Nathan Shook in a Tuba-Euphonium Quartet at the Britton Recital Hall in the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theater, and Dance on February 21st 7:30 pm EST
As someone who had personally never heard the Tuba or Euphonium in near isolation (always before in a full band or orchestral piece), I didn’t quite know what to expect. Given my little prior experience hearing the Tuba played as an accompaniment to the rest of the orchestra, I anticipated a concert full of background harmonies. I had assumed that I would listen to notes to fulfill the purpose of percussion and tempo keeping.
Wow, was I wrong. Nathan Shook (tuba) and his three compatriots in the quartet Kevin Fenske (euphonium), Lindsay Ring (euphonium) and Alec Mawrence (tuba) walked silently onto the stage this past Monday night. They gracefully raised their instruments and started to play ‘Consequences’, by Michael Forbes, who Shook later explained to be a momentous composer in the canon of Tuba music. A conversation started to flow from their instruments with ease: it seemed as if each one was talking to another within the melodic tradeoffs of the piece. The instruments seemed to mutter, to whisper, to chat lively and urgently. Finally, the separate pieces melded together, singing with grace and warmth in their tone as they joined forces as one voice. My assumptions went out of the brightly-lit, wood-paneled concert hall as I became more and more entranced with the music.
The quartet moved onto ‘Emma Catherine’ by Omar Thomas. After some of the contemplative and curious dissonance in the melody of ‘Consequences’, ‘Emma Catherine’ filled the hall with a bright swell of notes. The tones were gushing out of the instruments; it felt as if the Tubas and Euphoniums were emanating the feeling of falling in love. The piece spilled out notes gingerly and the melody danced longingly with the occasional incidental note placed in to mirror the winding and sometimes rocky feeling of infatuation and love.
This romantic mood was quickly upended with the start of ‘Hide and Seek’ by Imogen Heap and the accompanying ‘where are we?’, a newly commissioned piece by Harry Castle inspired by Heap’s work. The long, sweeping lines were ripped away to be replaced with poignant and worrisome sounding minors and incidentals. The piece cascaded further and further, spiraling into an existential crisis of flying notes and subdued tones. Continuing in this vein, ‘where are we?’ left audience members holding on to a melodic resolve that never seemed to come, thus leaving the titular question open.
After intermission, the artists picked back up with a piece I was familiar with, the ‘Marriage of Figaro’ by Mozart arranged for this type of quartet. It was delightful to hear a famous piece such as this sound out in such a different way than I was used to. The rolling quality of the brass instruments overtook any previous expectations of conventional strings. The skilled musicians were able to keep the staccato while simultaneously creating a wonderful roundness as one note blended just the right amount into another.
Transitioning into a lofty Bach piece of ‘Contrapunctus IX’, the musicians carried this rolling quality into the satisfying Baroque counterpoint. Each time the artists left the audience in a lurch of waiting for a refrain to complete the measure, they delivered sweetly each time, sending the much needed resolution to our ears.
Jumping nearly 300 years, the quartet closed with a relatively new composition entitled ‘Three Short Stories’ by Jose Flores. Much less predictable than the resolution of Bach, Shook carried low, bellowing notes that seemed to reach out to the audience like an outstretched hand. At the same time the three other members threw out low and high pitches seemingly from all directions, puzzling us in the utterly unexpected.
It was an honor to be proven completely incorrect in my assumptions and shown a whole new realm of music I might have never given a chance before. As Shook and the rest of the quartet continues to give concerts, may they keep surprising and pushing boundaries of musical conceptions.
