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My final report from the 2011 ISCM World New Music Days at the Zagreb Biennale is long overdue. Having lost my battle with Croatian Miss Universe contestants to use the computer in the Westin Hotel business center, the rest of my Friday was completely saturated with non-stop events and I didn’t get to sleep until about 3:30 a.m. On Saturday, after waking up at 6:30 a.m., I spent most of the day in the air and finally arrived back on my New York City doorstep at around 10 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (which is 4 a.m. Central European Time). Yesterday, after the first full night’s sleep I had in a week, I decided to keep my life corporeal for the most part and didn’t spend much time online. Instead I listened all day long to recordings I brought back with me which all made it back safe and sound and without any interrogations from customs officials in Croatia, Germany, or the United States. I barely scratched the surface, but it’s been a great listening experience so far. And then earlier today I was distracted by the Pulitzer announcement. But now I’ll try to reconstruct the rest of my stay in Zagreb, but the chronology might be slightly less linear than before (memory is funny that way).

Before I do that, a few words from Australian pianist Gabriella Smart, whom I spent a good deal of time with during the week. She was among the crew who followed me to the oldest, continuously operated restaurant in Zagreb which is closed on Monday but who also therefore got to drink that amazing 2007 Zlatan Vrhunsko Grand Cru Plavac Mali which we had in the restaurant that was open. Among the most exciting discs I’ve listened to thus far is her CD Chinese Whispers; I was particularly smitten with her performances of the Latin American Dances for prepared piano by Erik Griswold, an American-born composer who now makes Australia his home.

There were many amazing pieces performed during the course of the week, some of which I attempted to briefly describe in my earlier posts. You might remember how I was shocked by Sergey Khismatov’s Cymbals Quartet, mesmerized by Hugi Gudmindsson’s Handelusive, and haunted by Chiu-Yu Chou’s String Quartet No. 1. I thought it would be impossible for me to decide between the three of them, and there were others that captivated me as well. But it seems that almost everyone else was also awed by Chiu-Yu Chou which made her the clear favorite; here are a few words from her:

After writing yesterday’s installment I had a couple of hours of free time so I headed straight to Tratinska Street. According to a Google search I did back in NYC, there are two record shops there. Unfortunately one turned out to be out of business, but the other one, called Free Bird, was a gold mine. I picked up a few very affordable recordings of Croatian folk music and some singers from the 1930s. But since I was starting to feel like I was going to wind up spending a lot of money there, I cautiously asked the two guys who worked there if they accepted American Express before I browsed further. “Yeah, anything American; just not Russian Express!” exclaimed one of the guys, and we immediately started chatting. When I asked if they had any recordings by the 1970s prog rock band Tako from Serbia, the conversation got even more interesting. Unfortunately, the only Tako LP they had was way too scratchy for an aesthetically rewarding playback, but it led to my getting a crash course in the history of rock in the former Yugoslavia. They convinced me to pick up recordings of three groups from the 1970s: Buldožer, who were heavily influenced by Frank Zappa, the somewhat Jethro Tullish Drugi Način, who were based in Zagreb, and Time, who have a heavier, more hard rock sound. Then, Distorzija and Električni Orgazm, which were the Yugoslavian version of punk and new wave in the ’80s. After getting all the records, I really had to rush to get to the 4 p.m. concert on time. I just made it.

The first of the three concerts of the WNMD yesterday was a program of works for tuba quartet, including a heavy-hitting piece by our own Julie Harting who came to hear the performance. It turned out to be her first visit to Europe.

Turns out that he also had never been to Europe before and, as far as he knows, this is the first time his music has ever been played here even though his band piece, a surefire audience hit, has already been played quite a bit in the United States.

The highlight of this morning’s general assembly was the unanimous election of Sofia Gubaidulina as an honorary member of ISCM. Shockingly, it is the first time a woman composer has been so honored. The most recent American composer to be honored was Milton Babbitt, only months before he died. Also worth noting here is a comment from Japanese composer Tatsuya Kawasoi, who had a piece performed on the wind band concert yesterday. In an open letter to WNMD participants published in today’s Zagreb Biennale newsletter, he talked about how difficult it was for him emotionally to come to Zagreb amidst all the tragedy that has happened in his homeland and why he ultimately decided to be here:

We have to prove, by continuing our activities in any situation no matter how painful it is, that [a] human being possesses the freedom of creation [from which] arises new art.

The last 24 hours have been another relentless roller coaster ride of music and ideas. Once again, starting at 4 p.m., there were three consecutive concerts. The first was devoted to three new works scored for a Baroque period instrument ensemble—mostly wooden flute, strings, and harpsichord, although Turkish composer Erman Oydemir threw in some brass as well, which created a fascinating cross-century clash in his Music for Baroque Orchestra. Ante Knesaurek’s Four Croquis showed how effective period instruments can be in conveying counterpoint, even if the counterpoint is not based on standard tonal harmonies. But I was totally transported by Hugi Gudmindsson’s utterly surreal Handelusive which twisted Baroque dance forms into very 21st-century sounding music.

At 5:30 p.m., the participants of ISCM WNMD had an opportunity to rock out with a concert of works for electric guitar with or without string quartet. Three guitarists, including one appropriately named Elvis, were on hand to perform works by five different composers. The pieces of Nicolo Colombo and the aforementioned Daniel Matej (in an electric guitar solo dedicated to Elliott Sharp), revelled in distortion, as did I as a listener to it, while Mauricio Pauly weaved the electric guitar into the fabric of the string quartet sonorities contrapuntally. Claude Ledoux’s guitar solo was an hommage to Steve Vai, and Marcel Wierckx added a fascinating video of twisting hands to the performance of his frenetic solo piece. Taiwanese Chiu-Yu Chou was the only composer who wrote for string quartet without electric guitar, but her String Quartet No. 1 was a deeply moving and intellectually provocative sonic experience—strains of the third movement are still running through my brain more than 12 hours and as many pieces later!

The third concert of the night was devoted to jazz big band and featured six works, two by Americans: Randy Bauer’s Wide-Eyed Wonder and Steve Wiest’s Kurt Vonnegut inspired Ice-Nine (one of the soloists even vaguely resembled Vonnegut, but maybe my imagination was starting to get the better of me by that hour). Here’s what the piece sounds like (in a previously recorded performance by an American ensemble).

I need to rush off now to meet the mayor of Zagreb so there’s not enough time to describe the other pieces just yet, but I did talk to Randy Bauer, who came to Zagreb for the performance, so you can watch him talk a bit more about his music.

My hotel has been taken over by Croatian contestants for the Miss Universe Pageant and they have been constantly in front of the two computers at the hotel’s business center updating their Facebook pages. And then it has been nonstop meetings and concerts. It’s intermission at an orchestra program where I just heard Penderecki conduct a piece by Croatian President Ivo Josipović and I’m writing from my Blackberry. More details following my flight back to NYC late tomorrow night, but in the meanwhile some observations from composer Maria Panayotova, who is from Bulgaria and has since moved back there, but whose years in the USA have had a permanent impact on her. Food for thought.

We are now into the second day of the International Society for Contemporary Music’s annual World New Music Days (ISCM WNMD for short), which this year is taking place during the Zagreb Biennale in Zagreb, Croatia. I arrived in Zagreb yesterday morning via Munich. There are no direct flights from New York City despite Zagreb emerging as a major tourist spot over the past decade. The Zagreb Biennale is now celebrating its 50th anniversary—it is the longest-running new music festival in this part of the world.

There has not been a single moment of down time thus far. At 4 p.m. yesterday there was a brief formal reception welcoming delegates, most of them composers, who have come here from six continents. It is indeed a world new music event. I’m happy to report that there will be performances of works by six composers from the United States later this week—a composition for tuba quartet by Julie Harting, jazz big band pieces by Randy Bauer and Steve Wiest, plus works by B. J. Brooks, Brian Fennelly, and Melinda Wagner which will be performed by the Croatian Armed Forces Symphonic Wind Orchestra. But that’s later in the week.

After the reception last night there were two very different concerts. The first was an all-percussion extravaganza showcasing works by six composers. I was particularly intrigued by Couple by Norio Fukushi from Japan. It began as an extremely austere and introspective duet for unpitched percussion and gradually morphed into flamboyant, over-the-top zaniness with balloons popping, various children’s toys making animal sounds, and additional percussionists appearing in the audience seemingly out of nowhere. And this morning I find myself still mesmerized by Sergey Khismatov’s Cymbals Quartet, a harsh, sometimes excruciating exploration of bowing the sides of cymbals—quite a powerful sound, but not for the faint of heart.

After that concert we were all bussed to the headquarters of Radio/TV Croatia for the second concert. Radio/TV Croatia still has its own symphony orchestra, as well as the group we heard last night which was a tamburitza orchestra. The tamburitza is a plucked string instrument somewhat akin to the mandolin. The program consisted of nine short works, all but one of which was written expressly for these instruments. The sole transcription—Zaboravljene muzike (a.k.a. Forgotten Musics)—was so effectively translated to the sounds of the tamburitza by Siniša Leopold (who also conducted the orchestra) that it is difficult for me to imagine what it was originally composed for (the notes did not say). All of the music for tamburitza orchestra was composed by Croatian composers except for the very last piece, And the Strings Resound…, a work by a young Hong Kong-based composer named Dic-Lun Fung whose music I first heard back in September during the Gaudeamus Music Week. Having a work for this very Croatian ensemble by a composer from so far away was a real treat, and the ensemble approached the piece with a great deal of enthusiasm. The piece followed a work by Ivo Josipović who is currently the president of Croatia; a tough act to follow especially considering what a cool piece it was as well, but Dic-Lun Fung’s work held up nicely and introduced some unusual new timbral possibilities for the tamburitzas.

This morning began at 9 a.m. sharp with the first day of meetings of the delegates. These will take place for four hours every day this week followed by concerts in the afternoon. It was extremely exciting to be sitting alongside composers representing their parts of the world from places as far afield as Chile, the Sichuan Province in China, and even the Faroe Islands which this morning was voted in as an official member of the network. Joining me from the United States are David McMullin, based in Boston, and Stephen Lias from Texas. Orlando Jacinto Garcia from Florida and William Anderson from New York City are also involved but were unable to attend. It would be wonderful if more Americans could participate in this organization, which offers an opportunity for performances that will be heard by composers and new music aficionados from all over the planet.

Our meetings ended early this morning so we could all have a private audience with Croatian President Ivo Josipović who still actively composes music—no excuses not to make time to compose for any of us who have to maintain day jobs in order to earn a living! Josipović used to head the Croatian Composers Society as well as the Zagreb Biennale, and he is still very much interested in being part of this scene. Imagine what the world would be like if we could figure out a way to elect composers to political positions all over the world. According to one of the representatives here from Switzerland, a network of composers could be more efficient than a network of administrators. John Davis from Australia who currently chairs the ISCM and is also the director of the Australian Music Centre pointed out that composers have specific skills (vis a vis problem solving) that could be put to very good use in the political sphere.

It’s been about 24 hours since last I was able to sit in front of a computer terminal and type, but there hasn’t been a dull moment in between.

Photo thanks to Sorin Lerescu, President of the Romanian Section of ISCM

Yesterday afternoon there were two concerts back to back in one of the larger rooms of the museum MIMARA. It was great to hear new music surrounded by the paintings of Goya, Veronese, and other famous painters from the past. The first concert featured six new pieces performed by the Zagreb Saxophone Quartet. For the final two they were joined by New Sax 4, forming a saxophone octet—what glorious sounds were mined in very different ways by Mexican composer Mario Stern and Slovenian composer Uros Rojko. After a short break, the second concert began, which was devoted to music for voice with and without electronics. I was extremely moved by a work for soprano and electronically altered vocal sounds called Responsorium by Japanese composer Akira Takaoka. Given the recent tragedy in Japan, his mournful work had an even deeper—albeit probably unintended—emotional resonance.

After that I coralled a group of folks to wander through the old town in search of dinner. My hope was to have a meal at Pod Starim Krovovima, which has been in business continuously since 1830. Apparently not completely continually—they are closed on Monday nights. My bad luck. But we found a terrific modern restaurant nearby that served delectable oxtails which we accompanied with terrific Croatian wines made from local grape varietals. The particularly splendid red bottle we had was made from the grape Plavac Mali (which I first became aware of after seeing Marina Abramovic down an entire bottle of it in a film of one of her performance art pieces exhibited at MoMA last year—I now know why). During dinner I chatted with Slovak composer Daniel Matej, who for years programmed a festival of contemporary music which featured many important American mavericks including John Cage (only weeks before his death) and Steve Reich. It was amazing to learn that he discovered this music through Michael Nyman’s book Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond; reading it changed his life and served as a blueprint for the festival.

Effectively getting the word out about composers internationally further hit home during our assembly sessions this morning. The industrious Stephen Lias distributed copies to everyone attending of the just published first edition of Contemporary Art Music in Texas: A Guide to Composers, Performers, and Organizations. For each of the composers included—who represent a broad spectrum stylistically, including jazz—there is a photo, contact information, and a selected list of compositions. In addition, the book comes with a CD featuring recordings of all the compositions that were submitted to the 2011 ISCM World New Music Days, including the two works that will be performed (by B. J. Brooks and Steve Wiest). It is a wonderful promotional tool, and you better believe it will get composers from Texas in the ears of people from all over the world. Now for the other 49 states.

Concerts begin again in another two and a half hours, so now I am free to wander the town in search of more record stores. Yesterday afternoon on the way to the concerts I picked up an LP of Serbian jazz from late ’50s and a Croatian rock band from the early ’60s. I just couldn’t resist.