Music Festival finds harmony with audience
by Chris Wilson

Onstage at the Saturday morning Ojai Music Festival family concert, Marino Formenti twice invited young people to join him so they could see up close how a piano, rigged with special devices and doodads, can make intriguing sounds.
A nervous Ernest Fleischmann stood at the foot of the steps, ordering all adults off the stage. Formenti, it was clear, was there to challenge young minds, help them learn about the way music is made and to show them the finest in performances
But as a result, he may have challenged and slightly frustrated himself with a bevy of technical applications and stage changes.
Formenti, a master at the keyboard, himself admitted the pleasures of performing for young audiences, even if their minds and eyes do wander during the music.
"Their ability to concentrate is different from adults, children are basically very broad-minded about the sensitive emotional experiences they have," he wrote.
The four pieces he played, intended for kid's ears, challenged even the adults in the audience.
Olga Neuwirth's "incidendo/
fluido" requires that the piano be rigged with bits of rubber and plastic foam between the strings to muffle and alter the normal sounds of the Steinway. Then, otherworldly sounds are pumped out of a mini-compact disc player to lend even further playfulness to the piece. The result is a space-laced piano piece on the lunatic fringe of music. One concertgoer said it sounded like a lot of banging.
Formenti showed that he has the talent and technical ability to put on a show. Not only does he possess uncanny ability to bang away at the keys, but he also can climb under the piano and remove the foot pedal stops so the tones can sound without interruption for the next piece.
"Homage to Ligeti," requires the player to simultaneously play two pianos. One is tuned to the normal scale, the other is tuned a quarter-tone lower. This resulted in a mad dash of colorful sounds while Formenti sat bouncing between the two pianos with keyboards set to each other at a 90-degree angle. Playing both at once, he shows that he's holding a lot talent up his sleeve.
Closing out the concert, at last there were some familiar sounds, as Formenti launched into American composer Alvin Lucier's "Nothing is Real," we heard a dramatically slowed-down version of a popular Beatles tune, "Strawberry Fields." The piece is intended to be recorded, then played back while being played live again, to lend new and interesting sounds. But technical difficulties, an hour into the show, had challenged many young ears enough, and while Formenti called for a five-minute break to try it again, some of the youngsters headed for the Libbey Park swing sets.

© 2002 The Ojai Valley News

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