Word: layton
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...passage superimposes a subdued counterpoint in the violins over coarse grindings from the other pair and thereby stresses each feeling all the more. (It is interesting that Elliot Carter did the same in his first quartet--here, if you demand it, is a Zeitgeist.) But unlike Carter and Moevs, Layton does not set slow, soft melodies sweetly, but gives them a sustained, restful plainness. The work ends unpretentiously on that note...
...Claremont Quartet caught Layton's tastefulness with remarkable accuracy. The group did not inject intensity into the calm ending; they kept the changes of mood from being obvious, and mastered excellently the enormous difficulties in the quartet's violence...
...quartet was--traditional? tonal? or dissonant? "formless"? But assigning each work its spot on a spectrum of radicalism is quite irrelevant to experiencing them, because dissonance, tonality and the like have a quite dubious bearing on the actual emotional content of the music. Indeed, the quartets of Billy Jim Layton and Robert Moevs (both Assistant Professors) were more "shocking" than that of Anton Webern. You don't have to consult the dialectic before calling any of them modern...
Billy Jim Layton's String Quartet in Two Movements is a more complex and venturesome work. Moevs's lines are always aware of their direction; Layton's stab this way and that and hover with despairing trills and tremulos through long, stirring passages of static progression. The brutality of the quartet's chords and textures is not only searing but tormented: their writhing raises questions quite beyond Moevs's solid ideas. To call this powerful expression "romantic" is meaningless; only the term introspection recognizes the heaviness of the music's human implications...
...stage and seven men planted downstage. Some of the time these minstrels wander about, some of the time they huddle around a table like displaced poker players. The cast and chorus nimbly change settings, rotating panels and moving other airily designed scenic props. The dances bear Joe Layton's inventive signature, but excessive leg, arm, and hand signals threaten to turn the chorus into a platoon of animated traffic cops. As director, Layton has used all these devices to generate motion, at best the poor relation of action...