‘Music at the
HUSH at UIC /
Seventh Species performs its neo
hour’
romantic, impressionistic music at the
‘Festival of the Millennium, ‘99’
By Yael Menahem
Oregon Daily Emerald
Music that goes beyond the
boundaries.
That statement not only sums up
what audiences can expect from the
University’s School of Music “Fes
tival of the Millennium ’99,” the
comment also describes one of the
event’s participating ensembles,
Seventh Species, composer and
group member Tim Mason said.
The festival will include con
certs, panel discussions,
lecture/demonstrations and recep
tions with the contributing com
posers, all under the theme of “Ring
in the New: Three Dozen Premieres
for the Third Millenium.” Most
compositions were written espe
cially for this event, which was or
ganized by artistic director Robert
Kyr, an associate professor of com
position and music theory.
Seventh Species is one of those
ensemble’s that will offer a pre
miere. Composer Gary Noland
started the group when he lived in
the San Francisco Bay Area in 1990
as “a way for composers of new
music to get together and put on
concerts for audiences to hear,” ex
plained Mason.
The theme for this upcoming
Seventh Species concert at the festi
val is “Music at the 11th Hour”
which Mason explains is the last
opportunity for these composers to
write music in the 20th Century.
As part of the “Festival of the
Millennium,” Mason’s world pre
miere piece written for soprano and
oboe, called “Three Shakespearean
Sonnets,” will be performed.
Species regular Art Maddox will
premiere “Apocalypso.” He will be
joined by another Species regular
Jack Gabel, who composed “When
Nobody’s Looking.” Other Species
members Jeff Defty, Peter Thomas
and Guy Tyler will premiere their
pieces, as well.
Noland has written a perform
ance art piece for the event called
“Venge Art” that is six hours long,
but only a portion of it will be per
formed in concert.
Mason said he’s not sure what
Noland’s piece might include, but
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he gave an outrageous example of
what performance art on stage
might look like.
Imagine a cellist playing when
the conductor signals someone to
come from off stage. That person is
dressed up in a gorilla suit and is
walking around the cellist, who is
oblivious to the going-ons, and then
the gorilla leaves the stage.
“If you heard it on a CD, you
wouldn’t get the gorilla,” Mason ex
plained. “So you have to see it per
formed live in order to under
stand.”
Mason is an assistant researcher
at the neuroscience department and
has been with Seventh Species for
almost two years. Noland moved to
Eugene in 1994.
Seventh Species’ sound varies
from impressionistic, which Mason
said is “new age before new age
happened,” to neo-romantic, which
has a narrative structure. Seventh
Species’ music is at times atonal —
music that doesn’t have a dis
cernible melody.
“You wouldn’t be coming out of
the music hall humming the tune,”
Mason said.
Instruments range from pianos
and harps to electronic instru
ments, which Mason described as
“just noise, kind of like Yanni.”
The group performs around Eu
gene three or four times a year. The
composers have to pay musicians
to play their music at the concerts
and that is one reason the number
of concerts is few, Mason noted.
“Our music in not commercially
sellable [or] commercially popu
lar,” Mason said, emphasizing why
the group’s music goes largely un
noticed. “I don’t think our music
would go over at Sam Bonds —
they’d laugh us out of there.”
Plus, they’re not your typical
group of musicians.
“We don’t have a guitar or a drum
player. If you ask us who our bass
player is, well, we don’t have one,”
Mason said, with joking tone.
If that doesn’t spark your curiosi
ty about this eclectic bunch of com
posers, the explanation about their
name might.
In 1725, music theorist Johann
Joseph Fux developed a way to de
scribe how music works.
“Music is different melodic
Turn to Species, Page 6B
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