NUVO: "Energizing with music from the crack of Dawn to the slip of Night: ISO celebrating women composers"
Vivian Fung illuminates what I easily could name a bad hair day. Earworms, however, exemplify Fung’s reaction to a day with her three-year-old. Everything seems fragmented; not even a tune that conjures up can be sustained beyond a snippet. By the end of the day, it’s akin to ‘A Little Bit of This and a Little Bit of That,’ which somehow manages to evolve into pure calm from chaos. Instruments that clanged against each other find a way to harmonize. We’re discovering with Fung the possibility of shoring up new sound textures. It’s not so much going against the established musical traffic pattern as it is cutting a new path through heretofore-avoidance terrain. Again, the stage invites the bringing in of additional chairs with players swelling sections. Pleasant melodies wrangle themselves out from off-kilter rhythms. “Just as in life, short moments of peace are taken from us,” points out the notes. In our seats, we are rescued by a contingent of French horns, joined by trumpets and trombones, who, in unison, quash the runaway, belligerent strings. It’s quite a turn-about race to the finish with a whomp. It’s a definitive commentary on what life is like when you are just trying to get through the day.