Future Flute (review)

Haven't we all pondered the future of music written for flute from time to time? The question of the future of this repertoire is actually more of an enigma than a query. Welcome to the stage an oracle by the name of Margaret Lancaster. Ms. Lancaster is a flautist extrordinare, a star of the silver screen (Rockabilly Vampire, Ultraviolet City, and Balletboot-camp), a dancer, and a former Secretary of Education under Calvin Coolidge (alright, I made that last one up!). Her album, Future Flute, features music by four composers associated with the annual Bonk Festival (www.bonkfest.org) in Tampa, Florida: Robert C. Constable, Jr., Eric Lyon, Paul Herman Reller, and David Rodgers.

Margaret "The Lung" Lancaster has an amazing track record for new music. She has premiered more than 45 works from composers including Herbert Brün, Michael Frengel, Leo Kraft, and Drew Krause. More than 30 works have been composed specially for her, including pieces by Jon Appleton, Eve Beglarian, Phil Kline, and Larry Polansky. In fact every composition on Future Flute was written for her.

Ms. Lancaster has performed annually at Bonk since 1994, the third year of the festival's existence. She has also appeared at the ThreeTwo Festival, Bargemusic, Musical Observations 2000, the Lincoln Center Festival, and Spoleto Festival USA. Recordings featuring Ms. Lancaster also appear on OO Discs, Columbia Records, and Tzadik.

The centerpiece to this fin de siècle altarpiece to the future is Robert Constable's Once-a-thon. The composer reports in his notes that "the saying 'You only go around once in life' does not seem to apply to the many levels of cognition, intellect, and emotion through which we gather experience." Philosophically, the work deals with the oxymoronical relationship between the unique and the repetitious in societal rituals. As Mr. Constable puts it, "are we feeding the baby or are we cleaning the shotgun?"

This interconnection between the unique and the repetitious is explored in Once-a-thon through the guise of the annual year-end Toyota sales event. The work also seems to deal with the culture of the car in America. The equating of car with freedom, with power, is accomplished by the recurring appearance of male and female voices which deliver platitudes connected with driving. These voices have a sort of disembodied insincerity to them that references standard practices in "classic" advertisements of the 1950s. By the end of the work, the voices lead the soloist in a session of free association, and ultimately, the work ends insidiously with the announcement: "these messages will now become subliminal."

This composition features a number of motives that are presented in a very discrete manner. One is a repeated pattern in a hemiola-ridden environment, reflective of the philosophical underpinning of the work. Many of the motives involve the soloist playing in unison with the tastefully quirky tape part. Much of this tight unison playing is somewhat acrobatic for the soloist, and shows off Ms. Lancaster's facility with the instrument. One of the key motives, featuring a reiterative harmony in the tape part, slows down over the course of the piece, suggesting a sense of slowing inertia, and the piece itself gradually takes on an eerie dreamy feeling.

The sounds that comprise the tape part are varied and rich. Besides the drum machine parts and the large synthetic piano chord hits, the work also features reversed tones and samples of acoustic musical sounds. The backward envelopes of many of the sounds is often imitated by the soloist, and in general there is a high sense of coordination between the soloist and the tape part, again allowing Ms. Lancaster to shine.

Mr. Reller's In Praise of Buddy Hackett is a rhythmically intricate, vibrant work that again allows Margaret "Thatcher" Lancaster to prove her athleticism and grace through shifting accents and tricky skips and runs, often without being permitted much...