Next week, a Nashville-based alternative music collective called chatterbird will make its debut at abrasiveMedia, presenting a program of experimental music that will include a performance by the aerial dance company FALL. And next spring, another contemporary Nashville ensemble, Intersection, will give its inaugural concert at The Platform, performing with the city's red-hot modern dance troupe New Dialect.
Nashville seems to be experiencing a surge of interest in the avant-garde. No doubt, the opening of OZ Arts Nashville last year as the city's first dedicated space for contemporary art, music, theater and dance has provided the arts community with a burst of creative adrenaline. But OZ's artistic director Lauren Snelling insists her organization is not solely responsible for the recent renaissance of the avant-garde in Nashville.
"There is no way OZ could exist without all of the great arts institutions that came before us," Snelling says. "Groups like Nashville Shakespeare Festive, Nashville Symphony, ALIAS and others have laid the foundation and cultivated an audience for contemporary art."
Noted contemporary music composer and electric violinist Tracy Silverman says Nashville's recent emergence as an It City has most likely contributed to the creative impulse. "There seems to be an almost unlimited potential in Nashville to expand the arts, culture, food, you name it," Silverman says. "As the city grows, its appetite for new art and new experiences of every kind grows with it."
Currently, Nashville's population of about 609,000 is identical to that of Portland, Ore., which is where flutist and chatterbird founder Celine Thackston recently relocated from. Now, Thackston is determined to re-create the sort of artistic life she enjoyed in the Pacific Northwest.
"Portland has a vibrant alternative classical music scene," says Thackston. "There were really quirky productions, like staging Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold as an episode of Baywatch. There were also electric guitar orchestras that would play in alternative venues like bars and cafes. Nashville seems like a great place for that kind of scene."
Nashvillians might have to wait awhile for David Hasselhoff to make his local debut as a suntanned Wotan. But Thackston and her musicians plan to introduce the rest of their Portland-inspired quirkiness next Thursday at abrasiveMedia. Their program will include some remarkable experiments in sound, such as Dai Fujikura's Poison Mushroom for flute and electronics, a work that pits shrill, jagged flute melodies against a sparkling bed of electronic noise; and composer Missy Mazzoli's Magic With Everyday Objects, which is basically the sonic equivalent of a nervous breakdown, a work in which beauty and rapture emerge from chaos.
Thackston says chatterbird will bridge the worlds of indie rock and classical (the electric guitar is arguably the ensemble's favorite instrument). The group's primary mission will be to encourage the creation of new music in Nashville. "We're going to have a call for scores and try to get as many Nashville composers working as possible," she says.
Nashville's other emerging new music group, Intersection, most definitely owes its existence to the city's arts establishment. The group's founding artistic director and conductor is Kelly Corcoran, the director of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra Chorus and a fixture in the city's classical music scene.
A Massachusetts native, Corcoran is a graduate of the Boston Conservatory and a former soprano of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. Her obsession with modern music dates back 20 years, when she first came under the spell of Arnold Schoenberg's strange, otherworldly Pierrot Lunaire. "That kind of music just speaks to me," says Corcoran. "I love conducting the symphonic repertoire, but I felt like something was missing from my life. I need contemporary music."
Corcoran's colleagues and acquaintances were hardly surprised to learn she was launching a new ensemble, though a few did briefly question her sanity. "I think she's crazy," says Silverman. "But I also think Intersection is an awesome idea that's bound to take off as long as the music is hip, cool and artistically solid."
Silverman, by the way, has agreed to serve on Intersection's Artistic Advisory Council along with such other luminaries as the conductor Marin Alsop, the composers Richard Danielpour and Jennifer Higdon, banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck and Boston Symphony artistic administrator Anthony Fogg.
Corcoran has launched a 60-day Indiegogo campaign to help raise money for Intersection's debut concert on March 26 at The Platform. The program will feature music by Arvo Pärt and Sofia Gubaidulina, composers whose works are frequently heard in the world's great metropolises but are seldom encountered in Music City. Choreographer Banning Bouldin is currently creating an original dance that her company, New Dialect, will perform at the concert.
Intersection will also introduce a true novelty, a contemporary art music series for children. That series will debut on June 7 at the Green Door Gourmet farm on River Road, and will give new meaning to the term "Classical Dinosaur." The highlight of the program will be Bruce Adolphe's Tyrannosaurus Sue: A Cretaceous Concerto.
"Kids approach contemporary music with fresh ears," says Corcoran. "They are the audience of the future."
Email Arts@nashvillescene.com.
