June 8th Ron Mazurek Self Portrait

Program:

Bird of Passage: Cindy Shiung, flute and Marian Dybsjold, dancer

On Becoming: Ron Mazurek, keyboard with Jeoung Nam Park and Marian Dybsjold, dancers

Three Preludes: Ju-Ping Song, piano

Satori: Michael Caputo, clarinet and Jeoung Nam Park, dancer

In Strange Tongues: Ron Mazurek, keyboard with Jeoung Nam Park and Marian Dybsjold, dancers

If I have to describe him in a one sentence, I will say that Ron Mazurek is a composer whose vertical and horizontal senses are well balanced. Here "vertical sense" indicates the sense of temporally melody, harmony, and rhythm, while "horizontal sense" indicates the sense of time flowing that controls the audience's emotion. Mazurek's compositions are usually assemblies of sound textures. He assigns its own sonority to each texture with free space left. Performers, including him, can improvise in the specific frames. It makes the performers not only play pieces easier but also enjoy them and give them lives. Additionally, in the composing process, it makes him use energy to concentrate more on the time structure of the whole piece than on details. This concert showed many aspects of Mazurek. In the pieces as "On Becoming" and "In Strange Tongues," he played keyboard by himself with two dancers. Although he said most notes were actually written, we could say it was a sort of improvisation because the timing was obviously created in real time in interplay with the dancers. In pieces as "Bird of Passage" for flute, "Three Prelude" for piano, and "Satori" for clarinet, he manipulated electronic devices with each performer. The same kind of interplay occurred here between him and the performers. The performers seemed to enjoy creating the musical moments in real time. At the same time, "Three Prelude" showed his great sense of harmony. This piece has one of the most beautiful piano's sounds that I have ever heard. (Yusuke Iwasaki)