Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Tell the Birds

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; Creating the World; Robin Redbreast; Wonder Counselor; Landscaping for Privacy; FlamingO
Eve Beglarian
Lisa Bielawa, voice; MATA Ensemble; Roger Rees, voice; Jessica Gould, s; Paul Dresher Ensemble Electro-Acoustic Band; Corey Dargel, voice; Margaret Lancaster, picc; Eve Beglarian, voice and electronics; Bill Ware, vibraphone; Ensemble/Brad Lubman
New World 80630

Claves (and hand-claps?) establish a beat. A voice rhythmically intones William Blake: “Opposition is true friendship”. More claves, carving out a groove, then pitched instruments and repetitions of the Blake line.

So begins Eve Beglarian’s Downtown masterpiece, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. A thirteen-and-a-half minute essay in the attractiveness of opposites, Marriage wears its eclecticism lightly. The grooves are infectious, with layered rhythms and harmonies suggesting complexities underneath the surface. Beglarian’s melodies float effortlessly and lyrically over the teeming background. After an extended section built around the Blake line “You never know what is enough”, the piece closes with an extensive quotation of Bach’s “Es ist Genug” (It is enough). The ambiguity of the verbal response to Blake’s line combined with the emerging calm of the chorale quotation make for a beautifully conceived and executed ending.

Creating the World, on texts by Czeslaw Milosz, has much in common with Marriage—complex, shifting grooves, spoken text, and references to pre-existing music. Throughout most of the piece change is a constant; nothing goes on for very long without it being replaced by something else (a different rhythm pattern, for example) or becoming a layer in the overall sound. Finally, a rock groove dominates the last three minutes of the piece. It feels forced, or tacked on, in a way that the rest of the disc’s eclecticism avoids.

Robin Redbreast, for voice and piccolo (Corey Dargel and Margaret Lancaster, respectively, in fine performances), contrasts with the other pieces on the program in that it consists of a fairly straight forward melodic line in the voice, with birdsong-like figuration in the piccolo part. Wonder Counselor is a meditative soundscape that makes use of organ music and electronic and vocal sounds. Landscaping for Privacy combines the composer’s voice with electronics in another soundscape, this one populated by piano figurations and vocalization.

The final work on this compelling disc is FlamingO, a large scale exercise in groovy eclectics. It is one of the best uses of post-minimalist techniques I’ve heard. The rhythmic patterns pile up in an almost Carterian maelstrom, only to resolve in a peaceful and musical satisfying swirl.

Many recordings of postmodernist music (or recordings by postmodernist musicians) have sheen to them, a gleaming surface that is off-putting to me. A lot of the recordings of the Kronos Quartet feel that way, even when the music they’re playing isn’t postmodern. The music and performances on Tell the Birds feel more lived in and spontaneous, and that’s just one reason I highly recommend this disc.

posted by Steve Hicken 10:23 AM