CDs, Chamber Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Recordings

Surprise!!

Toub: darfur pogrommenJust when you thought we’ve been musically laying low… There’s a brand-new online-only CD release by fellow S21 regular and composer David Toub, realized by yours truly (Steve Layton, for those of you who don’t read the bottom post tag). It just became available on iTunes (US, also now or very soon in UK/Europe, Australia and Japan) on my little NiwoSound label; expect its appearance on eMusic as well very soon. The CD is in the “electronic” genre at both places, but purely as a matter of expediting the release; if it’s not classical I don’t know what is!

David’s darfur pogrommen, composed only a few months ago, is another expansive minimalist essay; its single continuous movement clocks in at 47 minutes. There’s no real attempt at programmatic writing; rather — like many of David’s other pieces — the title is a marker of a moment, that can call up whatever associations the listener might have in relation to it.

The piece is for open instrumentation. David’s own first recorded version used synthy string sounds, but I decided to give it a kind of “old school” treatment: a Reich-Glass hybrid with a vibraphone and electric organ taking the two primary parts, and electric piano and two more organs adding secondary voices. It trades a little lushness, but finds a bright, hard and uncompromising edge.

The biggest influence is still “classic” 60s-70s Glass, but David has his own way with how figures intuitively expand and contract, the harmonies involved, and his preference for alternating and pulsing notes. But later in the piece there’s a spot that to my ears definitely pays tribute to Morton Feldman as well. Surprising and beautiful!

Though there are many clearly defined sections in the piece, like so much of David’s work there’s just no way to get the whole flow with separate tracks. So if you want it, it’s all or nothing. (You can preview 30 seconds of the beginning on iTunes, but it’s a laughably hopeless indicator of what unfolds…)

Anyone wishing to burn the download to disc can also download and print this PDF file, which gives you the entire cover art and inner notes. More musically, you can freely download the PDF of the entire score from David himself.

Oh yeah: play it LOUD.