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Cellist Charles Curtis at the New Music Miami Festival

Cellist Charles Curtis at the New Music Miami Festival
Charles Curtis

Charles Curtis

On February 25th, 2015, I attended a new music solo cello recital by Charles Curtis at FIU’s Miami Beach Urban Studios (MBUS).  Curtis is an amazing cellist and a contemporary music professor at the University of California San Diego. He performed four pieces: Glacier by Alvin Lucier, Occam V by Eliane Radigue, Rice and Beans for Charles Curtis by Alison Knowles, and Slices for Cello and Pre-Recorded Orchestra by Alvin Lucier. All of the pieces were unaggressive, relatively slow, and very relaxing to my ear.

My favorite piece was Rice and Beans for Charles Curtis. It was very unique in that Curtis laid the cello down on the floor and tapped the strings with his fingers from top to bottom. I had never seen an extended technique like this on the cello, so it was quite interesting to me. The cello made different sounds as his fingers moved down every inch on the strings. When he got to the middle part of the cello, the sound was loudest. This is a very sensitive piece that should only be performed in an intimate space since some of the sounds are very soft, and the audience should be able to see the performer’s action on the cello as well. MBUS, therefore, was a perfect place for this piece since the recital space is relatively small.

My second most favorite piece was the last piece on the program, Slices for Cello and Pre-Recorded Orchestra. As the title of this piece indicates, Curtis played a pre-recorded orchestra along with his own cello performance. This piece was also very interesting because the pre-recorded orchestra was timed to sound like it was following his cello playing. Every time he played a phrase or a certain key, a different instrument on the pre-recorded orchestra played the same thing, as if it was following his cello. It was like a continuous chasing game. At first, I thought it was an interactive piece where whatever he played was repeated by a different sound on the computer, using a delay or looping effect, but it was actually all pre-recorded music, excluding his cello playing. I noted that it must be difficult to play with pre-recorded music, especially for a piece like this, because Curtis had to be very precisely on point. In addition, this piece was almost 40 minutes long, so Curtis had to be very focused throughout the entire piece to be precisely in step with the orchestra.

Overall, I really enjoyed this concert. I wish I could have heard more pieces performed by Curtis, but each piece in the program was at least 15-minutes long, so adding pieces would have made the concert too long.