“Aaron Siegel” (Used 3 times)

"I often have the experience of missing the present time as it is happening," Aaron Siegel says. Siegel and Mantra Percussion were last heard on the FMA in January with "Science is Only A Sometimes Friend," but collaborated again at the beginning of this month for "Preparing the Past," with video (above) by Christy Edwards. The piece, with two vibraphones, two glockenspiels, and piano four-hands, is less a continuous thread of events than a series of stases—like sonic tableaux—that build on one another and exist simultaneously. In these three movements, the first two of which were premiered last year at Roulette, Siegel examines stages of memory and fixing of moments: recording, scrutinizing, and re-imagining.

At the core of this is the desire to look at the same event from multiple angles—that is, in fixing the event, to move through the event and re-create it as your own. But rather than attempting to move toward the truth of a memory, all of these repetitions just make the event more enigmatic. In a certain way, the repeating glockenspiel figures are evocative of writing; the second movement, Scrutiny, repeats a rising, classically unresolved chord in many different forms that all seem to be basic variations on the same event. There is no harmonic or melodic motion, and the repeated action borders on the neurotic; the scrutinized becomes inscrutable.

This is where the final movement, Re-imagining comes in. In this, the pieces break apart—each member of the ensemble has a similar but staggered line—and float separately. When they overlap it's mostly on accident, and each voice moves on its own through a series of chords. This re-synthesis is more of a enzymatic denaturing, as each individual part is left as a shred of an original thought. Listen below to the entire performance, featuring Mantra Percussion on glockenspiels and vibraphones, and Emily Manzo and Anna Dagmar on piano.

For those looking for an hour-long respite from the bitter cold and straining grind steadfastly lurking outside the four walls of your bedroom, allow composer Aaron Siegel’s Science Is Only A Sometimes Friend to send you drifting, swaddled in a blissful stupor, into that hazy, temperate zone somewhere between the clouds and the sun. A warm, inviting bed of sustained organ chords melds into the whistling glow of the harmonic residues of eight chiming glockenspiels, forming a gauzy, sun-soaked orb that encircles the motoric pulsing of ever-shifting melodic fragments.

The composer (on organ) performed the work with the Aaron Siegel Ensemble at ISSUE last month, presenting a slightly re-orchestrated update (swapping audience contribution for organ) of the composition originally premiered last spring in Central Park as part of Make Music New York. The ensemble will be going into the studio next month to lay down a recording for release this fall. Keep an eye out for it.

In the program notes, Siegel suggests the work “tests the science of attention and the counterpoint of daydreams.” At least for this weak-minded listener, to maintain a focused listening perception throughout the duration of the work is to put up a forced, unnecessary struggle against the lulling powers of the gently consonant harmonies and hypnotizing permanence of pulsing rhythms. To engage in this strife is to lose out on the wonderful pleasure of allowing the intricacies of the music and the intricacies of your wandering thoughts to float gradually in and out of focus – internal and external sensualities dancing a woozy tango in which positions of prominence continually shift. The music seeps into the daydreams and the daydreams creep into the music, forming a harmonious feedback loop perfect for fifty minutes of time-obscuring escape.