Author: Cortlandt Matthews

CD Review, CDs, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, Percussion, Piano

Album Review – Nightflower

Elliot Cole – Nightflower

On January 25, 2019, Long Echo Records released composer Elliot Cole’s debut solo album, Nightflower. This album occupies the vague space between the generated and constructed, and lives up to its own claim in “defying the notion of computer music as inherently sterile or mechanical.” At the root of all these works, written entirely for human performers, are materials that were generated by a computer program of Cole’s design. The album opens with the kinetic, lyric, and mesmerizing Bloom, a trio for guitar, cello, and clarinet. Performances by Cabezas, Chernyshev, and Dodson are at times aggressive and urgent, tender and longing, and still when need buoyant and playful. These compositions are certainly not inherently sterile or mechanical, but the performers contribution to the human element in the music throughout this album is undeniable. After such a powerful opening to the album, Night (Corners) and Night (Flowers) disappoint in comparison. Billed as surreal, sprawling, and evoking Romantic piano nocturnes, the work instead scans as plodding despite Andrea Lodge’s carefully considered, introspective performance.

 

Flowerpot Music won me back over almost immediately, and is what I would consider to be the heart of this album. Cole is known for his percussion music, and the uninitiated will understand why after this five minute piece. The unique timbres of the flowerpots and the cathedral-like reverberation provide an immediate intrigue that gives space for Cole to play with pitch, duration, pulse, and repetition to great effect. The album closes with Facets, for solo piano. Like the “Night” pieces, Facets is also meditative and introspective, but a broader range of textures, dynamics, and tempi work to make a more engaging piece by comparison. Hanick’s performance expertly contextualizes these elements into a singular, cohesive arc, and is a fitting conclusion to this album.

 

Bloom

Gabriel Cabezas, cello

Stanislav Chernyshev, clarinet

Jordan Dodson, guitar

 

Night (Corners) & Night (Flowers)

Andrea Violet Lodge, piano

 

Flowerpot Music

Jacob Harpster, percussion

Matt Penland, percussion

 

Facets

Conor Hanick, piano

by Cortlandt Matthews
Chamber Music, Composers, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Performers

ArchiTAK at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music

NEW YORK – On February 10th, 2018, Architek Percussion and TAK ensemble presented five US premieres in the DiMenna Center for Classical Music’s Benzaquen Hall. The program, charmingly titled ArchiTAK, was composed entirely of new music by New York and Montreal composers. Walking into the hall expecting some sort of configuration to accommodate five percussionists, a flautist, clarinetist, violinist, and vocalist, I was instead greeted by nine chairs in a tight, even row behind nine microphones. I heard members of TAK ensemble behind me discussing the location of “the knives.” I was ready to expect the unexpected as the program began with Myriam Bleau’s Separation Space. The piece began with these nine performers manipulating electronically processed microphones with tapping, scratching, sandpaper, and yes, a chef’s knife. Adding to the rich amalgam building in the speakers, performers began to play pre-recorded media from cellphones, and two began to sing in a close, gently pulsing dissonance. The work was an excellent opening to the program. I found myself having a thought that I would return to many times throughout this program. New music can be strange, intimate, challenging, and moving, and in capable hands, can be all four at once. Taylor Brook’s Incantation left the stage to Architek Percussion, with each member of the quartet equipped with a hi-hat prepared with a small towel, two metals bars (each tuned to form a microtonal octachord spanning the width of about 2 semitones), a brake drum, and a violin bow. Early questions I raised to myself about the authenticity of their performance considering the handicap of headphones (presumably playing a click) were quickly replaced with a respect for these performers as they flawlessly moved through the aggressively fast and equally demanding piece with incredibly tight ensemble. The first half of the program concluded with A Song About Saint Edward the Confessor by Isaiah Ceccarelli, which again utilized the full complement of players. Opening as a vocalise before later unfolding into a proper song, the piece capitalized on vocalist Charlotte Mundy’s unaffected voice and pure tone, while still leaving her room to realize a richly expressive performance. While her diction was very clear and the hall was intimite, I felt that omitting the text from the program was a missed opportunity.  

Moments into New York composer David Bird’s Descartes and the Clockwork Girl, I understood why this was programmed after a short break. I again found myself considering the strange, intimate, challenging, and moving as the piece worked through timbre pairings that were as conceptually attractive and musically effective. I am still particularly taken with Carlos Cordeiro’s performance, balancing passages that demand incredible dexterity with clean, sustained bass clarinet multiphonics. The program concluded with Taylor Brook’s Pulses. For the fifth time that night, I found myself almost entirely outside of time, so engrossed in the performance that I honestly could not give an accurate break-down of the roughly 90 minute program.

After the final piece concluded and members of Architek Percussion and TAK received a strong round of much deserved applause, a gesture towards the audience revealed that both David Bird and Taylor Brook were in attendance for this performance. For all these musicians did to curate and present moving and compelling works of new music, there were several missed opportunities in the presentation of the program itself that could have gone a long way to making the music more accessible. Given that each piece contained such evocative, programmatic titles, I have a feeling including program notes would have provided audience members with a better vocabulary to appreciate the work of both the composers and performers. With a composer present for three of the five pieces on the program, I feel it was a real missed opportunity not to hear about their work from them, especially considering the intimate nature of the venue.

 

ARCHITAK

Myriam Bleau —Separation Space

Taylor Brook — Incantation

Isaiah Ceccarelli — A Song About Saint Edward the Confessor

David Bird — Descartes and the Clockwork Girl

Taylor Brook — Pulses

 

Architek Percussion: Ben Duinker, Mark Morton, Ben Reimer, Alessandro Valiante

 

TAK ensemble: Charlotte Mundy, voice; Laura Cocks, flute; Carlos Cordeiro, clarinet; Marina Kifferstein, violin; Ellery Trafford, percussion

by Cortlandt Matthews
Contemporary Classical, Opera

Horror in Opera, in Virtual Reality: The Parksville Murders

To open with a broad stroke, opera is generally seen as a medium that embraces tradition. For example, while the repertoire certainly has a myriad more terrifying works to offer, the Royal Opera House offers Don Giovanni and Macbeth as selections from their Top 5 Scariest Operas article. Bearing this in mind, I couldn’t help but appreciate the particularly rich novelty of fitting my smartphone into a specialized cardboard case to watch the first ten-minute episode of The Parkside Murders, the virtual reality horror opera.

The first episode of The Parkside Murders fully embraces its medium as a VR experience, and uses the unique strengths of VR to tell this story. While appreciating opera and cinema are traditionally group experiences, virtual reality (for now anyway)  is solitary by nature. Furthermore, the fixed perspective of traditional mediums allows for a layer of separation as an audience member that this VR experience sheds. Rather than treating this experience as a 360-degree film, The Parksville Murders forces you into drama immediately, establishing the viewer as a named character in the opening supertitles. Before learning the names of our protagonists, you learn that you (yes, you) are The Watcher. As this episode unfolds, The Watcher, unable to move anything below the neck, begins to wonder what their role is in this story. The lack of autonomous mobility in this visceral, 3D environment is frustrating, but a constant reminder that The Watcher is not here to help, harm, or change. The Watcher exists to bear witness. After being directly addressed by the supertitles, and later by one of the main characters, Watcher is left wondering about the nature of their role in this narrative. This isn’t a question one generally runs into in cinema, or opera. Director Cari Ann Shim Sham* transforms several formalist techniques prevalent in horror films such as frenetic editing, use of visual and aural white noise, and frame-rate manipulation in their adaptation for a VR experience. The line between the story and its telling is blurred, and opens up a floodgate of possibilities for storytelling in this medium.

Virtual reality aside (or about as far aside as it can be moved from the main focus) The Parksville Murders is, afterall, an opera. Scored for soprano (Corinne, played by Kacey Cardin), mezzo (Sarah, played by Mikki Sodergren), a small chorus, and electronics, composer Kamala Sankaram incorporates music in a way that is always in service of the drama, and mounting sense of dread. In this episode, the electronics are a clear backdrop for more interesting musical material: Sankaram’s vocal writing and extended use and manipulation of diegetic sound. Sounds of white noise from a nearby television set, sharpening knives, and nearby knocking are deeply embedded into the work, and had this Watcher constantly inspecting their surroundings in horrified anticipation. Sankaram’s vocal writing is, aptly, the cornerstone of this score, and well supported by Cardin and Sodergren’s excellent performances. Captivating in its own right, one begins to notice that Sankaram’s approach to vocal writing itself is being used to tell a story. Cardin’s initial plea of “Help me, help me…” (a plea made directly to The Watcher) is eerie, angular, and immediately stands in stark contrast to the electronic droning that comes before it. Later, the surreal nature of Sodergren’s entrance “on screen” is mirrored in Sankaram’s writing for her character. While Cardin sings at a slower, measured pace, often repeating words and small phrases, Sodergren sings parlando, often speaking in full sentences. The contrast between our two leads leaves so much room for uncertainty about what exactly The Watcher is bearing witness to. Again, it is hard to know where the story ends and its telling begins. The differences in the text setting between these characters and Sankaram’s blending of diegetic and nondiegetic sounds certainly leaves room for this story to dive deep into the realm of the supernatural, but it is too soon to tell.

The first episode of The Parksville Murders is available now exclusively on Samsung VR, and it is well crafted, immersive, and genuinely scary. Recommended. During the daytime. With the lights on.

http://www.theparksvillemurders.com/ 

by Cortlandt Matthews
Chamber Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Percussion, Performers

Metropolis Ensemble Presents: Memory Palace (Preview)

On Monday, November 20 in New York, Metropolis Ensemble percussionist Ian Rosenbaum will present an hour-long, seamless musical narrative culminating in Christopher Cerrone’s evocative work Memory Palace. Through electro-acoustic soundscapes, visual projections, and a fluid juxtaposing of unexpected techniques and instruments, works by Mark Applebaum, David Crowell, Tom Johnson, Scott Wollschleger, and Cerrone are interwoven to explore new, expressive possibilities for solo percussion.

Earlier this year, Rosenbaum released a recording of Cerrone’s Memory Palace, a work Rosenbaum has performed over 40 times since its premiere by Owen Weaver in 2012. An autobiographical work, the title refers to a memorization technique where one places mental signposts in an imaginary location and ‘walks’ through it. This 23 minute work is a construction of Cerrone’s life as a memory palace. Apart from three loose crotales, two glockenspiel bars, and a kick drum, a majority of Memory Palace is performed with homemade (or modified) instruments, such as slats of wood, metal pipes, and water-tuned beer bottles. The work also prominently features field recordings taken by composer.

Recorded in 2015 during a residency at the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, NY, this film may be a suggestion of what lies in store, with theatrical lighting and video projection further elevating the natural chemistry between Cerrone’s work and Rosenbaum in this incredibly moving performance.

Monday, November 20

Caveat / 21 Clinton Street / New York, NY

7:00pm (doors) / 7:30pm (event)

Tickets: $20 General / $10 Student

 

ON THE PROGRAM:

i is not me – Scott Wollschleger

Counting Duet #1 – Tom Johnson

Celestial Sphere – David Crowell

Counting Duet #3 – Tom Johnson

Aphasia – Mark Applebaum

Counting Duet #2 – Tom Johnson

Memory Palace – Christopher Cerrone

 

For more information/tickets, visit

https://metropolisensemble.org/#memory-palace

by Cortlandt Matthews
Composers, Conductors, Deaths, Obits

RIP Sir Peter Maxwell Davies

Photo: David Rose
Peter Maxwell Davies

English composer and conductor Peter Maxwell Davies died on Monday, March 14th 2016. At the age of 81, Davies passed away in his Orkney home. The cause of death was leukemia. In 2004, Davies was appointed Master of the Queen’s Music.

Farewell to Stromness is one of Davies most popular works for solo piano. The piece is a piano interlude from his work The Yellow Cake Revue, a work he created for the campaign against the proposed uranium mine on the Oakley Isles.

In this recording of his Symphony No. 7, Davies displays his skills as both composer and conductor with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.

by Cortlandt Matthews
Concerts, New York

Orchids and Violence in Brooklyn

March 4. Knitting Factory: Brooklyn, NY. Michael Daves album release concert.

Michael Daves was certainly apt in titling his debut solo album Orchids and Violence. The album presents twenty-four tracks: twelves songs realized with both a bluegrass band and an electric band. Mirroring the album, the album release concert featured both groups, both fronted by Daves.

Michael Daves

There is something so compelling about seeing six musicians huddled around a single microphone, weaving in and out of each other as they take turns playing solos. In the bluegrass set, Daves was supported by five amazingly talented musicians. Noam Pikelny (banjo), Brittany Haas (fiddle), and Jake Jolliff (mandolin) play these incredibly virtuosic solos without any effort. Larry Cook (bass) provided a solid backbone, and even took a few well placed bass solos, illustrating his skill as a performer. Jen Larson provided a perfect compliment to the twang of Daves tenor. This band breathes new life into these songs, songs Daves identifies as old bluegrass songs, pre-bluegrass songs, and murder ballads. Guest Tony Trischka also joined the stage toting his cello banjo for a few songs, adding another layer of depth to the electric texture of the bluegrass band.

For the second set, Daves returned to the stage with Kid Millions on drums and Jessi Carter on electric bass. While the bluegrass band was light and buoyant, the electric band was muddy and heavy. The heavily distorted guitar seemed to grow out of the tone of the electric bass. Halfway through this set Daves asked the audience if they recognized any of these songs from the first set. In response to a few fans cheering, he laughed and said he wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing, but that was the point of the album. I spent much of this set thinking about Daves approach to the electric guitar. I feel like this guitar sound was very important to Daves’ concept for this album. Honestly, I feel like Daves is experimenting with something in this configuration, though I’m not sure exactly what it was, or if it was entirely successful. This band brought something heavy and raw to these songs that the bluegrass band simply couldn’t. That being said, the guitar completely dominated these songs, with a thick layer of distortion not adding to the music, but instead keeping me from it.

Orchids and Violence is currently available from Nonesuch Records.

by Cortlandt Matthews
Composers, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, New York

Locrian Chamber Players Return to Riverside

On August 27, 2015, the Locrian Chamber Players gathered on the 10th floor of Riverside Church to present a program of classical contemporary music. The Locrian Chamber Players set themselves apart from other contemporary music ensembles in two ways. First, LCP only programs works that were composed in the last ten years. Second, they withhold the program notes until the end of the concert, leaving the audience members with fewer distractions from directly engaging in the program. As one who often finds himself buried in the program notes, this approach was incredibly refreshing, and successful.

 The program opened with Daniel Thomas Davis’ Thin Fire Racing, an art song for mezzo-soprano, piano, and clarinet. The work is a selection from Follow Her Voice, a set of songs based on Sappho’s Fragment 31, here translated into English. Mezzo Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek’s performance matched the fiery intensity of both Sappho’s text and Davis’ setting. While clarinetist Benjamin Baron and pianist Jonathan Faiman expertly supported her, both were also given moments to shine.

 To offer a change in mood, the second piece on the program was Shafer Mahoney’s Shining River. This duet was played by flautist Catherine Gregory and harpist Victoria Drake. In contrast to Thin Fire Racing, Shining River is calm, pensive, and deeply internal. Gregory’s long, lyric lines complemented the gently bumping harp to create the image aptly suggested by Mahoney’s title.

Another Ecstatic Opening Out by Victoria Malawey received its New York premiere. For this piece, violinist Keats Dieffenbach and cellist Kristina Cooper joined Gregory and Drake. The interesting textures and timbres Malawey creates within the ensemble are striking. The sounds of the flute blend almost seamlessly into the violin and then further from violin to cello. A pizzicato cello complements the steady churn of the harp, with Cooper’s timbre seemingly growing out of the colors of the harp.

 The first half of the program concluded with Mei-Fang Lin’s Mistress of the Labyrinth for solo piano. In contrast to the melodic and lyrical pieces presented before it, Mistress of the Labyrinth is rough and aggressive, with a dissonant and pointy harmonic language. The piece is labyrinthine, expansive and winding, never fully revealing to the listener exactly where it is leading.

 The second half of the concert opened with Cantico dell creature by Caroline Shaw. Another very old text, this piece is a setting of an Italian text by St. Francis of Assisi. While the lengthy text did yield a substantial piece, Shaw’s setting did much to offset the formulaic nature of Assisi’s poetry.

 For the finale, Cooper and Dieffenbach were joined by Baron, violinist Anna Lim, and violist Daniel Panner in Aaron Jay Kernis’ Perpetual Chaconne. The omnipresent falling motive that opens the piece creates a sense of perpetuity. As the piece builds and intensifies, it almost seems to exist outside of time. As most of the thematic detail seems to develop and open up upon itself as the piece progresses, in a fascinating way, listening to this piece feels much more like the expansion of the a single moment, the meticulous inspection of a single detail, than a large-scale progression over a long period of time.

by Cortlandt Matthews