"Vivid Premiere" of Mycelialore at GPO

The Grant Park Orchestra featured a composition by Chelsea Komschlies in its final week of concerts. Read excerpts of the article by Tim Sawyier from Chicago Classical Review below, or the full text here.

The evening began with the first Grant Park Orchestra performance—and the second ever—of Chelsea Komschlies’ Mycelialore. A mycelium is the underground root network of mushroom colonies, and Komschlies, who is also interested in neuroscience, fantastically imagines this subterranean lattice as a sentient brain, recounting to itself (to each other?) its own folklore. Midway through the ten-minute work, the mycelium becomes aware of human eavesdropping, and rebukes the “overtreaders” for their intrusion.

Komschlies creates a naturalistic atmosphere in the opening bars with rainstick and chirpy string glissandos sounding over bardic harp chords, and ultimately the feeling of an otherworldly courtly dances emerges with the uncanny sound of an electronic harpsichord. Mycelialore features a prominent electronic track, also handled by Guzman, with hissed voices, guttural spoken words, and menacing sprechtstimme sounding throughout: “they heard us,” “we hear you,” “seen your nature, “strange roads,” “use up.” The impression recalls brief moments of orc conversation in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films. Komschlies creatively (if somewhat literally) projects her imagined narrative, and was on hand Wednesday to receive the audience’s appreciation of her vivid storytelling.

Photo: Norman Timonera