Gryphon Trio, Nordic Voices combine on local premiere of 'Scar Tissue'

Two stellar ensembles will team up for a distinctive program spanning nearly half a millennium of composition at the next Chamber Music Pittsburgh concert. In addition, one of the pieces on the program shares the theme of “music and healing” presented on this series by the Brooklyn Rider string quartet last month.

The Gryphon Trio and Nordic Voices will be presented in concert by Chamber Music Pittsburgh on Feb. 3 at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Music Hall.

The concert will open with Nordic Voices performing two short pieces of medieval Spanish music: “Laudate Dominum” by Pierre de Manchicort (who chose to live in Spain) and “Exaltata est sancta Dei Genitrix” by Cristobal de Morales.

Nordic Voices is an a capella sextet which mainly performs very old and contemporary music. Based in Oslo, Norway, the group regularly garners ecstatic reviews and has a substantial discography.

The Canadian Gryphon Trio will play Beethoven’s greatest piano trio, usually called “The Archduke” because of its dedication to one of the composer’s most devoted aristocratic supporters. The music itself conveys a noble spirit, along with playfulness and quick wit. Beethoven loved writing piano trios. His first published works were piano trios. He even wrote a concerto for piano trio and orchestra.

The ensemble has been playing together for a quarter century, and has many commercial recordings and more than 80 commissions to its credit. It comes to Pittsburgh right after playing all of Beethoven’s piano trios at concerts over three days in Grosse Pointe, Mich.

The two groups will combine for the local premiere of “Scar Tissue” commissioned by the trio from composer Jeffrey Ryan and poet Michael Redhill.

“We all carry scars, for in life we have all be wounded in some way,” the composer explains. “‘Scar Tissue’ evokes that process through words and music, celebrating the body and its capacity to heal.”

Ryan and Redhill look at scars from a broad perspective, encompassing not only physical and emotional wounds but also “geological, environmental and cultural,” They see the scar process in three parts, starting with the wound and the healing.

“No matter the cause, the resulting scar represents a third state, a ‘new normal’ which allows the body to continue while carrying with it the memory of the past wound.”

The nine-part poem used mathematical variety in the number of syllables and lines in each section, a freedom which extends to breaking those rules from time to time.

“Scar Tissue” is an original poem which incorporates lines from previous poets in a way Redhill intends to be analogous to the way a scar on the skin consists of existing skin with new tissue.

Nordic Voices soprano Ingrid Hanke says Ryan’s music has both wonderful variety and effective transitions, and ranges from the fantastic to a beautiful lullaby.

The composer, like the poet and for the same reason, weaves some music by older composer into his language. Ryan says the final movement “embraces ‘the new normal’ with a dancing celebration of life.”