece begins, the listener is seduced by danceable rhythms, highly chromatic solo and duet sections, and phrases that seem to pounce. Finally, the music falls away as if we were watching the kobzar-bandurists themselves dance away down a village road.

"Dr. Shtok Makes House Calls" may have a cheeky title (referring to Shtokalko who was a physician by profession), but the harmonies within it are ominous. The music is ethereal in its openness of sound, but grounded with warm, thick glissandi, a woody and hollow meta-layer of plucked notes, and deep, relentless bass tones. At the end of this piece, the listener is inundated with "Noise," then left to ponder the original foreboding phrase.

The texture of "Canticle" grows from a hallowed melody being played by a lone instrument, to two instruments weaving the same thematic pattern together. A third instrument later sings a brilliant melody above the duet. Glorious, reverent harmonies close the piece, but echo in the mind.

A description of the CD album art may be understood to encapsulate the spirit of this music. The inside sleeve shows a very old black and white photo of three bandurists, holding early versions of the bandura; superimposed on the photo are staves of a music score; layered on top of this are hand-etched designs for a prototype of a bandura. We can understand the music of the EBT to have come from the roots of the kobzars, a tradition that immigrated to this New World with these men. During this past century, the bandura has been influenced by pianistic Western art music stylization and has experienced a metamorphosis with respect to a concert tradition - the superimposed music score. The prototype designs offer a "new bandura," as does the music of the Experimental Bandura Trio.

In this music, I hear virtuosic performance technique, knocking on wood, slight in-breaths of a performer readying to make his instrument sound, a variety of timbres and effects that remind me of what John Cage did with the piano earlier this century. Amidst recent efforts to bring the bandura to a more global forum and raise its profile from a folk to an art music instrument, I think these musicians have succeeded - without ever having had this intention.

The CD is available for $15 (postage included) from Michael Andrec, 69 Benner St. (second floor), Highland, NJ 08904. (Please make checks payable to Michael Andrec). It is available also at select Ukrainian stores.

Marcia Ostashewski is an ethnomusicologist affiliated with York University in Toronto.

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