Sufjan Stevens is an indie rock luminary who, throughout his career, has explored a number of styles. His first contemporary classical release, Reflections will be released on Asthmatic Kitty on May 19th. The music is for piano duo and performed by Time Andres and Conor Hanick.
This meeting of stalwart musicians crosses the boundaries of pop and post-minimalism to create music that is carefully crafted, well-paced, and has a strong sense of drama. Below is the recording’s lead off single, “Ekstasis,” both in a visualizer and a live performance.
Sam Gendel’s next LP, blueblue, is out on October 14th via Leaving Records. Today, Leaving has released the album’s first single, Uroko (鱗, fish scales), as a stream. Have a listen to the post-jazz goodness below.
The Dream Syndicate release the album “Ultraviolet Battle Hymns and True Confessions” on Fire (June 10th). The group has dropped a teaser track, “Every Time You Come Around:” see the embed below.
On June 10, World Circuit will release Les Racines, an album by Malian guitarist Vieux Farka Touré.
The third single on the album, “Oglala Kaurene,” has been given video treatment. Check out Touré’s guitar stylings, which draw upon the work of previous Malian musicians while remaining distinctive in its deployment of punchy lines and looping polyrhythms. He isn’t known as “Hendrix of the Sahara” for nothing.
Touring
May 13—Freight & Salvage—Berkeley, CA
May 14—Center for the Arts—Grass Valley, CA
May 15—Felton Music Hall—Felton, CA
May 17—Musical Instrument Museum Theater—Phoenix, AZ
Celebrating a new partnership between Nonesuch and International Anthem, two of the gold standard labels for adventurous music, January 24 will see the release of Jeff Parker and the New Breed’s Suite for Max Brown. Combining samples, some decidedly old school in origin, and exploratory improvisation, the music makes connections to Parker’s long tenure in Tortoise while adding still more depth to his musical profile.
Listeners will doubtless wonder: who is Max Brown? Parker’s mother’s maiden name was Maxine Brown, but her nickname is Max. The New Breed band name comes from the name of a store owned by Parker’s late father. Thus, the entire project is enacted as a tribute to family. The suite is Parker’s most personal, musically potent, statement to date.
On October 25th, the recording Composers at Westminster (WCC19109) will be released via digital platforms. The program notes are below.
“Composers at Westminster”
The five composers featured on this recording are full-time members of the composition faculty at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. The programmed selections display a range of musical styles and works for different forces: three of the college’s choirs as well as voice faculty, pianists, and visiting string artists.
Stefan Young is not only a composer but an estimable pianist. He performs some of his own piano pieces from a musical diary called Thoughts for the Day: here we get a peek at his ponderings for January. Young also plays in Ronald Hemmel’s string quintet Night Moves, a work written to accompany dance. The Other World is Young’s choral settingof an ancient Egyptian text (in translation), performed by Schola Cantorum, conducted by James Jordan. Clarum Sonum, a group of recent graduates, contribute Jay Kawarsky’s setting of Rami Shapiro’s poem Unending Love.
Joel Phillips is represented by two Christina Rosetti songs, performed by voice faculty member Victoria Browers and pianist J.J. Penna, as well as a setting of William Blake’s beloved poem “Little Lamb,” performed by Westminster Choir, conducted by Joe Miller. Two of Christian Carey’s Seven Magnificat Antiphons are performed by Kantorei, conducted by Amanda Quist. They are settings of ancient Latin texts that traditionally are sung during Advent. Carey’s first of two groups of Jane Kenyon songs are also performed by Browers and Penna.
Composers at Westminster celebrates the creativity of its faculty. It serves as a document of just some of the many collaborations they regularly undertake with Westminster faculty and students and in the wider musical community.
-Christian Carey
Program
Stefan Young
The Other World – 5:27
(text: Egyptian, 3500 BC, translated by Robert Hillyer, music by Stefan Young, Copyright 2018)
Westminster Schola Cantorum, James Jordan, conductor
Joel Phillips
2- Press Onward – 3:24
3- Sleep, Little Baby – 3:38
(poems by Christina Rossetti, music by Joel Phillips, copyright 1999)
Victoria Browers, soprano; J.J. Penna, piano
Christian Carey
Magnificat Antiphons
4-O Sapientia – 2:20
5-O Oriens – 2:45
(texts – 5th Century Latin, music by Christian B. Carey, GIA Publications, copyright 2019)
Westminster Kantorei, Amanda Quist, conductor
Ronald A. Hemmel –
6- Night Moves (Piano Quintet) – 10:55
(music by Ronald A. Hemmel, copyright 2014)
Leah Asher, Maya Bennardo, Meagan Burke, and Erin Wright, strings; Stefan Young, piano
J. A. Kawarsky
7- Unending Love – 3:41
(poem by Rami Shapiro, music by J.A. Kawarsky, copyright 2015)
Clarum Sonum, conducted by Rider Foster.
Stefan Young – Thoughts for the Day – January
(music by Stefan Young, copyright 2018)
8- Jan. 4. Vigorous – 1:52
9- Jan. 11. Driving – 1:43
10- Jan. 28. Slowly – 1:00
11- Jan. 31. Remembering Peter – 2:20
Stefan Young, piano
Christian B. Carey – Three Kenyon Songs
12- Song – 2:17
13 – Otherwise – 4:32
14- Let Evening Come – 4:13
(poems by Jane Kenyon used by kind permission of Graywolf Press,
music by Christian B. Carey, File Under Music, copyright 2019)
Victoria Browers, soprano; J.J. Penna, piano
Joel Phillips
15- Little Lamb – 4:09
(poem by William Blake, music by Joel Phillips, G. Schirmer, copyright 1997)
Westminster Choir, Joe Miller, conductor
Total timing: 54 minutes
Dr. Stefan Hayden Young is Professor at Westminster Choir College. He received a B.M. from Rollins College, certificates in harmony, piano, and solfège from the American School of the Arts, Fontainebleau, France, an M.M. in piano from the Juilliard School, and a Ph.D. in composition from Rutgers University. Commissions have included the Haverford Singers and NJMTA. He has written for various media including orchestra, band, choir, chamber ensembles, voice and piano, and a variety of solo instruments. He has also served as director of music and organist at a number of churches in New Jersey and on Martha’s Vineyard. At Westminster, Dr. Young is director of the Composition Week summer session, coordinator of the student composition concerts, and coordinator of the composers’ project with the Westminster Community Orchestra. In 2003, his Anthology of Art Songs was released onCD.
Joel Phillips is Professor at Westminster Choir College where he has taught since 1985. Phillips has received a number of commissions well as awards, the latter including annual recognition from ASCAP, the G. Schirmer Young Composer’s Award, and a BMI Award. His choral works are published by G. Schirmer, Inc., Transcontinental Music Publications, GIA, and Mark Foster Music (Shawnee Press).
Dr. J.A. Kawarsky is Professor at Westminster Choir College. He received a B.M. from Iowa State University, and an M.M. and D.M.A. from Northwestern University. He has written for all genres including solo instrument, orchestra, band, choral, vocal and theater. Prayers for Bobby. for choir, orchestra, narrator and soloists, has received numerous performances throughout the United States and Canada and was recorded by the New Jersey Gay Men’s Chorus and members of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC. Iowa State University premiered the alto saxophone and orchestral winds piece, Fastidious Notes. 17 universities throughout the United States commissioned the symphonic band work Red Training Reels. The cantata Sacred Rights, Sacred Song has been performed throughout the USA and Israel. Navona Recordings released Kawarsky’s 2018 portrait CD, Spoon Hanging from My Nose. Yelton Rhodes Music, Transcontinental Music, and Southern Music publish his compositions.
Ronald A. Hemmel is Professor at Westminster Choir College. Dr. Hemmel received his B.M. in Music Education from Westminster Choir College, his M.M. in Music Theory/Composition and Organ Performance from James Madison University, and his M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Rutgers University. He is a Fellow of the American Guild of Organists. Before coming to Westminster, in 1994 he directed the music program at Woodberry Forest School. His compositions include works for solo instruments, voice and piano, choir, and both small and large ensembles. Several of his choral works are published by Yelton Rhodes Music, G.I.A. Publications, and Transcontinental Music Publications.
Christian Carey is Associate Professor at Westminster Choir College. He has created over eighty musical works in a variety of genres and styles, performed throughout the United States and in England, Italy, and Japan. Performances of his compositions have been given by ACME, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Atlantic Chamber Orchestra, C4, Cassatt String Quartet, Chamber Players of the League of Composers, loadbang, Locrian Chamber Players, Manhattan Choral Ensemble, New York New Music Ensemble, Righteous Girls, Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra, and Westminster Kantorei. His score for the play Gilgamesh Variations was staged at Bushwick Starr Theatre in Brooklyn, NY. For Milton, a flute/piano duo,has been recorded twice, for Perspectives of New Music/Open Space and New Focus Recordings.
On October 25th, Constellation Records will release Entanglement, the second solo release by Jessica Moss. A violinist and vocalist who is one of the central members of Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and co-founder of Black Ox Orchestar, Moss draws upon a prodigious range of influences: from the post-rock and avant-klezmer of the aforementioned groups, to drones and loops reminiscent of post-minimalism. Over the past year, she has honed the material of Entanglement at over eighty concerts, developing a side-long piece, “Particles,” and a suite of four “Fractals.” Impassioned, moody, and slow-burning, her compositions are some of the most compelling fare we have to anticipate this Fall.
NEW YORK – Nestled snuggly in the midst of Greenwich Village, Smalls Live is an intimate space, but a vital one for the jazz scene. Over the past decade, the venue has hosted thousands of performances – 11,000 of them are archived on the site for subscription-based streaming. With a nice piano and fastidious sound, it is an enjoyable place to experience live music. “Nestled snuggly,” but comfortably, was how I felt on June 16th, as my partner and I were fortunate to garner two of the last seats. The venue was full of a wide cross section of attendees; seasoned jazz buffs and regulars mingled with a decidedly younger set. If pianist Aaron Parks — and Smalls — can continue to draw such a healthy-sized audience from a similar cross-section of demographics, signs are most encouraging.
Parks was celebrating the release of Find the Way, his second CD as a leader on ECM. He was joined, both on the recording session and at Smalls, by bassist Ben Street and drummer Billy Hart, veterans who have played together in various contexts in the past. Find the Way consists of eight originals and one tune by Ian Bernard: the CD’s title track. The live set featured selections from the album, as well as two tunes from elsewhere: an as yet unrecorded Parks original “Isle of Everything” and George Shearing’s “Conception,” which Parks has recorded with Anders Christensen. The first of these vacillated between free tempo bluesy excursions and more incisive post-bop passages. Hart played his cymbals with abandon while Street juxtaposed walking lines with countermelodies high on the neck of his double bass. “Conception” was tightly knit and taken uptempo, demonstrating the pianist’s facility with wide-ranging arpeggios and the rhythm section’s seamless coordination.
The trio sidled into a mid-tempo groove, with a plethora of gestural imitation between them, on the album cut “Melquíades.” “Adrift” included a guest musician: the saxophonist Dayna Stephens. Both Find the Way and Stephens’s Criss Cross recording I’ll Take My Chances feature this composition. Parks and Stephens spurred each other on, creating ebullient soaring lines in some of the most inspired playing of the evening. Not to be outdone, Hart played forcefully and dexterously on “Hold Music,” a piece written by Parks to showcase his colleague’s legendary drumming. The final number of the set was the CD’s title track, which demonstrated the pianist’s impressionist leanings, boasting limpid splashes of harmony redolent of Debussy and Ravel. As we departed, there was a line out the door, eager to hear the trio’s second set. Encouraging signs indeed.
Anja Lechner and François Couturier Greenwich House, NYC February 18, 2017. Photo by Claire Stefani
Francois Couturier and Anja Lechner
Greenwich Music House
New York
February 18, 2017
By Christian Carey
Five Things to Like About Francois Couturier and Anja Lechner in duo performance
Versatility — These are two musicians who are able to play in a plethora of styles: classical, jazz, world music, et cetera. I first interviewed cellist Anja Lechner for a Signal to Noise feature about the bandoneonist Dino Saluzzi. I was impressed with her versatility then and remain so today. Pianist Francois Couturier is an eminently qualified performing partner for Lechner.
Ensemble — Even though most of their set consisted of composed pieces — Couturier had sheet music on the piano throughout — the improvisational directions that they took the works featured a plethora of surprises and sharp turns into different musical terrain. The duo hardly needed to look at each other to turn on a dime into a new section or tempo.
Variety — The concert included pieces by Couturier, with the back-to-back presentation of Voyage and Papillons creating a swirl of timbres and techniques. Federico Mompou also featured prominently, with renditions of three of his works on the program, including Soleil Rouge, a sumptuous encore. Komitas, Gurdjieff, and a transcription of an Abel piece originally for viola da gamba were other offerings. But the standout was Anouar Brahem’s Vagues, a work that the duo had previously performed with the composer. It brought out a tenderness and poise that was most impressive.
Technique and effects — Both Couturier and Lechner demonstrated abundant performing ability. However, conventional playing was just a part of their presentation. The duo used a host of effects, Couturier playing inside the piano, Lechner supplying all manner of harmonics, pizzicatos, and alternate bowing techniques. This gave the abundant lyricism of their performance just the right amount of seasoning.
Tarkovsky Quartet CD — Happily for those who missed this intimate event, or for those who heard it and want more, Couturier and Lechner appear as members of the Tarkovsky Quartet (which also includes soprano saxophonist Jean-Marc Lerché and accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier) on a new ECM CD, Nuit Blanche.
