Burton Greene and Perry Robinson at the Zeitgeist Gallery, Boston, MA

Lyn Horton

Contributor since 2005

Lyn is first and foremost a visual artist. Her second love is music and the musicians who make it.

Recent articles (128 total)

Published: April 25, 2009

The piece commenced with ominous bass chords on the piano and peaked frequently as Robinson blew a whistle or fluttered on his wooden flute or claimed arpeggios and glissandos on his clarinet. As soon as the piece had climaxed, the music would break and then build again...harmonies were re-discovered, and everything would resume from the minutest treble tremolo on the piano to only the air that was pressed through the clarinet reed. Sliding into "Eitan" was immediate. At one point, Greene slipped a piece of paper into the piano so that the hammers hit the paper while meeting the strings of the sounding board. An almost electronic sound ensued. The composition created a vast space which seemed complex yet developed organically from a simple theme.

This was not epic or overblown music, the effusions of high romanticism. Rather, every note, every gesture, every compositional concept was proportioned to common humanity. Nothing that was attempted required gargantuan efforts. Such intimacy embeds awareness in the listener, embraces the listener and invites the listener into a world of consciousness that can be habitually visited. All that is required is open-mindedness and the watchful, playful acceptance of the inner child.

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Lyn Horton

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