Year: 2022

CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Minimalism

Steve Reich – Reich/Richter CD Review

Steve Reich

Reich/Richter

Ensemble Intercontemporain, George Jackson, conductor

Nonesuch

 

Steve Reich has long admired the artwork of Gerhard Richter, whose abstraction and ties to minimalism seem tailor-made for a collaboration with the composer. The artist’s film Moving Picture (946-3), made with Corrina Belz and based on Richter’s book Patterns, provided just such an opportunity. Reich/Richter was composed to be performed alongside the film and has received over a hundred performances at screenings starting in 2019. This audio recording of the work is amply diverting on its own. 

 

The piece is recognizably Reich, with ostinatos, polyrhythms and full-bodied harmonies interacting throughout. The use of pitched percussion, piano, and strings (with a particularly rangy double bass part) creates a sinfonietta that is an extension of the instrumentation of many of Reich’s key works. The use of wide-ranging soloistic passages in the winds is particularly suitable for Ensemble Intercontemporain. However, it would be a mistake merely to analogize it to past works. Reich/Richter is distinctive in its own right. Directedness of harmonic progressions, which in interior cadences are sometimes thwarted by deceptive fakes but in closing sections are emphatic, suggests a harmonic scaffolding with considerable long-term planning. The structuring of rhythm is rigorous as well. Belz talked about the film’s organization into “pixels,” and Reich used a time scale of rhythmic values to respond to rows of pixels. The end result breaks up the composer’s trusty polyrhythms into different, at times surprising, groupings. 

 

Ensemble Intercontemporain, conducted by George Jackson, perform a rhythmically incisive and expressive rendition of Reich/Richter. Not so many years ago, the group performing Reich would have been beyond the pale. It is refreshing that those stylistic barriers have fallen so that excellent ensembles known for their interpretations of modernism can have a crack at minimalism. Reich/Richter is a vivid and arresting work that shows as many departures by its octogenarian creator as mainstays of Reich’s creativity. 

 

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Opera, Premieres

Vera Ivanova – The Double



The much-anticipated Synchromy Opera Festival was presented at Boston Court, Pasadena, over June 4 and 5, with two sold-out performances for a pair of world premiere productions. The Double, by Vera Ivanova and Roman, by Ian Dicke, filled the larger space at Boston Court with imaginative stagecraft and powerful music performed by first-rate musicians and excellent singers. Both operas dealt with the unintended effects of technology on ordinary people and both succeed in artfully delivering a cautionary message to engaged and attentive audiences. This review will cover The Double, the first opera on the program, and a separate review will be posted for Roman.

The Double loosely follows the experiences of an ordinary man named Noth, who desires a better life through a new app-based psychological therapy. Although we aren’t told exactly how this therapy works, it is apparently “text-based and mobile”, an obvious reference to our ubiquitous cell phones. The opening features Noth, tenor Jon Lee Keenan, and the Therapist, baritone Scott Graff, singing a bright duo “A Better You” praising this latest innovation in therapeutic technology. The music here is bouncy and light as with an ad jingle, but with a slightly menacing undercurrent. As the plot synopsis explains: “Noth, a low-level office worker, states that he came to the therapist a month ago, with low self esteem, but now things seem to be worse.”

The Brightwork Ensemble provided the musical forces for The Double and included a piano, violin, cello, flute, clarinet and percussion. These were ranged along the back of the stage and directed by Marc Lowenstein. The stage was otherwise bare with no scenery so that the cast of just four singers had to carry the text, the plot and provide all the action. A full-size screen provided for projections and the sound engineering and lighting were under the capable direction Nicholas Tipp and Alejandro Melendez, respectively.

Throughout The Double, composer Ivanova kept the musicians busy with moving lines and plenty of notes while astutely giving the singers long, sustained tones that arc above the active texture of the accompaniment. This allowed for a clear delivery of their lines as well as space for greater dramatic expression. The sung text was projected at the top of the screen and this was helpful even though all the sounds were well balanced and the miked-up singers were almost always intelligible.

As the plot unfolds, Noth’s fellow office worker, Klara, sung by soprano Anna Schubert, also begins the new therapy in an attempt to exchange her dull life for “money, power, freedom and adventure.” Meanwhile, as Noth continues his emotional decline, a better version of him has actually emerged in the form of a physical Double. The casting of the elegant and taller Timur is inspired here – the extraordinary range of his voice gives the Double a vaguely alien presence. Klara, who is becoming more assertive through her therapy, meets the Double and is immediately attracted to him. Eventually, Klara and the Double marry in a ceremony presided over by the Therapist and witnessed by the heartbroken Noth. The Therapist binds Klara and the Double together with a long scarf, even as Klara sings powerfully about attaining wealth and freedom. This moment briefly recalls Das Rheingold when Alberich finally attains power and wealth, but must forfeit love. As the opera ends, Noth is reduced to ‘Noth ing’, now completely broken down by the therapy while his life has been appropriated by his better Double.

The Double is a beautifully precise and masterful work with careful attention to every aspect of the production. Dr. Ivanova’s music is exquisitely detailed, agile and always informing the action. The accompaniment provided by the Brightwork Ensemble was clear-cut and nimble, instantly changing direction as needed to support the emotions of the moment on stage. The singing was confident, assured and delivered with great expression. The costume design by Lena Sands and make-up had just the right balance between the imaginary and the real. Even the staged movements of the cast more than made up for the absence of impressive scenery. The sound and lighting complimented the production completely and the direction by Alexander Gedeon brought out the best in an already talented cast. As seen on Times Union, it is gratifying to know that serious opera can be staged with such splendid results without requiring huge financial resources. Congratulations to Synchromy for stepping up to the challenge.

While the music, staging and libretto are all artistically impressive, they also invite the audience to consider deeper questions layered within this compelling story. As Librettist Sarah LaBrie writes: “When Vera Ivanova approached me with this project, my first thought was that this story would offer an incredible opportunity to play with the concept of identity and the way it changes as our lives migrate increasingly online. Now, however, I’ve come to understand that the significance of The Double to our current cultural moment runs much deeper than that. In 2022, many of us are coming to terms with what it means to be a citizen of a country founded on a dream that clashes glaringly with the reality many of us confront.”

The Double brilliantly accomplishes what opera is meant to do: engage the audience to think about the wider consequences of progress and new technology on human relationships.

Photo by Richard An – courtesy of Synchromy, used with permission

by Paul Muller
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Percussion, Performers

Steven Schick – A Hard Rain (CD Review)

Steven Schick

A Hard Rain

Islandia Music Records

 

Steven Schick is an extraordinary musician, best known as a percussionist but also a formidable conductor. After decades of performing all of the important solo works of the percussion repertoire, Schick is creating a series of recordings, titled Weather Systems, documenting interpretations built on lifelong study. The first, A Hard Rain, includes works by the experimental and serial wings of American music, European modernists, and a tour-de-force rendition of Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonata (1932). 

 

The double disc recording begins with 27’10.554” for a percussionist (1956), a nearly half hour long piece by John Cage. As with so much of Cage’s music, the use of silences between aphoristic gestures is often present. The instrumental complement includes a number of regular percussion implements plus several unconventional noise-makers: radios, whistles, pre-recorded sound, wooden and metallic materials. The pre-recorded sound plays a pivotal role. Schick’s realization of the piece is an eighty-four multitrack mix. Schick calls it “a rainforest of sounds.”  The impression it makes is of a diverse, diffuse sound environment that moves between noise, nature, and more codifiable rhythmic structures.

 

Zyklus (1959), by Karlheinz Stockhausen, is an exciting, highly choreographed, graphic score, with the trick that, like the deployment of its instruments, it is circular in construction. The performer is allowed to enter the circle at any point and work through the piece from there. King of Denmark (1964) is far more intuitive, keeping the slow, soft, spare aesthetic of Feldman but transferring it to percussion.

 

Two American serialists are represented. Charles Wuorinen’s Janissary Music (1966) is an early example of the composer using serialized rhythmic structures. The pitch language also uses 12-tone techniques, the result a fastidiously designed piece that is  muscular in its angularity. Schick went to University of Iowa, where William Hibbard taught, and thus his recording of Parsons’ Place (1968) is a return to one of the first solo percussion pieces he learned. Like Feldman and Cage, Hibbard allows space between entries with a generally soft dynamic. However, they are knotty and self-similar, the pitched percussion chromatic in pitch spectrum. The accretion of gongs, cymbals, and a drummed pulse provides a slow build to an interior cadence. Once again, the texture thins, with long rests interspersing brief eruptions, shimmering gongs joining pitched percussion. Gently articulated melodies interspersed with drumming creates a hybridized last section that becomes progressively more assertive, then drifts off in a shimmer of cymbals.  Schick’s use of dynamic contrasts and nimble gestures make a strong impression. A compelling work that should be better known. 

 

Intérieur I (1966) by Helmut Lachenmann takes the post-War modernism found in Zyklus and expands its instrumental and expressive reach. Glissandos on timpani and xylophone, brightly articulated melody on vibraphone, and disjunct arpeggiations on marimba are offset by long-sounding gongs and punchy non-pitched drum interjections. The whole creates a labyrinthine complex of alternating gestures and textures. 

 

Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonata (1922-32) is one of the most important sound poems of the twentieth century. As the title suggests, the shape of the piece is sonata form, but the vocal sounds required are as far from traditional as can be imagined. Electronics composer Shahrokh Yadegari joins Schick for a virtuosic performance of the piece that includes echoes, layerings, and treatments of the voice. Schick provides a dramatic rendition of the Ursonata, rendering its tongue-twisters, repetitions, and non-sequiturs with flair and fluidity. I heard Schick perform the piece at the Park Avenue Armory, and while a stereo recording can’t capture the encompassing power of Ursonata live, it captures detail and an impressive amount of heft. A Hard Rain is one of 2022’s “must-hear” recordings. One waits with keen anticipation for its follow-ups.   

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical

Wilfrido Terrazas – The Torres Cycle

New Focus Recordings has released The Torres Cycle, a new CD by Wilfrido Terrazas containing seven tracks of original music composed between 2014 and 2021. Subtitled ‘A Musical Ritual for the Seven Cardinal Directions’, this album explores the significance of direction, place and culture as expressed by the proximity of Southern California to Mexico. As stated in the liner notes: “A deepened relation to cardinal orientation loosens social order and transforms common wisdom oppositions into liminal spaces: the cycle’s sonic presences are improvisational, but its figurations monumental; its scope at once historical, mythological and speculative…” Wilfrido Terrazas is a prolific composer with over 380 world premiers in 20 countries throughout Europe and the Americas. He is a master flutist and educator who is constantly exploring the unique cultural relationship between his place of residence in San Diego and his native Ensenada, Mexico. The Torres Cycle continues this important work with an album performed by top-flight area musicians.

‘Torre’ is Spanish for tower and each of the tracks in the album represent a musical expression inspired by looking outward in a certain direction. Orientation and direction are of great historical and cultural significance in Mexico – think of the celestial alignment of Mayan ceremonial buildings or the dramatic ritual of the Voladores: daring young men representing the four cardinal directions, who fling themselves off a high platform and twirl downward over one hundred feet secured only by ropes around their ankles. Even in our contemporary society, direction has a fundamental influence on our awareness. Along the west coast of Mexico and California, facing east generally means seeing mountains while to the west is the sea and the sunset; both inspire very different emotions. In California, facing south connects our imagination with Mexican culture while the obverse is true facing north from Baja. Terrazas exploits the connection between direction and imagination to create a cross-cultural dialogue expressed in contemporary musical forms.

The opening track, Torre del Norte (2018) explores the four cardinal directions of North, East, South and West. The piece is written for any number of brass players and opens with trumpets sounding long sustained tones. These start on the same nominal note, but the players soon bend the pitches to create new and dramatic dissonance and harmonies. As new tones are added, the tension rises and the texture swells and falls with changes in pitch and volume. At 3:00 the pitches again change with more notes with faster rhythms resulting in a flurry of independent passages flying through the air. The complexity builds to an almost chaotic level with lots of trills, tremolos and rapid runs – perhaps a comment on life north of the border? The playing here is quite amazing, especially in the lower brass. More and more extended techniques and special sounds arrive in broken phrases and uncoordinated rhythms. At length, the ensemble settles down and there is a languid stretch with more conventional tones and harmonies – there is an expansive, Duke Ellington feel to this, perhaps reflecting the rich and savory culture south of the border. The dissonance slowly rises as does the volume, increasing the sense of drama even as the piece suddenly halts in mid-stride. Expertly realized by the brass, Torre del Norte is a powerful reminder of the range of emotions that are evoked when simply facing different directions.

Track 4, Tótem II, Miro hacia el cielo (2019), explores another significant direction – in this case up. Scored for any number of piccolo players, this opens with a long, sustained piccolo tone whose pitch is slightly bent even as others join in at almost the same frequency. All of this soon becomes shrill and very penetrating. The sounds bounce around in the listener’s ear becoming almost painful at times. Short, breathy sounds are heard in the background providing some relief while the pitches in the foreground climb ever higher. By 4:20 some piccolo notes are heard in a more conventional register and this soon evolves into rapid runs and phrases that increase in complexity. The lines are independent and flighty, resembling nothing so much as a flock of chirping birds. At 6:50 the piccolos return to multiple sustained sounds with pitches that are within a few cycles of each other. This slows down to a stretch of breathy sounds that bring out a remote and desolate feeling. A flurry of active phrases appear amid the windy sounds but these gradually decline in number until fading at the finish. Tótem II, Miro hacia el cielo artfully captures exactly what you would expect looking upward into nature’s sky.

Tótem I, Camino sobre la tierra (2019), track 2, roughly translates to ‘I walk on the earth’ and is more introspective. Soft gong chimes followed by silence open this, creating a mystical and exotic feeling. The oboe enters with long, mournful tones that bend upward in pitch. The percussion continues independently, allowing the oboe to continue the exploration of an unknown emotional terrain. At length, a drum beat is heard as the oboe line turns shrill, producing a sense of distant menace. A flurry of oboe runs and percussion sounds follow, bringing Coltrane briefly to mind. The oboe ceases and soft percussive notes fade quietly to the finish. In Camino sobre la tierra it is clear that the most exotic direction is inward.

The other four tracks offer further perspectives on the inner influence of direction. Torre del Sur (2014) or ‘to the south’ is scored for five bowed string parts and opens with very soft sounds suggesting a quiet and rural landscape. More intense and complex stretches arise that sound happily chaotic in detail, yet are cohesive in the whole. There are also soft interludes so that one is reminded of the many complex cultures that are scattered throughout the mostly wide open spaces of the Mexican countryside.

Amy Cimini’s excellent liner notes state that “With Torre del Oeste, the cycle ends with laughter, facing west.” This piece is scored for any number of woodwinds and, as each player enters in turn, the intensity increases and exotic harmonies multiply. This piece can be quietly mysterious at times, becoming more actively shrill and almost painful to the ear. The woodwind players confidently navigate this complex musical terrain as alternating cycles of frenzy and repose continue throughout. Slowly the sounds de-escalate and become just a few solitary twitters, declining in volume as the piece fades to a close. Torre del Oeste certainly could be the musical equivalent of ‘gales of laughter’ and is a fitting conclusion to The Torres Cycle.

Using the concepts of direction and location, The Torres Cycle seeks to delineate the confluence of our cross-border cultures. Wilfrido Terrazas continues to build bridges of cultural understanding through the language of new music.

The Torres Cycle is available directly from New Focus Recordings and Amazon Music.


by Paul Muller
CDs, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Dream Syndicate, “Every Time You Come Around” (Bandcamp)

The Dream Syndicate release the album “Ultraviolet Battle Hymns and True Confessions” on Fire (June 10th). The group has dropped a teaser track, “Every Time You Come Around:” see the embed below.

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Dance, Experimental Music, Los Angeles

Alex Wand – Music for Dance 2017-2020

Music for Dance 2017-2020, by Alex Wand, is a new album of selected electronic instrumental music created as accompaniment for choreographed dance. Wand’s experience with the local dance community is extensive and includes residencies with the LA Dance Project, Los Angeles Performance Practice, REDCAT, and Metro Art LA. According to the liner notes, Wand has worked with choreographer Jay Carlon “ …as a collaborator on his site-specific dance theater productions and dance films…” This collection consists of eight tracks of electronic music, primarily realized using modular synths. Although Wand’s supple voice is absent from this album, the inventive sounds he creates provide an open and inviting framework for interpretive dance.

Composers working with dance companies have a distinguished history in new music. Lou Harrison often collaborated with dance choreographers during his career. John Cage famously devised the prepared piano to give his accompaniment more percussive punch, assisting the dancers to better follow the beat. The closest piece to the traditional forms of dance music in Alex Wand’s new album is Crest, track 5, which provides a repeating phrase at a brisk tempo that is mostly percussive in texture. This piece feels like dance in that it encourages movement. The rounded tones are subdued but active, and interesting harmonies develop as the repeating phrases evolve.

Out of Bounds, track 3, further explores the percussive texture but with a different expressive intent. This begins with a strong beat and rapid electronic pulse. The drum beats occasionally vary in pitch and volume so that the feeling is like being inside of a helicopter. A sine tone is heard and the rhythms change up, becoming more broadly mechanical. The pulses here are less a guide for body movement and more a framework that allows the dancer to react. Other tracks in the album encourage a similar response. Flocking, track 1, is typical with deep, sustained tones setting a warm foundation while a repeating, syncopated chirp in the higher registers convincingly evokes other worlds. There is a feeling of open grandeur to this that engages the listener while allowing the dancer full scope for interpretation.

Four Triangles features four synthetic tones with differing pitches and duration. The pitches are based on the resonant frequencies of pieces of sheet metal and the processed sounds are somewhere between a pure sine wave and a bell chime. These attractive tones blend well together and form engaging harmonies. Signal, track 7, consists of complex electronic sounds that seem to be emulating a message of some sort. Low, sustained tones compliment the beeps and boops in the upper registers. This ends dramatically as the signals fall away leaving just the lower tones. The other pieces in this album are similarly intended to give the dancers a wide canvas for expression.

Although often abstract and otherworldly, Music for Dance makes for an excellent contrast with the obvious human element that the dancer provides. Alex Wand writes: “The tracks feature fluctuating synth pulses, swirls of noise textures, and pitch-shifted recordings of planetary magnetospheres… I composed these pieces with the intent to leave room for the dance to speak and hope that this sense of spaciousness is translated to the listener as well.”

In addition to the electronic realization of his accompaniments, Wand has also experimented with physical inputs such as wireless accelerometers and contact microphones to provide a path for interaction between the movement of the dancer and the music. Music for Dance 2017-2020 adds a 21st Century sensibility to the long-standing collaboration between new music and interpretive dance.

Music for Dance 2017-2020 can be heard at Bandcamp.


by Paul Muller
CD Review, File Under?, jazz

Mark Turner – Return from the Stars (CD Review)

Mark Turner

Return from the Stars

Mark Turner, saxophone; Jason Palmer, trumpet; Joe Martin, double-bass, Jonathan Pinson, drums

ECM Records

 

In recent years, saxophonist Mark Turner has appeared as a collaborator on a number of ECM recordings, including CDs with Billy Hart and Ethan Iverson. His latest, Return from the Stars, is the first quartet outing he has recorded for the label as a leader since 2014’s Lathe of Heaven. The players who join Turner are trumpeter Jason Palmer, bassist Joe Martin, and drummer Jonathan Pinson. All of the tunes are originals by Turner, and he demonstrates versatility and depth as a writer. Just as Lathe of Heaven is the name of an Ursula K. LeGuin novel, Return from the Stars references a totemic sci-fi book by Stanislav Lem. There are no electronics or sci-fi effects that suggest spaciness, but the solos of the winds and freely flowing rhythm section suggest music that aloft ascends. 

 

The title composition has a mysterious cast, beginning with the tune outlined by trumpet and saxophone with heterophonic embellishments in both of the winds and a sotto voce rhythm section. The lines start to crisscross only to once again converge, with Martin interjecting a walking line that supplies another melody to the action. Pinson builds upon Martin’s gestures, swelling to dynamic presence. Turner is a generous collaborator, eager to showcase his colleagues alongside his own playing. Palmer is allowed considerable time to solo. His rangy and rhythmically varied one on “It’s not Alright” is a particular standout of virtuosity and taste in shaping numerous choruses. The tune also features Turner and Palmer playing fleet renditions of the tune in octaves completely together. On “Wasteland” they play a duet in rhythmic unison but in constantly shifting intervals. Martin and Pinson relate to them in an abstract fashion. Just when you think that they are off on a tangent, the group syncs together, with Martin providing harmonic underpinning and Pinson landing with him to articulate arrival points. 

 

Several of the tunes stretch, but “Unacceptable” is the longest form, with cat-and-mouse canons leading off into overlapping winds. A melodic cell is played in intervals and then developed as a principal motive in octaves. The winds submerge at their cadences points, affording space for breaks by the rhythm section followed by solo turns. Turner’s is chromatic, vibrant in tone, and filled with scalar passages that develop and recall the chorus. The game of canons returns, followed by a languid trumpet solo and then a warm wind duet. The close is a beautiful denouement, with the wind duo slowing down and fading to pianissimo and the rhythm section equally hushed. 

 

An intricate piece, “Unacceptable” suggests that Turner would do well to arrange some of his compositions for larger ensembles: perhaps ECM will oblige in a future recording project. In the meantime, Return from the Stars supplies the listener with plenty of fascinating music to savor. 

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Opera

Rhiannon Giddens sings “Julie’s Aria “from her new opera (Video)

Rhiannon Giddens, along with guitarist Bill Frisell and percussionist Francesco Turrisi, perform “Julie’s Aria” from Giddens’ first opera, Omar. Premiering at Spoleto, the opera is receiving productions at a number of prominent houses. Here is an audio stream via YouTube. Giddens is busy with myriad projects, but her singing is so compelling here: dare Spoleto offices hope for a cameo?

 

by Christian Carey
CDs, File Under?, Video

VIEUX FARKA TOURÉ – “NGALA KAOURENE” (VIDEO)

On June 10, World Circuit will release Les Racines, an album by Malian guitarist Vieux Farka Touré.

The third single on the album, “Oglala Kaurene,” has been given video treatment. Check out Touré’s guitar stylings, which draw upon the work of previous Malian musicians while remaining distinctive in its deployment of punchy lines and looping polyrhythms. He isn’t known as “Hendrix of the Sahara” for nothing.

Touring

May 13—Freight & Salvage—Berkeley,  CA

May 14—Center for the Arts—Grass Valley, CA

May 15—Felton Music Hall—Felton, CA

May 17—Musical Instrument Museum Theater—Phoenix, AZ

May 18—Dakota—Minneapolis, MN

May 19—SPACE—Evanston, IL

May 20—Le Poisson Rouge—New York, NY

May 21—World Café Live—Philadelphia, PA

May 22—Race Street Live—Holyoke, MA

June 8—Crystal Ballroom—Somerville, MA

June 10—Infinity Hall—Norfolk, CT

June 11—StageOne—Fairfield, CT

June 12—Afrika Nyaga Fest—Providence, RI

August 4—Celebrate Brooklyn—Brooklyn, NY

 

by Christian Carey