Frequency Duo performs contemporary music

On Wednesday night, avant-garde chamber musicians known as the Bent Frequency Duo Project performed a guest recital in Ford-Crawford Hall.

They played seven pieces by contemporary composers, five of which they premiered this year.

A number of different themes and motifs, such as the Book of Job, mathematical constructions and Popeye the sailor, inspired the pieces.

Professional percussionist Stuart Gerber and saxophonist Jan Berry Baker founded the Bent Frequency Duo Project in Atlanta in 2003.

Gerber, whose “consummate virtuosity” was praised by the New York Times, has toured and taught internationally, most recently as the associate professor of percussion at Georgia State University.

Also an acclaimed performer, Baker has appeared with numerous ballet, opera and chamber music companies.

In May, she will appear on the “Blurred Edges 2014” presentation by the German company aktueller Musik. 

The first piece performed and the only track not commissioned for Bent Frequency, “From the Air” was written by artist Laurie Anderson in 1982 for her experimental, minimalist album, “Big Science.”

The album remains influential, particularly for its combination of pop elements into experimental, contemporary classical music.

“O Superman,” an eight-minute track on the album inspired by the crash of a military rescue helicopter outside Tehran in 1980, featured repeated or looping harmonies as well as vocals and sporadic instrumentation.

The disaster and terror that inspired “O Superman” was felt in “From the Air” as well.

“I sort of felt like my life was ending,” freshman Katherine Knapp said. “I couldn’t decide if I was okay with it until the song was over.”

A similar sense of confusion was felt in the duo’s fourth song, the three-part “Oh, Popeye!”

“I’ve never heard anything like it before,” freshman Meredith Baker said.

“Oh, Popeye!” opened with a looping recording of the sailor’s dry cackle, which the performers built upon in a series of chromatic glissandi.

The sound culminated into what the program notes called, “a tempest of crashing oscillations” which led to the second section, “a grooving dialogue” between Popeye and his love interest.

The third section, labeled “Fight! (Tattoos, Forearms & Fisticuffs),” was entirely improvised.

After a brief intermission, the musicians returned for the last three songs on the program.

“Roulettes” explored various tones and figures through different rhythms and sounds presented by a baritone saxophone and a number of percussion instruments, including base drum, marimba and chimes, among others.

“‘Roulettes’ imagines a musical equivalent for mathematical constructs,” composer Christopher Burns wrote in his program notes. “A series of complex interactions between saxophone and crotales (a series of miniature cymbals) which result in a variety of elegantly curved melodic shapes.”

Unlike “Roulettes,” the amorphous “METTA,” its name derived from a Buddhist concept of meditation, did not experiment with the instruments’ relationship with each other, but with their relationship with reality and imagination.

Playing over a prerecorded disk of seemingly arbitrary sounds, the musicians mirrored, echoed and enlarged themes and ideas introduced by the recording.

“A deep integration of the live and electroacoustic components develops, that blurs distinctions between ... the ephemeral and concrete and the temporal and timeless,” composer Robert Scott Thompson wrote.

Baker expressed surprise at the result.

“I never would have thought someone would make that kind of sound,” Baker said.
Although the audience at Ford-Crawford Hall was sparse, the attendees responded to each piece with enthusiasm and curiosity.

“Music is about expression,” Knapp said. “Why not express yourself to your full extent? Bring out all you’ve got.”