CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Magnus Lindberg on Ondine (CD Review)

 

Magnus Lindberg

Aura – Marea – Related Rocks

Emil Holmström, Joonas Ahonen, piano and keyboards; 

Jani Niinimaki, Jerry Plippomem, percussion 

Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Hannu Lintu

Ondine

 

This recording includes three live recordings of compositions from the 1990s by Magnus Lindberg. Hannu Lintu leads the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in energetic and focused renditions of two of these challenging works, bringing out considerable detail from Lindberg’s vivid orchestrations. A quartet of pianists and percussionists perform the chamber piece, Related Rocks, an interesting corollary to the larger compositions. 

 

By 1990, when Lindberg had completed Marea, he was already an established composer. Particularly noteworthy was 1985’s Kraft, with a large orchestra, multiple soloists, enormous gongs, and influences from German industrial music, notably Einstürzende Neubauten. Marea is for more modest forces, a sinfonietta; however, it sounds larger than the sum of its parts. The title means “tides,” and the piece is a single movement set of variations. There is much in Marea that is muscularly scored, indicating the powerful ebb and flow of the ocean. Indeed, the flowing nature of the music overwhelms its constructivist design to create densely imprinted textures and dramatic climaxes.

 

The chamber piece Related Rocks (1997). for a quartet of pianists and percussionists with electronics, was written at IRCAM. It has a similar instrumentation to the Bartôk Sonata for two pianos and percussion, and its raucous ending is certainly Bartôkian in design. Most of the piece departs from this script, with a blending of the instrumental cohort rather than the bifurcation of the Bartôk sonata. Lindberg explores gamelan-like harmonics with spectacular shimmer. Rhythmic canons between piano and pitched percussion provide rigorous contrast for the more vertically oriented passages. Lindberg demonstrates both the percussive and sonorous qualities of the instruments, and the software he uses allows one to morph from one sound to the next. 

 

Aura (1994) is dedicated to the memory of Wiltold Lutoslawski, who passed away while Lindberg was composing the piece. At forty minutes in duration, it is the longest piece in his catalogue. Cast in four movements, played attacca, with a scheme of fast-slow-scherzo-finale, Lindberg has said it is neither a symphony nor a concerto for orchestra. Instead it seems to flow organically, with successive movements commenting on their predecessors. The concerto designation is tantalizing because material is often deployed in smaller cohorts of the orchestra and soloists. The first movement’s brass fanfares are followed by ricocheting counterpoint from winds and strings. Each successive climax adds to the complexity of the vertical chords that announce it. Winds, strings, brass, and percussion each take a turn as active ensembles. A general pullback allows for diaphanous strings and whorls of woodwinds to blend together. This is supplanted by edgy ostinatos and rangy clarinet passages. The trading off intensifies, bringing the movement to a fortissimo pileup and moto perpetuo coda that leads into the spectral verticals that begin movement two. 

 

Lindberg is not known for writing slow movements, but the second one of Aura qualifies. Blocks of harmony are connected by trumpet filigrees. Overtone chords and long string lines are underscored by stentorian timpani and succeeded by wind trills. The chorale-like movement of the harmony continues, until heraldic brass announce descending cellos and divisi string harmonies. Oscillating cells and intricate blocks of chords cascade through much of the rest of the movement, with echoing harmonics and busily moving pitched percussion giving decay a boost. Percussion – gongs notable in their appearance – and glinting winds bring the movement to a close. It is followed by a Scherzo, with skittering lines, repeated motives, and wide-ranging cascading verticals. The finale is a boisterous summation, with allusions to the music that has come before, motorized by post-minimal ostinatos, generously scored string melodies, and triumphal brass. Aura is an imposing, impressive piece. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

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

Scott Wollschleger – Dark Days (CD Review)

Scott Wollschleger

Dark Days

New Focus Recordings

Karl Larson, piano

 

Scott Wollschleger’s music has great emotional range. Dark Days explores an atmospheric and lyrical side to his composing for piano. Wollschleger has collaborated with pianist Karl Larson for some time, and this collection of pieces created over a number of years attests to the felicitous nature of their work together. 

 

The tile piece is both the briefest and most dissonant piece. It was composed on the day of Trump’s inauguration and channels Schoenberg’s atonal phase, but in a subdued manner. Much of the music here emulates impressionism instead of expressionism. One can often hear the influence of Debussy’s Preludes on works such as Tiny Oblivion and Brontal 2, “Holiday”. Music Without Metaphor resembles Satie in its delicate modal segments and slow rhythmic underpinning. Blue Inscription and Brontal 11, “I-80,” on the other hand, represent another throughline in Wollschleger’s work; his affinity for the New York School, particularly the music of Morton Feldman. Wollschleger is quick to point out that his graduate instructor at the Manhattan School of Music, Nils Vigeland, was one of Feldman’s prominent students and interpreters, and another influence on his music. 

 

It is most interesting when Wollschleger combines these two demeanors, as on Brontal 6, where frequent rests and modal figurations coexist with pointillist fragments. The last two selections, Secret Machine 4 and Secret Machine 6, are considerably charming. They mark a return to the modality, whole-tone scales,  and short motives of Debussy, with frequent ostinato repetitions. Dark Days is a well considered collection and it benefits from Larson’s assured interpretations.

 

-Christian Carey

 

Performance of Dark Days at Roulette on May 6, 2021:

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?

Mogwai: “As the Love Continues” (CD Review)

Mogwai

As the Love Continues

Rock Action/Temporary Residence Ltd.

 

On February 26th, twenty-five years into their recording career, Mogwai hit #1 on the UK charts. The band’s two previous full length releases were in the Top 10 in the UK, but the success of As the Love Continues, their tenth album, is remarkable.

 

Known for a live act that is one of the loudest in history, Mogwai retains a musicality that often hews close to the shaping of post-rock, with varied textures supplied both by synthesizers and electric guitars replete with pedals. The looping melody of “Dry Fantasy” evinces minimalist sympathies, as does “Here We, Here We, Here We Go Forever,” the latter combining a looping chordal ostinato with drums supplying one of the more danceable grooves in the band’s catalog.

 

Vocals treated with vocoder appear on a couple tracks, and the album opens with a spoken word excerpt – Benjamin John Power (Blanck Mass) apparently speaking in his sleep – that also serves as the song’s curious title, “To the Bin My Friend, Tonight We Vacate Earth.” What follows seems to emanate from a dreamstate, with heartbeat drums and haloing of harmonics giving way to overlapping melodies for synth-piano and guitar that provide a slow burn prior to one of the band’s patented anthemic choruses. Mogwai often gives their music enigmatic titles. The track “Ritchie Sacramento” was inspired by a record store clerk’s mishearing of Ryuichi Sakamoto. However, the piece, the only one with non-modified vocals, is more somber than this pun would suggest, referencing grief, not just for the COVID year, but for departed musician friends, among them David Berman.

 

Some emphases have changed, and As the Love Continues shows the band savoring a temperament for exploration. But Mogwai still makes thunderous rock. “Ceiling Granny” is inspired by a scene from The Exorcist, and the terror that Braithwaite experienced upon viewing it is translated into roaring guitars and triple forte drumming.  

 

Listen to an interview with Stuart Braithwaite and some live performances below.

 

KEXP interview and live performances:

“Ritchie Sacramento” Official Video: 

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Chamber Music, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?

Attacca Quartet – Real Life (CD Review)

Attacca Quartet

Real Life

Sony Music CD/DL

 

Kronos Quartet excepted, there have been a lot of really bad arrangements of pop music for string quartet. Part of the problem is that the arrangers of these covers attempt to translate a medium that involves amplification, electronics, and a flexible sense of rhythm into straight notation for acoustic ensemble. Attacca Quartet’s Real Life, on the other hand, sees the opportunity for collaboration in electronic music covers. 

 

Their recordings are subjected to production from some of the top electronic musicians in the industry: Tokimonsta, Squarepusher, and Daedelus among them. The songs are by the artists Flying Lotus (“Remind U” is a particular standout), Louis Cole, Anne Müller, and Mid-Air Thief. The title track, by Cole, features propulsive beats that are offset by chordal strings and the song’s melody doubled in octaves. After a fragmentary opening, Mid-air Thief’s “Why” is populated with reverberant crescendos. Pizzicatos, drumset, and quirky harmonies give Squarepusher’s “Xetaka 1” a fascinating, off-kilter feel, like Bartôk in a blender. 

 

At thirty-five minutes, the recording doesn’t overstay its welcome, with several of the selections truncated from their original versions. A welcome exception is “Drifting Circles” by Anne Müller, in which minimal ostinatos adorn the song’s sumptuous chord progression and evolving textures are explored. Cole’s “More Love Less Hate” provides an aphoristic, supple coda to the proceedings. 

 

  • Christian Carey

 

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

Martin Suckling on NMC (CD Review)

Martin Suckling

This Departing Landscape

NMC Recordings

CD/DL

Tamara Stefanovich (piano), Katherine Bryan (flute), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Ilan Volkov

 

Two concertos and two substantial orchestral works by Scottish composer Martin Suckling are programmed on This Departing Landscape, his debut portrait CD. The White Road (after Edmund de Waal) is inspired by De Waal’s ceramic artworks. It features flutist Katherine Bryan, a friend of Suckling’s since childhood – they played in youth orchestra together, and she managed to extract a promise of this commission some twenty years ago. Her virtuosic and energetic performance is remarkable. The violin part consists of frequent registral shifts, microtones, and angular melismas, often at high speed.  The White Road includes a series of cadenzas punctuated with brash interruptions from the orchestra. The orchestral writing also consists of “virtual flutes” that Suckling makes by selecting particular string harmonics with an uncanny resemblance to the flute’s sound quality. 

 

Release has a terrifying opening, with stentorian tutti followed by portentous silences. Gradually the spaces are filled in with echoes of microtones, then an English horn and viola duet, and a song-like theme in the upper register. Cascades of polyphony replace the tutti to create even more reverberant releases.

 

Although the piano is a fixed pitch instrument, microtonal harmony plays a significant role in the concerto too. Suckling, like Julian Anderson (a colleague who writes the liner notes for the CD) picks different instruments from the orchestra to supply quarter tones related to deviations from equal temperament in the overtone series. Anderson calls this technique “macrotonality,” and it is an effective way to exploit rich timbres. The rhythmic design is also intricate, with frequent use of polyrhythms.The concerto is cast in five movements, a fifteen movement first movement marked “Vigorously” followed by three intermezzi and a passacaglia as the finale. The first movement has a Carterian division of forces, with the piano interacting with different subsets of the orchestra: cor anglais and viola (the same combination found in Release), then strings, clarinets, oboes and horns (which contains some truly mind-blowing sounds), piccolo and violin, claves, and back to solo viola to finish the movement.

 

In Intermezzo 1 – Implacable,  a vigorous moto perpetuo inhabits the upper register with gradually introduced bass pedal points unfolding a chromatic ground against the dissonant counterpoint above. This leads attacca into the second Intermezzo, marked Luminous in which hushed repeated notes and chromatic melodies  on the piano are accompanied by high string harmonics, brief wind melodies, and brass swells. Intermezzo 3 has a more aggressive cast, with determined piano attacks, overblown flutes, and acerbic string lines. The final movement is a passacaglia that begins delicately, with ornamented lines in the piano and sustained strings. The piano builds corruscating lines over the ground bass, successively joined by members of the wind family who play sustained passages. Arcing strings and brass chords crescendo before cutting off to allow the solo piano to return to music reminiscent of the reflective opening, which here leads to a hushed close. Tamara Stefanovich is a powerful performer with a commanding presence, full sound, and facility in fleet passages. She also plays, in places such as the close of the final movement, with considerable delicacy. The Piano Concerto is an impressive, formally inventive, addition to the genre. 

 

The title work concludes the CD. In his program note, Suckling expresses the desire  to “write twenty minutes of orchestral music that lives its life in a perpetual state of high energy.” He achieves this goal, creating an imaginatively scored and formally intricate work. It begins with attacks from percussion and disjunct pitch cells and glissandos from strings and winds. These gradually accrete into a short ostinato in which bass octaves are followed by gear shifting gestures that alternate between sections of the orchestra. This ends with an accelerating, thunderous climax of hammering bass octaves and fortissimo polytonal tutti chords. It is succeeded by a quieter, but no less vivid, section for altissimo flutes and sustained strings. A sudden breakthrough of loud brass chords, exuberant drumming, and oscillating strings propels the piece forward only to be cut off in favor of solo timpani repetitions. 

 

The second movement begins attacca, with flute filigrees returning, set against brass swells this time, with a horn melody that begins to reestablish a sense of tonality. The brass moves from chorale to coloristic overtone chords. Microtonal adjustments added by instruments joining create a bevy of shimmer. Suckling maintains this spectral aura, tweaking it with overtones added and subtracted. In the midst, a lyrical theme appears first in lower brass and then oboe. We move gradually from microtones to a blurring into the micropolyphonic spectrum, with glissandos, clusters, and sustained notes competing for the field. This builds into an intense cluster chord that is echoed by a just major triad and then a harmonic laden overtone passage. Polychords in a reverberant echo, stacked verticals, and slashing melody are succeeded by an echo of the beginning of the first movement’s percussion attacks, which closes the piece. 

 

Martin Suckling has an unerring sense of pacing and is an abundantly talented orchestrator. This Departing Landscape establishes him as a distinctive voice. One hopes his second portrait CD isn’t long in coming. 

 

  • Christian Carey  
by Christian Carey
Composers, Contemporary Classical, Deaths

Remembering Louis Andriessen

Louis Andriessen has died. He was a highly idiosyncratic composer of music that, like the man himself, inspires great love. Encountering his music as a young composer changed my life. Encountering him as a conductor and producer was one of the greatest joys of my life.

 Louis was an incredibly gregarious, gentle, funny, wickedly funny, intelligent, well-read man. He treated everyone as a peer, regardless of age or career stage. Always curious and encouraging, he would ask young composers after their work, talk about his favorite American television shows (the “highly ironical” Desperate Housewives and South Park were among his favorites), who relished being in the company of people (a rarity among composers). During the 2014 Andriessen75 festival in Washington, DC , it was striking to see him become increasingly withdrawn as performer friends completed their stints and left him behind. His wife, the violinist Monica Germino, explained that he was a very social person and likes having people around him who loses something of himself when he has no one around for mischief. For Louis, balancing that part of his personality with the essentially lonely aspect of our profession meant regulating his schedule. He always kept a two hour window in the afternoons clear for his “naps”–periods of restful downtime devoted not just to relaxation but also to some comopsition, especially on the road.

 As a composer, Louis is often grouped with the early generation of minimalist composers. His music, however, never focuses enough on process to really be considered minimalist (he preferred to think of that music as “repetitive music” anyway). The truth is that his musical interests were broad and rather catholic. He is said to have written the first 12-tone piece in Dutch music history, is a published scholar, with Elmer Schoenberger, of Stravinsky (The Apollonian Clockwork, an impressively bizarre book in which it’s impossible to tell what is true and what is embellishment, let alone one authorial voice from the other), and wrote densely maximalist music theater that, yes, incorporates repetitive aspects. He also loved Bach and counterpoint, and the juxtaposition, particularly in the chorale preludes, of two different tempi for dramatic effect. Most famously, and no doubt through his love of Stravinsky, his music is highly ironic. And yet, occasionally, rarely, when called for, as in the waltz setting of the Song of Songs in part four of La Commedia, he could be sincere to the point of sentimentality.

 His influence is one of personal and political aesthetic as much as musical. “Who are you composing for: who’s going to play, where’s it going to be played and for whom,” he wrote in 1980. “If you ask yourself these questions and try to come up with some kind of answer then you’re already deeply immersed in the field of cultural politics.” (Everett, 2006) This meant embracing all art as political, an attitude that led him and other young composers to form the Notenkrakers collective, founding the ensemble De Volharding, and engaging in disruptive non-violent protest against the perceived problems of Dutch musical life in the 1960s and 1970s. This attitude permeates a great deal of Dutch and AMERICAN new music. It is impossible to think of groups like Bang on a Can, Alarm Will Sound and my own Great Noise Ensemble, among many others, without such an outlook.

 Louis’ best pieces have a sense of maximalist importance beyond their often profound subject matter. State power, Marxism, Anarchism, Catholicism, the nature of time and even matter itself are all themes he explored. Each piece is also perfectly constructed with a musical logic that embraces tonal consonance and emancipated dissonance; minimalist repetition with maximalist architecture. His “monsters,” as he called his large works, are cathedrals of sound (in the case of Hadjewich, literally!). They are among the most important works of the late 20th and early 21st century. I hope that one of their most unique aspects, their instrumentation, does not severely limit their performance moving forward as they often have so far. At the same time, a performance of one of Andriessen’s monsters is always an event because of the challenge of mounting them. That specialness is part of the appeal, too.

 They say to never meet your heroes or they will disappoint you. Louis Andriessen was the exception that proved that rule. He was gregarious, generous, mischevous, encouraging and supportive. In Amsterdam in 2011, we attended a concert together by the Steve Lehman Octet. The absolute virtuosity of those musicians and the metrical magic in their music was astounding, and Louis was like a giddy boy taking it in, wondering out loud how they did it. that joie de vivre was infectious, as was his encouragement of younger musicians. He sometimes seemed to lack ego (though he certainly had one. How could he not?). I still cannot believe that I was lucky enough not just to meet him, but to work with and befriend him!

 A giant has fallen. Living in a world without Louis feels apocalyptic. Or, it would, if he himself didn’t seem to have an ironic relationship with death. “Death is when you don’t piss anymore, you don’t shit anymore, you don’t think anymore” sings the boys’ choir at the end of “Dancing on the Bones” in the Triology of the Last Day. It is a part of life as much as birth and everything in between. That attitude is also one of his great lessons. To paraphrase Gabriel Garcia Marquez, said: don’t cry because it ended; smile because it happened.

Godspeed, dear Louis.

by Armando Bayolo
Ambient, CD Review, File Under?

Matt Evans – touchless (CD Review)

Matt Evans

Touchless

Whatever’s Clever Records

 

“touchless questions the phenomenology of touch, reaching to transcend the boundaries of the physical to embody touch while remaining touchless.” – Matt Evans

 

In 2019, Matt Evans lost his partner, the sculptor and eco-feminist artist Devra Freelander. He commemorates both grief and the light that came into his life as a result of their relationship on the recording touchless. Synthesizers, field recordings, piano, and additional acoustic instruments provided by guest musicians come together to create beguiling textures. 

 

Two piano pieces bookend the recording, Arcto 2 and Arcto 1. Artco 2, which begins the recording, consists mostly of muted chords in reasonably predictable patterns, only to go sideways at the end and venture into significant chromaticism. Arcto 1 repeats a middle register drone against which a repeating chordal ostinato and water sounds contend. 

 

Two other pieces that form a pair are “Solar Silhouette” and “Fluorescent Sunrise,” made of drones with extensive harmonics. The former is girded by octaves in bass and treble; rising glissandos populate the latter, perhaps as a slight programmatic evocation of sunrise.  

 

The title track is the most elaborate, with a harmonic series reinforced by Tristan Kasten-Krause’s double bass and, in multiple registers, David Lackner’s tenor saxophone. Overlaid with dissonant sustained tones, the piece serves as an eloquent statement on loss, in which unresolved tensions coexist with spectral harmony. A coda of trills adds a sense of belated keening, which cuts off suddenly; the inference is clear.

 

A modal canon, played on the piano, alongside sustained tones from violin, played by Elori Saxi, are the main components of “Firn.” The canons begin to operate in phase as Saxi plays in successively higher registers. Partway through, Kasten-Krause adds low register octaves to the proceedings, which reach a significant level of syncopation. Gradually, the music returns to being in sync. The reference to early minimalism by Steve Reich is clear, but Evans is also concerned with creating a version of ambiance that pushes the genre’s envelope in terms of expressivity. touchless is touching. 

 

  • Christian Carey

 

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

Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion (CD Review)

Caroline Shaw

Sō Percussion, Dawn Upshaw, and Gilbert Kalish

The Narrow Sea

Nonesuch CD/DL

 

Caroline Shaw and So Percussion

Let the Soil Play its Simple Part

Nonesuch CD/DL

 

 

The last live performance I saw before the pandemic hit New York was Caroline Shaw with Sō Percussion at Miller Theatre, which I wrote about for Musical America. It was Shaw’s debut as a solo vocalist (she has performed as an ensemble member in Roomful for Teeth for several years). Hearing these pieces again reminds me of the joy of concert life before the pandemic. I am glad to revisit them.

 

Two Nonesuch releases document the material she presented at Miller, one featuring Shaw as vocalist and the other the soprano Dawn Upshaw. Upshaw is joined by her longtime collaborator the pianist Gilbert Kalish.

 

The title piece on The Narrow Sea finds Shaw reworking spirituals from the 19th century collection Music from the Sacred Harp. The centerpiece is “Poor Wayfarin’ Stranger,” with a different tune to the timeless words. The instrumentation that accompanies the five parts of the piece is imaginative, including synthesizers, poured water, flower pots and the piano played like a dulcimer. Kalish and Sō Percussion collaborate well, particularly on the ghostly introduction to Part Three, which depicts shades of Henry Cowell. Upshaw sings with fluid legato and declaims the Sacred Harp texts vividly and emotively.

 

“Taxidermy” is an additional piece for Sō Percussion, who once again add flower pots to a considerable arsenal of percussion instruments. Steel pan and a hailstorm of chiming attacks swell and recede and are succeeded by layers of pitched percussion. A simple chord progression played by mallet instruments is elaborated by steel pan and a canon of spoken word is followed by the chord progression returning to serve as coda.

 

Let the Soil Play its Simple Part is a more collaborative venture, in which Shaw and Sō Percussion spent three days in a recording studio together creating an eclectic work, both textually and musically. It begins with “To the Sky,” in which Shaw’s voice is synthetically manipulated and set against mallet filigrees and Jason Treuting’s syncopated drumming. “Other Song” was originally part of an orchestra piece that Shaw composed to celebrate Sarah Bareilles. Here it becomes a banquet of battery, with the Sō Percussion players bringing, as Shaw puts it,”all of their toys to the table.”

 

Four of the pieces on the recording are duets. The title track is a duet between Shaw and steel pan specialist Josh Quillen. It features Shaw’s characteristic free-floating chordal writing alongside stream-of-consciousness lyrics. “The Flood is Following Me” is a setting of James Joyce that is groove forward with Shaw’s voice blending with keyboard harmonies and synth bass. It may be the first musical depiction of James Joyce with a hook. Joyce makes a reappearance on “A Veil Upon the Waves.”

Perhaps the most enigmatic section of the piece is a radical revision of ABBA’s “Lay All Your Love on Me,” just a small section of the middle of the song for Shaw and a marimba playing a chorale-like progression, with a gradual accumulation of Sō Percussion members joining around the instrument to build out an ostinato. “Cast the Bells in Sand” features both an IDM ambience and elaborate drumming from Treuting. Treuting and Shaw duet on “Long Ago We Counted,” which features nonsense syllables instead of conventional text.

 

A poem by Anne Carson is the text for “A Gradual Dazzle,” with thrumming bass drum and a vibraphone outlining subtle harmony that underscores some of Shaw’s most chromatic singing. The final song, “Some Bright Morning,” is a duet with Eric Cha-Beach, who mostly plays a single note but finds numerous textures to animate it.  Shaw plays with the lyrics from another gospel standard, “I’ll Fly Away,” rendering the result in gentle melismas.

 

Both of these recordings display abundant imagination and felicitous collaborations. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey

 

 

 

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical

John Luther Adams – Arctic Dreams

Cold Blue Music has released a new CD by John Luther Adams titled Arctic Dreams. Scored for four vocalists and four strings, the seven movements on this album also incorporate layers of digital delay that add a richness to the texture. The result is a warm ethereal ambiance throughout the album. Adams writes in the liner notes that “The sung text is a series of ‘Arctic Litanies,’ composed of the names of Arctic places, plants, birds, weather, and seasons, in the languages of the Iñupiat and Gwich’in peoples of Alaska.” The album is dedicated to the late Barry Lopez, a long-time friend of Adams, and the music, characteristically, is heavily influenced by nature and the Arctic tundra. John Luther Adams is a Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award-winning composer whose experiences in rural Alaska have been a decisive influence on his music throughout a long and distinguished career.

The string music of Arctic Dreams reaches back to the Festival of Alaska Native Arts where it was first heard in 1993 as part of Adam’s composition Earth and the Great Weather. Choral music was added to this in 2000. Arctic Dreams represents a re-balancing of these forces so that it has become a completely new piece. The harmonies for all the works on the album are derived from the first seven odd-numbered harmonics above the low D in the double bass. The tones are played on open strings and there is extensive re-tuning of the instruments so that only the natural harmonics are heard throughout.

The first track of Arctic Dreams is The Place Where You Go to Listen, and this is also the title of a John Luther Adams sound installation located in the Museum of the North in Fairbanks, Alaska. The installation is driven by the weather, time of day, phases of the moon, earthquake activity and other geophysical data gathered in real time. This is then used to select the sound components of the installation in the moment. The portrayal of natural phenomena also seems to be the basis for this track – it as if we are watching a sunrise on the tundra. The movement begins with a deep chord in the lower strings followed by voices singing a single syllable. The sustained low chords provide a warm and welcoming feel, yet there is gravitas present also. Some dissonance in the upper voices add a sense of mystery, and the tones seem to be reaching upward with a sunny, optimistic feel. The voices are attended by high, silvery sounds that add a glittery polish, like looking into the Arctic sun on a clear morning.

John Luther Adams does not write music that simply describes nature, rather, nature inhabits his music. We hear nature speaking to us directly and the most consistently surprising thing is how accepting nature is after all we have done to harm the planet. Pointed Mountains Scattered All Around, track 2, exemplifies this with foundational bass tones combined with lighter voices to make a lovely sound, climbing higher in pitch as our gaze looks upward at the mountain peaks. The music could be angry or forbidding, but there is a hospitable feeling conveyed instead. The bass line ambles down, descending from the heights, settling with the voices as they fade at the finish.

Very different emotions are conveyed by The Circle of Suns and Moons, track 3. This is spare and mysterious music with a chilling, almost alien presence. The high strings seem to twinkle in the night as voices climb very high to create a sense of distance and remoteness. This is less organic than the other pieces, but more evocative of a cold clear night in the company of the moon and the stars. The Circle of Winds, track 4, is just that, a flurry of short stringendo strokes in the low strings and a dense rising and falling in the layered texture that is reminiscent of a whirlwind. The disconnected runs of strings form an amazing aural construct. The color lightens as warm voices creep in, sustained and ethereal – completely different from the power of the opening. The feeling is now optimistic and bright, like a blue sky after a storm. The whirlwind sounds return, then recede at the finish.

River With No Willows, track 5, features lovely harmonies in the voices and what sounds like a jangle of bells in the accompaniment that create a sense of calm and meditation. All the sounds here are delicate and beautiful. The One That Stays In Winter, track 6, is a wonderfully abstract sounding of bird calls created by the voices and strings. Flocks of different birds are heard gathering deep in the wilderness and the sounds increase – the birds clearly own this place. The final track, Where the Waves Splash, Hitting Again and Again, is the shortest piece at just under 2 minutes. This consists of a series soft vocal whispers that evoke the waves of an ocean. It is as if we are standing on the edge of a wide beach, just barely able to hear the distant surf.

The excellent voices on Arctic Dreams are supplied by Synergy Vocals from the UK, who have performed works by composers such as Steve Reich, David Lang, John Adams and Arvo Pärt, among others. The string players, similarly distinguished, are Robin Lorentz, violin, Ron Lawrence, viola, Michael Finckel, cello and Robert Black, double bass. All of the performances on this album are perfectly in touch with the spirit of the music. The processing, mixing and mastering, so integral to the realization of this album, was ably executed by Nathaniel Reichman.

All of the tracks on Arctic Dreams bring us into close association with Arctic nature. The music is always reflective and seems to be telling us that nature will eventually prevail, despite our rebellion against it. We are living in a state of grace with nature and must adapt to it rather than seek to conquer it. Arctic Dreams affirms the constancy and primacy of the environmental perspective that has always been present in the music of John Luther Adams.

Arctic Dreams is available directly from Cold Blue Music, Amazon Music and other retail outlets.

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

“Blue” Gene Tyranny Boxed Set (CD Review)

“Blue” Gene Tyranny

Degrees of Freedom Found

Unseen Worlds

6XCD boxed set/digital

 

Composer and pianist “Blue” Gene Tyranny passed away in December 2020 of complications due to diabetes. The boxed set Degrees of Freedom Found, a generous six-CD compilation of tracks from 1963-2019, was already in the works and contains liner notes by Tyranny. Thus, it is an endorsed release rather than a posthumous archival grab. 

 

He was associated with a number of prominent musicians, Robert Ashley, Carla Bley, Bill Dixon, and Iggy Pop, whom he joined on an early tour of the Stooges. Most viewed him as a generous collaborator. Ashley, in particular, afforded Tyranny a considerable amount of freedom in crafting the music he played in the opera “Perfect Lives (Private Parts),” in which he enacted the role of Buddy, the world’s greatest piano player.

 

Like Tyranny’s talents, the boxed set is eclectic in makeup and it is curated roughly by category rather than chronology. The set begins with selections that highlight the extraordinary pianist he was, with a warm touch yet fluid dexterity. The stylistic incorporations of the music, even within a single work, is wide-ranging throughout. Thus, one can be in the midst of listening to a minimalist-inspired piece and suddenly swerve through blues or honky tonk pianism. His detractors took this to be undisciplined and digressive, but appreciators knew better that the amalgamations the pieces underwent were intrinsic to their design.

 

If one dipped into a later disc first, they might get the impression that Tyranny was more interested in synthesizers, chamber orchestra, jazz, or theatrical vocal works than solo piano: all are here. The performance dates range from 1963, when the composer was still in Ann Arbor, to later presentations in Montana, Massachusetts at Jacob’s Pillow, Philadelphia, and a number in New York, which became his longtime base of operations, culminating with a valedictory piece featuring winds from 2019, titled “The Forecaster Hopes.”

 

Some of the included works are aphoristic, the length of pop songs. Often the most evocative all too quickly vanish. One piece, “Meditation” for trio and chamber orchestra, is spliced together (seamlessly) between two performances thirty years apart. There are also large-scale pieces, such as Tyranny’s epic monodrama “The Driver’s Son,” the half-hour long piano work “We All Watch the Sun and the Moon (for a Moment of Insight), and “Barn Fever,” a substantial synthesizer piece with a rollicking groove and fiendishly fleet soloing. 

 

Degrees of Freedom Found is a substantial amount of music, but a deep dive into Tyranny’s work is amply rewarding.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey