Tag: File Under ? blog

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

Olivia de Prato – Panorama (CD Review)

 

Panorama – Olivia de Prato (New Focus)

 

Violinist Olivia de Prato has established herself as a staunch advocate of new music. In addition to her work with Mivos Quartet, she is a talented soloist. On her second solo release for New Focus Recordings, Panorama, she undertakes a recital disc of female composers. A number of the pieces include electronics, fleshing out the solo texture in diverting fashion.

 

The album opens with Missy Mazzoli’s violin plus electronics piece Tooth and Nail (2010). The original version was written for violist Nadia Sirota; this is a transcription for violin. The piece begins with string sounds in the electronics accompanying the live violin. De Prato digs into the vigorous passagework, executing arpeggiations and glissandos with incisiveness. As the piece progresses the electronics add a lower register to the piece, ending the piece. This is probably my favorite of Mazzoli’s instrumental works.

 

Jeom Jaeng Yi (Fortune Teller) by Jen Shyu is inspired by American polyartist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, including some of her poetry as a spoken word component. The gestures in the solo part are based on speech rhythms. Speaking isn’t constant but de Prato makes clear the connections between violin and voice. There is a mournful cast to the piece: someone’s fortune was disappointing.

 

The title track, for violin and electronics by Angelic Negrón, employs a bath of ambient synths and supple legato phrasing from de Prato, often with glissandos, that employs sumptuous high notes. Mallet samples and piano press the music forward, with repeating passages and pizzicato in the violin responding to the post-minimal electronics. Gradually the music picks up speed, with regularly articulated synth chords and oscillations in the violin. The texture becomes fuller, with a return of synth ostinatos, and once again upper register violin glissandos soar over the top of the varied palette of electronic sounds. The coda features a two note oscillation and clouds of chords accompanying the violin’s final melodic strands.

 

Mapping a Joyful Path, by Miya Masaoka, employs pitch bends in places in the synth parts. Mostly, however, the electronics part consists of sustained sine tones that are varied in register, with overtones skirting in and out of the texture. De Prato plays with varying bow pressure, aggressive repeated notes, microtones in double stops, and Eastern sliding tone to interpret a multifaceted and fetching piece. It finishes with a held altissimo note in the violin and the drones receding.

 

The recording concludes with Balconies by British composer Samantha Fernando. The piece can be played by five live violinists or one with a pre-recorded part. It begins with an arpeggiated flourish and overlapping ostinatos. After another iteration of the opening arpeggio, the texture thickens in the second section, moving from the triadic opening to secundal chords articulated with repeating notes. Soft pizzicatos interrupt the chordal texture, and the arpeggio announces a third section, this one supplying more spacing, but no less complicated harmonies. Melodic fragments are taken up, breaking up the verticals for a time. Melody and richly constructed chords then interact. The original gesture is reconfigured as chords in the alto register, followed by a coda of pizzicatos. Balconies is an arresting piece on recording. I would love to hear de Prato and four friends playing it live.

 

Once again, Olivia de Prato has presented a program of fascinating musical discoveries. Panorama supports female composers with advocacy and skill. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Composers, File Under?, Songs, Twentieth Century Composer

This Island: Susan Narucki and Donald Berman on Avie (CD Review)

This Island

Susan Narucki, soprano; Donald Berman, piano

Avie Records

 

Soprano Susan Narucki has long been known as an advocate for contemporary music, as has collaborative pianist Donald Berman. On their latest recording, for Avie, the duo present a program of art songs by female composers active in the first half of the twentieth century. Three of the song sets are world premieres.

 

Narucki was inspired to begin collecting the songs for this recording by Rainer Maria Rilke. Specifically, in one of his letters he mentioned the Belgian Symbolist poet Émile Verhaeren, one of the most highly regarded poets of his country. After reading some of Verhaeren’s poetry, and finding it captivating, the soprano set about looking for songs that employed it.

 

The program Narucki assembles uses Verhaeren as a focal point, though other poets are also included. The liner notes discussing the program are well-curated. I wish they were more legible in the CD booklet, but looking at them online allows an easier time reading Narucki’s fine essay. Narucki and Berman are an excellent performing partnership. Both are fastidious in presenting detailed interpretations of art songs. At the same time, they are consummately expressive performers.

 

Belgian composer Irène Fuerison (1875-1931) created  an entire group of Verhaeren settings, Les heure claires, Les heures aprés-midi, Les Heures soire, Op. 50. The poet wrote dozens of love poems, and Fuerison selected from among these a half dozen that  celebrate long-lasting love. As with some of the other programmed composers, the influence of Debussy and Ravel looms large. Ô la splendeur de notre joie has a rhythmically intricate ostinato in the accompaniment and a juxtaposition of speech-like repeated notes and soaring melodies, rendered with considerable warmth by Narucki. 

 

Nadia Boulanger collaborated with her teacher Raoul Pugno on Les Heures Claire (1909), settings of Verhaeren from which Narucki programs four selections. After the passing of her sister Lili, Nadia gave up composition for teaching. Dozens of prominent composers studied with her, including a number from the United States. Still, it is unfortunate that she didn’t afford herself the opportunity to compose more, as is made clear by Les Heures Claire. Le ciel en nuit s’est déplié is reminiscent of Gabriel Fauré’s songs, with a dash of Debussy. Vous m’avez dit has a simply constructed yet lustrous melody. Que te yeux claire, te yeux dété features a number of modal twists and turns and a soaring vocal melody. The final song, Ta bonté, is slow paced and elegant, a touching close to an appealing song set.

 

Three songs from 1947 composed by Henriëtte Bosmans are settings of twentieth century Dutch poets Adriaan Roland Holst and J.W.F Werumeus Buning. Dit eiland features plaintive, angular singing and similarly wide-ranging lines in the accompaniment. After a passionate beginning, it ends in a hush with enigmatic harmonies. In den regen has an emphatic vocal line buoyed by a spider web of arpeggiations in the piano. Once again, Bosmans relishes pulling back the dynamics and pacing partway through, with supple singing and figurations returning as an echo in the piece’s denouement. Narucki’s pianissimo declamation is exquisite. In Teeken den hemel in het zand der zee, Bosmans uses whole tone scales and pandiatonicism in a gradual unfurling of the words, sumptuously expressed, over carefully spaced chords.

 

Elizabeth Claisse is an enigmatic figure, only known to have written 4 Mélodies in 1922-23. Despite Narucki’s exertions, there doesn’t appear to be anything known about her biography. Could it be a pen name? One wonders. It is a pity there isn’t more of her work to sing, because this set of songs by various poets, while derivative, is quite well wrought. It begins with Issue, an Yves Arnaud setting that uses a few chromatic chord progressions that are proto Les Six. One hears Stravinsky’s influence in the stentorian bitonal tremolando chords that open the third song, Philosophe, a setting of Franz Toussaint’s troping of Keng-Tsin. The final song is the sole Verhaeren setting, Les Mendiants, of a piece with Poulenc. Berman’s voicing of its darkly hued harmonies is particularly beautiful, and Narucki counters with richly colored sound.

 

The last group of songs are by Marion Bauer (1882-1955), who taught contemporary music at NYU and wrote one of the first books in English that discussed the Second Viennese School and other twentieth century composers. Milton Babbitt was among her students. She also spent a great deal of time in France, and the influence of French composers on her work is clear. Four Poems, Op.24 (1916) are settings of the American Symbolist John Gould Fletcher, whose evocative imagery is an excellent complement to Verhaeren’s work. These were Bauer’s first songs, yet they are artfully written. “Through the Upland Meadows” is a miniature drama that features several juxtaposed motives. Here as elsewhere, Berman’s sense of pedaling and phrasing is flawless. Narucki explores a variety of dynamic contrasts and vocal colors that embellish the word painting. Her high notes, well-displayed here, are glorious. “I Love the Night” has a boldness that resembles an aria and includes a thrilling piano postlude. “Midsummer Dreams” uses the lilting 6/8 feel, like a boat on water, to create another vivid scene. “In the Bosom of the Desert” completes the recording with a song that begins slowly, with a high-lying emphatic vocal line, and then moves to a lyrical mid-tempo with the voice sitting in the middle register, performing parlando. The beginning melody returns, this time with an embellished modal  accompaniment. Bass octaves emphatically build to the song’s climax, where Narucki performs the final high notes with glistening intensity.

This Island is extraordinarily well curated. One hopes it will engender further treasure hunts for forgotten female composers. Furthermore, the program eminently suits Narucki and Berman, both in terms of taste and temperament. It is one of the best recordings I have heard thus far in 2023.

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, File Under?

Hearing Landscapes Hearing Icescapes – Lei Lang (CD Review)

Hearing Landscapes Hearing Icescapes

Lei Liang

New Focus Recordings

 

From 2012-2022, composer Lei Liang did a residency at the Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego, where he is a full professor. At Qualcomm, Liang worked with scientists in a variety of disciplines –  software developers, robotic engineers, material scientists, cultural heritage engineers, and oceanographers – to infuse his music with ecological and ethnographic elements. The result, Hearing Landscapes Hearing Icescapes, are two electronic works that incorporate samples, folk songs,  and a few live musicians. 

Hearing Landscapes is an homage to Huang Binhong (1865-1955), a gifted landscape painter. The audio components of this electronic score were in part realized by analyzing the types of brushstrokes used by Binbong, and translating them into sound. Visual artists did further analysis of the painting using their own methodologies. There are three samples from 1950s China used successively in each of the piece’s movements: a hu-aer folk song performed by Zhu Zonglu, a renowned singer from northwest Qinghai Province, xingsheng (crosstalk) in the Beijing dialect by comedians Hou Baolin and Guo Qiru, and guqin performer Wu Jin-lüe playing “Water and Mist over Xiaoxiang.” Other sonic devices used by Lei Liang include a “rainstorm” made by dropping styrofoam peanuts in an open piano, and the distorting of spoken voices to create indecipherable “tea house chatter.”

 

It is fascinating to  learn of the roles of many integrated disciplines used to fashion Hear Landscapes. The musical results are compelling. In “High Mountain,” the “strokes” found in the melodic lines, passages of upper partial drones, and the piano storm, ebb and flow and set the stage for Zhu Zonglu’s singing. Movement 2, “Mother Tongue,” a reference to Lei Liang’s own preferred dialect, creates swaths of distressed, unintelligible speech alongside the banter of the two comedians. “Water and Mist” returns to the clarion harmonics and brushed melodies. Dripping water appears alongside Wu Jin-lüe’s elegant playing of the guqin. A passage that incorporates sustained strings follows, succeeded by a lengthy passage of  solo guqin and water sound receding until the piece’s conclusion.

 

Hearing Icescapes uses different source material, including recordings of contemporary performers: David Aguila, trumpet, flutist Teresa Diaz de Cossio, and violinist Myra Hinrichs. Oceanographers provide sounds they had recorded in the nearly inaccessible Chuckchi Sea, north of Alaska. It takes echolocation as a formal design, with one part of the piece indicating the “Call” and the other the “Response” of this phenomenon. Ice, wind, bearded seals, belugas, and bowhead whales create an extraordinary variety of sounds that, without this project, would be available to be heard by few humans. At over twice the duration of Hearing Landscapes, Hearing Icescapes is expansive, the first movement gradually unfolding from the cracking of thin ice to flowing water to an effusive whales’ chorus at its close. Throughout, crescendos and diminuendos of water sounds are accompanied by short whistles from whales. The live instruments are fairly subdued, playing sustained tones underneath the surface of the soundscape. 

 

The second movement begins with snatches of the main source material, a combination of the ice noises and whale song. The live instruments are then foregrounded, imitating the whale sounds in a response to the first movement’s mammalian outcrying. Hinrich uses bow pressure to create an imitation of the ice noises. Aguila is an imaginative interpreter of the more boisterous sounds from “Call,” and de Cossio mimics the whale whistling with considerable fervor. A pause, followed by falling ice, demarcates the movement’s structure. Once again, the whales take up their echolocation, this time in a virtual colloquy with the live instruments. The combined forces end the piece in thrilling fashion.

 

Artists are often, by necessity, so focused on short term deadlines for projects, that they don’t get to innovate. Lie Liang’s decade spent with his colleagues at Qualcomm Institute has resulted in considerable innovation and two significant works that resonate with cultural studies and ecology, while at the same time providing diverting music. Recommended. 

 

-Christian Carey 

 

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

No Cosmos (CD Review)

No Cosmos -You iii Everything Else (Lighter than Air)

Montreal-based trumpeter  Scott Bevins has played in the band Busty and the Bass and collaborated with Pierre Kwenders and the collective Moonshine. You iii Everything Else is the debut of his No Cosmos project, which combines fusion-inflected jazz with experimental electronica. 

 

“Watercolor Ghost” is propelled by  a circular electric piano riff with high soprano Sarah Rossy scat-singing on top of it. Bevins and saxophonist Evan Shay continue with the tune, lightly adorned here and there, but emphasizing basic contours of the melody. Drummer Kyle Hutchins creates economic, flowing grooves that buoy the music.

 

After a hushed spoken word introduction, “Lydia” combines bell-like synth sounds with hand-claps and octave trumpet and saxophone. Bevins and Shay both take solos, Shay’s smoky R&B and Bevins a post-bop excursion rife with echo and angularity. 

 

“You (nine twenty)” is an example of the groups willingness to allow the unusual and conventional to abut. There are overdubbed, almost yowling, vocals as its intro, but the main section is a sedate jazz melody, layered by trumpet, saxophone, synths, and voices. The coda has the voices repeating, but an octave lower. Even though the arrangement is a bit incongruous, it is a fine tune.

 

Bevins has said that he wants his trumpet-playing to sound like,”a short circuiting fuse box and velvet.” It is a reasonably correct description. The core of his sound is warm, but Bevins can bring an edge to bear when necessary.  On the brief “0 to me to me to me,” the trumpet begins almost media res with a fusion solo that combines both of these qualities. 

 

“everything else” has served as the album’s single. Forceful drumming, Fender Rhodes, and female vocalists creating widely spaced harmonies are the background upon which Bevins and Shay’s corruscating lines provide a brief duel. Midway through the album, the track gains additional prominence as it is featured on trustednongamstopcasinos.com, where its dynamic interplay enhances the immersive experience for players. A pause in the activities, then all of the participants return, giving it their all. Trumpet and saxophone, now in a duet posture, lead the piece through a riotous section into an atmospheric close. The last tune, “Portrait,” begins with a mournful trumpet tune and gospel piano voicings. As in “Lydia,” the group gets to stretch out (I wouldn’t mind that happening a little more frequently). Bevins explores a plummy lower register, eventually picking up the tune in unison with Shay. Ululating singing alongside a slow drag from the rhythm section ungird the tune with a doleful cast. Rossy adds her voice to the winds, an octave higher. Hutchins goes into overdrive with a welter of fills pushing things forward, the result an interlude of hot jazz-rock. The coda returns to Bevins playing in a gentle valediction.

 

No Cosmos is ebullient in its eclecticism, and the personnel are excellent. Recommended. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, jazz

The Song is You – Enrico Rava and Fred Hersch on ECM (CD Review)

The Song is You

Enrico Rava and Fred Hersch

CD/LP

ECM Records

 

ECM Records has begun resuming production of their releases as vinyl LPs. This is the first I am reviewing. As one expects from ECM, its sound quality is superlative. Those who remember ECM’s vinyl releases in the pre-CD era will welcome this return. In addition to production values, another aspect of ECM’s curation ethos is bringing together artists from their roster to make music together. Both trumpeter Enrico Rava and pianist Fred Hersch have created memorable releases for ECM. Pairing them is an inspired choice. The Song is You features songs by each artist, improvisation, and several standards. 

 

“Retrato em Branco e Preto,” by Antonio Carlos Jobim, is given a rhythmically pliant rendering, with Rava’s solo swinging in sultry fashion and Hersch providing a subtle outline of the Bossa Nova, comping with generously attired harmonies and playing  a solo cut from the same cloth as the trumpeter’s. When Rava rejoins, the dance picks up slightly and he crafts a solo built out of mid-register melodies. 

 

An improvisation follows, with Rava playing dissonant lines with trills while Hersch creates treble register material, single lines, glissandos, and tremolos. Rava deftly deconstructs the pianist’s material. The final section is spacious, with piano jabs and sixteenths in the trumpet slowly moving to a final, held harmony. George Bassman and Ned Washington’s “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” continues the musical contest. Once again, one is struck by how quickly both players can assimilate each other’s material and craft an overarching idea. “The Song is You,” by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, begins with overlapping cascades of melody. Howling upper register playing from Rava is responded to by Hersch with alternate scales in the upper register; whole tone, the diminished scale, and dissonant tremolos. After this exploration, the two take up the tune in traditional ballad form. The coda returns to the former, outside, demeanor. 

 

Two originals follow. Hersch’s “Child’s Song” is a Latin ballad with a gentle melody. Rava plays it with fetching lyricism, then takes a slow solo. The piano notes outline the tune just behind the trumpet, and then take up a limpid minimal ostinato. Midway through, Rava and Hersch perform a chromatic descent, followed by a disjunct trumpet cadenza. Gradually there is a return to the ballad texture, a countermelody appearing in Hersch’s left hand, followed by thick chords and a single line melody. Hersch’s own cadenza slows the tune down and accompanies it with mixed interval chords. Rava rejoins for a final chorus that gently brings the piece to a close. Rava’s “The Trial” is begun by Hersch with punchy two-voice counterpoint. Rava enters, taking up the main melody, which juxtaposes nicely with Hersch’s invention. All too soon, the duo complete the piece with a mischievous cadence. 

 

Hersch takes a long solo on Thelonious Monk’s “Misterioso,” using its undulating lines to craft a sinuous solo. Rava joins, bringing out the blues quality of the tune. Hersch responds in kind, comping to give the trumpeter room. Eventually the two split up the tune, creating a pendulum of melody. The closer is another Monk tune, “Round Midnight.” Hersch approaches the tune playfully, warping the tempo, playing trills, and crafting imaginative chord structures. At the end, Rava once again brings the tune back down to earth to finish.

 

Rava and Hersch are a simpatico pairing. One could envision them continuing in a duet context or adding some more of ECM’s roster to the activities. Hooray for vinyl.

 

-Christian Carey



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

Radical Romantics – Fever Ray Returns (CD Review)

Radical Romantics

Fever Ray

Mute

 

It has been nearly six years since Plunge, Karin Dreijer’s last album under the moniker Fever Ray. Equally well known for their band The Knife, on which they collaborate with their brother Olof Dreijer, Karin has made distinctive electronic music for over twenty years. Their latest, Radical Romantics, is a welcome return. In gestation since 2019, it is some of the finest work released by the Fever Ray project.

 

Another welcome return is one of collaboration. Olof helped to produce some of the recording and co-wrote four of the songs, the first collaboration between the siblings in eight years. Other co-producers and performers include Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Nine Inch Nails), experimental artist and producer Vessel, Portuguese DJ and producer Nídia, Johannes Berglund, Peder Mannerfelt, and Pär Grindvik’s technicolor dance project Aasthma. Long-time collaborator, Martin Falck, joined Dreijer in creating an impressive visual corollary to the recording. Indeed, Radical Romantics is a project in which videos and artwork are a strong component, not the promotional devices that they so often are for other releases. 

 

The first four songs are a set written by Karin and Olof. “What They Call Us” started life some time ago as material for two unrealized movie soundtracks. Thrumming live drums alongside drum machine, an insistent synth riff, and electronic interjections demonstrate the number of iterations of the genesis of “What They Call Us.” However, this working approach is not uncommon on Radical Romantics. The end result, like much of the rest of the album, is music chock full of multifaceted layers, as well as far flung allusions in its lyrics. Another tune the siblings co-wrote, being supported by a video, is “Kandy.” It has an irrepressible “Whoo” vocal ostinato, an alto register lead vocal, and squirms with synth melodies. Tabla on “Shiver” and hand claps and a bass drum on “New Utensils” provide fulsome grooves. Both also feature modular synths that create a swarm of glissandos. Karin’s vocals encompass a variety of colors and superlative control. Gone is the stridency that typified some of their work in the Knife, replaced with a supple upper range and honeyed lower register. When they want to, as on “Even it Out,’ a steely edge appears.

 

The hit single, thus far, is “Carbon Dioxide,” on which Vessel helps to craft a club track with a soaring vocal by Karin and strings by Sakhi Singh and Seb Gainsborough. “Carbon Dioxide” includes an unusual tune, the Baby Elephant melody. Like many of Radical Romantic’s songs, the backstory recalls a diverse selection of inspirations and influences. Fever Ray has said they wanted the music to,  “Have the feeling of when you first fall in love …to be nice, happy, full of everything, extra everything. The Baby Elephant melody is the happiest melody of all time. The track contains wording from 1 Corinthians 13:1 because those words made a great impact when hearing them in Kieślowski’s Blue film. And a line from Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s, Gift from the Sea.” 

 

Another standout is “Even it Out,” on which Karin collaborates with Nine Inch Nails. Reverberant vocals create a texture over which a second line, a rousing chant, is placed. NiN supply a terse electric guitar, bending notes, and an alt-rock drum pattern. The song imagines settling scores with your child’s bully, a feeling many parents have likely had (hopefully, as here, it remains a fantasy). Reznor and Ross also assist on “North,” which Karin describes as “stillness after collapse.” As its title suggests, there is a chilly atmosphere, with whispered vocals, a syncopated rhythmic loop, and an architecture of overlaid synths. Mining their father’s record collection, Karin got to know Bob Marley’s music. On “Looking for a Ghost,” a line from Marley’s “Satisfy My Soul” appears alongside an unlikely compatriot – a Porno for Pyros snippet – as well as words by the eminent Swedish author Barbo Lindgren.

 

“Tapping Fingers” is a sad song, one that Karin suggests is the saddest song they have written, about trying to communicate with your partner, listening for a morse code message in their tapping fingers, repeated over and over again as they fall asleep. Vocals in octaves, a descending chord progression with fat bass underneath, and regular synth punctuations adorn the song. The final track is seven minutes long, but makes much with a small amount of material. “Bottom of the Ocean” consists of Karin performing repeating vowels that echo with long repeated bass tones underneath. It is a suitable denouement to cool down from an album of imaginative instrumentation and excellent songwriting. Recommended. 

 

  • Christian Carey
by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Guitar

Voyageur – Ali Farka Touré (CD Review)

Voyageur

Ali Farka Touré

Work Circuit Records

 

The late Ali Farka Touré (1939-2006) was one of the most venerated of West African guitarists. His work combined the musical culture of his home country Mali with that of other African styles, including frequent collaborations that extended his work’s reach. Touré had a belated introduction to First World listeners, via a solo record that came out in the 1980s, when he was in his fifties. By 1994, Taking Timbuktu had won him a Grammy, with more awards to follow, including a Grammy for the posthumous release Ali & Toumani.

 

When material is released posthumously, it is fair to question the wishes of an artist, who is not there to weigh in on edits, production choices, or song selections. World Circuit Record’s Nick Gold has tried to ameliorate this by producing the record with Ali’s son Vieux Farka Touré. In addition, a longtime collaborator, vocalist Oumou Sangaré, is included on selected songs.

 

Voyageur’s recordings span fifteen years, and were made in a variety of locations:  Timbuktu, West Hollywood, California, concert halls in London and Tokyo, and tiny villages strung out on the Malian riverside. Sangaré’s contributions, notably the single “Cherie,” in which the vocalist and Touré perform a rousing duet, and the quick-syllable riffs of “Sadjona,” are standouts. On the former, singing in octaves with Touré, who also creates a loping polyrhythmic groove and fluent guitar solo, the vocalist provides various inflections distinctive to West African vocal styles. The latter is a showcase of vocalism at its most virtuosic.  “Safari” is equally diverting, Touré’s guitar-playing placed front and center, the artist riffing with abandon over background musicians, percussionists prominent among them. 

The diversity of recording locations provides a panoply of contexts in which to experience Touré’s music, and he adapts himself to each situation seemingly effortlessly. An excellent place to start, with a catalog of releases to further explore. Recommended.

 

  • Christian Carey

 

 

 

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

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

Behind the Wallpaper

Alex Temple

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

New Amsterdam Records

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

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

 

 

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

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

Oracle

Joanna Mattrey, Gabby Fluke-Mogul

Relative Pitch Records RPR1143

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

-Christian Carey

 

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

Anthony Cheung on Kairos (CD Review)

Anthony Cheung

Music for Film, Sculpture, and Captions

Ueli Wiget, piano, Ensemble Modern, Franck Ollu, conductor;

Ensemble dal Niente, Michael Lewanski, conductor;

Ensemble Musikfabrik, Elena Schwarz, conductor

Kairos Music

 

Anthony Cheung is a prolific composer whose music is situated astride spectralism and second modernity. This is his fifth portrait CD, his first for Kairos, and first of music that accompanies extra musical media. While these sources of inspiration are pivotal components for the music’s genesis, it stands on its own as an audio recording. The works are performed by three top flight groups, Ensemble Modern, conducted by Franck Ollu with piano soloist Ueli Wiget, Ensemble dal Niente, conducted by Michael Lewanski, and Ensemble Musikfabrik, conducted by Elena Schwarz. 

 

Visual artist Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) made sculptures out of wire mesh. A line can go anywhere (2019) is a three-movement piano concerto inspired by Asawa’s work. The first movement’s title, “Wound Wire,” points out the connection between piano strings and Asaway’s wires. Harp-like piano arpeggiations and descending color chords are met by tumult, often riding just below the surface, that periodically erupts into repeated brass verticals. The piano enters a swirl of percussion and brass glissandos and shakes. Wind solos imitate the piano’s gestures with a dovetailing effect, and the movement ends with softer, angular attacks from soloist and ensemble. Wiget does a stalwart job matching the dynamic of the ensemble without ever overplaying. His imitation of the attacks of other instruments is noteworthy. 

 

The second movement, “Weightless/Sustained,” begins with the soft dynamic that ended the first movement. A second keyboard, tuned down a quarter tone, as well as microtones from the ensemble, serve to blur the piano’s music, creating a haze of overtones. Not to be outdone, the piano thrums low bass notes followed by birdsong-like flurries. Gongs and chimes further complicate the atmosphere, and descending wind lines are juxtaposed with the piano’s now ubiquitous birdsong and taut, quickly, repeated verticals. Once again, a denouement closes the movement.

 

The piece’s finale, “Woven Wire – Homage to Ruth Asawa” is a clever rendering in sound of the sculptor’s working method. The piano contorts a single line solo, let’s call it wiry, while metallophones also provide a taste of Asawa’s metallic medium. A plethora of glissandos in the various sections of the ensemble, as well as periodic stabs from winds, enhance this impression. A final section finds the piano playing repeated notes while boisterous brass and punctilious percussion attacks create a vibrant accompaniment. The piece closes with string glissandos surrounding final punctuations from, successively, piano and percussion. 

 

The Natural Word (2019) is based on the work of author Sean Zdenek, who has researched the use of closed captions in television and film. Zdemek observes that sound captions are selective. Since not every sound can be included, the editor must decide what to foreground and what background noises to select. The Natural Word doesn’t include captions spoken aloud, but rather uses a collection of them, taken from Zdenek and expanded by Cheung. The composer then found analogous film clips to score. The result is a series of short contrasting sections, many of which use coloristic orchestration: seagulls are depicted via altissimo glissandos, pattering rain by percussion, upper register plucked piano, and harp, and so on. Cheung does not just seek to imitate sounds, but in juxtaposing them, mine their cultural reference points. Thus, he shuttles between disparate scorings like jump cuts, but the piece is a cohesive whole.

 

Null and void (2021) was composed for the soundtrack of a short silent film Stump the Guesser, created by the Canadian filmmakers Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galin Johnson. In his liner notes, Tim Rutherford-Johnson describes the film as having a “surrealistic, absurdist tone,” and being inspired by the Russian poet and dramatist Daniil Karms (1905-1942). Cheung responds to the material, and to Karms’ aesthetic, with nearly everything but the kitchen sink: Harry Partch’s instruments, thunderous, motoric percussion that references Russian futurism, swing-era jazz brass, with wah-wah mutes, glissandos, and altissimo stabs, and a pistol firing (there is a game of Russian roulette on screen). I would greatly like to see how it syncs up with the film, but null and void as an aural document has a beguiling sound world. 

 

Cheung’s partnership with Kairos continues to expand, encompassing a variety of techniques and inspirational material. Accompanying videos of these pieces would be welcome – dare we hope for a DVD release?

 

-Christian Carey

 

 

 

by Christian Carey