Post and Courier Review

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THE POST AND COURIER
Thursday, June 8, 2000

Cutting-edge flutist closes series
by Jack Dressler

Spoleto's Music in Time contemporary music series at the College of Charleston's Albert Simons Center concluded Wednesday for a sparse but engaged audience. This program featured flutist Margaret Lancaster, a masterful performer who has championed new works and has had numerous vehicles composed for her.

Beyond the materials performed, it must be said that as a soloist Lancaster's sense of timing and articulatin, her focused releases and confident phrasing, as well as a wealth of sheer technical command, all place her in the front ranks of contemporary instrumental artistry. She has chosen to place these enviable resources in the service of what used to be called the avant-garde, a term now so vague and unserviceable in today's stylistic diaspora that what she offers simply is "new music."

A 1998 work for solo flute and prepared tape named "In Praise of Buddy Hackett," by Paul Reller, exemplified the best and most puzzling features of these works which seem to roll out in some arbitrarily appointed pace. Electronic noises led into vaudeville bumps and grinds and then into a jazz-rock fusion rhythm section. The flute part, also amplified and apparently painstakingly notated and brilliantly executed by Lancaster, overlaid the tape, not really as an accompaniment, but often as an opponent.

"Preciosilla (Margaret's Mix)" (1992) by Eve Beglarian used taped sampling techniques, with spoken repetitions and echoes, to frame a conterpoint with soprano and alto flutes. Lancaster ended with ear-splitting filagrees during which some members of the audience were encouraged to protect their hearing.

She noodled in virtuoso fashion as well on the next unaccompanied number, dressed in leotard and slippers, a portion of a work in progress by Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Samstag aus Licht," begun in 1983. This portion for piccolo alone, also called upon Lancaster to make a dance-imitation of a cat while playing, lying on her back, prancing around the stage, to accompany the solo "Zungenspitzentanz" ("Tip of the tongue Dance").

When each work is determinedly sui generis - or, as series director John Kennedy says, asserts its "freedom from history" - then for the listener who probably will hear it only once, bereft of formal references, the work could just as well have been randomly improvised. For this reason, despite colorful presentations, each of these music occurrences had a tendency to sound much the same.

The last two numbers, by contrast, at least were aesthetically bound bytraditinal instrumentations.

Kaija Saariaho's 1998 "Cendres" for alto flute, cello and piano suggested a developmental exchange of themes and ornamentations. Cellist Anja Wood and pianist Judith Gordon gave a balanced and reactive precision to the most arresting musical scenario of the concert.

The trio was joined by double marimbas, played by David Mancuso and Mark Suter, for a larger-scale but somewhat less adventuresome sketch entitled "Thread" (1999) by Belinda Reynolds.

Unlike the rest, it was unabashedly tuneful with real chords and a cogent shape. it also was less interesting than the more outrageous elements of the program, which more than anything remained a tribute to Lancaster's artful energies.

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