Every so often, a collaboration between two artists occurs which is so extraordinary that you feel as though they have been working together all their lives. The partnership between Leo Yablans and Owen Chan is one such collaboration. Together they presented an exquisite forty minutes of music for saxophone and organ in Hertford College chapel. Both instruments weaved in and out of each other in a brain-melting collection of pieces and improvisation where both artists transformed their playing into an incredible all-encompassing soundscape.
In a brief address before the concert proper, Yablans explained how the pieces he had written were a mimesis of his emotions during the writing process: dealing with a breakup, jealousy, and growing up. Within these pieces were opportunities for both to improvise and it is a testament to the pair that they each had strongly distinct voices while complementing each other so sensitively. Chan opened ‘Cascade’, the first of Yablans’s pieces, with a gradually expanding chord which slowly filled the entire room. The sound that he coaxed out of the organ was not particularly dominating, but the soft-edged and full playing created such a strong auditory experience that, when you closed your eyes, you could forget where you were. The chapel melted away into the music and the only sensation that ground me in reality was the vibration from the floor as Chan introduced the lower tones of the chord.
A slap and a rush of air introduced Yablans into the piece. It took a second to realise that these were sounds coming from the saxophone rather than filtering through from the quad outside or the creaky wood of the chapel. The way Yablans managed to grow from the ambient noise that surrounded us and focus it so quickly was extremely effective and ground you immediately in the music. He then started a calm but intense solo, growing imperceptibly from the organ’s texture. His music fell over itself and winded in and out of what had just been played. The organ acted more as a resonating chamber in the work and Chan did incredible work in keeping it flexible enough to give Yablans space while maintaining its power. The cascade of the title was not clearly apparent until both Yablans and Chan suddenly receded quickly. It was at that point that the ear realised how overwhelming the sound had become, the astonishingly gradual crescendo imperceptible until it was taken away. The piece finished with a rush of air, a slap and a dying organ chord. We were back where we started.
The second work, ‘Ozymandias’, was a piece of contradictions, both subdued and tense, morose and active, calm and desperate. The organ again began the work, this time more active than in ‘Cascade’, Chan’s right hand driving the music forward over a chordal bed. Yablans entered with a constant solo line, but this time it feels very different to that of ‘Cascade’. Where the previous piece was a submersion into sound, ‘Ozymandias’ felt just out of reach. Yablans’s music practically slid off the organ’s sound, like oil off metal, trying again and again to accomplish a passage. Far darker than ‘Cascade’, ‘Ozymandias’ felt as if you were walking down an empty motorway, constantly expecting an event that never occurred.
Despite being the only work in the programme not by Yablans and Chan, Andy Elmer’s ‘Journey Around the Truth’ felt as though it had grown naturally out of the opening two pieces. Yablans referred to the inclusion of Elmer’s work as a tribute to their “pregenders”, in this case Elmer and David Liebman. Chan started ‘Journey Around the Truth’ with a subdued but hysterical organ line, winding up and down the entire register and practically convulsing over an initially calmer left hand and feet. The way that Chan’s material developed from ‘Cascade’ to this piece, becoming as kinetic as Yablans’s music, was so beautifully measured that it created a perfect continuation between the three pieces. However, instead of coming into itself, Yablans’s material began to crack and splinter. His music obsessed itself, expanding briefly before getting lost in an echo chamber. Music was passed between the instruments, breaking apart in the process. Chan exploited the flatter notes of the organ, Yablans began infrequently bending his notes to match. Virtuosic solos ended the work, Yablans’s wailing leading to a drifting organ solo which anticipated the arrival of ‘Untitled’, the pair’s free improvisation.
All the developing ideas of the first three pieces exploded in ‘Untitled’, a nasty, seething and epic display of the musicians’ creativity and physicality. Chan opened with a brutal explosion and what followed felt as though we were listening to a hammond organ being smashed apart in slow motion.
In their improvisation, Yablans and Chan completely tore apart the limits of their instruments. The sheer volume of noise and gestures that Chan created was overwhelming and it felt as though we were being thrown around by his music. Yablans responded with incredibly direct sounds which struck the listeners right between the eyes, almost forcing the sound out of the saxophone. The obsessive nature of his material in the opening works became aggressive, the music forcing itself to try again and again, squealing and honking with the effort, the tuning warping and falling. Chan finished the piece with low notes so intense that it felt like my head was being squeezed by a vice and I could feel my teeth rattling. The power of Yablans and Chan’s collaboration was extremely evident in this incredible improvisation, an astonishing auditory assault which left the room shaking.
‘Son’s Farewell’ closed the concert, yet it felt as though we were back at the beginning, listening to ‘Cascade’, but through the filter of what we had just experienced, returning to the wasteland of the initial work. Yablans’s sinuous solo led us through the piece with the organ, as before, acting as a kind of resonating chamber. However, every so often, Chan would catch Yablans’s music and refract it in the organ. It was a subdued and dark ending to the concert, especially after the intensity of ‘Untitled’, and it worked perfectly.
Leo Yablans and Owen Chan have created an extraordinary partnership and I can only recommend that you run to go and watch them when they play their next concert.