In January Lisa Illean’s Weather a Rare Blue for chamber ensemble and electronics received its Spanish and French premieres, in a collaboration between OCAZEnigma and Ensemble l’Itinéraire. First, on 23 January from at the Auditorio Palacio de Congresos Zaragoza from OCAZEnigma, and subsequently on 30 January in Montreuil at La Marbrerie.
Weather a Rare Blue was commissioned by Explore Ensemble, who premiered the work in 2018 at Kings Place, London. It is cast in 11 short movements, and scored for flute (doubling alto flute), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), piano, violin, viola, and cello, as well as pre-recorded sounds.
Like several of Illean’s pieces, the 11-minute work draws on contemporary visual art. Dan Graham’s pavilion Double Exposure, installed in the gardens of Serralves Park, Porto, provides one creative impetus. Two sides of mirrored glass conjoin a colour transparency creating a triangular prism – an image of the location “photographed at dusk on a spring day.” Graham’s installation plays fixity against contingency: the semblance of a photographic image is disturbed by the changeable character of the environment, landscape, and viewer. Illean’s title is drawn from a poem by Anne Stevenson: “Rain’s rained weather a rare blue, so you can see the thinness in it.”
That image of transparency evokes the way Weather a Rare Blue superimposes different acoustic elements: live and recorded sounds, tempered and non-tempered tunings, and performance venue and recording studio. Likewise, Graham’s Double Exposure influences Illean’s work in its overlaying of images. Illean writes,
Just as exposure to ultraviolet light causes photos to fade, and materials exposed to the atmosphere exhibit wear, weathering alters the presence of a thing. This altered presence evokes the passing of time and the fragility of all that is susceptible to it. This section is haunted by the attrition of the pre-recorded sonorities heard in the first movement and the elusive character of the montaged melodies scored for ensemble…The following movements have a cyclical, incantatory quality.
Weather a Rare Blue calls for an unconventional preparation of the violin, viola, and cello. The score details how players should place a cork with two grooves cut in it over certain strings. The prepared strings produce what Illean calls
…a beguilingly complex sound when played at a low dynamic, with a slow bow, light pressure, and all of the hairs of the bow on the string. Many different overtones (and combinations of these) are possible, especially when the bow is placed quite close to the preparation…The sound should be harmonically rich but never harsh.