Peter Askim: Press/Reviews

"I love your orchestral music!"

A "Modern Master..." One of the "figures from the 20th and 21st centuries who have played pivotal roles in the double bass's continuing development... Original works from contemporary musicians who have combined bass playing with a successful composing career, such as Frank Proto and Peter Askim, have significantly expanded the solo repertoire."

Performance Review: "As Glaciers Thaw...", Tokyo Symphony Orchestra

"As Glaciers Thaw..." by an American composer, Peter Askim, Piano Concerto No. 2 by Rachmaninoff and Ein Heldenleben by R. Strauss were played under the baton of Naoto Otomo. Composer Askim's work which Otomo focuses on is written for the strings, and as such, it evokes an atmospheric feeling as you might experience with soundtracks, with a breath of contemporary American sound that contributed to a sense of purity.

Performance Review: Oregon Festival of American Music

"...The orchestra, conducted by Peter Askim, was excellent..."

Publication Review: Islands: Concerto for Double Bass and Strings

This fifteen minute Concerto is a big, evocative, colorful, tonal, tone painting for double bass and string orchestra... The piece has an effective big finish.

Islands is obviously written by someone who knows the instrument very well. It is a challenging but ultimately very playable concerto…

Performance Review: Sweet Basil Jazz Club, NYC

Special mention should be made of Lowe's rhythm section of drummer Ray Kaczynski and bassist Peter Askim, who made their way through Lowe's diverse itinerary with implacable control and daring.

Performance Review: Sweet Basil Jazz Club, NYC

A fourth surprise was the harmonic underpinning provided by bassist Peter Askim... whose unobtrusive but assertive playing was as satisfying as any I've heard in years.

Concert Preview: "Santuario for Oboe and Strings"

Serenata of Santa Fe has a dynamic creative dialectic with famed composer and double bassist Peter Askim. Askim returns to Santa Fe this weekend to perform some traditional chamber works with Serenata, and to premiere two of Askim's original compositions, one of which - "Santuario" - was written for the group.

This summer, their 10th, the Portland Chamber Music Festival did dazzle us... with headliner Peter Askim, and his fine trio, with took the cake for best local contemporary work heard in 2003.

CD Review: "Moving, Still"

This is a much-awaited new CD by the gifted bassist, composer, conductor, and teacher Peter Askim. It features a diverse array of works and artists, opening with the arresting Bass Concerto Islands, recorded during the 2005 ISB Convention in Kalamazoo with Ransom Wilson conducting and Askim as soloist. This is a richly orchestrated and highly effective work. Its four movements reflect four of the islands of Hawaii where Askim spent several years as a member of the Honolulu Symphony, from the “Jagged contours of Kauai’s Na Pali coast, the play and shimmer of Oahu’s surf, Maui’s majestic Haleakala sunrise and the bubbling and crackling of the Big Island’s lava fields” From the very catchy opening motive, the work brims with energy and myriad colors; it is certainly one the most engaging concerti written for the bass in recent years.

The two orchestral works which follow, Moving Still and As Glaciers Thaw, while very different stylistically, are both indicative of Askim’s unique language; a frequent sense of rhythmic urgency and vitality, if not immediately manifest then pulsing or bubbling away somewhere latently. Peter’s textures and soundscapes (perhaps born of his diverse experiences and influences) exhibit an amazing array of colors, yet with a clarity, transparency and directness that are unique.

…but the rain is a major nine and a half minute work for Shakuhachi and 21-string Koto commissioned by the Orchestra Asia-Japan. Its haunting textures manage to sound urgent and intense, with some fascinating and complex rhythmic sections and a dramatic emotive climax. Again the inspiration is Hawaii; here Koke’e on the island of Kaua’i, the title coming from a sonnet by Pulitzer Prize poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Eight Solitudes for bass and piano (which won the ISB Solo Composition Competition in 2002) and Edge for solo bass (commissioned by the ISB for the 2003 ISB solo competition), here again played by Askim, serve to highlight his skills as composer and performer; technically and musically challenging they are both immediately appealing and rewarding works.

Meridians, which closes the CD, is another orchestral work featuring the Idyllwild Arts Academy Orchestra who commissioned the work, sounding as good as any professional ensemble under the direction of the composer.

Askim’s compositions can be heard on several other CDs but this is the first collection to give such a diverse cross-section of his works and performances. The recordings are clear and concise and this release should go a long way to bringing the music of this uniquely talented composer to a much broader audience.

Performance Review: World Bass Festival (Wroclaw, Poland), Recital

Askim is an artist tuned into the sounds of his bass, sensitive to each note. He does not run towards cheap effects, he looks for depth in the music. That was noticeable in the choice of the repertoire, in his own compositions and in his style...

CD Review: "Moving, Still"

Askim has just released a new CD of seven of his own works, titled "Moving, Still". All of the pieces are well-composed, most are notable, and several are quite distinctive. The performers include the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, pianist Douglas Ashcraft, the Idyllwild Arts Academy Orchestra, and the composer.

The title track "Moving, Still" is a five- part essay for orchestra that alternates between emotional repose and raw rapacity of sound.
"Islands", a big concerto for double bass and orchestra, is a colorful, energetic, and gripping tone painting of four Hawaiian islands. "As Glaciers Thaw ..." for string orchestra is a brilliantly orchestrated and heartfelt composition, mammoth in conception but perfectly detailed in sound and presentation.

Other works on the disc are "... but the rain ..." for Japanese shakuhachi and 21-string koto; the angular, forceful "Eight Solitudes for Bass and Piano"; the thorny yet lyric and effective "Edge" for solo double bass, commissioned by the International Society of Bassists as a competition piece; and the passionate orchestral work "Meridians".

Performance Review: "What You Have Almost Forgotten"

Askim's four-movement work opened the evening, described by the composer as a piece about memory, how it persists and can take on a life of its own. A tone poem itself, the music reflected the anguish of a beautiful memory turned painful perhaps because of lost love. Haunting melodic lines were squelched by angry dissonances, stratospheric notes from the violin were countered by growlings from the bass. The third movement was an exhausting race to escape the memory, a turning to busyness to fill the loss. A soaring violin note fading into space ended the piece as if the memory had finally been released or at least transformed into a benediction rather than a curse.

CD Review: "Emily Dickinson in Song: Dwell in Possibility"

"To Make a Prairie" is "exploratory yet concise..."

Publication Review: Islands: Concerto for Double Bass and Strings

...His time in Hawaii certainly served as an inspiration for this Concerto. Mr. Askim’s program notes offer a vivid description; Islands is based on the four major islands of the Hawaiian chain. The jagged contours of Kauai’s Na Pali coast, the play and shimmer of Oahu’s surf, Maui’s majestic Haleakala sunrise and the bubbling and crackling of the Big Island’s lava fields. Islands was commissioned by the Tam and Young Arts Chair at Iolani School.

This fifteen minute Concerto is a big, evocative, colorful, tonal, tone painting for double bass and string orchestra. The four sections are played attacca. The energetic and propulsive groove of the beginning five-minute Kauai section gives way to a shimmering effect of waves in the Oahu section. This wave effect is created by fast, 16th-note, arpeggiated harmonics in the double bass. Haleakala (section three) begins dark and brooding with a lovely tune in the low register of the double bass. The tessitura of the long singing double bass melody continues to rise throughout this section, creating the effect of an awakening, emerging, or a sunrise. The final section begins with some freely notated, murky textured music. This is quickly followed by a steady rhythm and jagged tempo that bring back elements from the other sections. The piece has an effective big finish.

Islands is obviously written by someone who knows the instrument very well. It is a challenging but ultimately very playable concerto… And the piano reduction is an invaluable aid to anyone preparing for a performance with orchestra. The ISB is to be commended for bringing us this fine bass/ piano version of a fine concerto.

Performance Review: "Vital Signs for Solo Bass", "Eight Solitudes for Bass and Piano"

Askim, a masterful musician who plays his instrument as if it's an extension of himself, presented his composition, "Vital Signs for Solo Double Bass," a piece that reflected not only the infinite capabilities of the bass but also of the rhythms of the human body. In his "Eight Solitudes," a duet with Pollock, Askim presented eight different ways of thinking about being alone.

CD Review:"Moving Still"

There is a driving force behind Peter Askim’s music that reflects the energy in his approach to composition and performance. "Moving, Still" shows the breadth of this imaginative musician’s abilities as composer, conductor and performer, an enigmatic mixture of skills that inform his regular existence.

The sound world of "Islands: Concerto for Double Bass and Strings" is at once contained and expansive. The accompanying strings echo the sonorities of the solo bass engagingly. When other timbres are employed, as in the orchestral piece from which the disc derives its name, the impetus and incisive motive are particularly effective in brass and percussion passages. "As Glaciers Thaw" is of a similar style. An arresting departure comes with "…but the rain…" which evokes oriental woodwind and strings in its sparseness, freedom of metre and intensely declamatory style.

Askim recently said in interview that he begins every new work by producing a small musical fragment. He then hold up this fragment in his mind’s eye, turning it around and viewing it from every angle. The cellular growth which this technique inspires is especially noticeable in "Eight Solitudes", for bass and piano. Here rhythmic mottos and ostiniati unite the players while dissonance and slow writing add drama to the whole. Rather than a limiting palate, for Askim the bass provides no end of colour and contrast.

Review of Liben Music Publisher's "A Family Album, Book 2"

...The final piece by Peter Askim is "Vital Signs for Solo Double Bass". This five-page, single-movement work is full of intensity and passion. When you have completed the piece, you feel as though you have completed an epic journey. "Wild, frenzied, urgent, intense, calm, intense, bursting, reflective, violent, animated, longing, inward, lullaby, breathlessly..." are a sampling of some of the composer's indications, which gives you an idea of what to expect on this wild ride...

Music Review: "Eight Solitudes", "Edge"

As the winning entry in the 2003 International Society of Bassists (ISB) Solo Composition Competition, "Eight Solitudes" has already found approval from a discerning audience. This eight movement contemplation of aloneness stares into a turbulent, tense internal universe that only occasionally smiles optimistically through lyricism and rhythmic levity.

Opening with a wailing, desperate held G sharp, Askim reveals the mood of the complete piece, showing a fondness for clashing seconds and sevenths. Specific discordances reappear throughout, tying the whole work together. This sense of cohesion is strengthened in the attacca instruction at the end of every section, with piano notes pedalled through each subsequent downbeat. The second movement is driving and rhythmical, with ever changing metres threathening to undermine the ensemble of bassist and pianist. Movement three's long, unsettling dissonant double stops contrast with brief bursts of sweet lyricism before movement four crashes in on the icy reverie with relentless, mechanical semiquavers. Movements five and six comment further on this juxtaposition of motoric cruelty and plaintive harmonic double stops. The seventh movement begins threateningly but builds excitement through melodic and rhythmic intensity until a semiquaver figure heralds the final sketch. Here the mood lightens significantly, with the music settling into a jazzy, hypnotic groove. Askim suggests that his music, like life, should not be tied up in easy packages, and closes with the anguished wail of the opening, gradually fading into a questioning silence.

"Eight Solitudes" will find resonance with those prepared to embrace Askim's occasionally melancholic, often uplifting work. Beautifully presented in orchestral tuning, with the piano accompaniment included in the solo part, this piece is clearly the work of someone who knows and loves the sound of the instrument. Lower registers are lingered over luxuriously, and all higher position passages seem expressly designed to illuminate the bass' strengths.

Askim's work, "Edge", served as the required piece for the 2003 ISB Solo Competition. For unaccompanied bass, this single movement composition displays many of the characteristics of the longer "Eight Solitudes". Opening with loud, accented double-stop seconds, Askim seems to be still voyaging through the emotional landscape of the former piece. Very soon it becomes apparent that the atmosphere is more upbeat, with tumbling, forceful rhythms playfully exploring the full range of the fingerboard. Slower, legato central sections indulge the simple three note motivic heart of the work in lush, colourful treatments. Askim picks up the pulse again in the rush to the end, but finds time to breathe, allowing his strong melodic and harmonic sense to prevail. Meticulously crafted and faultlessly paced, "Edge" displays a musicality that far outweighs its technical difficulties.

Concerto Preview: "Santuario", "Spirals for 'Cello and Bass"

Critical Ear: Ask Askim - composition delights

By Craig Smith | The New Mexican


Last February, double-bassist and composer Peter Askim joined Serenata of Santa Fe in the Santuario de Guadalupe for his first concert in Santa Fe. Askim was so struck by the space's dignified ambience and good acoustics that when Serenata oboist Pamela Epple invited him to write a piece for a return concert in the space, his memories of the ancient, calm building were an immediate inspiration.

The resulting commission, "Santuario", can be heard at 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 15, with Askim, Epple, violinists Kerri Lay and Joanna Jenner, violist Elena Sopoci, and cellist Dana Winograd as the performers. Askim's 1996 "Spirals", John Harbison's 1979 "Snow Country", the 1987 "Josie's Well" by Serenata's founder, Dennis Milne, and two waltzes for string quintet by Dvorák are also slated.

"I knew that I wanted to try and get at something in terms of an emotional landscape," Askim said of "Santuario", speaking by phone from Cumberland Center, Maine. "And so it kind of came from there. It was written for Pam and Kerri and Elena, and knowing the musicians, knowing the space, I was just kind of trying to write with that sound and visual setting in mind.

"That space is just amazing," he said of the Santuario, which was built in 1781 and contains a large oil painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe by José de Alzibar. "It was the first time I'd ever been to Santa Fe, when I came last year. The whole week was great. I got the chance to work with a lot of really good students, and I got a chance to ski, which I hadn't done since high school. And working with those players was great. It just all came together very well."

Some chamber pieces follow a fast-slow-fast format. "Santuario" begins fast, moves into a slower tempo, and finally turns into an extended, deliberately paced finale. "I wasn't sure where the form was going to go," Askim said, "so I came up with lots of little fragments of musical ideas and put them on notecards. I read that Stravinsky worked that way. I put them on notecards so I could see how they progressed in space by arranging them visually. The form kind of came organically out of that, little melodic and rhythmic gestures that found their own path through time."

Askim was born in Maine, holds four degrees from Yale University, studied for a year in Vienna, and was a member of the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra for eight years. He spent the 2004-2005 academic year at the University of Texas-Austin working on his doctorate in composition. He was ready to return to Hawaii when fate stepped in late last summer.

"I was planning on going to Honolulu. I had shipped all my things back," Askim said. Then he got an e-mail from flutist Ransom Wilson, who is orchestra music director at Idyllwild Arts Academy, a private arts high school in California. "He said the position was open for the orchestra's resident conductor, and he asked, 'You wouldn't be interested in that job, would you?' I said, 'Actually, I would.'" In next to no time Askim was ensconced at Idyllwild -- and he loves his job.

"The students have an amazing amount of energy and talent. I'm conducting the orchestra, composing, teaching history and other things, and coaching chamber music. There are about 260 students total in the school, and about 70 are in music. It's nice to be close to Los Angeles -- the L.A. Philharmonic does a lot of new music. I'm writing a piece now for the [Idyllwild] orchestra to do in L.A."

Given his new job and the fact that he's busy finishing his doctoral dissertation (a large-scale work for concert band), Askim hasn't been performing chamber music much lately. So his Serenata concert is welcome. "I've been totally snowed with moving, and I haven't been doing much playing. I miss it. I hope there's more stuff coming up after this."

Concert Preview: "Spring Essence: 3 Vietnamese Songs for Soprano and Double Bass"

THE CRITICAL EAR
Craig Smith

The 2003 "Spring Essence" is one of a series of works for solo voice and a stringed instrument, including double bass, piano, harp, and violin, commissioned by soprano Judith Kellock. It was inspired by English translations of three Vietnamese poems: by 20th- century writers Vu Hoang Chuong and Huy Can and 18th- century poet Ho Xuan Huong.

“Judy knew the middle poem by Ho Xuan Huong and said it would be great to do a song cycle based on Vietnamese poems,” Askim said.

But, the process of choosing poetry took quite a while. “ I started poking around, coming at it with a blank slate. I’m very picky about texts. I went through thousands of poems to find these three.

“That was the longest part. Somehow, once I found them, they spoke to me so deeply they just kind of suggested music to me. They sort of flowed; at least, that’s what I remember now.”

Askim found the Vietnamese poetic tradition as full of nature painting as an art form he knew already, Hawaiian poetry. He had come to love Hawaiian lyrics during his eight years with the Honolulu Symphony and had already written some songs for Kellock with Hawaiian texts. “ The Vietnamese poetry, like the Hawaiian tradition, is often very simple, stark, nature poetry. But it’s filled with metaphor. The nature is never just nature. It’s standing in for some thing much deeper and universal — human emotion, love, longing, sorrow. When you read and hear those texts, you see very spare, very beautiful, nature images.” The trio of songs are titled “Secret Love,” “Autumn Landscape,” and “Regret.”

When writing the piece, Askim brought voice and instrument into the same register by extending the bass’ sound upward with various techniques and writing a two-octave-plus voice line that goes from low G- sharp to high B. “ Judy has a very versatile voice and has done a lot of new music,” Askim said. “I wanted to take advantage of that.

Within a female voice, the sound of low G and the sound of a high B are these incredibly different emotional worlds. There’s something so stark and raw about the low voice.

“I used a lot of harmonics in the bass to bring it up into the soprano register,” Askim said. “ It’s a traditional use [ of instrumentation], but I’m trying to find new colors within that tradition. There’s a lot of pizzicato. I played a lot of jazz music, and I think there’s this whole world that classical music doesn’t tap into — this whole kind of color palette of pizzicato. It all ties it back to the roots, no pun intended, of the bass. I’m trying to get back to this kind of gnarly, rooty, woodenness, in a way.”

When he began rehearsing "Spring Essence" for the Serenata concert, Askim said he looked at the songs in the cycle dispassionately, “as if someone else wrote them — and they’re OK! I found out they were recently on heavy rotation on WNYC’s Web site, the classical music station in New York. That was nice.”

As for composing, Askim said that “coming up with the ideas is not the problem. I find that when conducting, I have other people’s music in my head all the time. My best composing time is when the music in my head is my own. It’s easier when you have time off to let it bubble to the top. I went out to Joshua Tree National Park last year and locked myself in a hotel room and wrote music all morning and hiked all afternoon. I’m from the East Coast, so the whole idea of the desert is something. That’s why I love Santa Fe.”

Concert Preview: "Open..."

PCMF is living large
A 10th anniversary worth celebrating
BY J. MARK SCEARCE

PETER ASKIM: Cumberland classical boy wonder with musical compatriots.

It’s a small world, but a big country. If you’re gauging the greatest distance this country spans, Hawaii to Maine would just about do it. Maybe Florida to Alaska is greater, but I doubt it; I’ve flown across country to Hawaii and it is painfully long.

Still, this is the distance composer and Maine native Peter Askim travels every summer when he brings his aloha and comes to play double bass with the Portland Chamber Music Festival, as he has nearly from its inception 10 years ago. This summer, however, he comes not only as bassist, but composer, too.

There have always been composer/bassists it seems, many of them quite good: from Mozart’s friend Pischelberger to Domenico Dragonetti. Koussevitzky and Turetzky both wrote for their instruments and commissioned hundreds more works for the bass from other composers.

And today, besides Mr. Askim, there are a whole slew of able-bodied bassists who also compose (and vice-versa!) from Louisville’s Marc Satterwhite to Nashville’s Edgar Meyer, the Bottesini of bluegrass. The list of composer/instrumentalists is a longer one for this instrument than any other, I think, except for piano. Perhaps living life closer to those lower fundamental tones enables the imagination to hear the partials float out in the ether above.

The bass has been a large part of Peter’s compositional and performing life from his earliest days in Cumberland, Maine, to his schooling at Yale and freelancing in Vienna, to his Hawaiian sojourn. I say "bass." I should qualify. The instrument is usually referred to as double bass or contra bass — string bass to the rest of us — to distinguish from the lowest male voice, a point of distinction worth making in a moment when we look at PCMF’s other celebrity soloist!

I first met Peter in ’96 when he and I shared a program on Hawaii Public Radio: I was teaching at the university and Peter was playing with the Honolulu Symphony, which he had just joined at the ripe age of 25. Entering his eighth season playing with the orchestra on Oahu, Peter also teaches composition at the University of Hawaii and conducts the New Music Ensemble, which I founded there a decade ago.

Still, with such credentials, it is his foundation in jazz and rock that Peter Askim draws upon in his composition. A self-described "post-punk rocker," Askim remembers fondly the Reindeer Rock-Off of Maine high-school bands and finds to this day the impulse oddly similar to what brings him to commit music to the page now as a composer.

"It is the same desire to communicate," says Askim. "It’s a multi-headed beast with the same belly."

His tenth anniversary commission for the PCMF is a nine-minute trio for violin, viola, and bass, in the premiere of which he will also perform. The work’s title is "Open . . .," no pun intended, though the allusion to open windows and doors is quite intentional.

Based on a series of paintings by the American Abstract Expressionist painter Robert Motherwell, the visual and aural art is "spare and textural" with offset mystical rectangles adding to the abstraction "simply but darkly."

Contrary to its description, the musical work is "energetic and forward-moving." Simply put, the composer says, "it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it."

Rock on.