There is no one pulling the strings.
A Boerum Hill orchestral music festival will spotlight the out-of-this-world arrangements of modern string orchestra wizards, featuring compositions that use spoken word, video, and electronic elements. The three-day “String Theories” fest will kick off on March 22 with an eerie, drone-like 1980s-era piece with no conductor, which the show’s artistic director says is a perfectly out-there place to start.
“At that time, it was a radical departure from what had come before,” said Eli Spindel, the founder of the String Orchestra of Brooklyn, who chose John Cage’s “Twenty-Three” to begin the group’s festival. “I thought it was an interesting way to kick it off and pay homage to what used to be avant-garde.”
The 23-minute, 23-instrument piece is an abstract, loosely-composed arrangement of shifting tones, with a metronome to keep the time and musicians who choose when to start and stop playing, making each performance unique. Spindel’s interpretation places the orchestra in a circle around the audience — a 360-degree approach meant to flood listeners with the spooky tones in surround-sound.
“It has a massive sound that rises and falls and gets louder and softer very gently and imperceptibly,” said Spindel. “It makes sense to surround the audience with the sound.”
The festival’s second day will feature two world premieres: a piece by composer Taylor Brook called “Tarantism” — a cacophony of crashing rhythms featuring a baritone performer reading a 16th-century text about curing tarantula bites through music and dance — and “Cipher,” a composition by Alexandra Gardner accompanied by electronic sounds that overlap with the string music.
All of the works in the festival speak to the exciting, still-unexplored musical territory out there for orchestral compositions, said Spindel. The contemporary works often draw from a smorgasbord of modern influences.
“People are still exploring that terrain,” he said. “You get a mix of pop, rock, and jazz influences — there are a lot of genres crashing together.”
“String Theories” at Roulette [509 Atlantic Ave. at Third Avenue in Boerum Hill, (917) 267–0363, www.roule
