Fort Worth, 11.6.2025

A musical week in the Town of Cow, this: El Mantis topping the bill at the Grackle Art Gallery Wednesday, Frontier Ballet's Nutcracker at I.M. Terrell Performing Arts Center last night, and Sounds Modern at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth this afternoon. Presented in conjunction with the museum's current exhibit, Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting, Sounds Modern's The Anatomy of Sound was inspired by an interview where the artist spoke of her love of Bach's Goldberg Variations, Radiohead's "Weird Fishes," and Philip Glass's Facades. 

The Glass works Sounds Modern director Elizabeth McNutt chose for this program were a far cry from the mechanistic repetition a naive listener like your humble chronicler o' events associates with the minimalist icon. The cello solo piece Orbit was originally performed by Yo-Yo Ma with the Memphis street dancer Charles "Lil Buck" Riley; here, it was beautifully played by Kourtney Newton, whom I've seen perform improv with dancers in other venues. As always, Newton's technique and expression were impeccable. One could almost imagine a dancer complementing her solo with movement. Glass's Taoist Sacred Dance was played by McNutt on flute with Shannon Wettstein on piano. It featured surprising (for Glass) Romantic harmony, which served as the springboard for wider melodic explorations before the recapitulation. Another side of the composer that took this listener by surprise.

Three of the pieces made reference to Bach. Played solo by Wettstein, Jennifer Higdon's The Gilmore Variation was a new variation on Bach's classic, while David del Tredici's My Goldberg (Gymnopedie) is simultaneously referential to Erik Satie's Gymnopedies, juxtaposing a free-flowing melody of almost jazzlike sonority with Bach's descending bass line. Missy Mazzoli's Dissolve, O my Heart begins with the D minor that also starts the Chaconne in Bach's Partita in D Minor before taking off with a series of surprising chords and soft passages with audible harmonics, finishing with some fast passages. Violist Daphne Gerling gave the piece a fine reading; a reminder of how satisfying such mathematical music can be. (I'm listening to Yo Yo Ma playing Bach's cello suites as I type this.)

The closing piece of today's performance was Stephen Lucas' arrangement of Radiohead's Weird Fishes/Arpeggi, played by an ensemble including Sarah Ruth Alexander on voice, Lucas on synthesizer, and Patrick Overturf on percussion alongside Gerling, McNutt, Newton, and Wettstein. It was novel hearing the piano and synth doubling lines while the flute and cello acted as a rock rhythm section in tandem with Overturf's minimalist percussives and Alexander gave Thom Yorke's lyrics a soulful reading. Sounds Modern is a musical treasure that more people in Fort Worth need to know about.