Brazil's bizarre sound

The Jacobs School of Music continued its new Brazilian Music Festival on Feb. 11 with a special guest lecture and a pair of concerts. Themed "Modern and Experimental Composers," this second installment in the festival's concert series dismissed any remaining preconceptions about Latin American music. American ears used to Latin music thick with rhythmic complexity and festive brass instead received a genre rarely heard by American audiences: modern and contemporary vocal compositions. \nThe festival was a joint effort between IU and international professors, and headed by special guest conductor Marco Antonio da Silva Ramos, considered to be of the most important Brazilian choral conductors in the world. Although this is the first appearance of a Brazilian music festival at IU, it isn't the first time for the cultural switch. On occasion, professors of the Jacobs School of Music have traveled to South America and presented similar functions.\nSpecial guest conductors Marco Antonio da Silva Ramos and Carmen Helena Tellez led the various performance groups in modern and contemporary choral Brazilian pieces. These ranged from a 1925 choral piece reminiscent of Gregorian Chant to a world premiere modern piece. \nBefore the 4 p.m. concert was a guest lecture featuring University of Sao Paulo professor and Brazilian music researcher Susana Cecilia Igayara. \n"To talk about Brazilian music is to talk about diversity," Igayara said early in the lecture.\nAmong the strangest presented were the choral-song pieces, which explored just how many sounds a group of singers could make. These featured clicks, whistles, claps and other breathy noises in the place of an audible melody. If the beautiful sacred-chant style didn't break the mold of Latin music, and the lively choral-symphonic pieces didn't stir the audience, then this very free-form example of Brazil's little-exposed music did both.\nThis genre of atonal music, having risen to prominence during the early 20th century under various titles, dared to step away from the standard Western melody, form and scale, embracing dissonance and what can seem like discord to the untrained ear.\nRamos led two pieces Sunday evening. The first, aptly named "Asthmatour," was without question the oddest piece of the evening. The chorus exuberantly clapped and yawned its way through this tribute to asthma. Between the surprisingly real sounds of water coming from the mouths of the singers, and members engaging in all manners of tomfoolery, holding inhalers, casually talking to one another about asthma, even engaging in small skits with their fellow singers. The "narrator" during this song, and member of the chorus, sat in the front behind a small table and brightly declared amid all the confusion behind him: "We're introducing a new treatment for asthma. It will take your breath away!" \nClearly, this piece is not what one on the outside of the musical community would expect when attending a festival of Brazilian music. But it was triumphant, receiving the most applause of any piece that afternoon.\nCarmen Cecilia Tellez presented a beautiful series of sacred Brazilian pieces in chant style by composer Luigi Antonio Irlandini, followed by the world premiere of a striking modern piece entitled "Luna" for Chamber Chorus by the same composer. The former presented very avant-garde musical ideas that would turn off all but the most informed classical listeners. It separated itself from everything held standard in Western music and embraced dissonance and free-form.\nAlso worth mentioning was a piece performed by soprano Sarah Fox, accompanied by two recorders and a didgeridoo.\nTwo concerts remain in the Brazilian Music Festival. The first, at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Auer Hall of the Simon Music Center, will feature Grammy-winning IU faculty member Sylvia McNair, Marco Antonio da Silva Ramos, Jan Harrington, the University Singers and the Latin American Popular Music Ensemble in several vocal performances. This concert will present the music of composers Jobim, Villa-Lobos, Gallet, Ernani, Aguiar and Guarnieri. The last concert, at 2 p.m. Feb. 18 in the same location, will feature IU students led by Edelton Gloeden and Ricardo Ballestero.