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11.25.2001 00:04
Arranged
marriage
Atonal composer Barbara Kolb will teach, organize cultural events and write music for a state that abhors the avant-garde
By CHANNING GRAY
Journal Arts Writer
Cartons of books remain unpacked. Paintings sit on the floor, waiting for a spot on the wall. Babette, an aloof Siamese cat, is perched in a window, basking in the morning sun.
It is here, in the shadow of Brown University, that composer Barbara Kolb has set up shop, in a rambling third-floor flat that looks out on a landscape of Victorian rooftops and white pine. In the coming months, she hopes to make her mark on the local contemporary music scene, if such a thing exists. She might have an easier time persuading Federal Hill restaurateurs to start serving bratwurst and sauerkraut.
Kolb has spent most of her adult life in New York City, working in the rarefied world of atonal music, garnering important accolades.
The New York Philharmonic hired her in 1994 to write music celebrating its 150th anniversary. A decade before that, she was invited by the cerebral French composer-conductor Pierre Boulez to become composer-in-residence at his new-music research center in Paris, IRCAM, a mecca of sorts for the European avant-garde.
Kolb was the first American woman composer to win the Rome Prize, and has earned Tanglewood, MacDowell and Guggenheim fellowships. The National Endowment for the Arts has seen fit to award her grants on seven occasions.
Now after more than three decades on the New York scene -- with periodic sojourns to France and Italy -- Kolb has decided to try and make a go of it in Providence, where many audience members still flock to the exits when being confronted with modern music.
Rhode Island's New Music Ensemble underwent an agonizing demise some years ago, after empty seats outnumbered the full.
"It's kind of odd," says Kolb, "that the first piece I wrote for orchestra was performed by the New York Philharmonic with Pierre Bouilez. And where do I go from there . . . Providence."
It started in Hartford
Kolb, 57, did not exactly pick Providence out of the blue. She is here on a three-year grant from Meet the Composer, an organization that, among other things, places composers in communities to teach, organize cultural events and write music that reflects the spirit of the area.
The project is being sponsored by four local organizations: The Rhode Island Philharmonic; The Music School, which is under the orchestra's umbrella;
WaterFire Providence
;
and Festival Ballet Providence, for whom Kolb plans to write a 45-minute story ballet based on a tale by Chris Van Allsburg, the award-winning Providence illustrator.
Meet the Composer pays Kolb $40,000 a year for the first two years, which means the sponsoring groups get her services for free. In the third year, the sponsors are expected to chip in half her salary, or $5,000 each.
But most of all, Kolb came to Providence to return to her New England roots -- maybe for good.
Kolb -- articulate, outspoken and fond of vodka martinis -- grew up in Hartford. Her father, Hal Kolb, was a jazz pianist who worked as music director for a Connecticut radio station. Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman visited their home.
Barbara picked up the clarinet at an early age and got good enough to earn a full scholarship to Hartford's Hartt School of Music. During her college years, she played with the Hartford Symphony.
The idea of performing the Beethoven and Tchaikovsky symphonies again and again was not nearly so appealing, though, as writing her own music. So she signed up for a master's degree in composition at Hartt.
"I had every belief that I would get married, have two kids and stay in Hartford," said Kolb, who envisioned herself continuing to gig with the symphony and perhaps teach at Hartt.
But friends started leaving for New York, and Kolb followed. Her music attracted the attention of a number of composers, including Aaron Copland, who helped her get a contract with the prestigious Boosey and Hawkes publishing firm.
Awards followed. A Fulbright to Vienna, the Rome Prize in 1969, and a Guggenheim.
"I was lapping up awards left and right without really knowing why. I suspect now that it might have been I was one of the first serious woman composers on the scene, as serious as the guys were."
But after more than 30 years in New York, Kolb admits she is still a New Englander at heart.
"I miss what I knew as a child," said Kolb, dressed in black and reclining on a voluminous leather couch. "I miss the stoicism and the cleanliness. New York is just so dirty.
"But you also lose your identity in New York. Everyone is interested in achieving more money and more success, and in the end they become terrible people.
"There's nothing to talk about except your last review, what award you got. And if that's all you talk about, you become a very boring person."
Djuric and she "clicked"
It was because of Festival Ballet's artistic director, Mihailo "Misha" Djuric, that Kolb settled on Providence, as opposed to some bucolic town in Massachusetts or Maine.
She and Djuric met in 1996, when he choreographed Kolb's nine-minute
Extremes,
a knotty, angular work for flute and cello. It's music full of polarities, of passages where the two instruments resist one another, then embrace.
"I was very impressed with him," said Kolb. "
Extremes
is probably my most difficult piece. And for someone who does not do a lot of contemporary pieces, I was just amazed at what he did."
Djuric recalls having second thoughts about the project once he realized how challenging Kolb's score was. But the two "clicked," he said.
"Her music is unpredictable," said Djuric. "It starts somewhere, but you don't know where it will end up."
Kolb is planning to write two pieces for Festival Ballet during the next three years -- a score for Van Allsburg's
The Widow's Broom
, and a short jazzy piece that is down for a premiere in the spring of 2003, as the ballet celebrates its 25th anniversary.
The Widow's Broom,
which is also being made into a film, is about an aged witch's broom cast off by its owner because it is losing its powers. A kindly widow takes in the broom, which is able to muster enough strength to perform housework, which spooks her neighbors. The ballet, said Djuric, could get a huge boost from the movie, should the screen version appear first.
Kolb is also expected to write a piece for the Philharmonic, teach at the music school and team up with Barnaby Evans for
WaterFire
lightings.
Red carpet still furled
Meanwhile, she is contacting local composers in hopes of starting a contemporary music series here, similar to one she ran in New York.
So far, though, Kolb has not found Rhode Island rolling out the red carpet.
She worked with urban youngsters last summer in a program sponsored by the Capital City Community Centers. Kolb and the center ended up parting ways.
Kolb was also disappointed that the Philharmonic did not include any of her music in this season's plans, such as, say, one of the short overture-type scores she's written. Philharmonic manager David Wax said that by the time he signed Kolb's contract, the programs were already decided.
But four local organizations joining forces to split the cost of a resident composer is a good thing, said Wax.
"It represents several organizations trying to do something that no one group could do," he said. "I think that's good for audiences here."
Said Kolb: "I'll either make a difference here, or they'll ignore me completely."
Written in the key of simile
One problem Kolb will no doubt face here is that her music is not exactly what has come to be known as "listener friendly."
Chime-like bursts of percussion punctuate screeching clarinets and flutes that leap about in stumbling rhythms. Soon the music slows, taking on an eerie, ominous feel.
So begins Kolb's
Millefoglie,
a mind-twisting work for chamber ensemble and computer-generated tape that Kolb wrote for Boulez's IRCAM. It is her homage to Boulez, one of her heroes.
It seems at first impenetrable, music impossible to wrap your brain around, until Kolb offers some insight into her craft.
The title, Italian for "a thousand leaves," was inspired by Boulez's groundbreaking
Pli selon pli,
but on another level, it's about a dessert, a napoleon.
A recurrent motif represents layers of pastry. Sandwiched between those are sequences that can be seen as fillings of different flavors.
"Anyone can grasp that," said Kolb, who may be fond of writing dense, difficult music, but who bristles at being seen as anti-audience.
"If music sounds arcane, it is probably because it is incomprehensible. Composers like Milton Babbit and Charles Wuorinen delight in the fact that the audience doesn't know what they are doing.
"But if you write music and love it," she said, "you want others to love it."
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