One of the gang
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For the most part, composers and performers stick to their separate lanes, with the implicit understanding that one person writes the music and the others play it. This has become a less predominant paradigm in the past decade or two (and there have always been composers who wrote virtuoso solo showcases for themselves), but I still find myself moved when one member of a chamber ensemble emerges from the group to say, “Yeah, I wrote that. Nice, huh?”
It happened during Saturday’s concert by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players under artistic director Eric Dudley, when the group performed percussionist Haruka Fujii’s quintet Divisions I. Fuji had already played a key role in Nico Muhly’s puckish quartet Flexible Music, which opened the program for this final concert of the season. But her 2023 composition was something else again — vivid, inventive, and by my reckoning the most engaging work of the evening.
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What’s particularly interesting is the way this short three-movement piece seems to map onto the divisions within the ensemble itself. On one side is the marimba, which in Fujii’s hands emerges as a combination ringleader and antagonist; on the other are the rest of the players, three string players and a clarinet. (Functionally, this serves as a string quartet with a bit more resonance and range of timbre.) In the first movement, a brusque five-note theme from the marimba serves to punctuate a series of elegant episodes, as well as opening and closing the proceedings; in the second, it maintains a gentle, thrumming drone as each of the other instruments in turn plays a luminous solo. This would be a compelling creation under any circumstances, but to have Fujii take part in the performance gave it an extra spark.