New Music Society program premieres work by Rollin

Music fans would do themselves a favor by seeing the performance.
By JERRY STEPHENS
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
YOUNGSTOWN -- The Youngstown Symphony Orchestra's concerts appear to be the major musical centerpieces of the cultural year in this city, but there is much of equal merit that goes on -- with much less publicity. One example is the Winter Pops concert presented by the Dana School of Music, and sponsored by New Music Society New Music Guild. It was Wednesday evening at Bliss Recital Hall on the Youngstown State University campus.
Basically, the program was a recital. The central theme was the old ballade form of composition, but with interesting modern developments, one being a composition by the Dana School's own Robert Rollin, which saw its world premiere performance. The guest artist was pianist Kevin Robert Orr of the University of Florida, and he was the one playing the ballades, in addition to other compositions on the program. There are performers out there who are the equal of the ones we pay big bucks to hear. Orr is one of them.
As a base point, Orr began his part of the program with a masterful rendition of the Opus 10, No. 1 Ballade of Johannes Brahms. While this cannot be called "new music," it did demonstrate how far the form has advanced since the days of Chopin.
Orr then went on to play a much more modern work by Jennifer Margaret Barker. It was quite dissonant, and took full advantage of the basically percussive nature of the modern piano. There were echoes of Carl Orff, Shostakovich, Copland, and even Mahler, to be heard throughout the piece. But in the end, it was clearly Barker's own.
World premiere
The ballade by Rollin was, as mentioned above, a world premiere, and was commissioned by Orr. The format was very different in that, unlike the basic ABA form of the ballade of Chopin's day, it was a series of ideas strung together, going as far as JKL before the resolution.
The inspiration of the format was in Rollin's studies of Tin Pan Alley, the New York City lofts where stage performers would go to find and buy new material for their use, often on the Vaudeville circuit. The pianists employed there would play long strings of new songs in the hope that one of them would be sold. In this present-day presentation, I believe I will buy all of them.
I do not want to slight the other parts of the program. All of the presentations were of equal merit. The opening selection, titled "Hexarchic Episodes," was also by Rollin. It was also a quite dissonant work where each of six instruments in turn demanded attention. The result was a flexible ensemble in which the conflict mended into a seamless whole.
A much more melodic piece was Miklos Rozsa's "Spellbound," as played by Tim Webb. The form and sound were rather like an art song done by a 21st-century Schubert. In fact, it almost demanded words that a contralto could sing with it.
Mixing it up
Paul Richard's "Hypercube" was scored for piano and percussion, although there are many who would not think of the instruments used as being percussion. They were of the marimba/xylophone family. Kevin Orr did the piano part, while Brian Sweigert was having a grand old time jumping from one instrument to another. The statement and resolution were calm and quiet themes, but what was in between was fast driving like good, hot jazz.
Selections from "A Suite for Flute" and "Jazz Piano Trio" by the well-known composer Claude Bolling helped round out the program. The composition was originally done by Jean-Pierre Rampal, and Danielle Frabutt was an able interpreter of that complex piece.
The concluding work was another world premier, "Dervish Diversions," by Tim Webb. It was scored for flute, clarinet, piano and percussion, and intended to have a spinning effect. It succeeded very well in that. Even the drum set gave that effect, rather than giving a beat as many would expect. A great conclusion to a great program as done by top-notch musicians.
Programs such as these deserve a larger audience than was present. Maybe one of the sponsors could see to there being a quarter-page ad in the local papers for the next program.