Musicians sink their teeth into the weird at Sick Puppy

By David Weininger, Globe Correspondent  |  June 15, 2007

One sure and uniquely Bostonian sign of summer is the return of Sick Puppy. No, that's neither a veterinarians convention nor a mediocre punk band. It is instead the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP, universally known as Sick Puppy). Every year pianists and other instrumentalists gather at New England Conservatory under the direction of pianist Stephen Drury to sink their teeth into some of the most enigmatic, esoteric, and downright weird music the 20th and 21st centuries have to offer. This year's seminar gets underway on Monday and runs through Saturday; all its public concerts are free.

A highlight of each seminar is the presence of a composer in residence who drops by to work with the participants on his or her own work. Last year it was Michael Finnissy, a British composer associated with a trend known as "new complexity." In a neatly symmetrical turn, this year's guest puppy is Walter Zimmermann, a German composer linked to a movement known as the "new simplicity."

Tags like these rarely offer much substantial insight into a composer's music, yet in Zimmermann's case it does get at something important about his art. Born in 1949, Zimmermann forged his musical identity at a time when the European avant-garde was under the lingering influence of the Darmstadt School and the thorny creations of such composers as Stockhausen and Boulez. By contrast, Zimmermann looked to America for inspiration, and in particular to the music of Morton Feldman and the early works of John Cage. From them he absorbed the austere, stripped-down sound and uncomplicated way of handling musical ideas that underlie his first important works.

That approach gave rise to the "new simplicity" label, and it made him something of a renegade in Europe. It can be heard most clearly in a large cycle of pieces called "Lokale Musik," excerpts of which are on Wednesday's and Thursday's programs. Written for a variety of ensembles, each selection is a sort of reimagining of the folk music of the composer's native Franconia region. Where composers like Bartok used folk melodies and rhythms as building blocks for elaborate inventions, Zimmermann's entries have a naive, almost artless quality to them. Drury, who was directed to Zimmermann's music by Cage in the late 1980s, describes one piece of "Lokale Musik" in an e-mail as sounding "like the kind of music Ives would have written growing up in Franconia: straightforward and rhythmic, but with a fractured sound somewhere between experimental music and amateur playing."

Other works are based on philosophical or religious ideas, such as the Zen-inspired piano suite "Beginner's Mind." Another is "Wüstenwanderung" ("Desert Journey"), a monumental piano piece that runs nearly half an hour and is on Wednesday's program. It depicts the creation of the World Soul as Plato relates it in the "Timaeus." Appropriately for a work of such intellectual heft, it's extraordinarily complex , as Drury explains: "It continually adds and overlays new patterns on top of each other in a machinery which ends up with nearly every note on the entire keyboard being used repeatedly and simultaneously."

It may seem that there's not much in the way of "new simplicity" to "Wüstenwanderung," which makes demands on the pianist that have been described as bordering on the impossible. Yet Drury can still hear the underlying directness of expression underneath the blur of notes. "No matter how furious the activity of the performer," he writes, "there is always an underlying simplicity and a direct apprehension of pure sound and pure intellect."

Zimmerman is almost unknown in America, so in addition to presenting his music, SICPP will do some context-setting by playing works by Cage and Feldman, as well as some minimalist pieces to which Zimmermann is more distantly related. The final public concert, on Friday night, is a marathon show of four-plus hours. It'll include music by Zimmermann, Stockhausen , Kagel , Rzewski , and a whole lot more. Audience members are invited to come and go as they please. If that doesn't satisfy your avant-garde jones, maybe you're a sick puppy after all.

Information: Sicpp.org

Boston Baroque has announced its 2007-08 season, composed of five programs under the direction of music director Martin Pearlman. As it did last season, it will open with a Mozart opera, this time "Cosi fan tutte," on Oct. 12 & 13. Other programs of note include the annual New Year's Eve and Day concerts, which will include music by the French Baroque composer Jean-Fery Rebel . Also on that program is Vivaldi's "Four Seasons," with the young violinist Christina Day Martinson as soloist. The Vivaldi will be recorded for the Telarc label shortly after the performances.

The season also includes Purcell's rarely performed "King Arthur" and Haydn's "The Creation." Rounding it out will be the ensemble's annual performances of Handel's "Messiah" in December.

Single tickets go on sale in September. 617-484-9200, bostonbaroque.org.