Contemporary Classical

CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?

Chamber Music from Hell – Chris Opperman (CD Review)

Chamber Music from Hell

Chris Opperman

 

Chris Opperman, Synclavier, piano 

Kurt Morgan, programming, electric bass 

Mike Keneally, electric guitar 

Ryan Brown, drum set 

Jason Camelio, trombone 

Brianna Tagliaferro, cello 

Marco Minnemann, drum set 

The New Jersey Percussion Ensemble (Peter Jarvis, Payton MacDonald, Mike Aberback, Paul Carroll) 

Ursula Joy Opperman, Synclavier 

 

Purple Cow Records

 

When you have two Synclavier players on a recording that begins with a comic spoken introduction (“Where is Everybody?” – these reappear periodically in a robotic voice), it is tempting to suggest that the composer, Chris Opperman, must be writing a post-Zappa homage. Without a doubt, Zappa, Mike Keneally, Adrian Belew, and other artists in the art rock vein are sources of inspiration for Opperman; Keneally even makes a cameo guitar solo, tearing it up  on “Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?” 

 

These inspirations are only part of the mix, alongside Opperman’s own distinctive post-tonal concert music. He creates vivacious, complex, and tautly compact pieces on Chamber Music From Hell. A series of number compositions, each around a minute, are cases in point. They combine an acerbic pitch language with pith and wit. “Shades of Beige” is densely scored, and “Longest, Blackest Scarf” is a windswept piece with the rhythmic challenges that Babbitt posed for the RCA synthesizer: here the music is half live/half Synclavier. “Spider Yo-yo” is a grooving canon,  “Dancing Mimic” an ebullient piece for flute and cello, and “Hooded Stick Thinker” adds synth to this complement, with speedy lines in octaves concluding the set. 

 

New Jersey Percussion Ensemble performs “Owl Flight,” with scratches, timpani thrums, and a slowly stroked cymbal introducing the nocturnal sojourns of this most mysterious bird. This is followed by a mid-tempo rhythm with a florid tabla solo played atop it. A full-throated blast from the whole group ends the piece; perhaps the owl has found its prey. “Waking Up” begins sotto voce, a s synth pad providing a modal ostinato over which soaring string melodies are layered. “The Black Ball” is a polymetric prog rock song with more than a hint of “Supper’s Ready” by early Genesis; Ryan Brown plays a rousing drum solo, then joined by bassist Kurt Morgan, and then a full onslaught of keyboards. 

 

Chamber Music from Hell concludes with another suite, the Cribbage Variations. The first few are examples of Klangfarbenmelodie, with angular melodies corruscating throughout. “Mid-December” includes a puckish flute solo played in canon with synth. “Babbitt Time” also finds the muse of the RCA Synthesizer irresistible; Opperman crafts a compelling rendition of Milton Babbitt’s pitch language too. “At the Grave of Anton Webern” adopts the pointillism of the Second Viennese composer and is, of course, short in duration. 

 

Opperman’s piano takes center stage on “The Play,” while “Level Pegging” is a series of synth fanfares. “Muggins” features fast flute flourishes and synth brass interjections. “The 144,000” is a piano solo which begins with mid-register ostinato, followed by thunderous octaves, and then a reprise of the gentle repetitions. “Knock knock Bach” is a fugue for synthesizer and trombone, a demented recasting of the second Well-tempered Clavier fugue. Cribbage Variations’ finale, “The Show,” features dissonant arpeggiations, at first in the soprano register, then in bass octaves. These two registers overlap, and a huge crescendo moves the piece into major with the entire ensemble playing a syncopated groove. The chords are spiced up with extended tones and a gradual diminuendo brings the piece, and album, to a close.

 

Opperman is an imaginative arranger of the heterodox forces at his command. His music is varied and always distinctive. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
Classical Music, Composers, Concert review, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Lincoln Center, New York, Review

Turangalila at New York Philharmonic / Nightcap with Gamelan Dharma Swara

Just before the NY Philharmonic concert began playing Turangalila by Olivier Messiaen at David Geffen Hall on Saturday, the stranger sitting next to me asked if I thought he would like it. I told him it’s very different and very thrilling. Just keep an open mind.

For classical music enthusiasts of a certain ilk, a performance of Turangalila is a hotly anticipated special occasion. It doesn’t get performed all that often, perhaps because it requires additional personnel on stage (ten percussionists!), it takes up an entire program, AND you have to find an ondes martenot (an early 20th century electronic instrument) and someone to play it.  Although it was written nearly 80 years ago, it still sounds radical.

Hearing the Philharmonic perform the 80 minute piece, led by Jaap van Zweden with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Cynthia Millar playing ondes martenot, was indeed a thrill. The music is full of contrasts, which the Philharmonic’s musicians brought out well. Sweet winds, acerbic brass, sharply staccato percussion and thunderous tympani. And that was just in the Introduction, the first of ten movements. By the end of Turangalila II, the seventh section, the ensemble was whipped into a frenzy, the music resolving into a massive major chord in a flourish of brass, strings and winds. Throughout the work, every section of the orchestra was used to maximum potential, practically a concerto for orchestra.

During the long and wildly enthusiastic ovation, the gentleman next to me turned to me and said he liked it! He described it as Holst fighting against Stravinsky, with Bartok poking at them. That sounded pretty accurate to me.

After the performance, I lingered in Geffen Hall’s lobby, sipping a cappuccino and admiring the sizeable crowd in a post-concert schmooze – a new experience since the recent renovation now boasted a comfortable space with generous seating and a cash bar that was still open after the concert.

Gamelan Dharma Swara at Lincoln Center (credit Gail Wein)
Gamelan Dharma Swara at Lincoln Center (credit Gail Wein)

Next, I planned to attend the Philharmonic’s “Nightcap” concert, scheduled for 10:30 pm in the Sidewalk Studio, an intimate space created during the 2022 renovation of the building.  Performing in this small space was Gamelan Dhamra Swara, a New York-based Balinese gamelan ensemble. The musicians gathered around two dozen gendèr (Indonesian xylophones), with four suling (flute) players and a couple of performers at drums and gongs. From the first rhythmic clanks of metal on metal, I was taken back to 2010, when I travelled with group to Bali (and filed this report on NPR).

It’s a lot of noise for the small space, and the sound of the percussion was loud and visceral. Once I got past the ear-pounding volume, the effect was mesmerizing. Through several selections, some modern, some traditional, the group showed off its musical mettle, along with performances by two dancers clad in ornate traditional costumes. Through the floor to ceiling windows looking out over Broadway, I could see passersby stopping to listen, gaze over the line of taxis on the street and hear the sirens of the inevitable emergency vehicles.

by Gail Wein
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Piano

Nicholas Chase – Tiny Thunder

Tiny Thunder is a new CD of graceful piano music by Nicholas Chase, released February 10, 2023 by Cold Blue Music. This album includes two new works performed by pianist Bryan Pezzone. The press release for Tiny Thunder states that: “Held in motion by their internal logic, these pieces drift and weave through alluring, often serene musical landscapes.”

Nicholas Chase has enjoyed a long career as a composer and performer. He has appeared in a number of concert festivals in Europe and the US. Chase has participated in the Whitney Biennial in New York and was an inaugural Composer Fellow at the international Other Minds Festival in San Francisco. At the California Institute of the Arts, Chase studied with Morton Subotnick, Bunita Marcus, Stephen L. Mosko, Mary Jane Leach and James Tenney, among others.

While carefully circumscribed within its stylistic boundaries, the piano music of Tiny Thunder is capable of a wide range of expression. Often quiet and serene, there is never any flashy technical excess in the more active stretches and the music is understated even when it turns agitated and turbulent. There is little formal structure or harmonic progression; the refined playing by Bryan Pezzone is the critical element for realizing the composer’s intentions.

Zuòwàng, the first track, opens with a series of soft notes followed by silence that allow the tones to ring out. The tempo is moderate and deliberate so that the simple phrases evoke a settled feeling. Spare harmonies, consisting of two or three tones, gradually add notes from the deep bass registers to provide a reflective sensibility. High plinking notes occur every so often, as if sending a signal. There is no extended melody, just short phrases separated by moments of silence – this is intimate music inviting close listening. Bryan Pezzone’s delicate touch on the keyboard is essential, maintaining a gentle and introspective quality. As the piece proceeds, more notes are added to the phrases and they occasionally break into separate lines for short stretches. There is a final return to the simple phrasing of the opening just before Zuòwàng arrives at its fading finish.

The second track on the CD is Tiny Thunder, a longer piece at almost 20 minutes duration. This piece is written for four hands and was realized in the recording by overdubbing. As with Zuòwàng, this begins with simple piano lines and short phrases in a slow, dreamy tempo. The notes are nicely sustained and brief intervals of silence allow the tones to fully ring out. A shift to the lower piano registers along with more prominent bass notes in the phrasing create a quietly powerful feel. A high melody line against the very low bass notes adds tension. When the phases move up to the middle registers, the rhythms become more agitated and culminate with light tremolos.

Delicate high notes are heard at 6:50, accompanied by solitary deep bass notes. There is an almost ominous feeling in this. As the piece proceeds, single notes heard in the upper registers are joined in harmony by deep, sustained tones below. The tension grows with the higher notes straining for optimism while being weighed down by the lower line. Soon, a fuller harmony is heard with many new notes and roiling tremolos in the phrasing.

Lush and dramatic, waves of sound are soon flowing off the keyboard. A repeating series of high notes is reminiscent of raindrops. The harmonies in the lower registers paint an image of clouds moving across a dark sky. There is a stormy feel with strong phrases and many driving notes. The piece continues on, gradually increasing in tempo and dynamic followed by a swirling, pounding texture. A final low chord rings out to finish the piece. The playing throughout is beautifully expressive without resorting to keyboard histrionics. Tiny Thunder is one long crescendo that builds from a pensive tranquility to a convincingly vigorous tempest without exceeding the expressive limits of its economical musical materials. Tiny Thunder is a polished combination of refined music and a thoughtfully sensitive performance.

Tiny Thunder is available directly from Cold Blue Music.

by Paul Muller
Contemporary Classical, New York, Piano

Adam Tendler: Inheritances

Adam Tendler (credit Cameron McLeod)

When the pianist Adam Tendler received a windfall of cash a few years ago, he chose not to blow it on such ephemeral items as rent and groceries. Instead, he commissioned 16 composers to write short works, and assembled those into a program called Inheritances which he performed at The 92

nd Street Y, New York on Saturday in the collection’s New York premiere. Inheritances is deeply personal for Tendler: the money was an unanticipated bequest from his father, whose death itself was unexpected.

Nearly all of the music was tender and gentle; an impression that was formed from both the interpretation and the compositions themselves. Though it could have been monotonous from so much music in a similar mood and pace, the evening unfolded as a through-composed work with a discernable emotional arc.

An intense peak at the center of the program was inti figgis-vizueta’s hushing, which was coordinated with home video clips from Tendler’s childhood. It was stark, energetic and physical, with Tendler rising to his feet several times to fiercely pound the keys, alternating with poignant moments in which the Tendler on stage gazed up at the child Adam on the screen.

Inheritances began with an audio montage by Laurie Anderson called Remember, I Created You; after which Tendler, clad in a tight short-sleeved dress shirt that strained to contain his impressively bulging biceps, launched into Missy Mazzoli’s Forgiveness Machine. Mazzoli’s music was beautiful, tonal and lyrical, like many of the works that followed. Prepared piano in Scott Wollschleger’s Outsider Song added a variety of timbre to the lovely lullaby. Angelica Negron’s You Were My Age was whimsical in its staccato melody. What It Becomes by Mary Prescott was eerie and somewhat dissonant, yet still tender. Sarah Kirkland Snider’s rich chorale, the plum tree I planted still there, led into False Memories, a jazz-inflected dreamy piece by Marcos Balter. Pamela Z’s Thank You So Much changed up the texture by including a pastiche of voices mixed on a laptop, with the pattern and rhythm of the speech echoed in the keyboard music.

We don’t need to tend this garden. They’re wildflowers by Darian Donovan Thomas was a new-age style piece over which Tendler intoned an extended monologue of memory fragments. The final selection, Morning Piece by Devonte Hynes, evoked both metal and Bach, and Tendler ended Inheritances with a long slow decrescendo to Hynes’s music.

Ten of the 16 composers were in the audience: Timo Andres, Marcos Balter, inti figgis-vizueta, John Glover, Missy Mazzoli, Mary Prescott, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Darian Donovan Thomas, Scott Wollschleger and Pamela Z (Laurie Anderson, Angelica Negron, Ted Hearne, Christopher Cerrone, Nico Muhly and Devonte Hynes were not able to attend).  As the applause began at the conclusion of the performance, Tendler motioned for the composers to stand. I spotted Pamela Z and Missy Mazzoli in the brief moment before the entire audience was on its feet in a standing ovation, a tribute to Tendler, his late father and the music.

by Gail Wein
Contemporary Classical

Seattle Symphony announces 2023–24 season

Assistant Principal Cello Nathan Chan (photo: Seattle Symphony)

Seattle Symphony has unveiled its 2023–24 season, replete with familiar repertory (including The Messiah, Bach’s St. John Passion and two Beethoven and Mahler symphonies), plus family concerts, holiday and community events, pop/Hollywood-style programs ranging from Disney and Harry Potter to Joe Hisaishi and David Bowie, and a bevy of blue-chip soloists and guest conductors (Lang Lang, Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell and Marin Alsop among them). Thomas May has aptly summarized the season’s overall shape and scope, so I’ll focus on its contemporary music offerings, an area where the announced lineup is something of a disappointment.

With no Music Director to provide a coherent vision (the position has been vacant since Thomas Dausgaard’s abrupt resignation in January 2022), and with staff turmoil leading to the departure of Elena Dubinets (the executive behind most of its recent commissions and initiatives, now decamped to LPO) and the discontinuation of the acclaimed [untitled] series (which showcased genres other than conventional orchestral works), the Symphony’s new music programming has become unfocused, even lackluster, with no major commissions forthcoming in the 2023–24 season, nor any mainstage events comparable to 2022’s Buddha Passion, 2019’s Surrogate Cities or 2015’s unveiling (and premiere recording) of the critical edition of Ives’ Fourth Symphony. And although next season’s calendar boasts dozens of 21st century compositions, many of them are in the mold of the mandate-fulfilling, stylistically-inoffensive short works that have become commonplace on North American orchestra programs.

Dalia Stasevska and Lauri Porra (photo: Kari Pekonan)

Nevertheless, there are several highlights to look forward. And what follows is an opinionated listing of some of them:

  • Dalia Stasevska (a successor to Osmo Vänskä as chief conductor of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra) returns to the mainstage to conduct her husband Lauri Porra’s Entropia Concerto for Electric Bass, with Sibelius and Anna Meredith also on the program. Porra is a crossover artist who could be regarded as a Finnish counterpart to someone like Edgar Meyer. He’ll also appear at the Symphony’s Octave 9 space in a chamber work called Cabins & Hideouts. All of these events will be in mid-November
  • Conductor David Robertson, who has an impressive new music pedigree (he was the first American to serve as Ensemble Intercontemporain’s music director), has written a new piano concerto for his other half Orli Shaham. They’ll perform it two weeks after the Porra events, along with Lydia Tár’s favorite Mahler symphony
  • Speaking of Vänskä, he’s slated to return in March—not, alas, to conduct Sibelius. But alongside the scheduled Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev warhorses, his program will include an interesting—and as-yet unrecorded—piece by the Korean-born, London-based Donghoon Shin. Despite its Steinbeck-alluding title, Of Rats and Men, its inspiration comes from Kafka and Bolanõ. In April, Vänskä will premiere another Shin composition (this one inspired by Yeats) with the Los Angeles Philharmonic
  • Alisa Weilerstein arrives to perform Lutosławski‘s Cello Concerto, which might well be his most underrated work, and one in which he rather uncharacteristically establishes an oppositional, dialectic relationship between soloist and orchestra (personal note: many years ago as a student at USC, I played in the Concerto‘s West Coast premiere with Gabor Rejto as soloist)
  • Another April 2024 event features Ralph Vaughan Williams’ often-recorded but rarely-performed Sinfonia Antartica, which the composer adapted from his soundtrack to the 1948 feature film Scott of the Antarctic. This seventh of Vaughan Williams’ nine symphonies is perhaps the least admired of the lot (aside from the non-canonical A Sea Symphony, which is more of an oratorio), often inhabiting an uncomfortable no man’s land between program music and symphonic ambitions. But it’s also one of Vaughan Williams’s most colorful scores, featuring wind machine, organ, and a Sirènes-style women’s chorus. In the manner of last season’s presentation of Messiaen’s Des canyons aux étoiles, the music will be accompanied by a multimedia presentation featuring journal entries and photographs from Scott’s doomed 1910–13 expedition

Steven Mackey (photo: Kah Poon)

The Symphony’s diminutive Octave 9 space will continue its newfound and successful scheme of double Friday night recitals (at 7 PM and 9 PM), which in addition to the aforementioned Cabins & Hideouts event, will include the following:

  • Hub New Music, the Boston-based quartet whose instrumentation duplicates that of the fondly-remembered Seattle Chamber Players (flute, clarinet, violin, cello), will perform on October 6, with a program featuring a world premiere by Nina C. Young, an experimentally-oriented composer who now teaches at USC, along with works by Daniel Thomas Davis and Angélica Negrón
  • February 2 will bring Steven Mackey’s Memoir, scored for string quartet, a pair of percussionists and a narrator. Premiered in May 2022, it’s a theatricalized setting of an unpublished memoir written by Mackey’s late mother (who was also the subject of his violin concerto Beautiful Passing, recently featured on Flotation Device via its premiere recording conducted by David Robertson—if only he would bring that to Seattle!). Mackey is a rock guitarist who got involved in instrumental composition through the influence of the Downtown New York improv scene and the broader international avant-garde—something of an American counterpart to Heiner Goebbels or Steve Martland. His music is often quite engaging in its unexpected juxtapositions of styles, but it can also drift into sentimentality, so I’ll be interested to see where in that spectrum this as-yet unrecorded work falls

Ludovic Morlot at [untitled] 2019 (photo: James Holt/Seattle Symphony)
2023–24 will mark the Symphony’s second full season without a Music Director, and its third full season (added to two COVID-shortened ones) under the leadership of its embattled President & CEO Krishna Thiagarajan. That the organization has returned to a full schedule—and that its musicians have maintained the orchestra’s impressive musical standards—is remarkable under such circumstances, especially given the compounding challenges of the pandemic and the effect of the city’s lingering social and economic ills on its civic and cultural life. Still, it’s hard to look back on the Ludovic Morlot/Simon Woods era (2011–19), with its succession of contemporary music triumphs, often presented through the innovative (and now abandoned) [untitled] series, without feeling a disconcerting sense of nostalgia—a gnawing fear that the glory years of the Northwest’s new music scene have ended, a perception reinforced by the fact that none of the composers, conductors and guest artists mentioned above currently reside in Washington state.

After Morlot’s final [untitled] concert in 2019, I noted how dramatic and reinvigorating his tenure had been for the Symphony, how this “exceptionally charismatic and personable conductor” had “succeeded beyond all expectations at winning the hearts and minds of the city”. Today, Seattle desperately needs another agent of musical rejuvenation. Something that’s not easy to find—but no other musical institution in the region can match the Symphony for prestige, reach and built-in resources. And so as its Board and administration continue their secretive search for the next Music Director, undoubtedly preparing to audition visiting conductors as candidates in the coming season, one can hope that enough hard lessons have been learned, and enough organizational agility regained, that dreams of Emerald-tinted musical splendors will include not just those in the past, but those yet to come as well.

by Michael Schell
Contemporary Classical

Dragonchild – “Above All” – (Single)

Today, dragonchild released “Above All,” a single from his forthcoming debut self-titled album, out April 21st, 2023 on FPE Records.

dragonchild is new project by Debo Band’s DA Mekonnen. Mekonnen’s background is fascinating. He is a composer, saxophonist, and ethnomusicologist who is applying the study of eighties Ethiopian cassette culture to create the music on the LP. His lithe saxophone solos celebrate this tradition of disseminating music, reviving its musical grammar and spirit. Recommended.

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Minimalism

Peter Garland – The Basketweave Elegies

Cold Blue Music has released The Basketweave Elegies, a new recording of music by Peter Garland. This is a CD of solo vibraphone music performed by renowned percussionist William Winant, a close friend and collaborator of the composer. The album consists of nine short movements in an alternating mixture of ‘declamatory core’ pieces and ‘lyric refrains’. Inspired by his admiration of basket making, Garland writes of the album: “The title was originally conceived as a homage to the late artist Ruth Asawa (1926-2013), famous for, among other things, her woven wire sculptures.”

Peter Garland has a long and distinguished career in experimental music as a composer, writer and musicologist. He studied with Harold Budd and James Tenney and was influenced by Lou Harrison, Conlon Nancarrow, Paul Bowles, among others. The press release notes that “Since the early 1970s, Garland’s music has been marked by a return to a ‘radical consonance’ and simplification of formal structure influenced by Cage, Harrison, early minimalism and a great variety of world musics.”

The very first thing you notice when listening to The Basketweave Elegies is the absolute radiance of the notes coming from William Winant’s vibraphone. Very quiet, still, the opening track, immediately establishes this purity of tone. The phrasing is simple – a series of singular notes followed by an arpeggio with very few chords heard at first. One of the ‘lyric refrains’, this piece is short at just 3:25, yet it casts a magical spell. Bright, clear follows, and this consists of high, brightly active tones in running phrases that evoke a sense of movement. Counterpoint appears in the lower registers adding some warmth as the tones combine in beautiful harmonies with lightly syncopated rhythms. One of the ‘core’ movements, the radiant notes of Bright, clear are memorable for their intensity.

The third movement, Very quiet still, has the same title as track 1 but begins with lower register notes that are softer and slightly slower. Middle register notes enter and some nice harmonies develop from this. This movement is similar to track 1 in construction as it continues with the mystical feel. Similarly, movement 4 shares the same title as the second movement, Bright, clear. Luminous tones are heard in a fluid series of independent melody lines. The pitches climb ever higher as if ascending skyward, adding a sunny, optimistic feel. The tempo is moderate, allowing the lovely tones ring out.

The remaining five tracks do not have duplicate titles but continue with the contrasting ‘core’ and ‘lyric’ pattern as before. Lyric, expressive , track 5, is heard with two melodic lines in contrasting registers. Understated and introspective, this movement has the lilt and rhythm reminiscent of a nursery rhyme. Vigorous, declamatory follows, and this features strong phrasing and higher pitches that invoke a sense of urgency. This movement has a purposeful sensibility that is propelled by short, punchy notes heard in the lower register. Peaceful, radiant, another lyric movement, is true to its title with simple chime-like chords and a lovely buoyancy. The declamatory Bold, emphatic opens with a series of ascending scales in brilliant tones followed by a soft trill in the middle registers. As the piece proceeds, the scales vary slightly and this introduces some interesting variation. Two-tone chords are heard as the sequences change in both quantity and pitch, giving a sense of movement and evolution to the phrases.

The final movement, Lyrical, tranquil, concludes the album with a slow series of notes in two independent lines that turn and work off each other . Descending scales in the higher line contain the more active rhythms, but the overall feeling is one of quiet serenity. The simplicity of form and the brilliant tonal colors of the vibraphone are lovingly maintained in this movement, as throughout the entire album. The sparkling clarity of Garland’s writing and the sure-handed touch of Wiliam Winant’s playing make The Basketweave Elegies a masterful summation of the elemental and the pure.

The Basketweave Elegies is available directly from Cold Blue Music and other music retailers.

by Paul Muller
Contemporary Classical

Julia Holter and Spektral Quartet record Alex Temple (CD Review)

Behind the Wallpaper

Alex Temple

Spektral Quartet: Clara Lyon (violin), Theo Espy (violin), Doyle Armbrust (viola), Russell Rolen (cello); Julia Holter: voice

New Amsterdam Records

Out this Friday, March 3rd, via New Amsterdam Records  is composer Alex Temple’s cycle Behind the Wallpaper. Vocalist Julia Holter joins the Spektral Quartet in this song cycle inspired by Temple’s gender transition. 

Holter, as always, is a marvel, with expressive, liquescent singing throughout her soprano voice’s range. The Spektral Quartet is given a variety of styles to play, from doleful lyricism reminiscent of Shostakovich’s string quartets to post-minimalism. The musical smorgasbord reminds me in places of Elvis Costello’s collaboration with the Brodsky Quartet, The Juliet Letters. Temple is fluent in marshaling these materials. Behind the Wallpaper deals with a significant event in Temple’s life, yet her touch is light and lyrics affirming. Recommended.

 

 

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

Oracle – Joanna Mattrey and Gabby Fluke-Mogul (CD Review)

Oracle

Joanna Mattrey, Gabby Fluke-Mogul

Relative Pitch Records RPR1143

 

In their first collaboration, improvisers violist Joanna Mattrey and violinist Gabby Fluke-Mogul create music that combines drones, microtones, and extended techniques. Mattrey also plays stroh violin, which includes an attached horn that serves as a resonating chamber. Performing the aforementioned sounds on the stroh creates far out results.

 

Each piece on the album is titled, “The,” followed by a single evocative word. Wayward lines and multi-stop pizzicatos begin “The Vision,” which are then followed by pizzicato glissandos accompanying a bluesy riff. Improvisations vacillate between these two demeanors, with greater sustain accumulating. The piece settles, only to be followed by the eruptive “The Trinity,’ with a howl of over-bowing and various methods to elicit scratching and non-pitched noise. “The Potion” returns to pitched sounds, with a duet between repeating patterns and glissandos. 

 

“The Switch” explores the lower register and quasi chitara strumming. As an antidote to all the upper register violin prior, Mattrey explores scordatura low tuning on her viola and supplies cello-like sounds. The texture gradually thins out, with glissandos and pizzicati dueling for primacy. “The Switch” ends on a sustained, bass register note. “The Child” begins most quietly, with upper register over-bowing, harmonics, then continues with pizzicato multi-stops versus a delicate altissimo melody. The delicate contrast with previous selections is welcome. While there is no steady pitch center, the duo play thirds and sixths and a modal melody. This isn’t to last, as hails of pizzicatos supplement it. Things remain soft, but string noise, circular glissandos,  and wood thwacks, with the occasional harmonic, create an entirely new atmosphere. This crescendos, and the noise quotient is upped, only to suddenly shift to quiet harmonics. Like so many of the pieces on Oracle, the music may be improvised, but the players are experienced enough to shape the musical narrative seamlessly.

 

“The Womb” is Mattrey and Fluke-Mogul at their most scary. The use of glissandos, sotto voce noise, and a  voice-like, panting line that predominates its opener could be licensed for a horror movie: why shouldn’t free improvers get some of the dough? Parlando whimpering is accompanied by an upper register fiddle followed by squealing string noise. This moves into a drone section of repeated plucked notes and microtonal sustained double stops. The monster’s voice returns, slighter higher, making it even more frightening. Just when you think the piece has hit its zenith, Mattrey and Fluke-Mogul quickly pull back to soft harmonics, only to build to a conclusion that howls with fury.

Oracle closes with “The Blade,” in which clock-like wood blows and a viola drone that gradually moves between three pitches and then is replaced with a high register squall. A number of ostinatos are juxtaposed, some pitched, some extended techniques, with the one constant being the rapping on wood. Like a broken clock coming apart, the material dissolves, with a pizzicato heartbeat ticking and altissimo harmonics and scratches gathering toward the close, an acerbic descending flourish. 

 

Mattrey and Fluke-Mogul have hit things off from the beginning. One hopes their musical association will continue.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Percussion

Tony Oliver plays James Romig’s Spaces (CD Review)

Spaces

James Romig

Tony Oliver, vibraphone

Sawyer Editions

 

James Romig’s music has become more expansive. Spaces (2021) is his third recent piece to run over an hour in duration. Still (2016), a piece for pianist Ashlee Mack, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Last year brought The Complexity of Distance, a piece for metal guitarist Mike Scheidt that was both rigorously constructed and ripped uproariously. 

 

Like all of Romig’s music, Spaces has a highly detailed plan. Each of the four sections of the piece has an “a” and a “b” subgroup. They begin with a collection of three pitch classes that works its way up to six by the end of “a,” while “b” unspools this in reverse, ending with only three pitches. Three strands are put in a structural polyrhythm of 9:10:11, providing the work with an asymmetrical rhythmic scheme.

Vibraphonist Tony Oliver has worked with Romig for over thirty years, and Spaces was composed to celebrate that collaboration. One can readily hear why the two have enjoyed this association. Oliver performs every nuance of the score, embodying Romig’s music like few others do. Romig is a percussionist himself, and knows the in and outs of the vibraphone, the resonance of each key and the best way to balance a passage. This affords the music, despite its limited palette, to retain interest throughout.

James Romig

One continues to be fascinated by the surface of Romig’s music. After all the preplanning, the result sounds intuitive. Romig studied with the most prominent of American serial composers, Charles Wuorinen and Milton Babbitt, and yet there is a palpable influence of the music of Morton Feldman on these recent extended pieces. And like Feldman’s own long works, Spaces has a meditative quality that draws one in and makes them forget the time that’s passing. As Feldman said about one of his pieces at its premiere, “It’s a short eighty minutes.” 

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey