Flute

CD Review, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Flute, Strings

Persist – Ethel and Loggins-Hull (CD Review)

Persist

Ethel and Allison Loggins-Hull

Sono Luminus

 

The string quartet Ethel presents a characteristically diverse program of contemporary music on Persist, their first recording for Sono Luminus. They are joined by composer/flutist Allison Loggins-Hull and the resulting quintet are strong advocates for the emerging composers featured here.

 

The title work is by Loggins-Hull, currently a composer fellow with the Cleveland Orchestra. Her work is gracefully written and appealing. Persist begins with an ambling section with an angular flute melody, pizzicato strings and percussion instruments. This is varied throughout, juxtaposed with presto passages featuring quickfire flute lines accompanied by circling countermelodies in the strings and pulsating drumming. In 2024, the title’s meaning is self-explanatory and timely, and Loggins-Hull’s piece aptly depicts both the current exhaustion and perennial indomitability of the progressive movement. 

 

PillowTalk by Xavier Muzik opens slowly, with oscillating thirds in the flute and impressionist harmonies in the strings. Languorous in demeanor and gradual in its unfolding, the color chords are eventually augmented by a pentatonic tune in octaves and a more elaborate flute solo that dovetails with pizzicato cello. The violin then takes a turn duetting with the flute. A fast passage with sliding tones and birdsong affords some much-belated energy, indeed making up for lost time in its latter half. A return to slow music reminiscent of the opening brings the piece full circle. 

 

Migiwa Miyajima presents a stylistically varied four-movement piece with her Reconciliation Suite. The first movement, “The Unknowns” is rhythmically vibrant and hews close to the cinematic. The second, “Never Be the Same,” features a flute solo that explores the low register of the instrument with gradual accelerations and slowdowns. Partway through, the cello adds a drone to accompany it. The flute moves higher, and the rest of the strings join with lush harmonies. “Mr. Rubber Sole from the Digital World” has fun with ostinatos á la rock ‘n roll. The suite concludes with “The Blooming Season,” a lushly attired pastorale.

 

Sam Wu’s Terraria features the flute imitating shakuhachi and the strings using sliding tone and other traditional gestures from Chinese music. It also has passages of neo-romantic arpeggiations. Particularly affecting are the central passages in which high flute and midrange strings double a folk-like melody above a low drone. The second appearance of the arpeggiations is accompanied by energetic flute runs. Harmonics and brief melodies in the flute create an evocative denouement, after which the flute returns to the shakuhachi manner of the opening to close. 

 

Leilehua Lanzilotti is likely the best known of the programmed composers; she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music. The final work on Persist is her We Began This Quilt There. It is about Lili‘uokalani, the first and only Hawaiian queen and last sovereign of the islands before their annexation by the US. She made artworks, including the Queen’s Quilt, while she was imprisoned. Kaona, hidden meanings, is a concept Lanzilotti feels is suggestive of the queen’s artwork. The three movements include quotations of prison songs and folk music. Lanzilotti allows these materials space to breathe, with the flute playing melodies over gentle strumming from the strings in the first movement. The second is brief but haunting with flute harmonics and pitch bends over a sustained midrange piece. The final movement, “Ku‘u pua i Paoakalani” is based on a musical composition by Lili‘uokalani, an ode for her supporters. Lanzilotti veils the ode with its musical surroundings. A buildup of triadic repeated notes in the strings is joined by the flute playing the song with the addition of repeated notes: a musical Kaona that concludes a beautiful and meaningful work. 

 

With Persist, Ethel and Loggins-Hull demonstrate their continuing commitment to compositional voices from a variety of geographies and backgrounds. The programmed works are diverse in terms of their impetuses and styles, but uniformly of high quality. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?, Flute

Laura Lentz releases new EP (CD review)

Laura Lentz

Prismatic/Plasmonic EP
Music for flute and electronics
Laura Lentz, flutes; Sean William Calhoun, electronics
Blue on Blue Records

 

Laura Lentz’s Prismatic/Plasmonic EP consists of three works, each addressing contemporary approaches in a different fashion. Lentz plays beautifully, with enviable control and supple phrasing. Although the pieces include amplification and electronics, they do not dilute her sound in the slightest. 

 

Prismatic Wind by Chloe Upshaw is a work meant to abet sound healing. Upshaw is a flutist who lives in Arizona and the idea of supporting the health of others, particularly other musicians, through a composed  version of music therapy is an important part of her work. Prismatic Wind features gestures of rising tension and gentle release, affording an experience not dissimilar to meditative breathing. Electronics are used to add resonance to the flute and to underscore the aforementioned phrasing. 

 

Plasmonic Mirror is written by Rochester-based composer/electronic musician William Calhoun. Cast in four short movements, the piece begins with a lyrical flute passage, followed by beat heavy electronica, altissimo passages, a synth interlude, an IDM pattern with a new theme in the flute, altissimo flute lines, and dovetailing with a bass synth. It closes with the synths and beats moving double time with the flute playing trills and a triumphal ascent. 

 

Lentz and Calhoun collaborate on what is effectively a remix of Claude Debussy’s 1913 solo flute piece Syrinx. Lentz plays alto flute and Calhoun incorporates a warm bed of synths and a high countermelody, all accentuating the modal and whole-tone writing in Syrinx. It is an intriguing experiment. One eagerly awaits Lentz’s next full length recording, but for now, there is plenty to savor in Primatic/Plasmonic.

 

Christian Carey

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=pAhJk7mOZ90

 

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

Jennifer Grim – Through Broken Time (CD Review)

Jennifer Grim

Through Broken Time

Jennifer Grim, flute; Michael Sheppard, piano

New Focus Recordings

 

In Anthony Barrone’s astute liner notes, he describes Through Broken Time, flutist Jennifer Grim’s New Focus recording as a mixture of pieces that explore Afro-modernism and post minimalism. I would suggest that classic modernism also plays a role in these varied and compelling pieces for solo flute, overdubbed flutes, and flute with piano accompaniment.

 

Case in point is Tania León’s Alma. Her propensity for Mediterranean rhythms and melodies is on display, but in places it is subsumed by post-tonal gestures and irregular rhythms. Balancing the piece’s digressive narrative, Grim and pianist Michael Sheppard demonstrate a simpatico pairing. The earliest piece on the recording is Alvin Singleton’s Argoru III (1971); the rest have been written in the past fifteen years. Gestural angularity, trills, microtones, bends and florid lines, with suddenly appearing altissimo pitches, make this challenging both from a technical and interpretive standpoint. Grim does an admirable job shaping the piece to create a sensitive performance. Would love to hear more first-rank players tackle this piece.

 

Julia Wolfe’s Oxygen: For 12 Flutes (2021) is a brand-new piece for overdubbed instruments. At fifteen and a half minutes, it is the longest piece on the recording. Even with overdubs, one senses the exquisite breath control required in each part. Whorls of ostinatos are offset by melodies in quarter note triplets. The central section thins down to just the slow melody and then resumes in a buoyant dance with mouth percussion. Gradually, the slow melody does battle with rocketing upward gestures and trills. A new ostinato goes from bottom to top, once again juxtaposing the low melody and trills as a cadence point. Thinning out the texture to the slow melody and a number of polyphonic lines and soprano register flurries, the last few sections then build several of the previous segments into new combinations. The slow melody is presented in the bass register, accompanied by it in halved values in the treble in an oasis before the finale, a pileup of material that displays all twelve flutes, punctuating the close with a bevy of trills.

 

David Sanford’s Klatka Still (2009) is a two-movement piece, dedicated to trumpeter Tony Klatka. The first combines a solemn chorale-like passage in the piano with disjunct gestures in the flute. The duo finish the movement returning to the note A-flat again and again, almost obsessively. The second movement gives the piano a shuffle rhythm. After a cadenza, that flute takes up a moto perpetuo with a bit of swing alongside the piano. Then another cadenza with interpolations by the piano. Gradually the duet evolves into descending third gestures in the piano which spurs still another ostinato in the flute. The duo adopt and then discard a number of tempos, each developing one of the segments of the material presented at the movement’s beginning. Finally, the first ostinato locks in, with the flute adorning it with high trills, leading to an abrupt close.

 

Allison Loggins-Hull’s Homeland (2017) has the benefit of the composer being an accomplished flutist as well. It is expertly composed for the instrument, giving Grim a score to relish: which she does. Like so many of Loggins-Hull’s pieces, it meditates on race, grief, and impoverishment. Homeland’s subtext considers the mournful experience of being deprived a home, from those stolen for the slave trade to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. The piece is a compelling testament to mourning, with a soulful yet undefeated character.

 

Valerie Coleman’s Wish Sonatine (2015) is inspired by Fred D’Aguiar’s eponymous poem about the Middle Passage of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Coleman depicts both the creaking of the slave ship’s hull and djembe rhythms from the homelands of the enslaved. Score markings suggest the struggles she depicts: “Defiant,” “Chaotic, gradually more anxious,” and “With fierce indomitability to survive.” Emotive and programmatic, Wish Sonatine vividly communicates the type of engagement she seeks.

 

The piece closes with a new work by David Sanford, commissioned by Grim, Offertory I and II (2021). The first movement knits together spare melodies, often doubling flute and piano. Muted repetitions in the piano and supply lyricism in the flute bring the movement to a close. The second begins with a solo cadenza that is fleet, combining post-bop and post-tonality. The piano chimes in with tense intervals and succinct gestures, the two combine into a Calder mobile of busy overlaps and alternating gestures. The piano gets its own solo turn, the two eventually coming together on unison rhythms but disparate gestures – spaced chords from the piano, and trills from the flute. The piano takes on a muscular strut while the piano adopts another jazz-tinged solo. Descending whole tone patterns followed by a terse game of hide and seek ends the piece, and the recording, with a button. A well-curated and admirably well-performed collection, Grim’s Through Broken Time shares a bevy of repertoire that should be in any new music flutist’s folder.

 

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
Classical Music, Composers, Concert review, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Flute, New York, Strings

Buffalo Philharmonic honors Lukas Foss @ 100 at Carnegie

Lukas Foss
Lukas Foss

Buffalo Philharmonic and its music director JoAnn Falletta brought their considerable world class talent downstate to Carnegie Hall on Monday. The hall was full, despite persistent rain and the fact that the program was entirely dedicated to a composer whose name and music are not familiar to the casual music fan.

The celebrated composer and conductor Lukas Foss (1922-2009) put his indelible stamp on Buffalo when he was music director of the Philharmonic, 1963 – 1971. With programming that included a healthy dose of new music, he paved the way for a taste for contemporary works in Buffalo. He made a deep impression on JoAnn Falletta, whose association with him goes back to Milwaukee Symphony where she was his assistant conductor in the 1980s. It’s evident from the way Falletta talks about – and performs – Lukas Foss, that she reveres the man and his music.

This year, the centennial of his birth, brought some of his brilliant and neglected works to the stage, five of which were featured this evening. The ensemble performed the music as if it were in their DNA, although, as I later learned, the works were new to these players.

JoAnn Falletta
JoAnn Falletta (credit David Adam Beloff)

The program, while full of collaborative performers, allowed the Buffalo Philharmonic to shine on its own in the first and last pieces on the program. Foss said of the first work on the program, Ode, that it represented “crisis, war and, ulti­mately, ‘faith.’” It was appropriately heavy and ominous with BPO’s brass shining through with impressively dense chords.

BPO’s concert master, Nikki Chooi, took center stage as soloist for Three American Pieces, a work which seemed to shout “Americana!” Chooi’s warm tone and heartfelt playing were evident throughout.  In fast passages, Chooi showed off his virtuosity as his bow bounced rapidly on the strings, a spiccato effect. Elements of jazz and country fiddling were woven into the composition; Chooi made the most of each of these styles, supported by various orchestra soloists, notably William Amsel’s jaunty clarinet.

The flutist Amy Porter was featured in Renaissance Concerto, a composition commissioned by the BPO in 1986 for the flutist Carol Wincenc. Foss called it a “lov­ing handshake across the centuries,” and in the process of writing the work, tapped Falletta to help gather lute songs for his inspiration. The orchestra navigated fast riffs in excellent intonation, supporting the soloist. Foss cleverly plays with rhythms, delaying a beat to create a jagged rhythm in the second movement. In the third movement, the soloist’s portamento pitch slides affirm the work’s modernism; a passage which was echoed by principal flutist Christine Lynn Bailey with a nicely matched tone. Porter navigated the extended techniques with aplomb, generating percussive sounds meshing in duet with tambourine. With a dramatic flair, Porter inched her way off the stage as she played the final measures.

 

BPO was joined by The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and Downtown Voices, for Psalms, a work written in 1956. Tenor Stephen Sands (who is also Downtown Voices director), and soprano Sonya Headlam delivered solos that were spot on and especially moving; beautifully punctuated by harp, tympani and strings. Fugal passages were well-executed, and, with Falletta’s encouragement and direction, never overpowering. The singers had the spotlight to themselves for Alleluia by Foss’s teacher Randall Thompson, an a cappella work that was stunningly gorgeous and reverently performed.

Symphony No. 1, written in 1944, was the earliest work on the program. Textures in the orchestration evoked the sound and style of Copland, mixed with Bernstein, mixed with Hindemith; a sound parallel to the “midcentury modern” style of architecture and furniture. The third movement displayed an appropriate amount of swing, and each of the principal string players were radiant in their respective solo passages in the final movement.

The Lukas Foss Centennial Celebration at Carnegie Hall was a fitting tribute to this under-recognized American composer. Next week, Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic head to the recording studio, and an album of the entire program will be released by Naxos next year.

by Gail Wein
ACO, Ambient, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Commissions, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Flute, New York

Carnegie Hall: Highlights of contemporary music in the 2022-2023 season

Claire Chase

Ironically, the first concert of flutist Claire Chase’s reign as Richard and Barbara Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall in the 2022-23 season focuses on a dead composer. In honor of the groundbreaking composer and accordionist Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016), on January 21, 2023 Chase and friends perform an all-Oliveros concert. In addition to Chase (credited as performing “air objects”), instrumentalists include percussionists Tyshawn Sorey and Susie Ibarra and Manari Ushigua, leader of the Sapara Nation in the Ecuadorian Amazon, who has the intriguing credit of “Forest Wisdom Defender”.

Oliveros was hugely influential on the contemporary music scene. She was especially noted for “deep listening,” a term that Oliveros herself coined, referring to an aesthetic based upon principles of improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation.

The performance will be in Zankel Hall, reconfigured to a theater-in-the-round setup with the performers in the center of the hall. Several other contemporary music program in January will take place in the “Zankel Hall Center Stage” milieu, including performances by yMusic (January 19), Third Coast Percussion (January 20), Rhiannon Giddens (January 24) and Kronos Quartet (January 27).

“I’m honored to be the 2022-2023 Richard and Barbara Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall this season,” wrote Chase on Facebook. “Each of the projects on this series has collaboration at its core, and I’m gobsmacked to get to share the stage with some of the most inspiring musicians in my orbit—people who have changed the way I play, changed the way I listen, and who continue to blow the roof off of the imaginations of everyone in earshot.”

Chase is fortunate to have Carnegie’s backing for this season’s chapter of her 24 year-long commissioning and performance project, Density 2036.  Beginning in 2013, Chase has commissioned a new body of solo flute repertoire every year; she’ll continue the process through 2036, the 100th anniversary of Edgard Varèse’s groundbreaking flute solo, Density 21.5. The decades-long project has given a unique framework for Claire Chase’s performance career.

The two “Density” programs are highlights of the entire Carnegie season, and they’re worth waiting for. On May 18, Chase performs Varèse’s Density 21.5 alongside works for flute and electronics that she commissioned over the past ten years, by Felipe Lara, Marcos Balter, Mario Diaz de Leon, George E. Lewis and Du Yun. The sound artist and percussionist Levy Lorenzo handles the live electronics. On May 25, Chase, along with cellists Katinka Kleijn and Seth Parker Woods, pianist Cory Smythe, and electronics artist Levy Lorenzo performs the world premiere of a Carnegie Hall commission by Anna Thorvaldsdottir.

The Paris-based Ensemble Intercontemporain, in its first Carnegie Hall performance in two decades, appears on March 25. The ground-breaking group, founded in 1976 by Pierre Boulez, brings a program that includes the New York premiere of Sonic Eclipse, by EIC’s music director Mattias Pintscher, alongside Dérive 2 by Boulez; and the ensemble reaches back a century to include Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra.

I’ll never forget the first American Composers Orchestra concert at Carnegie that I attended, over 20 years ago. I marveled at the fact that every composer was in attendance (except Charles Ives, and he had a good excuse). Since then, I’ve eagerly looked forward to ACO’s offerings at Carnegie. On October 20 the orchestra, led by Mei-Ann Chen, gives the world premiere of a new work by Yvette Janine Jackson (co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall), and brings a host of guest performers to the Perelman stage: Sandbox Percussion (performing Viet Cuong’s Re(new)al -you’ll be seeing his name more and more, mark my words), the Attacca Quartet (performing an as-yet untitled new work by inti figgis-vizueta), and cellist Jeffrey Zeigler (featured in the New York premiere of Last Year by Mark Adamo). On March 16, Daniela Candellari conducts premieres by George Lewis, Ellen Reid, and Jihyun Noel Kim, and Modern Yesterdays by Kaki King, with the composer on guitar. As far as I can predict, none of these composers will have an excuse as good as Ives if they don’t show up.

The long-lived quintet-of-color, Imani Winds performs new and recent music at Zankel Hall on April 25. Vijay Iyer continues to prove his mettle as a versatile composer with Bruits; also on the program are The Light is the Same by Reena Esmail, and Frederic Rzewski’s Sometimes.

There are many other concerts that showcase living composers at Carnegie this season, including a good number of regional and world premieres commissioned by the institution itself. Composers from Thomas Adès to Caroline Shaw to Michi Wiancko are featured; details are at this link. A complete calendar with program details and ticket information is at this link.

by Gail Wein
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Flute, Los Angeles

Wilfrido Terrazas – ĺtaca

Wilfrido Terrazas
Cero Records

Cero Records has released Ítaca, a new CD of solo flute music by Wilfrido Terrazas. The album contains ten mostly short pieces that explore a wide variety of musical sounds and extended techniques, inspired by epic Greek poetry. Terrazas is a native of Mexico and has performed widely throughout the world. He is currently a member of the music faculty at UCSD and a presence in the Southern California new music scene. His website states that “His work focuses on finding points of convergence between notated and improvised music, and in exploring innovative approaches to collaboration and collective creation.” Ítaca was composed over two months in 2012 during an artistic residency at the Ionian Center for Arts and Culture in Metaxata, Greece.

Ítaca is motivated by Terrazas’ long fascination with Greek culture and especially Homer’s Odyssey. Those familiar with that epic poem will recall that it is the story of Odysseus’ ten year journey to return to his native Ithaca (Ítaca) after the Trojan War. Nine of the ten pieces on the CD directly relate to an episode or a character in the Odyssey. While the poem itself does not follow a strictly chronological order, the descriptions of the album tracks given here are roughly in the sequence that they appear in the Odyssey story line, so as to give some context to the music.

The first track on the CD is Exordio (Epilogo), for flute in C. This serves as an introduction and sets out the pattern for the music in this album: improvisation contained within an overall narrative structure. Exordio begins with a long and low tone sustained by what seems to be circular breathing. Some overtones are also heard so that there is a quiet, preliminary feel to this. As the piece proceeds, the sounds break out into full tones, often with more than one pitch present. This gives a brighter and unexpectedly colorful feel, as if the plot is on the move. The pitches wander and there is no imposition of harmonic or melodic structure. The tones move faster towards the end with a brilliant flourish followed by a sudden finish. The versatility and variety of the unconventional expressions are impressive, mesmerizing the listener – perhaps just as Homer might have done reciting the dramatic opening lines of the Odyssey.

Calipso (Ausencia), on track 2, is inspired by the seven years Odysseus spent with as a captive of the goddess Calypso. This one of the shorter pieces at 3:03 and opens with low, slurred tones and a rolling feel. Odysseus had a life of comfort with Calypso, but nevertheless sought to leave her island for his home. The active melody line combines an interesting texture with increasing speed and a shrill tone. Many notes follow in rapid succession, all with a sure-footed technical proficiency, suggesting Odysseus’ successful, if harrowing, escape.

Nausicaa (Mar), on track 4, is inspired by the aftermath of the escape by raft of Odysseus from Calypso. He is found washed up and unconscious on Schrie, the island home of the Phaeacians. The daughter of the local king, Princess Nausicaä, finds and cares for him. This is a piccolo piece that opens with soft, whispering sounds as well as thin, streaky sounds as if shards of wind are blowing by on an empty beach. The main tone is breathy and only slowly gains some footing and speed – perhaps Odysseus reviving. Now the notes are very precise and rapidly phrased. The tones take on a high, almost mechanical feel – like a squeaky axle. After of few days of recovery, Odysseus is promised a ship for his return to Ithaca by Nausicaä’s parents. Very rapid notes converge on a single sustained pitch, a pure, almost electronic sound, just as the piece ends.

While on Schrie, Odysseus recounts to the Phaeacians his many adventures returning from the Trojan war. Setting out from Troy, he is blown off course on the voyage home to Ithaca. Odysseus and his crew land on a distant island inhabited by a race of Cyclops. Nadie (Odiseo), on track 3, opens with a rapid blast of blurry notes and recalls the encounter with the Cyclops, who has trapped Odysseus and his shipmates in a cave. There is lots of sound here, with runs of high notes and repeating counterpoint below – almost like two parts from one flute. The playing is impressive and brightly engaging, with no breaks or slow stretches. The climactic battle between Odysseus and Polyphemus, the cyclops who had trapped the Greeks, is portrayed by the flute with an almost maniacal speed and range.

After a narrow escape from the Cyclops, Odysseus is given a leather bag by Aeolus, keeper of the winds. The bag contains all the adverse winds that would keep his ship from reaching home. Odysseus sets sail, but just as they came within sight of Ithaca, the sailors opened the bag, thinking it contained gold. All of the winds were released, driving the ship back the way it had come, and on to new adventures. Eolo (Proteo), track 8, begins with a low, almost inaudible sound of air moving through the flute. There are no musical tones – only air. All is mysterious and unfamiliar with only a few tones breaking through from the air. Close listening to the air sounds makes for a sudden surprise when a tone is heard. More very soft sounds are heard at the halfway point, half musical and half breathy. The winds seem to dissipate as more tones are heard that come and go with silences between. There are plenty of extended techniques here with very few conventional sounds. The winds and tones fade at the finish into silence.

At this point in Homer’s story, Odysseus and his crew have arrived at the island of Aeaea, ruled by the witch Circe, who has drugged the sailors and turned half of them into swine. Circe (Niebla) opens on track 5 in a low sustained tone with a slightly wobbling pitch from the bass flute. The sound is drone-like but with some surface variations and pitch bending. This becomes much softer – perhaps under-blown – as if portraying a foggy state of inebriation. Two pitches are heard simultaneously, followed by a very soft tone – continuous and just on the edge of intonation. The playing is very controlled and disciplined, yet with simple surfaces that artfully conjure the thickly befuddled senses of the sailors.

After staying a year with Circe, Odysseus and his crew sail across the ocean to the western edge of the world. Odysseus visits the realm of the dead, as portrayed in track 9, Hades (Tiresias). This begins with a sharp blast of breathy notes, as if scattered by a machine gun and interspersed with breathy, wind-like sections. There are grunts and shouts as well, and the intense virtuosity of the playing builds to a frightening climax. The sounds are very animated and hot to the touch!

Track 6, Escudo (Torre), refers to the shield of Ajax, one of the notable Greek warriors of the Iliad – the Homeric story that precedes the Odyssey. The courage and strength of Ajax was greatly celebrated among the Greeks and Odysseus attempted to visit the deceased Ajax in Hades, but was rebuffed. Escudo begins with a light, sustained tone on the flute in C that warbles slightly in pitch, becoming breathy at times. Runs of fluid notes follow, not conventionally flute-like, but engaging to the ear. The many changes in pitch and intonation are skillfully played. The number of notes rapidly increase to create a complex texture until a long, sustained tone is heard that wanders in pitch, like a tea kettle boiling as the piece ends.

Odysseus and his crew continue their journey, sailing past the island of the fateful singing Sirens. They next encounter the six-headed sea monster Scylla and then face the forbidding whirlpool Charybdis. Escila (Caribdis), on track 7, captures these adventures with deep plunking sounds followed by a rapid flutter of notes in the low registers on the alto flute. This is the shortest piece of the album, but quickly explodes in a blizzard of notes, creating a convincing image of fast swirling motion. The melody is wickedly fast but with a smooth intonation that adds to a vivid sense of danger and panic.

After surviving the dangers of Scylla and Charybdis, a storm washes Odysseus up on the island home of Calypso, bringing the account of his adventures full circle. The Phaeacians are so moved by his story they provide Odysseus with gold and treasure and secretly bring him home to Ithaca. After some score-settling with those who took advantage of his long absence, Odysseus is reunited with his household and returns to power.

Hexagram 57, the final and longest track at over 13 minutes, completes the album. This steps away from the Odyssey theme and is a bit more autobiographical in nature, inspired by the composer’s interest in Chinese culture and recent time spent in Southern California. The techniques and style are similar, but arise more directly from the present and not from the heroic ancient past. Hexagram 57 was written in San Diego and New York between February 13 and April 15, 2018 and the title comes from the classic I-Ching texts.

The piece opens with a soft, sustained tone, drone like, with an unusual intonation that is almost reed-like. The pitch changes, reminiscent of a buzzing bee, with occasional flashes of musical tones. A bit of melody creeps in – not full and round, but with a thin, breathy component and many trills. The extended techniques quickly multiply with breaths, clicks, double tones and a large vocabulary of unusual sounds that appear in rapid succession. As the piece continues there is a short stretch of more conventional notes played very fast and filled with complexity. The extended techniques return again with ever greater versatility and a precise articulation that highlights the masterful playing – always agile and marked by a supremely fluid intonation. At times there is a mechanical feel to the sounds, as if a squeaky shaft is spinning along. There is often more than one sound at once – breathy sounds plus musical pitches – as well as a sort of buzzing plus a breathy whistle heard simultaneously. Towards the end, all of this slowly declines in volume – the pitches cut out and the buzzing finally dies out at the finish. Hexagram 57 is a virtuoso performance that vividly demonstrates the incredible range of sounds produced by a flute in the hands of an accomplished master.

Ítaca successfully operates on the cutting edge of virtuoso improvisation and extended techniques while anchored in the framework of ancient epic poetry. Wilfrido Terrazas continues to push the envelope for state-of-the-art contemporary flute performance.

Ítaca is available directly from Cero Records and also from Amazon Music.


by Paul Muller
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Flute, Strings

Spektral Quartet – Experiments in Living

Spektral Quartet

Clara Lyon (violin), Maeve Feinberg (violin),

Doyle Armbrust (viola), Russell Rolen (cello)

Experiments in Living

New Focus Records (digital release)

The Spektral Quartet takes advantage of the open-ended playing time of a digital release to create effectively a double album for their latest recording, Experiments in Living. While double albums often suffer from a bit of flab, this one doesn’t have an extraneous moment. It is a well curated release that attends to meaning making in contemporary music with a spirit that is both historically informed and deeply of this moment.

A clever extra-musical addition to the project is a group of Tarot cards that allow the listener to ‘choose their own adventure,’ making their way through the various pieces in different orderings. These are made by the artist/musician øjeRum. The tarot cards may be seen on the album’s site. 

It might seem strange to begin an album of 20/21 music with Johannes Brahms’s String Quartet Op. 51, no. 1  in  C-minor (1873). However, Arnold Schoenberg’s article “Brahms as Progressive”  makes the connection between the two composers clear. It also demonstrates Spektral’s comfort in the standard repertoire. They give an energetic reading of the quartet with clear delineation of its thematic transformations, a Brahms hallmark. 

Schoenberg is represented by his Third String Quartet (1927). His first quartet to use 12-tone procedures, it gets less love in the literature than the oft-analyzed combinatorics of the composer’s Fourth String Quartet, but its expressive bite still retains vitality over ninety years later. Ruth Crawford Seeger’s String Quartet (1931), an under-heralded masterpiece of the 20th century, receives one of the best recordings yet on disc, its expressive dissonant counterpoint rendered with biting vividness.

Sam Pluta’s Flow State/Joy State is filled with flurries of glissandos, microtones, and harmonics to create a thoroughly contemporary sound world punctuated by dissonant verticals. One of Pluta’s most memorable gestures employs multiple glissandos to gradually make a chord cohere, only to have subsequent music skitter away. Charmaine Lee’s Spinals incorporates her own voice, replete with lip trills and sprechstimme that are imitated by string pizzicato and, again, glissandos. 

Spektral is joined by flutist Claire Chase on Anthony Cheung’s “Real Book of Fake Tunes,” which combines all manner of effects for Chase with jazzy snips of melody and writing for quartet that is somewhat reminiscent of the techniques found in the Schoenberg, but with a less pervasively dissonant palette. Cheung’s writing for instruments is always elegantly wrought, and Chase and Spektral undertake an excellent collaboration. One could imagine an entire album for this quintet being an engaging listen.  

The recording’s title track is George Lewis’s String Quartet 1.5; he wrote a prior piece utilizing quartet but considers this his first large-scale work in the genre. Many of the techniques on display in Pluta’s piece play a role here as well. Lewis adds to these skittering gestures, glissandos, and microtones the frequent use of various levels of bow pressure, including extreme bow pressure in which noise is more present than pitch. The latter crunchy sounds provide rhythmic weight and accentuation that offsets the sliding tones. Dovetailing glissandos create a blurring effect in which harmonic fields morph seamlessly. The formal design of the piece is intricate yet well-balanced. More string quartets, labeled 2.5 and 3.5, are further contributions by Lewis to the genre. One hopes that Spektral will take them up as well – their playing of 1.5 is most persuasive.

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
Composers, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Flute, Music Instruments, Performers, Resources

Glissando Headjoint for Flute

The Glissando Headjoint for flute was invented by performer, composer, improviser, and inventor Robert Dick. Essentially, it adds a carrier tube to the standard C flute headjoint. The lip plate can be moved along the carrier tube to create true glissandi. Much of Dick’s work with the headjoint is in an improvisatory style; most of my work with it has been largely through commissioning works. One of the most rewarding things about this activity as a performer is seeing the variety of sounds composers require from the headjoint in their works. The minimal repertoire for glissando flute compared to the vastness of the rest of the flute repertoire across the centuries really highlights that the lack of precedent drives some pretty rewarding creativity. 

The first work that I performed with my newly-purchased headjoint in 2013 was Jay Batzner’s Dreams Grow Like Slow Ice. Written for glissando flute and electronics, it’s an evocative work that brings to mind an icy, barren landscape. I’ve had the pleasure of performing it fifteen times on three continents. I’ve worked with Jay on two other works involving the headjoint: Fire Walk, which is for solo glissando flute and is based on ideas from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks; and Used Illusions, a large work in three movements for glissando flute and concert band, based on Guns N’ Roses tunes. 

Andrew Rodriguez’s Highways for solo glissando flute brings to mind the sensations of driving at night: being lulled to sleep, occasional lights when traveling through towns, the mixing of dreams and waking consciousness. It’s a highly effective work that uses the glissando effect masterfully to blur the lines between being asleep and the reality outside the vehicle. 

The Dream Has Ended in Death by Aaron Jay Myers is based on a lithograph of the same name and uses a variety of sounds to create a mood representative of the visual art inspiration. It is particularly effective to project the lithograph behind the flutist during a performance. This work is also for solo glissando flute. 

Chamber music involving the Glissando Headjoint can also be effective. Wes Flinn’s Urban Legends X: Mothman is written for glissando flute and trombone, and the similar glissando effects are really heightened when utilized by both players. Similarly, Alan Theisen’s Pura Besakih, inspired by the temple complex in Indonesia of the same name, uses glissando flute and traditional C flute in a duet.

___________________

When writing for glissando flute, there are helpful resources to help composers find the sounds they want to hear. Several documents on Robert Dick’s website (http://robertdick.net/the-glissando-headjoint/) include fingering charts, which explain the extended lower range. His website also includes a selection of demonstration videos. Most importantly, work with your performer either before starting the composition process or throughout it to confirm your ideas will work within the limitations of the instrument. For example, the headjoint extends the lower range of the flute to a low A, but it can’t be played very loudly. Another limitation is just plain physics. The headjoint can only move so quickly, so some combinations of notes and headjoint placement within the carrier tube are simply impractical. Keeping the lines of communication open with your performer will reveal any of these quickly.

___________________

Tammy Evans Yonce, an Atlanta native, is a flutist, collaborative musician, writer, and professor. She is a dedicated new music performer who is particularly interested in the commissioning and teaching of new music. Dr. Yonce has commissioned over twenty works involving flute, many with a specific focus on creating new music for the Glissando Headjoint. She is Associate Professor of Music at South Dakota State University. Her recently-released album, Dreams Grow Like Slow Ice, includes several works for glissando flute. She can be found at tammyevansyonce.com and on Twitter @TammyEvansYonce.

by Tammy Evans Yonce
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Flute, Houston, Improv, Interviews, jazz, Performers

The Imani Winds Bring Improvisation to Classical Chamber Music Performance

The Imani Winds: Jeff Scott, Toyin Spellman-Diaz, Valerie Coleman, Monica Ellis, and Mariam Adam.

Imani Winds: Jeff Scott, Toyin Spellman-Diaz, Valerie Coleman, Monica Ellis, and Mariam Adam. (Photo by Matthew Murphy)

(Houston, TX) Since the group’s inception in 1997, the Imani Winds have continued to expand the relatively small-sized repertoire for wind quintet by commissioning several works by such forward-thinking composers as Alvin Singleton, Roberto Sierra, Stefon Harris, Daniel Perez, Mohammed Fairouz, and Houston’s own Jason Moran. Moran’s four-movement work Cane, Moran’s first composition for wind quintet, appears on the Imani Winds’ 2010 album Terra Incognita, along with pieces by two other jazz masters, Paquito D’Rivera and Wayne Shorter. (The Imani Winds appear on Shorter’s critically acclaimed 2013 live quartet album Without A Net in a scorching performance of his 23-minute through-composed work Pegasus.) Imani Winds members Valerie Coleman (flute) and Jeff Scott (horn) also compose and arrange for the quintet. In concert, the Imani Winds present traditional classical fare alongside new works that explore African, Latin American, and the Middle Eastern musical idioms and performance techniques.

On Tuesday, October 15, 2013, the Imani Winds make their Houston Friends Of Chamber Music debut at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, performing arrangements of classic works by Ravel and Mendelssohn, Jonathan Russell’s powerful wind quintet arrangement of Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring, and Scott’s arrangement of Palestinian-American oud and violin virtuoso Simon Shaheen’s composition Dance Mediterranea, a piece that requires the quintet to play and improvise with Arabic scales or maqamat.

I spoke with Jeff Scott about the challenges of arranging Shaheen’s piece for the quintet as well as what it means to be a chamber wind ensemble in the 21st century.

Chris Becker: What are some challenges you faced in arranging Simon Shaheen’s music for the Imani Winds?

Jeff Scott: I listened to Shaheen’s piece over and over and over again so I could learn what I could do in the different section to offset it. We are an ensemble with five completely different sounding instruments that can create many different colors. So I listened to each section and thought, “Who could play the bass here? Who would sound great playing the solo line here? Who could really do something percussive on their instrument there to make it sound like an authentic version of the song?”

CB: There’s improvisation in your arrangement? Is that correct?

JS: Absolutely.

CB: Can you talk a little bit about the improvisation in the piece? Are you and your fellow winds improvising with scales? Are you improvising over some kind of harmony? Or is it even freer than that?

JS: It’s definitely structured. In that part of the world, the scale is called a maqam. This piece deals with three different maqamat. So for the solo sections, I only wrote out a rhythmic figure for whoever is playing the bass and the scale itself for whoever is playing the solo. The stuff in the middle is fleshed out completely and gives the top and bottom players guidelines they can follow.

In preparation for this piece, we had workshop rehearsals for learning the different maqamat and how to play inflect on our respective instruments the quarter tones and semitones that exist in those scales, so we wouldn’t just be playing a diatonic scale with two half steps and then calling that a maqam. That’s not it at all. The challenge was getting that g half flat just so! (laughs)

What separates people who play with those different scales and people who play Western music and diatonic scales, is that our ears are adjusted. We know when someone is playing a flat seventh, you know? But to be able to play it as part of a scale and know whether or not you’re just flat enough? (laughs) That’s a different thing! We played these scales in workshops for Shaheen almost like we were auditioning for him. We’d play, and he would say, “No, no, no…” and then play the scale with us and show us exactly where they fit. It’s a thing you just constantly have to work on because it’s not a part of our pedagogue. It’s not part of our training.

Before playing this piece, we’ll have our set of rehearsals the week before, and we’ll go through the shed of practicing those scales and testing one another.

CB: Is improvisation a part of your background? Or is it something new that you and the other members of the Imani Winds have explored since coming together as an ensemble?

JS: I’d say for the most part it’s new. Improvising wasn’t a part of our formal training. We all went to either the Manhattan School of Music or Juilliard. And it just wasn’t asked of you, it just wasn’t. Now, post-school? Yeah. You realize that in the 21st century commercial world, if you’re going to survive, regardless of what your training is, you have to be flexible enough to improvise. It was definitely harder for us coming into it, but more schools are requiring it these days. I think that’s really wonderful. The language of music from other countries is now filtering its way into the Western chronicles and as a musician, you have to be able to speak the different dialects. We have embraced it and really went out there and grabbed every possible challenge we could.

CB: What you say about conservatories in the U.S., that more programs are including improvisation and music from around the globe, is something I’m hearing about more and more in my interviews with younger musicians.

JS: It used to be shunned. When I was at the Manhattan School of Music, back in the 80s, I wrote this piece for horn and percussion that I wanted to play on one of my recitals. I remember playing the piece for my teacher and him not wanting me to do it because most of my part wasn’t written down and he couldn’t work with me on it. It wasn’t because the it sounded “bad” or “good,” he just didn’t know how to work with me on it as an improvised piece of music. And that said a whole lot about the institution and my training in general! (laughs) It speaks volumes!

CB: Tell me about the Imani Winds’ collaboration with saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter.

JS: We were asked to come and perform with him at the Hollywood Bowl on his 80th birthday along with Esperanza Spaulding, Herbie Hancock, Dave Douglas and all of these incredible musicians. We performed a piece that Shorter composed and arranged called Pegasus. It’s a symphony! The piece is written for his and wind quintet. It’s a symphony! It’s a mammoth, epic journey with improvisation from everyone involved, a through-composed piece with many different moods.

The whole thing started when the La Jolla Music Society in California commissioned Shorter to compose a piece for us, which he titled Terra Incognita. It was just for wind quintet, and it was the first piece he’d composed that didn’t involve him as a performer. He’d never written something for someone else that he didn’t intend to perform.

So he wrote this wind quintet and it was way out (laughs) with just as much room to improvise as you could possibly want. We didn’t know what the heck to do with it. So we learned everything note by note, and then played it for him. And he smiled and said, “That’s great. But promise me you’ll never play it like that again. I want you play it different every time. I want you to start from the end. I want you to leave out some parts. You can start in the middle. Just use the piece as a point of departure.”

CB: That’s so great.

JS: It says a whole lot about him. But it also says a whole lot about where I think classical music in general is going when it comes to chamber music and accepting improvisation, jazz and all of the world’s music, and having musicians who are flexible enough and open enough to at least experiment. It’s the only way we’re going to get the patrons of chamber music societies to have that openness and expectation when it comes to who they decide to put on their series. I mean, if we don’t start doing it, they’re going to continually only want the Haydn cycles. (laughs)

So we have to not only accept it, we have to become nimble at it. You have to be able to deliver a good product so the patrons say, “You know what? I want more of that!”

And besides, as a wind quintet, we don’t have the Haydn cycles! (laughs) They just don’t exist. We occasionally play the old stalwarts of the wind quintet, but that stuff runs out in about two weeks. You’ve got to play new stuff and push the envelope a bit, and improvisation is just a normal step along the way for expanding the repertoire for the wind quintet.

Houston Friends of Chamber Music present the Imani Winds, Tuesday, October 15, 7:30 p.m. at Stude Concert Hall, Shepherd School of Music, Rice University, performing works by Valerie Coleman, Mendelssohn, Ravel, Simon Shaheen, and Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring arranged by Jonathan Russell.

by Chris Becker
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Dance, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Flute, Houston, Improv, Women composers

Flutist Michelle Yom’s FALKOR

Houston-based flutist, composer, and improviser Michelle Yom
Houston-based flutist, composer, and improviser Michelle Yom

(Houston, TX) This Sunday, Houston-based flutist, composer, and improviser Michelle Yom presents FALKOR, an interactive music and dance composition featuring Yom on flute and four dancers, Kriten Frankiewicz, Erin Reck, Leslie Scates, and Sophia Torres. FALKOR utilizes video motion tracking and a wireless system triggering audio samples based on the colors of the costumes worn by the dancers as well as their movements. FALKOR takes place at Studio 101 as part of the ongoing electronic music series Brave New Waves.

Fantasy film fans (not to mention fans of 1980s pop music) will no doubt recognize the name Falkor (i.e. Falkor the Luck Dragon) from the film Neverending Story, which tells the story of a young boy who, through reading a magical book, enters into another world called Fantasia, a world sustained by human imagination. Yom uses the names of different characters and creatures from the film, each of whom represent some facet of humanity, as “venture points” to explore “the relationships between emotions, noise, sound, silence, and nothingness.”

Says Yom, “Falkor is luck and joy, Swamps of Sadness is sadness, Engywook is intellect, and Morla is cynicism. I use these characters as general ground to inspire the improvised music and dance. It seems linear, but I hope to show other sides of seemingly one-sided notions of emotion. For example, we treat sadness as a negative feeling, but it actually springs from hope in the first place, and when destroyed, begins something new.”

As a frequent participant in concerts of freely improvised music presented by the Houston organization Nameless Sound, improvisation is a crucial component to Yom’s compositional vision. Each of the four dancers in FALKOR are experienced improvisers as well. The wireless system triggering audio in response to their movement and costume colors will scramble the audience’s perception of what has been composed and what is being improvised, as well as time itself.

“I’ve been exploring silence,” explains Yom. “Different types of silence with factors like physical movement and the inevitably strong role it plays in our perception of time in a concert. I’d like to push the length of silence in a musical piece without losing the audience.”

Sunday, January 27, Brave New Waves presents Michelle Yom’s FALKOR at Studio 101 at Spring Street Studios, 1824 Spring Street, Houston, Texas, Houston, Texas 77007. Doors open at 7:45 p.m. the performance begins at 8:05 p.m. $10 cover.

Tune in to KTRU Saturday at 6:00 p.m. CT for an interview with Michelle Yom.

by Chris Becker