Tag: Jr.

CD Review, File Under?, Improv

Favorites 2022: Barre Phillips and ​​György Kurtág Jr. (Review)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Barre Phillips and ​​György Kurtág Jr.

Face á Face 

ECM Records

 

Luminary avant-jazz bassist Barre Phillips and György Kurtág Jr., son of the well-known Hungarian composer and an electronic musician, join together on Face á Face. Kurtág uses a variety of synths, providing both pitched material and percussion to complement Phillips’ bass-playing. It might not be a pairing one would have readily thought of, even with Phillips’ long pedigree of collaborations, but Face á Face is a compelling recording. 

 

The album opener, “Beyond,” finds the two in a cat-and-mouse game, Kurtág beginning with oscillating seconds and then repeated pitches. Phillips responds initially with a melodic duet and then bends double stops. Chiming notes in the synths contrast Phillips’ low register melody on “The Under Zone.” “Two by Two” features sci-fi synths and combative percussion. Partway through, this gives way to Phillips, who plays repeated oscillations and harmonics in a hat tip to Kurtág’s textures. Low register double stops and minor seconds create a cavernous close. On “Across the Aisle,” both musicians play with material that combines non-pitched and pitched sounds, Phillips attacking various portions of his bass while Kurtág provides plinking gestures to offset bass harmonics. The piece begins and ends furiously with a more reserved development in between.

 

Every piece has a different sonic pedigree. Glissando bass lines and modular synth punctuations create intriguing blurring on the miniature “Algobench.” Double stopped bass notes and then repeated single tones are haloed by high register synth on “Chosen Spindle.” The synth part becomes more melodic and Phillips responds by taking on a grounding role with repeated octaves. Rather than concluding, the music seems to disappear. Arco playing and vibrating electronics, complete with cricket noises, are juxtaposed in the aptly named “Extended Circumstances.” “Bunch” has the players change roles, with Phillips making percussive sounds and Kurtág string-like glissandos. Phillips returns to harmonics, which are countered by a long, slow synthetic slide. On “Sharpen Your Eyes,” Phillips uses his bass as a drum and Kurtág engages in whistling noises. “Stand Alone” is a percussion duel with some bleeping to boot. The denouement is like a clock unwinding. 

 

Phillips moves closer to jazz with a swinging line on “Ruptured Air.” Not taking the bait, Kurtág supplies angular, sustained single notes as an avant rejoinder. This blending of styles provides one of the more fascinating colloquies on Face á Face. The recording closes with “Forest Shouts,” a miniature in which Phillips plays double stops and repeated dissonant intervals. Kurtág responds with a droid-like flute tune to bring the proceedings to an enigmatic close. Ingenious music-making: Face á Face is one of our favorites of 2022.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
Brooklyn, CDs, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, Interviews, jazz, Minimalism, New Amsterdam, New York, Orchestral

The Changing Same: Numinous New Music from Joseph C. Phillips, Jr.

Composer and conductor Joseph C. Phillips, Jr.

If you’re a fan of new music, be it “indie-classical” or whatever it’s being labeled this week, then you must check out the music of composer and conductor Joseph C. Phillips, Jr. Phillips’ music, composed and arranged for his ensemble Numinous, a large chamber group (or small orchestra?) of woodwinds, brass, strings, tuned percussion, electric instruments and vocalists, is a complex, finely detailed amalgam of classical, minimalist, South American, Asian, and African American influences, with a distinctive “sound” that is instantly identifiable, yet full of surprises. (You know those descriptive terms “Brahmsian” or “the Mingus effect”? It’s like that.) Phillips’ latest album, Changing Same, due out August 28 on New Amsterdam Records, is perhaps his most autobiographical musical statement to date.

While his previous recordings, Numinous: The Music of Joseph C. Phillips, Jr. and Vipassana include notes that detail the inspiration for his compositions, Changing Same has no notes; just a quote from 1966 by writer, poet and playwright Amiri Baraka (then Le Roi Jones) that describes a “post-black aesthetic,” one that unapologetically digs both the down-home and the downtown, the highfalutin and the funky, the Anglo-centric and the Afro-futuristic, the “what it is” and the “what the hell is goin’ on?” The titles for each of the six movements of Changing Same offer some additional clues . . . “Behold, the Only Thing Greater Than Yourself,” “Miserere,” “Unlimited,” “Alpha Man,” “The Most Beautiful Magic.” The first track, “19,” which can be streamed and purchased here, refers to November 19, 1970, the date of the publication of James Baldwin’s essay, “An Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis,” Arnold Schoenberg’s Sechs Kleine Klavierstücke, opus 19, from 1911, and the age Phillips began studying music as an undergrad, after two semesters as a bio-chemistry major.

Changing Same is another intriguing chapter in Phillips’ journey, from growing up listening to both Holst and Prince, to conducting Numinous onstage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in a performance of his score for the 1922 silent film The Loves of Pharoah, to producing this latest release. In the following interview, Phillips provides some details about that journey, and explains how his life experience, be it past, future or present-day-craziness, is reflected in the music of Changing Same.

On the back of your new album, there’s a quote by Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones) from his 1966 essay, The Changing Same:

“R&B is about emotion, issues purely out of emotion. New Black Music is also about emotion, but from a different place, and finally toward a different end. What these musicians feel is a more complete existence. That is, the digging of everything.”

So, my first question with regard to this quote is, do you dig everything?

Well, of course, I have my standards. [laughs] There are things I like and don’t like.

In that essay, Baraka is explaining the spontaneous compositional processes of the creative improvisational people at that time, and putting them in a continuum of what had come before in terms of black music. He’s saying look, these guys might seem like they’re acting wild and crazy, But really, this “New Black Music” harkens back to earlier music.

When I read the essay, the quote just jumped out at me. I thought it was a perfect encapsulation of what I’m doing or hoping to have happen with my piece. With Changing Same, I wanted to take the cultural and musical things that I grew up with and incorporate them into piece. When I read Baraka’s essay, I thought, yes, I grew up with the black music continuum, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, and Prince. But I grew up with classical music as well, like Holst, Bach . . . like any other composer, I have a potpourri of influences. Sometimes you can hear these influences very specifically. For example, on the fourth track, “The Most Beautiful Magic,” the initial bass line is actually coming straight from Prince’s “Purple Rain.”

(more…)

by Chris Becker