Chamber Cartel speaks contemporary classical music’s special language

This story was originally published by ArtsATL.

It is time once again to give thanks to and for the rich, vital community of musicians and composers in Atlanta who are making post-classical or new classical or whatever label one chooses to identify contemporary music rooted in the formal Western tradition dating back to Medieval Europe around the 11th century (think: chanting monks and singing nuns).

The special occasion for this acknowledgment is a performance by Chamber Cartel of “For Philip Guston,” a five-hour-long work for flute, piano and percussion composed by Morton Feldman in 1984. Feldman’s tribute to his friend, painter Philip Guston, who died in 1980, is a quiet, delicate, meditative work that calls for sustained discipline and muted passion from the musicians and a receptive spirit and extended attention span from the listeners.

The concert is Saturday, as part of SITE 2025, a one-night-only arts festival at the 12-acre Goat Farm cultural center adjacent to the Atlanta Waterworks. In addition to Chamber Cartel’s rendering of “For Philip Guston,” this edition of SITE includes a cornucopia of installations, static and performance art and open artist studios.

A seasoned post-classical percussion specialist and ensemble leader, Herron founded Chamber Cartel in the 2010s in Atlanta. During its inaugural season, it performed a dozen concerts, mostly at the Goat Farm and at Poem 88 gallery. Currently, Herron teaches at Georgia State University’s Perimeter College and at Morehouse College, sits on the faculty of the Summer Music Academy at University of Alaska Fairbanks and is principal timpanist with the LaGrange Symphony Orchestra. Recently, he was named principal percussionist of the Johns Creek Symphony for the 2025-26 season.

Over the years, Chamber Cartel has performed works of all shapes, sizes and tonal colors, requiring musicians in numbers great and small, playing instruments of all sorts and types, including some exclusively constructed for the work itself.

Commissioning work by emerging contemporary classical composers is a Chamber Cartel imperative, producing music by Aaron Jay Myers, Adam Scott Neal, Nickitas Demos, Jeff Herriott, Christopher Adler, Carolyn Chen and Olivia Kieffer. Another priority is premiering music never performed in Atlanta or the Southeast, examples of which include “Le Marteau sans Maître” (Pierre Boulez), “The Brightest Form of Absence” (Hans Thomalla), “Vexations” (Erik Satie) and Iannis Xenakis’ “Pléïades,” along with works by John Luther Adams, Giacinto Scelsi, Franco Donatoni, Mauricio Kagel, George Crumb and Marc Yeats.

In the 1950s and ‘60s, when abstract expressionism dominated the elite painting world and avant-garde experimentation raged in the realm of contemporary classical music, Canadian-American painter Guston (1913-1980) and Feldman (1926-1987) forged a strong bond based on shared aesthetic values. In the late 1960s, Guston abruptly abandoned abstraction in favor of recognizable — albeit wildly distorted, grotesque and cartoonish — depictions of human figures, objects and settings.

Shocked and aggrieved by his friend’s turnabout, Feldman withdrew. “One day, (Guston) went to Italy, then he came back and something happened,” the composer reportedly said. “His work started to change, and when he came to me and asked, ‘So, what do you think?’ I remained silent for 30 seconds, and that half-minute cost us our friendship.”

The two men never spoke to each other again. Nevertheless, when Guston died, Feldman honored his estranged friend’s request to recite the Kaddish at his funeral. Four years later, the composer completed “For Philip Guston,” which premiered in 1985.

“There’s this feeling of remorse in the piece,” Herron says. “It’s a very personal piece, and I know that it’s abstract, but it still speaks to me on that level. You can hear the confusion and regret, and the lost opportunity to reconcile things.”

“‘For Philip Guston’ is a meditation in slow motion,” says Stuart Gerber, professor of music-percussion at Georgia State University and co-artistic director of Bent Frequency, another Atlanta-based contemporary chamber music ensemble. “It stretches time to the edge of perception, unfolding as an exploration of memory and texture. I’m sure Chamber Cartel won’t merely perform the piece; they’ll inhabit the silence and space between notes, transforming Feldman’s quiet monument into something almost sacred.”

2025 marks the 14th season of Chamber Cartel concerts. Following the performance of “For Philip Guston” during SITE, the final concert of 2025 is a reprise of Xenakis’ “Pléïades” at Goat Farm’s Goodson Yard in November.

Forty years after the premiere of “For Philip Guston,” new/post/contemporary classical chamber and symphonic music still struggles to connect with general audiences.

Still, says Herron, “For me, contemporary classical music or whatever you want to call it breaches a barrier to a unique and almost mystical sound world. It’s a special language, which gets to something that is otherwise not readily available — and I think the audience for it in Atlanta is expanding.”

Part of SITE, 5-11 p.m. Saturday (Chamber Cartel will perform virtually throughout). $21.82-$27.02; VIP tickets, $157.04. Goat Farm, 1200 Foster St. NW, Atlanta. thegoatfarm.info/site2025.