With music so readily available on streaming platforms these days, it’s easy to put a playlist on in the background and go about the day. The Eugene Difficult Music Ensemble is asking audiences to put a little more thought into their listening.
The group aims to “expand the definition of what music can be and what music is capable of achieving, as well as who is capable of achieving it.” They commission and perform experimental works from underrepresented artists in showcases such as the New Music Festival and Ambient Ecology, which is taking place over the next two weekends. Recent performances have included vocal meditations that ask for audience participation and an instrument petting zoo for children.
JP Lempke is the executive director of EDME, and Adrian Cervantes Mendez is the group’s secretary. They both join us to talk about difficult music in the age of easy listening.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Streaming platforms seem to be on a mission to make it possible to listen to anything, anywhere, all the time. They are monetizing easy listening.
Some folks in Eugene want to add some friction to the mix. The Eugene Difficult Music Ensemble is asking audiences to put a little more thought into their listening. The group aims to “expand the definition of what music can be and what music is capable of achieving, as well as who is capable of achieving it.” Recent performances have included vocal meditations that ask for audience participation and an instrument petting zoo for children. Their Ambient Ecology Festival started last weekend. There are going to be performances in Eugene tomorrow and next Saturday.
JP Lempke is the executive director of the ensemble. Adrian Cervantes Mendez is the group’s secretary. They both join us now. It’s great to have both of you on Think Out Loud.
JP Lempke: Yeah, thank you for having us.
Adrian Cervantes Mendez: I’m happy to be here.
Miller: JP, I understand that you’ve been a part of this ensemble since nearly the beginning. Why was it created back in 2019?
Lempke: This was really Lee’s idea. Lee is our current treasurer and the founder of the ensemble. So this goes back to his days when he was at the university, getting his certificate in nonprofit management. There were a couple of other students there who were nonprofit students, who were also music grad students.
He was in charge that year of doing the bridge exhibitions in Eugene called The Distance Between Us. That was this kind of showcase of the main strip downtown. The businesses along Willamette Street, in between 7th and 8th, all participated in this. So they produced artworks or had artworks commissioned centering around their businesses. For example, a shot glass or a coaster around the bar on the northern end of the strip.
And as part of that, Lee really wanted to have an ensemble. He wanted to start a new music ensemble and have a premiere performance as part of that. So this was launched because of that. He brought in those two other music students. They were Milton Fernandez and Kathie Hseigh. I was actually commissioned to write the first piece for that trio, which included Lee and those two other people. I actually didn’t perform on the first work, but we did premiere it at a sports bar – that was a very interesting reception.
Then it kind of continued from there as Lee’s idea and evolved over time. [It became] a nonprofit the following year, expanding our repertoire to go beyond what we’d call graphic scores or text-based scores, a lot of improvisation, as well as including a lot of audience-based works. Later on, [it included] more scored works, more, I would say, difficult-to-learn pieces as we started up our New Music Festival, which is now actually going into its fifth year this year.
Miller: A lot packed in right there, but I want to zero in on the word “difficult” for a second. Adrian, I get the sense that everyone has their own definition of what difficult music means, and even for any one person, it can maybe mean different things. But what’s your definition?
Cervantes Mendez: Yeah, difficult definitely is a charged term. I think if you just asked anybody what that meant, they might be confused at first. They might be intrigued by it. And I think that the pull that that word has is what really draws me to it. So it’s not necessarily a definition that I’m quite attracted to. I just really like how that pull that the word has: Difficult.
You want to know what’s difficult about the music that we‘re pulling cause some people might be assuming that difficult means it’s hard to perform. And some people might be assuming that difficult means that it’s hard to listen to. And I think that contrast of what definitions other people might have is what defines it for me, in many ways.
Miller: JP, you did mention, as the ensemble has gone on over the last five or six years, that some of the music has been difficult to perform. But the other easy-to-imagine definition is that it’s difficult to understand, difficult to appreciate, difficult to make sense of. How much of the music that you perform or commission would fall into that category?
Lempke: Less than, say, it’s hard to learn, you mean?
Miller: Yeah, exactly.
Lempke: It really depends. Like I said, for the New Music Festival, a lot of the works are scored and a lot of music is difficult to learn. Some of that music does get played outside the festival. We try to give additional performances as much as we can...
Miller: When you say scored, you mean written out, and it’s up to the musicians to recreate what’s been put on a page for them by the composer.
Lempke: Yeah, exactly. This can read like traditional notation, but oftentimes we’re asked to play what’s called extended techniques or new ways of performing on the instrument, and that often comes with new notations. So, there is a bit of decoding a map or decoding a key, if you will, while learning these works. I will say, in regards to this year, I do feel like we have been doing quite a bit more on the improvised side of things since our season started in February. Like I said, that just depends on the availability of the performers.
I will say, when it comes to interpreting like graphic scores – scores that have a picture, oftentimes with no clear instructions or vague instructions – that’s not always an easy task. I feel like if you’re perhaps not familiar with this type of music, you might look at that and be like, “OK, well, they’re just telling me to play whatever I can do, whatever I want.” But actually, it takes some time to look, think about what this graphic score is saying, and then come up with an interpretation. Also, for the ensemble members, to play in a way that the performance gels together and into some sort of meaningful context. If people are just playing whatever, it’s noisy, I guess, and maybe the effect isn’t very artistic or aesthetic. But if people are listening to each other, if there are moments where the performers are sitting silently and waiting for their time to come, and if there is some sort of plan as well, even if it’s a vague plan for when to play and how to play, the effect is much more meaningful, I would say, from both the performing perspective and the audience perspective.
Miller: Adrian, we’re gonna hear part of a piece that you played last Saturday as part of the Ambient Ecology series. It’s called “Un Lenguaje Hecho de Célula” or “A Language Made from Cells.” This is by the composer Luis Fernando Amaya. What should we know about this piece before we hear an excerpt?
Cervantes Mendez: This piece is scored for open instrumentation. So the piece doesn’t have a specific instrumentation that it’s calling for. Normally, a string quartet is composed of two violins, a viola and a cello. For this piece, there’s no specific stipulations about what instruments you are hearing. So for EDME, that instrumentation will change when we perform the work.
Along with this open instrumentation, there’s also the usage of two transducers attached to some sort of vibrating surface. So that could be an instrument, it could be a box, it could be a metal tin. The result is that when the material vibrates, it creates a kind of external sound. That’s not intentional by the musicians. And that effect, combined with the open instrumentation, creates this very cellular-like effect that I think Luis is really trying to go for.
Miller: All right, let’s hear a little bit of this. This is from a dress rehearsal. Again, this is “Un Lenguaje Hecho de Célula”
[“Un Lenguaje Hecho de Célula” by Luis Fernando Amaya playing]
Miller: JP, what draws you personally to music that requires more from you as a listener than something that just sort of goes down easy?
Lempke: I guess that’s the question of all time, right? What draws us to any form of art? I don’t know if I have a straightforward answer to that. I know I have been to the museum that mostly has historical art, and I find myself honestly rather bored by this. It’s not to say that this isn’t good art, but it is art that has its time and place. It was good for its time. Oftentimes, the art featured is the pieces that deserve to be featured and deserve to be exhibited, and have stood the test of time.
I find myself always wanting to pursue something new, to find new avenues of expression. I guess that tickles something within me. I’m drawn to the intelligence of how these things are put together. There’s a sort of creative expression that goes on that is unique when it comes to these experimental sounds. If you’re not looking and saying, oh, that’s a chord, that’s a rhythm expressed this way or expressed that way. But rather that what happens if, like just what we heard, what if I have to demand circular bowing, where the double bassist, in this case – Adrian said it’s open instrumentation, but we were using strings – is rubbing the bow up and down in the strings in a circular motion, and you’re getting kind of these noisier effects mixed in with the “normal” sound of the double bass. How do you manage that?
Answering that question is fascinating. And doing so effectively is an incredibly difficult task and I think a testament to the skill of the composer, as well as the performers, in realizing that score. I think, really, that’s what draws me in more than anything. It creates an experience unlike anything you’re used to, and I feel compelled almost to share that with other people.
Miller: One of your first projects was something called the Eugene Garbage Project. JP, what was that?
Lempke: This was kind of our first big venture as a nonprofit, after we gained nonprofit status. This is one of the original ideas [when] I came in as the new executive director. So Eugene Garbage Project, what we did is we collected trash from the people of Eugene, with this ecology-centered consciousness in mind. And we took pictures of all of it and we made sounds with all of it, and those pictures became the animations for the work. The sounds became an electronic part for the work.
We also hired our vocalist, Emma Rose Lynn, to sing with us. She had an electronic instrument that I created. [It] was basically just a camera that read colors, but she wore gloves of specific colors, so that she could control the electronic sounds from the garbage as she sang and performed.
This was premiered back in, I believe, 2021. [It was] delayed a few times, as you can imagine with lockdown and the pandemic, but eventually we settled and decided we had to do it at some point. [We] ended up live streaming the first performance out of Eugene Contemporary Art Gallery’s ANTI-AESTHETIC.
Since then, we brought an installation version to the light art showcase BEAM that October – I believe this was also 2021. What I mean by that is that people could actually interact with it themselves. We used colored balls instead, so they could just grab them and then move the ball around, and it would affect the sound. They could change the animation if they wanted to, which was projected on a screen. [It was] really just like a fun participatory activity.
And then, oh yes, we also live streamed as part of BrainRave that year. We just replayed the recording of the performance. Then, we kind of left the work for a few years, and then on our 5th anniversary at Pacori Cafe, we did our last performance of it so far.
Miller: Adrian, let’s have a listen to another performance that you all have put together. We’re going to hear part of “Meeball’s Wacky Adventure” by Erin Blake. This is from the 4th annual New Music Festival in 2025. And then this was also performed at a children’s concert after that. Let’s have a listen to part of this.
[“Meeballs Wacky Adventure” by Erin Blake playing]
Miller: Adrian, how do you think about difficult music or new music in the context of kids?
Cervantes Mendez: I think the word I’ve come back to a lot is play. For whatever reason, whether scientifically based or culturally based, children are into playing. And in many of the same ways, I think adults really just enjoy playing, wherever they can be. Sometimes it manifests in the creation of visual artwork. Some people play in their work, in their conversations with their co-workers. Some enjoy fishing.
I think what new music, at this current moment, is willing to explore is how are people playing? How and when? And I’m sure there’s another question they’re asking, but I think “Meeball’s Wacky Adventure” is a really good example of that. I think it shows the way that humor, in a lot of ways, can transcend the concert experience for people. And I just come back to that word play. I think it’s exemplary of what new music is wanting to explore.
Miller: JP, it’s interesting to hear about the word music humor, because when I’ve been to classical concerts, there’s not too much humor built in. There are a couple symphonies, say, or string quartets that are famous for being standouts for having slightly humorous moments, but those are the exceptions. In general, it’s a very serious world. How do you bring humor? I mean, you talked about one of the very first concerts at a sports bar. How do you welcome people in, and get them to relax and have fun?
Lempke: Yeah, the humor is definitely part of that. I think you’re right in calling out that a lot of classical concerts, there’s a very rigid social structure to this. You come in, scan your ticket. You go into this dark, isolated auditorium that is meant to be separated from the outside world, that is meant to get rid of all that noise from outside. It is a frame that you are stepping into. And you applaud at certain moments. You stay in your seat generally, unless the baby’s crying. We all generally know the rules from going there. If you don’t know the rules, you will find out very quickly that people act a very particular way.
I find that beyond having humor in performances, which we definitely welcome, having a different environment matters so much to people’s experience of the music. I mean, we give free concerts. We give free concerts that are open to the public, and it matters a lot, the setting that it is in. So, like our Ambient Ecology concert series that’s going on, it’s at Maurie Jacobs Park. There are a lot of people who are just wandering by, who are like, “What’s this? I’d like to stay for a little bit of this.” A lot of people, of course, deliberately come, bring their blanket, sit in the grass, enjoy the show and the like. But then there are the people who are surprised to stumble upon something.
This is a scenario you are welcome to stumble upon. You don’t have to go through the formalities, you don’t have to dress up, none of that. You can just come, you can be casual, and it’s fine. And you have some freedom to leave in the middle of the performance. You’re not a captive audience in this case. So, playing at parks, playing at bars, playing in smaller venues, outdoors a lot, in downtown, at businesses, these are the sort of things that I think break down the barrier for many people.
What we often run into is that people just don’t know that experimental music exists. So, making an effort to bring the music to them, I often find that they are quite delighted. I think we often have the impression that new music is a scary thing, that experimental music is inaccessible, but that is not what I’ve run into at all. People are surprised, people are craving new experiences, and it’s good for them to not only stumble upon us, but then to seek us out. As our audience has built over the years, we find there are more and more people who are seeking us out.
Miller: JP and Adrian, thanks so much.
Cervantes Mendez: Yeah, thank you.
Lempke: Yeah, it’s an honor, pleasure.
Miller: JP Lemke is the executive director and Adrian Cervantes Mendez is secretary of the Eugene Difficult Music Ensemble. We’ll go out with one more piece from the group. This is a piece by João Pedro Oliveira. It’s called “Intersections.” It was from the Ensemble’s 2023 New Music Festival.
[“Intersections” by João Pedro Oliveira playing]
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